The Present
Bruce Springsteen was screaming at the top of his lungs about freight trains in his head, which Taylor could fully appreciate right then. It felt like a whole friggin’ rail yard was using her brain as parking space, running backward and forward over her brain cells for the hell of it.
“Come on, Taylor, open your eyes, damn it. Let me see them.”
The light wouldn’t go away, which was worse. She tried to push it away, but it persisted.
Finally, she gave up and opened her eyes. Bad mistake.
“Sick,” she croaked. That was all the warning she could give. She tried to turn her head. She was lifted and turned and held expertly and a bucket slid underneath her to catch what she brought up, which wasn’t much. When she was finished, she was laid back on something soft.
Finally, she could see without being blinded by the low light in the room.
She recognized the ceiling. It was the guest room in her house. Their house.
Almost afraid to look, she turned her head to take in the rest of the room. She was lying on one of the guest beds, an IV drip in her arm, the pole next to her bed.
Brody lay on the other bed, an IV pole and a blood bag on his. He was slowly blinking up at the ceiling.
Veris sat on a chair between them. He was rolling up a blood pressure cuff and had a stethoscope around his neck. But he was wearing the college professor suit pants and shirt he would have worn in Europe and he looked like he had been wearing them for days. They had deep wrinkles embedded in them. The shirt was rolled up to the elbows and open at the collar.
He looked as haggard as Taylor had ever seen him.
She began to cry, unable to help herself.
Brody yanked his IV out, hauled himself to the side of the bed and threw his arms around Veris’ shoulders and buried his face against his neck. Fine shudders and ripples passed through his body.
Veris tried to hug Brody, but his arms were trapped. So he waited.
Brody finally sat back and pushed his hand through his hair and twisted it back off his shoulders. “I stopped needing to feed about two days ago. That’s when you got back here, yes?”
Veris nodded. He reached for Taylor’s hand, gently withdrew the IV and held it, his fingers stroking hers. “I can’t even tell you why in realistic terms. Something just told me I had to come back. I chartered a flight and arrived back and found you both in the library. Taylor was bleeding all over the floor from a deep cut on the shoulder.” Veris shut his eyes and shook his head for a second. “I’ve never had my heart stop by itself…until now.” He opened his eyes again and drew a deep breath. “I’ve been too busy tending you to review my history and for all I knew you were back somewhere in Brody’s timeline. God knows, that was violent enough.” He took off the stethoscope and loosened another button. “So where were you?”
Taylor glanced at Brody. She tried to sit up and found herself surprisingly weak.
“Take it easy,” Veris told her. “You’ve been without food for days.” He helped her sit up and propped her against the headboard. He wiped her tears away with his thumb and sat on the edge of her bed and looked at Brody.
“Brace yourself,” Brody told Veris.
Veris lifted a brow.
“Jerusalem,” Brody said simply. “The first siege. Review your memories. You’ll find all you know about what happened has changed, now, from the moment we met.”
Veris frowned, his focus turning inward.
Taylor glanced at Brody again. She wondered if this was the best and kindest way for Veris to discover what had happened there. But it was the most efficient way, certainly. His own memories were the most accurate way of telling him what had happened.
Veris’ breath halted. “Davina…” he breathed. “Dear God.” His eyes closed and his breathing began again, more quickly this time, as he worked his way through the four days they had spent in 1099 and their combined seduction of a changed Veris.
His head slowly bowed as he realized just how close he had come to destroying his own future. He pressed his fingers to his head, hunched over, as if he were in pain. “No,” he muttered thickly. Then he jerked his head up to look at Taylor. “A child? You’re pregnant?”
She nodded.
“I was gone. I had gone away,” he said helplessly.
“I know,” she said simply.
“In my arrogance…” He bent over again, clutching the arm of the chair, his knuckles white with the power of his grip. His shoulders bowed, shaking.
Brody detached Veris’ hands with sheer force, one after another, then wrapped his arms around the bigger man.
Veris tried to turn his head away, but Brody caught his face in one hand and held it steady.
Veris opened his eyes. Tears, slightly pink, glittered and then fell. “It hurts. This hurts more than anything I know.”
“I know, my lover,” Brody murmured. He held his hand out to Taylor. “But you don’t have to hurt on your own.”
Taylor worked her way across the bed using Brody’s strength and wrapped herself around Veris. His big hand found hers in a painful grip.
He laid his head against Brody’s chest and wept.
* * * * *
“YOU ‘DIED’ A FEW DAYS after the siege, from complications from the wound you got from the spear you took protecting Sir William,” Brody murmured, flipping through a dog-eared, year-old National Geographic. He was wearing one-way wrap-around sunglasses, a long trench coat and his hair was tied back. Even so, Taylor had a sinking feeling the medical receptionist had recognized him, because she was staring at him almost nonstop.
Veris glanced at his Tag Heuer and grimaced. “Forty minutes he’s kept us waiting. This is ridiculous, Taylor. You’re a woman of means. You don’t have to be kept standing in line like this. I’m not surprised the prick gave you the run around last time. He doesn’t seem to give a damn about his patients at all.”
She squirmed at the reminder. “The reception area doesn’t really look quite the same, though. More changes?” she asked.
They had been discovering all sorts of small and large changes in their world the last four days. The car that Taylor drove was now a Porsche, not the Audi she’d had before. She discovered that she loved driving it and was good at it, too, although both Veris and Brody hated seeing her behind the wheel.
There were small changes to the layout of the house, the clothes she wore, the people she worked with and her own personal memories.
Brody and Veris had been systematically working through their own personal memories and discovering the changes that had taken place. So far, nothing earth-shattering had been uncovered. Most of it had been interesting, though.
“Ms. Taylor?” the receptionist called. “Dr. Cruz will see you now.” She waved from the desk toward the door where, presumably, the doctor’s office was.
They all stood up.
“I’m sorry, only your husband is permitted to accompany you in Doctor’s office for the consultation,” the receptionist said primly.
Taylor looked her in the eye. “They are my husbands,” she said flatly.
The receptionist’s mouth opened as her jaw descended.
Taylor looked at Brody and Veris. “Come on.” She stalked over to the door marked “Dr. Cruz,” her temper already simmering.
When they got inside the consultation room, Brody kissed her cheek soundly. “Damn, I love you, woman.”
Veris crossed his arms. “Just mind her claws there. She’s ready to bite.”
“Hell, yeah,” she growled. “I’ll abide by common sense rules, but being dictated to by a star-struck teenager quoting ‘da rulz’ pisses me off.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” Brody suggested. He leaned a shoulder against the wall. “Figure we have another forty minutes in here now?” He dropped his sunglasses to the edge of his nose and looked at her over the end of them. “Your blonde-model-fucking doctor is not endearing himself.”
“Not with me, either,” Taylor admitted.
“Then why are we here?” Veris asked.
“Now? To make a point,” Taylor told him.
Veris smiled. “How much of a point can we make?”
“Just don’t be cruel.”
“Moi?” He touched his chest.
Brody straightened up, pulled the band out of his hair and put away his sunglasses. He dropped the coat off his shoulders. Underneath, he wore outrageous death metal band clothing—low-rise skinny jeans, ripped in several places. Two tee shirts in different colors, also with designer rips and tears and chains, and the band’s logo in pitted and rubbed iron hanging from his neck. Leather cuffs around his wrists were studded with iron. Neither tee shirt had sleeves, which emphasized his nicely muscled arms. His black eyes and brows seemed to scowl at everything and everyone.
He was the complete antithesis to Veris, who wore a silk, dark-gray business suit that gleamed with polish, good taste and obscene expense. His blonde hair was pulled back into a neat little band at the back and his blue eyes radiated power and blazing intelligence.
Taylor looked down at her pleated skirt, stilettos and stockings. The skirt came to her knees, the stilettos were a conservative three inches high. She wore a cardigan, buttoned up, in dove gray, that matched her eyes and the gray in the tartan of the skirt. She wouldn’t raise browse in the middle of the street like Dr. Edward Cruz’s blonde did. But one of the changes that had taken place when they got back was her hair. It was down to her waist now—full, thick and with bangs cut to fall over one eye. She wore it loose as often as was practical and was rewarded by Veris and Brody plunging their hands into it and turning her head for a kiss and more, or simply just playing with it.
Under the skirt she wore a garter belt to hold up the stockings and nothing else. When Brody and Veris had discovered that new habit they had driven her mad with delight with their habit of running their hands up under her skirt, or simply throwing her over their knee and flipping her skirt up…
She had Brody to thank for that inspiration.
“Should we sit down?” she suggested.
“No, I don’t think so,” Brody said.
There was a sound outside the office. Voices talking. “The receptionist,” Veris said softly. “You’ve been recognized, Brody.”
“That’ll work for us now,” Brody said.
The door opened and Dr. Edward Cruz sailed into the room, only to be brought up short by the fact that Brody and Veris weren’t tucked in neat and tidy into the two miniature consultation chairs sitting in front of the desk. Cruz almost ran into them and stepped back a half a step, looking up at them.
Cruz was a much different man from the cocky, suave doctor Taylor had consulted ten days ago. He looked at least ten years older, although that wasn’t possible. The thirty or forty extra pounds he carried could account for him looking older. Stress and unhealthy living would claim the rest. He had silver in his hair that hadn’t been there before and dark rings under his eyes. He wore a wedding ring Taylor hadn’t noticed before.
His clothing was department store cheap, the striped shirt straining at the buttons, to cover the excess bulge around his belly.
Cruz pulled his white coat in around himself, glancing up at Brody, then up higher at Veris. “I…er…” He looked at Taylor. “Ms. Yates, I only need you and your husband for this consult.”
“These are my husbands,” Taylor said. “Brody Gallagher and Professor Veris Gerhardsson.”
Brody was the one who held out his hand. Veris crossed his arms.
Cruz nervously shook Brody’s hand, then smoothed down his tie and moved around to his side of the desk. “Would you like to sit down?”
“There’s not enough seats,” Brody pointed out. “We’ll stand.”
Cruz put down the file he was carrying and glanced at Brody. “My receptionist says that you are in a rock band, Mr. Gallagher.”
“Fuck that,” Brody said. “I wouldn’t touch rock music with a ten foot barge pole. Nocturnal Rain does death metal.”
Cruz cleared his throat. “I see.” He turned his attention to Veris. “And are you the Gerhardsson who wrote the paper about the preservation of the Latin language as the language of sciences until the nineteenth century and its contribution to medical nomenclature?”
“I am,” Veris replied calmly.
Cruz shifted his gaze from Brody to Veris and back. Taylor knew he was trying to assimilate the differences between the two and how Taylor could possibly be with both of them at once.
Brody straightened his shoulders, pushed his hand through his hair, and twisted it back off his shoulders. “Dr. Cruz, you have been in your office for two and a half minutes and so far you have failed to address any direct medical concerns about your patient at all. Instead you have quizzed me and Professor Gerhardsson on our resumes. Added to that, the forty-minute wait in your reception area, which was neither necessary, nor apologized for. I find this utterly unacceptable behavior for a member of the medical profession. I will be reporting it to the California State Medical Board.”
Cruz paled.
Veris grinned. “Isn’t Percy Brown the Chair of the Board there? I was part of the hearing when he defended his professorial thesis at UCLA. We go back a long way, Percy and I.” He winked at Cruz. “You might want to add that to your resume check.” He picked up Taylor’s hand. “Let’s go, Taylor.”
Brody pulled out his cell phone. “Yes, I’ve got someone much more suitable in mind. He makes house calls and he knows how to be on time, too.”
Cruz stood up as they turned to leave. “I think there has been a misunderstanding!”
Taylor looked at him over her shoulder. “Yep, you did get it wrong.” She shut the door after them.
* * * * *
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN weeks, the weather had broken and that night, it was cool enough to light a fire, although it wasn’t cold enough to huddle by it. The firelight was just decorative, lending ambience to the downstairs level of the library.
Taylor sat on the Craftsman chair watching the flames, wondering what on earth Brody was up to. He had made her dress up, even picking out the white dress. Now she sat here alone.
She heard voices and looked up as Brody and Veris came downstairs, arguing. Not strenuously. Not seriously. But Brody was forcing some sort of issue that Veris didn’t like.
Brody had been doing that a lot, lately, she realized.
“Just shut up and get in there,” Brody finally said, exasperated. “She’s waiting for you.”
A long moment of silence, while Taylor’s heart thundered. She sat up straight, watching the doorway.
Veris finally appeared, Brody behind him, carrying a tray with a bottle of champagne and an ice bucket.
The champagne and ice bucket and her white dress told her what this was.
Brody was recreating her birthday, three months ago. Before everything had changed. Before she had destroyed it all by making that awful, fateful request of Veris.
Only, why? What was Brody doing?
Taylor clasped her hands between her knees and remained silent. Veris, wearing the more casual black leather pants and sleeveless white shirt she preferred than the professor outfits he wore in public, pulled the other matching chair over close by her.
Brody put the champagne on the table next to Taylor. As neither of them could drink the stuff it was a symbolic ritual to open the bottle and pour glasses. But Veris loved the symbol and the smell. He insisted the human ritual be maintained, especially around Taylor. So they had opened the bottle for her birthday. Now, even Taylor could not drink it. Brody pulled up a third chair from across the room and settled into it after handing them all a frosty tall glass.
Veris took breath. And another. “This is to be your birthday present. The one we failed to give you.”
She nodded. “I gathered.”
His gaze skittered away from her face and came back. “Brody insists you need to know this. I…think otherwise.”
“Or your courage would have you wish otherwise,” Brody said.
Veris twirled the champagne in his glass. “Yes,” he said flatly. “I do not deal well with…these matters. Not when they are unhappy ones.” He held up the flute. “I would give anything to be able to drink this. Dutch courage.” He put it on the table with a grimace.
Taylor swallowed. “You don’t have to do this, if it makes you feel this bad—”
“Yes, he does,” Brody interrupted. “We’ve shielded him long enough. We’ve read his mind, interpreted, made allowances, stepped around him and tried to understand him long enough. It’s time he met us halfway. It’s time. He left you weeping in that chair and fled to Europe to sulk because you asked for a favor. A favor.” He put his glass down. “Veris, you have to tell her why. She needs to really understand. She stepped in front of a stake for you, she killed Davina for you. She’s going to be the mother of your child. Our child.” He paused. “I still have trouble believing that one,” he murmured and shook his head. “All that and you’re going to baulk over revealing a few ugly truths about your ugly nature?”
Veris’ chest lifted as he drew a breath. “Put like that…”
Brody sat back in his chair.
Veris let out his breath again, studying Taylor. “It’s still difficult,” he confessed. “Made harder, now I know I left you crying that night.” He rubbed his temple. “You shocked me, asking to be turned. I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t think you would ask for years yet. Not until you noticed your first gray hairs and your metabolism started to slow. I was so sure of it, I had completely relaxed.” He sighed. “What made you ask?”
“You did,” Taylor said. “When we were in old Norway and you were so happy to be human. So in love with the pleasures of it. I said something about the compensations of immortality. I don’t quite remember what I said, but I remember exactly what you said. It is carved on my heart. You said ‘You think watching those you love age and die isn’t a high enough price?’”
Brody swore softly.
Veris closed his eyes.
Taylor could feel her tears building, but there was nothing she could do about them now. She had to keep going. “We keep time jumping and living this dangerous life and just being human is dangerous enough these days. Disease and crime and heaven knows what. You two are impervious to it all. Do you spend your time worrying if I’m going to come home in a body bag each day? If you’re going to get a call from the police about how I got mugged? That I was in an accident? Or I get the bad news from the oncology department about some rapidly spreading cancer? A brain embolism and you can’t reach me in time to do anything about it? A stroke?” She wiped her cheeks dry. “I suddenly realized that you two must live with those fears about me every day. So I thought I would take that fear away from you. Forever. If I was vampire, if you turned me, then you wouldn’t have to worry anymore.”
She put her glass on the table and pressed her hands between her knees. “I didn’t get the reaction I was expecting when I asked to be turned.” She shrugged.
Veris leaned forward, his hands together, his index fingers just touching his lips. “I’ve never turned anyone. I’m not sure that I could. It would mean taking away your humanity to do it.”
“But you have taken so many lives,” Taylor said.
“In battle, yes. In defense. I have never drained a human life as a vampire, watched their life fade in their eyes, made them drink my blood and seen them waken as one of my kind, where all humanity is gone and they go on changeless, timeless and eternal.” Veris shook his head. “Live life as a vampire long enough and you begin to find humanity a precious thing. I have selfishly enjoyed yours. I want you to stay human for as long as possible. To be alive, vital, free to live and die. Not trapped outside time like Brody and I are.”
“Well, for at least seven months, I will have to be.”
Veris smiled. “And at least another six after that.”
Taylor shook her head. “Breast feeding. Of course, you will want to do it all properly.”
“Of course!” Veris said. “It’s life! That’s my whole point. In the four years we’ve been together, I’ve watched you change. Actually change. Brody and I cannot do that. Your hair…your beautiful hair. And your face has developed small lines. Especially around the eyes and the corners of your mouth. You’ve put on weight around your breasts and hips.”
“Mmm…” Brody agreed with an appreciative growl.
Taylor glanced at him, startled.
“After the baby is born, your hips will spread, too,” Veris told her. “Not fat, but the actual bones. But even a few pounds may creep on, despite all the exercise and sex you manage to sneak into your day. I will enjoy every tiny change, because that’s what it means to be human. It’s something that Brody and I have not been able to share with anyone, ever. You asked to take that away from me, from both of us.”
Taylor sat back. “I…hadn’t seen it that way,” she said softly.
“The worst of it,” Veris said, “Is that if I had managed to overcome my prejudices and turned you on your birthday when you had asked, then you would have been protected while you were in Jerusalem with Brody and I would not have raced home from Europe to find you bleeding all over the floor.” He grimaced. “You would have been protected and the baby lost to us.”
He picked up her hand and kissed the knuckles. “You are mine, Maggie Taylor Yates.”
Brody picked up her other hand. “And mine.” He slid his lips across her fingers, a delicate nuzzle. “We’ve marked you in a way that makes you ours forever.” He touched her neck. “No one in our world will ever dispute that. But we aren’t interested in the politics of our world and never have been. You’ve brought us back into the human world. You’ve given us life again.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small box and opened it. A ring was nestled inside. “Stay human, Taylor. For a while longer, anyway. We will do everything in our power to protect you and the babe. Please say you will.” He slipped the ring onto her left hand. It was a left-handed swirl of green stones. Emeralds, Taylor assumed.
“Let us be as human as we can, at your side,” Veris said, taking her hand from Brody’s. He placed an identical box on the table and slipped a similar ring onto her hand, only the swirl was to the right and the stones were blue. Sapphires, almost the same color as Veris’ eyes. He brought the rings together and twisted them. The swirls locked together like yin and yang curves. Taylor caught her breath. The arrangement looked like one elaborate engagement ring. It was gorgeous.
“Of course I will,” she whispered. “How could I not? Although how on earth am I going to marry both of you?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Brody told her. “Sooner or later. Boy genius there has been thinking about it.” He lifted Taylor up and put her on his knee. “I love you, the future Mrs. Gallagher-Gerhardsson.”
“What if I want to keep my name?” she asked primly.
Brody blinked. “I’ll still love you?”
She smiled. “Good answer.” She kissed him.
“Hey, my turn,” Veris complained as Brody’s hand slid under the hem of her dress and the kiss grew slow, hot and sweaty.
Taylor was passed over to Veris. “Hi,” she said, her voice thick.
“That’s a habit you really need to keep up,” Brody said approvingly. “I so like that. Jerusalem, right?”
“Mmm,” she agreed, pressing her lips up against Veris’.
“What is he talking about?” Veris asked, his big hand curling over her thigh and sliding under her dress. He pushed higher until he reached her hip, then her ass and found…nothing. His thumb pressed into her naked abdomen and her hip tilted forward in a twitch of nerves. He curved his hand around to cup her ass, his fingertips pressing into the crease of her ass.
“I see,” he breathed into her mouth.
“So do I,” Brody murmured. “The view from here is spectacular.”
The front doorbell chimed.
“Damn, it’s nine already?” Brody complained, standing up. “This shouldn’t take too long, then I’m definitely picking this conversation up where we’re leaving it.” He kissed Taylor’s hand again and went through to the front door, heading off the maid and answering it himself.
“Another surprise?” Taylor asked Veris, returning to her chair and straightening up her dress.
“This one is all Brody’s,” Veris replied, easing the front of his pants. “I hope he means it when he says it won’t take long.” He stood up. “I find most of Brody’s surprises less than comfortable.”
“Baby,” Taylor teased him.
But Veris was already concentrating on sounds coming from the front door, listening to more than she could hear. His brow lifted. “Son of a…” He laughed and looked at Taylor. “You’ll like this.” He relaxed and crossed his arms.
About forty seconds later, Brody reappeared, followed by a tall, olive skinned man in a good suit, carrying a heavy briefcase. The man was familiar…
“Alexander!” Taylor scrambled to her feet, shock delaying her. Veris helped her up.
Brody led Alexander forward, a hand on his arm. “You remember Taylor, of course. Our fiancé, Maggie Taylor Yates. Taylor of course remembers you. For her it was only a week ago. Taylor, Alexander is now Dr. Alexander Karim.”
Alexander shook her hand. “Naila Fathiyya, I remember you most fondly. You changed my life and are the reason I stand here at this moment.”
Taylor felt her hand fall back to her side. “I…really?”
Brody laughed. “You might have built up to it, Alex.” He rested his hand on Veris’ shoulder. “My partner, Veris Gerhardsson. You remember him as William, or Will.”
“Yes, of course. Veris. Well met.” Alexander held out his hand. “You were the other reason I am here.”
Veris lifted his brow as he shook Alexander’s hand. “Is that so?”
Alexander smiled, showing very white, even teeth. “All three of you. I nearly had it figured out, the relationship between you, when Taylor ‘died’, but then neither of you seemed to mourn her properly. Then there was all the confusion about Lady Selkirk’s death. I heard some strange whispers that Taylor herself had killed Selkirk’s wife. After the siege was over it became hard to track down facts. It took me years.”
“But you did,” Brody concluded. “And you confronted me with them.”
“You didn’t tell me any of this,” Veris accused.
“I was in the Holy Land with Richard at the time. Getting killed, as I remember. You were back in Italy. Alexander found me at Acre. He was vampire by then.”
“It was the three of you who started me on the road to finding vampires in the first place,” Alexander explained. “You gave me hope that one day I might once again practice medicine. Real medicine. And now I am.”
“Which is why he is here, in part,” Brody explained.
Alexander nodded. He reached into the briefcase and produced a card, which he held out to Taylor. “I am a most sought-after private physician now. One that the stars pay a small fortune to have call upon them. Their fees allow me to do my research and add certain special clients to my roster. I would be honored to add you to my list of patients, as I have already treated you and know part of your history.” He smiled. “How is the arm, by the way?”
“Fine,” Taylor said. “Nearly perfectly healed already.”
“These days I would use anesthetic and sutures. You were desperately trying to wish yourself back to a simple emergency room for that, weren’t you?” He laughed.
Taylor nodded. “But you did well, all the same.”
“I can call upon you tomorrow, with a nurse and mobile ultrasound scanning equipment. What is a good time for you?”
“Ten thirty would be good.”
Alexander nodded. “Ten thirty it is. Good night, then, everyone. I’ll leave you to your celebrations. Brody told me the good news. Congratulations, all of you.” He lifted a book out of his bag and laid it on the table. “For you, Taylor.”
“I’ll see you out,” Brody murmured.
Alexander nodded at Veris and followed Brody from the room.
Veris picked up the book and read the title. “Son of a bitch,” he said and gave it to Taylor.
She looked at the grainy sepia-styled map on the front, which showed a copy of the old walled city of Jerusalem underneath the large typeface of the title.
Warrior Wives: The Mysterious Women of the First Crusade who fought, lived and disappeared from the history books—Naila Fathiyya, Davina of Selkirk, Tyra of Norwich.
The author was Alexander Karim.
“If he knows you killed Davina, then this is a tribute to you,” Veris said, tapping the book.
Taylor put the book down and shivered. “I didn’t do anything to impress him that much,” she said.
“You impressed me enough to make me change houses, shields and give up a bad habit that had been slowly killing me for seventy years,” Veris pointed out. “And you did it in four days.”
“But you already loved me,” Taylor pointed out.
“I had no idea who you were,” Veris said flatly. “You were Brody’s slutty wife and human at that. And you were in my way.”
She shivered again, staring at him. “What changed your mind?” she whispered, stunned.
Veris drew her into his arms and tilted her head back to look up at him. “You did. You and Brody.”
Taylor felt Brody press up against her from behind. His arms hooked around Veris’ neck. “Me and Taylor what?”
“Seduced me across time,” Veris replied. “And saved my life while you were at it.” He kissed them both. “I want to try something. I’ve always wanted to make love to you both in that little cottage high up on the side of the Welsh mountains, the one we used when the War of the Roses was at its peak, remember, Brody? We hid out for five years or so, waiting for the turmoil to die down.”
“There actually were roses all over it in summer and rose hips in spring.”
“Keep it in mind, Brody,” Veris said. “Summer, roses, heat, the inside of the cottage.” He lifted Taylor’s chin again. “You get to take us there. If I’m right, we’re the direction, you’re the power. You get to come and go.”
“How?”
“Close your eyes and decide to jump. And we jump. Stay in physical contact with her, Brody.”
Taylor closed her eyes.
* * * * *
AND OPENED THEM WHEN THE air changed and the sound of doves cooing alerted her.
“No…” she breathed fearfully, looking around the small dry stone structure. There was a rough, hand-hewn, pergola-like lean-to outside the window, covered with roses that provided shade against a beautiful, summer-blue sky. Jagged mountains painted the backdrop.
“I’m not wearing a red shirt,” Brody said.
“Then you’ll live long and prosper,” Veris replied.
Taylor was grabbed and turned. Brody laughed and kissed her. “You bloody well did it!”
Veris swept her off her feet, his arm under her back and her knees. She was wearing some sort of simple kirtle and chemise and her hair was loose. “Exactly where I wanted you,” he muttered. He laid her on the built-in bed, with its pushed-back shutters and shed his clothing as she lay there and watched.
Brody came up behind Veris, brushed past and settled next to Taylor. He undressed her, then himself. “If we really can control the jumps…” he began.
“Not now,” Veris said firmly. “We’ll discuss it later. For now we talk of nothing but love and frailty and all that yucky emotional stuff that makes us more human.” He picked up Taylor’s hand, curled it around his hard, erect cock and gave a shuddering gasp at her touch. “I’m ready.”
Brody groaned as Taylor gripped him, too. “Always,” he added.