“Lieutenant Anne Sanger, Women’s Army Corps, zero three three six two four eight nine one two.” Ann smacked the guy again. He was so big, and so, er, hard, and weirdly slippery, that her slaps slid off him. “Lieutenant Anne Sanger, Women’s Army Corps, zero three three six two four eight nine one two, get your damn hands off me.”
Obligingly, he dropped her. Instantly the water closed over her head, and she flailed about until she reached the surface. Her mind was trying to process too many things at once. The room, big and open and airy. The water, an odd color and an even odder smell…not bad, not remotely bad, but different. And the man. Big. Muscle-bound. Blond, with storm-gray eyes. And what was with that long hair? It was down to his shoulders, the color of gold and shadows, and weirdly, it didn’t seem out of place. It should have; a man with hair like that would have had to fight out of any saloon he was dumb enough to walk into. But instead it went with the tanned skin and the big white flashing teeth and the intense gray eyes. It looked good. It looked right.
“Lieutenant Anne Sanger,” she said again…she expected to say it many times, per her training. It had been one class out of many: What to Do If You Are Captured. Preceding it had been: How to Break Down an Army Carbine. “Women’s Army Corps, zero three three six two four eight nine one two.”
“That is very nice,” he told her. “I am Maltese, second in line to the throne of the SandLands, Prince of the Exalted Ranges of the OnHigh Mountains, Lord of the Snowy Islands—”
“Are we in England?” she asked. It was one of the few places she knew of that had princes and lords. “How’d you do that? What am I doing here?”
“I wished for you,” he told her, which was terrifying to the extreme, “and you came. You are here for me.”