by Ann Lawrence
He joined her on the raised platform. Together, they lifted the head pieces. Derek glanced about, then rolled his shoulders, a sheepish look on his face. “I hate to say this, but I don’t know how to start it up.”
Maggie smiled and shook her head at him. The smile sent a flood of relief through him. “You created this game and you don’t know how to start it? Lucky for us, I watched my friend Gwen start hers. She said it takes hours to warm up.”
Derek hooted with laughter. “This is the latest version. It’s incredibly quick, or so I’m told. I plot it, I draw the scenes; I never play.”
So, Gwen had been humoring her. Maggie knew she might lose her nerve if she didn’t act quickly. She touched the sequence of keys she’d watched Gwen press and a hum and whir filled the air. Her heart throbbed in her throat. She lifted the headpiece.
Derek stayed her hand. He placed the headpieces on the railing and faced her. He lifted his hands and held them close to her cheeks. “May I?” he asked, his voice soft and low.
Maggie nodded, unsure what he intended.
He cupped her face and stared into her eyes. “Whatever happens, Maggie, you must know the truth as I see it. I believe all you told me. I dream it. I live it each night. If this fails, I still believe you.”
Just as she had when Derek kissed her, Maggie desperately wanted to fall into his arms and embrace him as her Kered, her Ker, embrace him as her lover, not just because he trusted her, but because he had asked permission to touch her. Something held her back. Trust? One part of her wanted to trust in this man as she had learned to trust in her Ker. Part of her just didn’t know. No words seemed worthy as a response to his declaration. She nodded her head.
His fingers lingered along her cheek. Then he dropped his hands. At the same time, they lifted the headpieces and faced the screen. They linked hands, and Derek placed their joined hands atop the hilt of his sword.
Maggie gasped as the sword heated beneath her palm.
The storm outside howled its approval and, fingers laced with Derek’s, Maggie opened herself to pain and other worlds.
Derek shook himself awake. The scent of wet stone filled the air. His head hurt like a dozen hammers beating on one anvil—just as Maggie had described.
Maggie. He squeezed her fingers, still curled in his.
He stared up at the night sky. A stunning array of constellations dazzled his eyes. Not one was earthly. He rolled to his knees and stared about, a groan issuing from his lips as nausea joined the pain.
Maggie lay curled on her side, eyes tightly closed. Gently, he stroked her cheek. It was ice cold. His head pounded with images that made him want to close his eyes and lie down for a week. He forced himself to focus on Maggie. He lifted her head into his lap and said a silent prayer that she would wake.
Pain and confusion possessed him. Images that had been nothing but dreams in his head until today stretched before him in vivid reality—the blue-green orbs nestled in the star-studded indigo canopy that hung overhead, the scent of flowers whose names he could recite as if he’d known them all his life, the warmth of the woman he held in his arms.
Perhaps an hour later, perhaps five minutes, he couldn’t tell as his mind grappled with his new world, Maggie stirred in his arms.
“Kered?” She whispered his name and reached up to touch his face.
He nodded. He could not explain what was roiling through his mind, so he helped her to her feet in silence. They stood facing each other, both panting as if they’d sprinted a mile.
Then she leapt into his arms. He hugged her tightly, tears running down his face. He kissed her mouth, hungry, but couldn’t lie to her. “Maggie. Stop.” He pushed her to arm’s length.
She shook her head and fought against his staying hands. “Please, I need you.” She burrowed into his chest.
He gripped her arms as tightly as he could without hurting her and placed her at arm’s length. “Stop.”
He had a desperate need to make her understand. Immediately. She had to know who he was.
She fell still. The expression on her face made him feel as if he’d kicked a kitten. He gentled his hold. “Look about you.”
She did as he bid.
“Do you know where we are?” Kered asked.
Maggie nodded. They stood on the gentle slope of a meadow, one she knew well. Where Kered had flown paper airplanes. She had walked it numerous times on her way from Kered’s to Mada’s shop. To her left, Tolemac lay spread out. Flickering candlelight gleamed in a few windows, but most were dark.
She pointed away from a grove of trees whose black shadows told her it was hours before dawn. “Mada’s shop is that way.”
He nodded. He remembered everything—everything—with a sharp-edged clarity that made his head sing. For the first time in two decades, he felt healed, whole. His gaze followed the direction of Maggie’s outstretched hand.
“That way is the bathhouse,” she said.
“Aye.” Exaltation choked his voice. She abruptly turned from the contemplation of their surroundings to face him. Her hand lifted, stretched out to him, then very slowly, almost haltingly, she came close. Inside him, every nerve of his body was strung taut.
She stood on tiptoe and stared up into his eyes. He bent to her, skimmed his mouth across hers to silence her words. Flames of want and desire—the want and desire of two worlds—raced through his system.
He pulled her swiftly to the concealment of the trees. Into the dark shadows he hurried, his heart pounding, his need great.
She was sweet and eager, pliant in his arms. He stroked and savored the feel of her hair as it tumbled down her back. He touched her lips, then kissed her.
The sweetness of her taste exploded in his mouth. He was hungry, starved for what he knew was his alone. With little thought for the consequences, he pulled her to the cold earth, to the cushion of leaves and ferns that would make an ample bed. He drew up her gown, sliding his hand along her warm thigh, taking in the gasp of her breath, the soft moan in her throat.
He tasted her and knew if he did not have her he would expire with the wanting.
She stiffened in his arms, planted her hands, and shoved. “No,” she gasped against his mouth. Her fingers kneaded his chest but held him off.
“Maggie?” He fell still, his hands wanting to seek further beneath her gown, yet he felt the resistance, heard the pain in her voice.
Maggie struggled from his arms. She pressed her hand to his where it lay on her thigh to hold him still. “We can’t do this, Derek, we can’t.”
He fell back and flung his forearm across his eyes. His breath burned in his chest. His body throbbed for release, but he knew what was wrong. She had given her heart and loyalty to only Kered.
Maggie rose onto her knees. The dark shadows did not allow him to read the expression on her face, but her quick breath, her occasional sniff communicated quite effectively.
He groped for her hand in the dark. It lay small and still in his. “Listen to me, Maggie. You must believe in me.” A lump in his throat made it nearly impossible to speak. “I remember every moment in Mada’s shop that first time with you. I can taste you in my mouth, even now. Your scent fills my head.”
She gripped his hand in the dark, her fingernails digging into his palm.
“I wake in the middle of the night with those images burned into my mind and my body ready for you. I can feel the heat of Mada’s forge, the sweat that slicked our skin. And now, I even remember the fear I felt when Samoht attacked you.”
She groaned and shook her head, her hair sweeping down to brush like a cobweb across his bare arm. He shivered.
“Aye. You understand.” He used both hands to hold her, for he sensed she would bolt. “I also remember the taste of Consuela’s chili that gave me heartburn last night.”
“No. No.” Maggie tugged violently against his hands. He held her captive.
“Accept it. I am Kered. And I’m Derek, too. Ask me anything, any detail. Something only Kered wou
ld know.”
Maggie’s mind refused his words. Her head and heart ached with equal agony. Try as she might, she could not stop the words that were barely audible in the sylvan silence. “When did you first kiss me?”
Maggie heard the smile in his voice. “You kissed me first, or perhaps I dreamed it was so. In the cave. On the Scorched Plain. I remember falling asleep with your taste on my mouth.”
Then his voice grew somber. “Now. Something only Derek Townsend would know. I saw you first in Santa Fe two years ago. In the square by the Palace of the Governors. You were looking at the jewelry. There were two children with you, and I remember your necklace, its design, both Navajo and Celtic at the same time. I put you in the game.”
“Why?” she whispered. “How? How could this be?”
He clasped her hands and brought them to his mouth. “I do not wish to explore the hows or the whys. I wish to explore what is still between us.”
Maggie went into his arms. He growled as he clasped her near. She buried her face against the warmth of his throat and breathed deeply of the scent that was Kered and only Kered.
They slid closer in the bracken, bodies touching along their lengths, and she craved all she had thought lost forever.
In the mad darkness his hands were the same—soothing, arousing. His touch was at once rough and gentle as he explored her body from knee to hip. The sound he made in his throat was the same Kered growl.
His mouth was hungry and insistent on hers. She groaned at the familiar and knowing touch of his hands, the feel of his aroused body pressed to hers.
The words he uttered in breathy gasps at her ear turned her inside out. “I know you,” he said. “In any world. The way your hips lift against me to tell me you want this, too. Open to me.”
She wrapped her arms about his neck. The scent of him was intoxicating, the heat of his hands melting all resistance. Cool air bathed her legs as he lifted her gown. “Ker,” she cried out as he touched her.
“Maggie,” he said, moving between her thighs. He could not control the violence of his need. He crushed her in his arms and barely worked the laces of his breeches open to shove them from his hips. Her mouth feasted on the frantic throb at his throat and the same throb drove him to hurry, hurry, hurry to join himself to her.
She dug her fingers into his shoulders and held on. Memory swirled through her. As if stabbed by the molten knife he’d strapped to her thigh, she felt the heat of him sear into her. A scream rose in her throat. She felt the familiar fullness, the hot liquid desire to somehow make herself part of him as he was part of her. She gasped his name again and again, hanging on for the wild ride.
She was scorching heat. He knew how she would move with him, meet his rhythm and take him beyond mere physical sensation. Her legs clasped his hips and a brilliant flare of memory coursed through his brain. His release was the echo and reverberation of each time he had met ecstasy with this woman. It stopped his breath and tore apart his insides. With a mighty shout, he collapsed across her.
Maggie lay there beneath his weight, lungs heaving, body alive as if an electrical wire had been placed against her wet skin. “Oh, God. Kered. Ker. Ker.” He didn’t respond.
She heaved him off. He rolled heavily onto his back and lay like the dead. She knelt over him and cupped his face. “Kered. Derek. Wake up.” She slammed her fists into his chest and slapped his face. “Don’t you dare die just when I’ve found you!”
His hand whipped out and gripped her arm. “Enough. Would you kill me twice?” With a groan, he sat up.
Maggie frantically searched him with her hands. Sweat slicked his body, and she realized as she explored in the darkness that he was enjoying her ministrations far too much. “Okay. What happened there?” She sat on her heels and tucked her gown back down over her knees. Her body throbbed from head to toe.
Kered rose, and from her place at his feet, he loomed like a giant pine in the dark, faint light gleaming off his naked skin. He pulled up his breeches and laced them, then crouched before her. “I cannot explain it. When-when I gave myself to you, it was as if I was experiencing each time I have loved you, again, all at the same time. My mind went red. I would imagine a lesser man might have expired from such joy.”
Maggie stood up and dusted off her skirts. “Yeah, well, we both know you’re not a ‘lesser’ man.”
With a wild whoop, he scooped her into his arms. Her stomach lurched as he twirled her about, danced her among the trees.
“You are mine, Maggie. Mine and mine alone.”
His joy and exuberance could not be denied. She found herself laughing and kissing him with a fervor that matched his own. Whatever explanation these events had, she would think of them later. And later, she would ask him why, if he loved her so much, he’d thrust her away.
Finally, he stood still. She slid slowly down his long, hard body.
“Do you have doubts?” he asked. He realized that her answer could kill him. The pain of her rejection would be more devastating than any defeat a warrior might experience.
“Come.” She drew him to the edge of the grove. The orbs overhead gleamed down on them. In the wash of light, she examined him. He rubbed his hands up and down her arms to maintain contact with her. Goose bumps broke out on her skin.
“There are a thousand small ways a woman knows her lover. It’s in the touch of his hands, the way he moves as he loves her. No one tastes like you, or has your scent.” She half turned away from him, heat rising in her cheeks. “I have to call you Kered.”
Warmth swept his body. Relief and joy mingled in equal measures in his mind. He enfolded her in his arms and kissed the top of her head. “I understand and am filled with joy that you recognize me.”
Suddenly, Maggie knew she had ceased to exist for him as he dropped his hands from her shoulders and turned his face to the Tolemac heavens. His voice was awed. “I feel as if some part of me was lost and now is found.”
Maggie followed his gaze. She gripped his arm and pointed heavenward. “Look. Look at the moons!”
“What of them?” he asked, turning to look heavenward.
“Don’t you see? We’re early. My God. We’re early.”
“Early? For what?”
His exasperated tone made her stutter through her explanation. “The conjunction—when I left. It hasn’t happened yet. Can’t you see?”
He nodded slowly. He understood what she meant. The conjunction was yet to come. Unconsciously, he gathered her into his arms and held her tightly. “It makes no sense. The movement between Tolemac and…home is—I can’t explain it.” The familiar sight of the moons’ alignment raised a raw fear in him, a fear he could not set aside. “We must speak of Samoht, how we may protect you against—”
“Do you know what this means?’’ she whispered.
Kered squeezed her tightly. “I can think only of how you may be in danger.”
Maggie pushed away and pounded his arm. “Think! Think of how the orbs were aligned when Samoht attacked us.”
Kered strode to a position on the meadow where he could overlook the capital. He surveyed the shadows, the position of the stars and moons overhead. “Aye. I see what you are saying. By all the gods, there is still time!”
He grabbed Maggie’s hand and began to run across the green sward. Maggie stumbled along behind him. She could barely get her breath to gasp out, “We could stop the N’Olavan guard from accusing you.” It was then she realized Kered had taken a direction away from his quarters—and Samoht’s. “Where are you going? You’re headed in the wrong direction.” She dug in her heels. “We should be looking for the guard and stopping him, damn it!”
Kered skidded to a halt and rounded on her. He gripped her hands. “There is no time for that. I can stop the massacre of the soldiers who guard the ice shipment. That must come first.”
“Sweet heaven,” Maggie whispered. Why was she surprised? Of course he would think of others before himself. Maggie realized that this concern for others w
as what she loved most about him—what made him Kered. “Please. Oh, God. Please stop the guard. Then see to the ice shipment.”
“Seek the answer to that suggestion in the heavens.” He shook her off and strode away.
Maggie stifled her grief. She then knew he still needed her protection. She had no need to look overhead.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The die was cast. Kered would act whether it endangered his life or not. He strode past the councilors’ hall, impervious to Maggie’s presence. She walked quietly as any good slave would do, head down, several paces behind him. He only became aware of her again when they passed the palace and the rising wind whipped her skirts in a sharp snap against her legs.
Kered stopped and looked about. She stood there, silently. As if bidden, she raised her hand and offered it to him. He lifted her fingers to his lips. His breath was warm and his touch gentle. “I want you badly, and we have no time.”
Maggie nodded. He crouched down in the bright orb-glow by the side of the road. He drew his dagger and quickly sketched a map with the tip of the blade. “I can’t wait to see Vad. I know ‘twill seem to him as if we left him but a day ago, but in a way,” he looked up, a twisted grin on his face, “to me ‘tis twenty-odd years ago and one bloody night with my heroine defending my life. I must conceal what I know—for now. And you must put your fears aside. We know where the treachery lies. We can guard our backs this time. I will need all my levels of awareness.”
Maggie watched him shake off his emotion with a visible shudder of his shoulders. He peered at his drawing, then groped at his chest where a pocket might be if he were garbed in other clothes. “How I wish I had my glasses.” He added a few more details to the map. “Here is the most likely place for an ambush—’’ Maggie’s gasp interrupted him. “What is wrong?”
She knelt and surveyed his drawing. “You should conceal this sudden ability to draw. This is extraordinary.” The map he’d rendered was but a few lines, yet it conveyed the terrain with uncanny accuracy.