Veris was still holding her when Brody returned, five minutes later. There was a haunted, stunned look in his eyes. From the limp angle of Taylor’s head, she had become unconscious.
Brody’s gut clenched.
Alexander was working on the bloody shoulder, his face expressionless. He glanced at Brody. “There is blood all over your tunic,” he remarked. “I presume it is Fatimid blood?”
“It’s English blood,” Brody said. He wiped his sword on his tunic, which would never see another wearing. He slid the sword back into its scabbard. He reached inside the neck of his tunic and retrieved the scrap of cloth he’d pulled from inside the assassin’s clothing. “We found that next to his heart.” He laid it across Taylor’s lap, where Veris could see it by glancing down. He patted Veris’ shoulder. “I’m sorry, Will.”
The strip of cloth was in Selkirk colors, with a Selkirk shield embroidered at the end of it, along with a stylized “D”. Davina’s household shield.
Alexander glanced at the cloth. “You have powerful enemies, William. Is that not the shield for the Lady Selkirk, the wife of your current master? Why would she wish to have her man parade as a Fatimid assassin and have you murdered?”
“Why indeed?” Brody muttered.
Veris shook his head. “Enough,” he murmured. “Let us take care of Tyra for now.”
Brody bent to take her from him. “There’s a wagon over here—”
“I will take her,” Veris said.
Brody stepped away. “Over here,” he said simply, pointing.
Veris turned and carried her toward the wagon without a word. Brody’s gut roiled as he saw blood drip from Taylor’s fingers as they trailed down behind Veris.
Well, justice had been mete. The man was as dead as it was possible to be. But he had died with regret on his lips that his duty to Davina had not been fulfilled and that was something Brody would fail to tell Veris for now.
Brody followed uselessly behind Veris and Alexander as they settled Taylor on blankets that had been quickly folded and set up as a temporary bed for her on top of the water barrels on the lead wagon. Alexander climbed up with her. “I will tend her,” he said, dropping a saddlebag next to him. “Leave her with me.” He tore the tunic open and was already unfastening the first of the buckles on her hauberk, as if Brody’s permission had been given.
Brody rested his hand on Veris’ shoulder. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said softly.
Veris jerked and tore his gaze away from Taylor. He seemed to process Brody’s words as if listening to them again in his head. He frowned, struggling to understand the idiom. Then nodded. “Yes, let us,” he agreed. He pointed to Brody’s tunic. “Your horse won’t let you near him.”
Brody swore. “A fast change and then we go, no matter what. We’ve been delayed in this place for far too long. I don’t care if we only get five miles today. I won’t spend another night here!” He headed for the wagon that held his gear, trying not to linger on the images in his mind.
The moment when she had taken the spear in her shoulder.
The soft sound she had made.
Veris’ desperate reach for her.
But the images played on like a YouTube video stuck on autoplay, making him re-live the sick realization over and over that he was too far away to do anything at all but watch it happen—and Veris, too.
They were both the most powerful creatures ever to have roamed the earth and neither of them had been able to help her. She had protected Veris, instead—a frail, mortal human.
Brody found himself leaning against the side of the wagon, his chest heaving, his eyes closed, struggling to hold in a pitiful cry of frustration and rage. And if this was his reaction, how was Veris handling it?
He threw on a fresh tunic over his mail, belted it and added his sword as he hurried back to the head of the column.
Veris was seated on his horse, his gaze straight ahead, waiting. Alexander’s and Taylor’s mounts had been hitched to wagons farther back. The captains, the next in line in the columns, stayed a respectful dozen paces back. That left Brody and Veris alone at the head of the column.
Brody threw himself up onto his horse, gave the “forward” signal and moved forward himself, setting a pace that was not quite a brisk walk. He glanced at Veris. “I keep seeing it happening in my mind,” he said, using Saxon. He wasn’t as fluent in it as Taylor, but he was good enough with it that it would keep their conversation secure. “I hate that I wasn’t fast enough to stop it, to help her.”
Veris glanced at him sharply. “Then you do not blame me?”
Brody felt his lips part as his jaw dropped open. “Good heavens, no! If there is blame to be apportioned, I will pass it all onto Davina with pleasure. Veris, for the gods’ sake, why would you think I would blame you?”
He was staring between the ears of his horse again. “You love her. It is because of me she lies on that wagon now.”
“That is all you can think of?” Brody asked harshly. “In all of this, you worry only that someone might blame you?”
Veris turned his head again. His eyes were filled with agony again. “Forgive me. I worry that this might jeopardize what I’ve just found. I’m being selfish. Taylor…” He drew a breath. “Taylor absolved me before she slept. I want to make sure you feel the same. I want her to wake and find the world is aright. She has given up much to make it so. I would not ruin her efforts. She deserves far more than that.”
Brody felt much like he had when once he had fallen from the curtain wall as a child and winded himself. The inability to breathe, because his stunned lungs would not cooperate.
“What are you suggesting, Veris?” he asked, when at last he could speak.
Veris shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said at last, in a whisper. “No one has ever done for me what she did. Not a human. Not a woman. And not out of…” He dropped his gaze.
“Out of love,” Brody finished flatly. “Say it, Veris. It doesn’t bite.”
But Veris fell silent and for the rest of the day his comments were innocuous and in French.
* * * * *
TAYLOR WOKE TO PAIN AND heat and the smell of dust that told her she was still in the eleventh century.
Relief trickled through her. She had been terrified that passing out from the wound would send her back to her time and she was in no way ready to return yet. It was so not the right time to suddenly disappear.
She looked up at the blue sky above. She was being jolted. The wagon, she guessed.
“Keep as still as you can, my lady,” Alexander said softly. “It is a delicate thing I do right now.” His head appeared above her own, his soft brown eyes narrowed, the brows drawn together.
“And that is?”
“I am stitching your skin and your flesh is so much softer than a man’s.”
No wonder she was in agony. “I’m guessing there’s no such thing as pain relief while you’re doing it, either, huh?” she said.
“Most men grip a piece of wood, or clench it between their teeth,” he suggested.
“Are you at least using sterile string?”
“It was boiled, as I know your insistence upon such things. I am going to stitch again,” he warned.
She felt the needle prick and thought, This is not so bad. Then it pushed through her skin and she felt it underneath. It punched through the other side of her already outrageously sensitive wound. Then, the worst came. She felt the string being drawn through the wound.
“Oh, God, Alexander,” she moaned, trying to sit up.
“No, you must lay still, my lady!”
“No, no, Alex.” She clutched at her stomach.
He caught her around the middle and hauled her with surprising strength over to the edge of the wagon. She retched hard, over and over, each time as she thought about the thread running through her flesh. Finally, she could be sick no more.
Alexander helped her lay down on the blanket pad once more and it was then she realized that she was almost topless. The tunic was torn open, the hauberk unbuckled at the shoulder and folded down. The undershirt also torn all the way down to her waist. Her left breast was bare, but covered in almost dried blood.
She shivered, suddenly cold.
“I must finish the stitching,” Alexander said gravely.
Taylor nodded.
He began again. Taylor swallowed, clutching the edges of the blanket pad. “Talk to me,” she begged.
“If you wish. What would you like to talk about?”
“Tell me about the wound, then. How bad is it?”
“As wounds go, I think you are very lucky,” Alexander said. “There were no organs that were touched. No bones were broken. Just skin, muscle, tissue. I cleaned the wound and now I am stitching it. When I am done, I will put a herb compress on it to increase the rate of healing. In a day or two, you can take the compress off and a day after that, the stitches, if you do not plan on being very active.”
“I don’t plan to be active, no. But my life has been unexpectedly active all on its own,” Taylor said.
“Then leave the stitches for another day or two after that,” Alexander said placidly.
She hissed as the needle tugged.
“My apologies, my lady,” Alexander said. He fell silent.
“Please, keep talking,” she begged.
“Most eastern masters insist on utter silence while one tends them,” Alexander said. “I am not in the habit of speaking while applying medicine.”
“Even an old dog can learn new tricks,” Taylor insisted.
“Yes, I admit that is a puzzle I have been trying to resolve in my own mind.” He fell silent again, but before she could prompt him, he began to speak again. She thought it was a change of subject. “The one caution we must watch for now, my lady, is fevers of the blood.”
“You mean infections?”
“Yes, you could call them that, I suppose,” Alexander decided. “They are what happens sometimes when wounds aren’t correctly cleaned. Above all, this must not happen with you. You might survive such a fever, but your babe would not.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “Yes, I thought you had guessed,” she said softly. “That first day I didn’t say anything.”
“I am a doctor first and foremost, even though I cannot practice my craft in this new world I find myself in,” Alexander said gently. “There is a man called Hippocrates, an ancient Greek doctor, who is considered to be the father of medicine. Eastern doctors try to emulate his philosophies. He believed in the sanctity of the doctor and patient relationship. What we talk about I do not repeat to anyone, my lady.”
“I know who Hippocrates is,” Taylor assured him.
“You do?” Alexander seemed surprised. “Then I do not need to explain further.” He sat back. “The stitching is finished.” He lifted her undershirt back over her chest. “I will prepare your compress.” He hesitated. “I judge the child you carry to be about forty-two days old. Is that about right?”
“Forty-six,” she said.
Alexander’s gaze shifted past her head. “My lord!”
Taylor lifted herself up onto her elbows and turned her head. Brody sat on his warhorse, staring at them, the horse’s head almost grazing the side of the wagon. He had come up alongside the wagon, probably to check on her. Alexander and she had been too involved in their talk to notice.
Shock was written on Brody’s face. It was white as marble. He pulled his gaze to Taylor. “You’re pregnant?” he asked in English.
“Brody…” But there were no words there. Nothing she could say would undo this.
He closed his eyes and squeezed his temples with the finger and thumb of one gauntlet covered hand. “Forty-six nights ago I was in Vegas with the band. That’s when you went back to Norway with Veris.” He lifted his head to look at her. “Back to when he was human,” he said bitterly and pulled at the reins, turning the horse’s head.
“Brody, don’t leave!” she said quickly.
But he didn’t listen.
When Taylor looked back at Alexander, he was fussing with the herbs in his bag, pretending to be oblivious.
Taylor lay back down on the blanket and put her hand over her eyes to shut out the sun and hold in the tears. Her chest shuddered as she tried to stop them. But that made her shoulder spasm and just made her want to cry harder.
Alexander’s hand touched her arm. “Drink this,” he said. “It will soothe the pain.”
She eased herself up again on her good elbow and took the cup he handed her. Easing the pain sounded really good right now. She took a big swallow and gagged at the bitter taste.
“All of it,” Alexander added.
She nodded and tipped the rest of contents into her mouth and made herself swallow it. “How long does it take to work?” she asked as Alexander settled her back on the blanket.
“Not long. Close your eyes.”
She closed her eyes. It occurred to her that Alexander might leave her alone on top of all these water barrels while she had her eyes closed. She didn’t want to be alone. She opened her eyes again to tell him so and found Brody watching her.
“Brody.” Pure warm happiness washed over her.
He picked up her hand and kissed the knuckles. “Hey.”
There was soft whiteness behind his head and she focused her gaze behind him. “I can feel that we’re still on the wagon, but what is over your head?”
“We rigged up a cloth over the top of you. Alexander said the sun was bothering you.” Brody stroked her cheek. “It was only going to get worse as the sun got stronger.”
“How long have I been sleeping?” she asked, astonished.
“It’s late afternoon,” Brody told her. “We’ll be stopping soon for the night.”
She had slept the day away.
“How long have you been here?” she asked, struggling with the idea that a whole day could disappear just like that.
Brody’s shoulders lifted a fraction. “A while.”
“Watching me just lie here?”
Again, the tiny shrug. “And thinking.”
“You’re wondering why I didn’t tell you,” she guessed.
“I know why you didn’t.” He touched her hip. Hesitantly. Then, when she didn’t flinch or protest, he smoothed his hand across her belly. It was a possessive movement. “Veris doesn’t know yet. You couldn’t tell me until after you told the father.”
“You’re wrong, Brody. So wrong.”
He lifted his gaze to her face. “Then why?”
“I wanted to tell you both together.”
He took a massive breath that lifted his shoulders. His gaze dropped to her hand still held in his. “The day we jumped here, when you were asking about Veris. That’s when you found out, wasn’t it? That’s why you were suddenly anxious to track him down.”
“Yes.”
His thumb brushed over her fingers. “You should have told me when we landed here. Niceties aside. I could have protected you, made better arrangements—”
“Protected me more than you have?” she asked reasonably.
His head snapped up. “Look at where you lie!” he protested.
She reached for him. “Don’t do this to yourself.” She grasped his tunic with her good hand and drew him to her. He allowed her to move him, lowering himself down closer to her and carefully avoiding her injured shoulder.
Taylor brought his face close to hers. “This was not your fault,” she said carefully.
He rested his forehead gently against hers and closed his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispered. “Don’t you trust me? Love me enough?”
Taylor stroked his hair. “It’s because I love you that I couldn’t tell you,” she confessed. “I thought… I knew you would be angry that it wasn’t your child, and you were, weren’t you? That was your first reaction, this morning.”
She felt more than heard his sigh. “I’m over it now,” he murmured and lifted his head. He kissed her and sat up. Strangely, he was smiling. “Any child is such a gift we’d all be sheer idiots to question the source.”
“But that’s not why you’re smiling, is it?”
He shook his head. “No.” His thumb stroked her jaw. “I’ve always thought that to you, Veris was the real man and I was just the gentle poet and singer. Most people don’t see me properly when Veris is in the room and I’ve got used to that. But you do, don’t you? You see me perfectly.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Taylor asked. “I mean, look at you. You’re magnificent. Beautiful, even when you are totally pissed.”
He grinned. ‘“Beautiful’ huh? People don’t call Veris beautiful. He’d take their heads off.” His smile faded. “It’s nice to have my male ego stroked occasionally. You just did, by being afraid to tell me I wasn’t the father.” He lifted her hand again and kissed the back of it. “My age is showing, I know. But that felt good.”
Taylor yawned suddenly. Hugely. She frowned as sleep tugged at her. “What did Alexander slip me, anyway? We should ask him for the formula. Patent it…back in…our time.” She yawned again.
Brody gave a soft laugh. “Sleep. It’ll help you heal. I’ll have the camp set up by the time you wake up next.”
“A soft bed…” she murmured.
“Done.” She felt his lips on her palm. The tickle of his canines. “I love you, Maggie Taylor Yates.”
“Mmm…” She wasn’t sure what she meant to say except it was a universal all-encompassing agreement. She accepted his love, she loved him back, love was all that mattered. Love followed her into sleep. This time she felt the sleep slip over her and let it.
She woke to a cool breeze on her skin. Night, she knew instantly. She was not on the wagon anymore. She sniffed carefully, listening to the sounds of a camp of men going about their business. There was a campfire quite close, crackling and popping quietly. Her shoulder ached. She lay, she thought, on more blankets, but these did not have the unforgiving ridges of water barrels beneath them. Just the ever present sand of the Jordanian desert.
“You are quite safe, my lady,” Veris said, next to her. “You don’t have to pretend to be asleep while you test your surroundings.”
Startled, Taylor opened her eyes. As before, a wagon had been pulled up to make a small private camp site for Brody and Taylor. It appeared to be the wagon she had spent the day upon, for the swathe of linen that had shielded her from the sun was still propped upon four spears thrust up between barrels.
There was a big cooking pot sitting on a rock next to the fire. Veris stood in front of the fire, making him a dark silhouette, his arms crossed as usual. He wore no sword that she could see from her prone position.
She tried to sit up, but pain shot through her.
Veris hurried forward, his hand held out. “Do not exert yourself,” he said. “The elixir Alexander gave you has worn off and now you will be in pain.”
“Yes,” she agreed breathlessly, falling back on the blanket. Her shoulder was pulsing with black waves of agony that radiated through her body. Her head felt like it would split in two. Two small tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes.
She felt more than saw Veris kneel beside her. His hand hovered over her shoulder. “Will you allow me to look at the wound?” he asked. “I once trained with the ancient Greek doctors in Pergamum. I know how to treat war wounds.”
“I know that,” she said, her voice husky.
“Yes, of course you do,” he said, sounding vexed.
“There’s no need to ask my permission.”
“You of all people must say yes,” he replied, his voice low. “Brody has agreed. But you must also.”
“I agree,” she said.
Veris carefully pulled aside her bloodstained tunic. He swore softly when he saw the hauberk. “The mail is too heavy to leave in place over the wound. I will take it off.” He opened the buckles on her right shoulder. Taylor thought he would make her sit up, but he pulled the hauberk down her hips. With the clinical detachment of a nurse, he slid his hand under her waist, lifted her hips and pulled the mail down past her hips, then off over her feet. He dropped it with a hiss of links into a pile in the sand and came back to her side.
She realized then that he was wearing no mail of his own.
He picked up a cup—one she recognized. It was the small cup that Alexander had made her drink from that morning. “This will help with the pain,” Veris said. “It is the same mix as this morning, only weakened to one fifth of the power. You will not sleep. Brody seemed to feel that you would resist being forced to sleep again.”
“I would.” Taylor relaxed. “But pain relief would be welcome.” She tried to sit up again and Veris pushed back against her good shoulder, keeping her on the blanket. “You are a persistent woman.” He slid an arm under her back and lifted her enough to let her drink from the cup. When the cup was half-empty, he let her back down.
“The stuff works almost instantly,” Taylor told him. “This morning I went out like a…a candle.”
Veris folded back the undershirt over the top of the tunic. Like the tunic, the shirt was crusty with her blood. He carefully tucked it down only just enough to give him access to the wound and the bandages Alexander had tied over it, but that still meant that almost all of her breast was exposed.
Alexander’s concoction had already set in. Her pain seemed to lift off like a hot air balloon and drift away from her. It was still attached via a slender thread, threatening to reel in and reinsert itself into her body at any moment, but for now it floated off up in the never-sphere, where she could ignore it.
Taylor focused on Veris’ face as he leaned over her. His blue eyes were so dear to her. So familiar. Yet this man was an awkward stranger who was staring at her breast while he treated her wound.
Her skin was as blood-stained as her clothing and grimy after a day of heat, pain and sweating under the mail, but she barely cared. Taylor could feel the liquid, languorous heat of arousal rising in her. It didn’t matter that Veris couldn’t see all of her breast, either. That made it more exciting. He had only to peel the undershirt a half an inch lower and her nipple would be exposed.
The nipple tightened painfully at the idea.
Veris lifted the bandages away, then the compress that Alexander had applied. He touched the wound. It didn’t hurt.
“Good stitches,” he remarked. “Alexander did well.”
“I threw up when he was doing them,” Taylor confessed. Maybe if she kept the conversation on the disgusting and the normal, her body would cool down.
Veris laughed. “Your first stitches, I’m guessing.”
“Alexander said they were his first stitches on a woman, too.”
Veris abruptly sobered. For a fraction of a second, she saw heat in his eyes. Anger. Then an internal shield dropped down and his expression neutralized.
Taylor grew abruptly aware of Veris’ fingers touching her flesh outside the region of the wound. Accidental brushes. Tiny imprints of the tips of his fingers as he worked. Her skin was hypersensitive to his touch.
“There is no sign of bad blood,” he said. “But I want to clean the wound anyway, just to be sure.”
She nodded.
He rose and moved to the pot sitting next to the fire. There was a smaller cup sitting next to it and he dipped it into the pot and carried it back to Taylor. He soaked a cloth in it, concentrating on the task.
Silence was worse. Taylor cast about for an innocent subject. “How far from Jerusalem are we?”
“They figure we should reach the city by early afternoon tomorrow, if we leave at first light.”
She focused on his use of the neutral word “they”. It would have been Alexander who would have supplied that information, but Veris was not using his name. He had not liked the fact that Alexander, a man, had touched her. Taylor had reminded Veris of that by pointing out that Alexander had never had a female war victim before.
Was this jealousy? From Veris?
“Then good time was made today despite my slowing everyone down.” She was pleased.
“You?” He seemed surprised.
She sighed. “It wasn’t good military thinking, stepping in front of you that way. It slowed everyone down and made a late start. If we had been on campaign, or rations had been short, it could have been a critical blunder. No one said anything, but I know the men thought me foolish. There were other ways to deal with the man. Possibly dozens of them. I just reacted. I didn’t think. Not thinking can be foolish out here. I’ve read about it. I think even you have told me that, too.”
A great weight lifted from her as she finished speaking and she realized that this guilt had been with her all day, hovering in her sleep and the few short minutes she had been awake, making her deeply uncomfortable.
Veris paused in his work to look her fully in the eye. “Yes, it was foolish, if you are only thinking like a soldier. But you will always have my gratitude. Taylor…Yates. That is your name, is it not?
“You and Brody have covered a lot of ground.”
Veris smiled a little. “I insisted, after this morning.”
“You know that knowing too much about your own future can be dangerous, don’t you?”
“I didn’t ask about my future. I asked about you.” He went back to work. “There is a difference.”
“That’s typical of you. Splitting hairs so minute you need a microscope to see them.”
Veris lifted his head. “I don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t matter. I was teasing. And trying to change the subject.”
“Why change the discussion? You don’t like talking about yourself, do you? You’ve tried to deflect me twice since I expressed my gratitude. Or is it my gratitude that bothers you?” He sat back and put the bowl of water aside, apparently finished with the cleaning. He simply watched her, waiting for her answer.
Taylor licked her lips. “Yesterday, you considered me a hindrance.” She held up her palm, where the scab from his knife cut was still red and healing. “Now I have your gratitude. No one changes their minds that fast.”
His gaze shifted and dropped away from hers. “Brody warned me you do not deal with men as other women do. I keep forgetting that.”
“I treat men as my equals in all but physical strength,” Taylor said. “And I’m used to being treated the same way.”
Veris snorted. Then he glanced at her. “You do not jest,” he said slowly. “This explains much…” He seemed lost in thought. Absorbed for a long moment. Then he stirred and picked up the filthy corner of her tunic where it laid folded back against her shoulder. “This must be changed, and you should bathe and remove all that blood and filth lest it travel to the wound.”
“Good idea,” she said dryly. “I’d love to, except that I’m as weak as a kitten, high as a kite and have one good arm.”
Veris’ mouth lifted in a small smile. “I believe most of what you just said means you approve the idea in general. I will bathe you.” He nodded toward the big pot of water by the fire. “I have all the arrangements in hand.”
Her body seemed to burst into flames and melt into a pile of nameless goo at the idea.
“No, Veris. No. That would be… That’s totally inappropriate. Brody can help me, when he gets back from wherever he is.”
“Brody won’t be back tonight,” Veris said shortly. “He’s camping with his men.”
Taylor drew in a short, hot breath that sizzled on the way down. “Why? Why would he do that?”
“I asked him to.”
“Why?” She tried to breathe, to bring her galloping heart under control and to find words that wouldn’t offend this Veris. Screw it, she decided and looked him in the eye. “Are you trying to seduce me?”
Veris smiled a little. “No.” He rose and walked back to the fireplace and brought back the big pot, carrying it by the handle. “This is a common service doctors used to provide for their patients, in Pergamum. It seems to be a lost art, these days, or one passed on to servants as being too menial a task.” He put the pot on the ground close by and settled down next to her, pushing up his sleeves. “I want Brody in my life. You are wedded to his life in a way that the word ‘marriage’ does not even begin to describe. I want to know more about the woman who shares her man so selflessly, that she will take a spear in the chest in order to save his lover.”
“That’s not the only reason I did it,” Taylor replied.
Veris eased her torn tunic from her shoulders and off her arms. “The other reasons?”
Taylor said carefully, “In another time and place, I love you.”
“In that other time and place we are lovers, aren’t we?” Veris said flatly. He looked her in the eye and waited for her answer.
Taylor nodded. A single tear squeezed out from her eye despite her blinking. Veris picked it up on his finger. “You told me you loved me yesterday,” he reminded her. “Now it is only in that other time and place?”
Taylor closed her eyes. Veris, the master logician. She might have remembered not to lie around him. She opened them again. He was still waiting for her answer, so she gave him the truth, the only thing Veris would ever settle for. “I won’t be the one to ruin what you and Brody have now,” she said, trying to make her voice firm, her tone strong. But it came out sounding wobbly and pathetic. “I won’t be the one who gets in the way.”
Veris went back to gently removing her clothing. “You have a remarkable mind, Taylor Yates.”
But it was her body that was responding to what he was doing. She couldn’t help it. This was Veris, her longtime lover, his familiar hands removing her clothing. His scent. His voice. His eyes. His big body.
He even unbound her hair and laid it out on another blanket, leaving her stripped of everything while the night air brushed over her skin like a caress.
Veris first turned her carefully on her belly, then soaked a cloth in the water and washed her from neck to toe in long gliding strokes. He didn’t spare an inch of her. The cloth pushed between her legs and washed her cleft as thoroughly as any other part of her, while her face heated against the blanket.
This is Veris, she reminded herself. His tongue has been there. His cock, his hands. Why be coy?
It kept coming back to the strangeness of this Veris. They didn’t know him. He didn’t know them.
She heard the cloth drop back into the pot. Then Veris’ hands touched her back, spreading out. Smoothing. The fingertips digging in.
Taylor breathed out as muscles she didn’t know she possessed seemed to all sigh and relax at once. Tendons uncramped, knots disappeared. Veris was not applying as much pressure over her wounded shoulder as he would normally and he wasn’t using the Shiatsu and acupressure techniques he would pick up in the centuries ahead, but he was giving her one of his infamous massages. These massages were deadly, as Brody and she had both learned over the years. If she was tired or Brody distracted by band business and Veris wanted their energy and undivided attention, a fifteen minute massage would have them relaxed, aroused as hell and ready to go.
Taylor swallowed hard. “What are you doing?” she asked, trying to make it sound casual.
“It’s called rubbing. An ancient medical technique. Very good for diagnostics. Good for the patient, too.” He sounded utterly sincere. He either didn’t know what he was doing to her, or he was playing the game very deep indeed.
She just couldn’t figure out why Veris would toy with her this way. He had to be unaware of what he was doing.
So Taylor struggled to subsume her building arousal and ensure that not a hint of it showed in her movements, nor that she made any sound that would give her away. She tried to relax her body. Utter stiffness would be just as telling a statement, too.
Veris remained silent throughout, which was also a first. She was used to him crooning suggestive comments and making other ribald statements as he worked, for Veris usually found the massages just as erotic as they did.
Finally, Veris turned her onto her back, rinsed the cloth and began to wash the blood and gore from her. The touch of the warm cloth and his gaze upon her breasts was almost welcome after the power of the massage. No one ever suffered from a gaze.
The cloth brushing over her nipples made her hiss and she disguised it by drawing in a deeper breath and trying to pretend it was a yawn. She kept her gaze away from Veris’ eyes. Her heart was already a runaway steam train. No need to stoke it further.
The cloth pushed down her body, cleaning thoroughly. Veris rinsed more often now, as the blood was much thicker, especially on the left. The cloth worked its way down to her hips.
Taylor clenched the blankets, fighting not to let her hips flex upward in reaction. The need to squirm now that she could not was like a neon sign in her mind’s eye. It was all she could think about. That and what Veris’ hand was doing with the cloth.
The cloth dipped, rinsed and came back to her thighs. His hand separated her legs and lifted one knee. It was gentle, clinical, cool. The cloth washed her leg from foot to hip. Veris followed the path of the cloth with his gaze.
Then the other leg.
Taylor could barely breathe. Veris had somehow ended up kneeling between her thighs. It was far too suggestive for her already seriously weakened pulse.
As he washed her leg, running the cloth from hip to ankle, she shuddered. It was impossible to stop it. Veris could not possibly fail to notice it.
The cloth paused only for a minute fraction of a second. He did not look at her. He finished with a sweep of her ankles and toes.
He tossed the cloth into the pot, but instead of lowering her leg to the ground he turned his head and kissed the inside of her ankle. His tongue swept across her flesh.
Taylor was helpless to prevent the shaky breath she drew in reaction, because she simply hadn’t expected him to do that and not on such a sensitive spot.
Veris closed his eyes and pressed her ankle against his cheek. After a moment he lowered her leg back to the blanket and stood up. For the first time since she had shuddered, Veris looked her directly in the eyes.
Taylor saw a maelstrom of emotions on his face. Confusion was the chief among them, along with a heated arousal that made her own look like a penny candle alongside a nuclear furnace.