Kiss Across Deserts

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About Kiss Across Deserts

  Praise for Kiss Across Deserts

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  The Next Book in the Kiss Across Time series

  About the Author

  Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Copyright Information

  About Kiss Across Deserts

  Time travel is not for the weak of heart.

  Alexander Karim, long-time friend of Brody, Veris and Taylor, has been questioning everything; his purpose in life and his identity as a vampire and a doctor. Even his long time pursuit of the lovely but reluctant police lieutenant Sydney Stevens is on shaky ground.

  Life tosses him a curve ball when Alex learns that Brody’s trial lawyer, Rayner De Leon, the youngest appeal court judge in the state, is attracted to Alex. Rayner is a vampire, Rafael, who has known Brody and Veris since the fifth century. Alex warily allows Rafael to seduce him, and the affair has surprising results for both of them.

  But then a deliberate hit and run tosses Sydney back into Alex’s life and this time, her defenses are down and she is vulnerable. But there are unanswered questions surrounding Sydney. Who tried to kill her? And why is she insisting that Alex was there, when he doesn’t remember it that way?

  When a kiss sends Alex and Sydney back to Alex’s beloved desert, and he realizes that Taylor is not the only one who can time travel, the questions pile up like gunpowder. The flint that strikes the spark is Sydney’s past, which is exposed when Rafael reaches through time and uncovers her dangerous secret.

  The explosion that follows is both deadly and tragic, reaching out to touch everyone’s lives.

  Warning: This time travel menage romance features two super-hot alpha vampire heroes, multiple sex scenes, including anal sex, MM sexual play, and MMF sex. Do not read this book if frank sexual language and sex scenes offend you.

  The time-space continuum was restored to order at the end of this book. Promise.

  This is the fourth book in the Kiss Across Time paranormal series:

  Kiss Across Time 1.0: Kiss Across Time

  Kiss Across Time 2.0: Kiss Across Swords

  Kiss Across Time 2.5: Time Kissed Moments I

  Kiss Across Time 3.0: Kiss Across Chains

  Kiss Across Time 4.0: Kiss Across Deserts

  Kiss Across Time 5.0: Kiss Across Kingdoms

  A Vampire Time Travel Menage Romance

  Praise for Kiss Across Deserts

  All Romance eBooks Bestseller

  I loved learning more about Alexander and especially loved watching him struggle with his relationship between Sydney and Rafe.

  Wow !!!! This fourth book in this Time Travel Ménage series is so dang sensual it's amazing my eye's didn't burn up reading it.

  I love Tracy's writing style and the vampire/time-travel always draws me in to the point of neglect for everything else around me.

  I always wanted Alex to have his own story and now he has.

  This has to be my all time favourite series and I hope it never ends there's still so many more stories to tell.

  I just couldn't put it down once I started it, but who needs sleep?!

  I’m really hooked into this series, its hot and sensual, erotic, but not one of those where the sex takes over the story.

  I really enjoyed the distinct highs and lows in this book. I need that balance, and somehow when one or more characters are really feeling heartbroken, it makes it so much more meaningful when things work out.

  You better have a very cool drink and a fan with you on this one.

  The ending is pure drama with passionately poignant heat and touches of wonder that is absolutely fantastic.

  I was so excited when I heard Alexander was getting his own book and it didn't disappoint. I've had a crush on him since he was first introduced.

  All I can say is WOW! I have waited to see the next installment of the series, and it was well worth the wait.

  Flat out, Tracy Cooper-Posey writes some SEX-AY men. Alexander and Rafael get high HIGH marks for sheer smolderability.

  Chapter One

  Up until Alexander phoned just after four that afternoon, Sydney was having one of those days where everything was breaking right. She had put away three cases, one of them a gnarly brute that had defied the efforts of two senior detectives before she had taken it off their hands. The budget for the department balanced, even though the bottom line just sucked, and her captain, Leonard Baker, had actually smiled at her.

  Sydney had floated through the day, saying just the right things, making exactly the impression she wanted to make. No one was extraordinarily pissed at her. And for the first time in weeks, she had brought Bud, her trainer, down to the mat and held him there for three vital seconds. Even Bud had grudgingly nodded his approval.

  It had been the perfect day, until Alex had called. When she recognized his cultured voice, Sydney sighed and swiveled her chair away from her computer to face the window. It was an oddly dismal day out there. March was always blustery and windy, but the clouds overhead were taking the light out of the day. “Dr. Karim, you’re late.”

  “I’m back to Dr. Karim, am I?” Alex asked. “You must not be having a very good day, Lieutenant.” Despite the fact that he had been phoning her regularly for nearly a year, he still refused to call her anything other than Lieutenant even though he had insisted she call him Alex, or Alexander. Sydney didn’t know if his formal ways annoyed her or not. Mostly, she found it quaint in an odd, foreign sort of way. That fit in perfectly with everything else she had learned about him, which wasn’t much at all.

  “It has been a perfectly wonderful day,” Sydney said truthfully. She hesitated. “I just don’t think you should call anymore.”

  “It took you a year to come to that conclusion?” Alex asked, and she could hear the amusement in his voice. Unlike some of her colleagues, Alex never treated her like an idiot. That was why he was teasing her now in his cool, gentle way.

  “Even after a year, I still don’t know what to make of you.” Which was true, too. It was almost impossible to put him into any sort of category. “But I got the papers today. Brody’s trial date has been set.”

  “I heard. Early August. Brody’s right to a speedy trial does seem to have been overlooked.”

  “It’s the clogged court system, Alex. There are too few courts, too many trials and not enough people to process it all. Brody isn’t the only one who is waiting. He should be thankful he could afford the bail, otherwise he’d been sitting in a cell waiting.” She took a breath, deliberately halting the flow of words pushing at her lips. “I’ve said this before,” she pointed out. “And it is why you should stop calling me. We’re going to be on opposite sides of the courtroom when the judge bangs his gavel.”

  “Do you feel your professionalism is in danger, Lieutenant?” Damn if he didn’t sound amused again.

  “Of course not,” she shot back, “but—”

  “I haven’t been called as a witness,” he continued. “I’m on the sidelines, merely a curious spectator. I do not believe I r
epresent a conflict of interest in any way at all. So I will continue to call you, as it is one of the small pleasures in my life.”

  “Are you never going to get sick of me saying no, every time you ask?”

  “I live in hope, Lieutenant.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “You have explained that before. You do not date. It interferes with your career. Nevertheless, I like talking to you, even by phone. And one day you might say yes and surprise us both.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  “Are there, perhaps, more reasons than those you’ve told me that explain why you continue to say no?”

  Sydney carefully inhaled, controlling her reaction. Alex wasn’t an idiot either. That had been a very astute guess. “None that you need to know,” she said, making her voice sound light. Unconcerned.

  “Ah…one day you will learn that you can trust me,” he said softly. “But for now, may I ask you to dinner, Lieutenant?”

  “Thank you, Dr. Karim, but I must decline.”

  “That is your privilege, Lieutenant. So tell me why your day has been so wonderful.”

  He moved on from her rejection so smoothly that she was barely aware that he was doing it. She found herself telling him about her day. The small successes that came in incremental slowness because she was a woman in a man’s world. She barely had to explain any of it, because Alex already knew who all the key people were in the department, and the issues she had dealing with them. After a year of pleasant conversations, he had learned more about her life and her career than she had realized.

  He laughed in the right places and complimented her on her little achievements and when she hung up the phone twenty minutes later, she actually felt happier than before the call, even though she had been dreading the next time he phoned her ever since she had been advised of the court date.

  She turned back to face her computer, examining her feelings carefully. Was she…did she really feel relief because he would continue to call? How strange.

  * * * * *

  Alex let out a deep breath as he put his phone away. It wasn’t quite a sigh, but it was close enough that he almost laughed at his own foolishness. He looked out through the window across the gray grimness of Los Angeles visible on the horizon. The rain was keeping the smog down today and he could see everything in depressing detail.

  He realized that the same grimness was gripping his thoughts and deliberately straightened up, turned and walked out of the elegant, barely-used dining room, across the tiled foyer and back into the cavernous library where Veris, Brody and Taylor spent nearly all their spare time.

  Shelves rose through two floors, with a wide balcony running around the edge of the second floor to give access to the stacks there. The books and precious knickknacks on the shelves never failed to make Alex’s soul sigh. Brody and Veris had been collecting books for centuries, and Taylor was equally interested in delving into human knowledge. She was the historical expert, which was ironic because Veris and Brody had lived through it. But Taylor roamed across the eras and regions, while their knowledge focused on their serial experiences only.

  Taylor had arrived since Alex had stepped out to make his call to Sydney, and she had brought company. She looked up from the child in her arms as Alex entered, and smiled. “Alex, come and say hello. The twins just woke up.”

  Alex hurried over to her side and looked down at the dark-haired baby with genuine delight. “Aran?” he asked.

  “He’s here,” Veris said, lifting the baby he held. In his big arms, the child looked tiny.

  “Hello, Alannah,” Alex murmured, caressing the soft head of the girl in Taylor’s arms. Alannah blinked up at him sleepily, her mouth curved into a perfect cupid bow. The twins were just about to have their first birthday, and they were chubby, happy children.

  Alex felt a tugging on his sweater and looked down. Marit raised her arms up toward him and he scooped her up and hugged her. “And hello, Marit,” he told her and kissed her cheek.

  She kissed him back, a soft, moist kiss on the lips. Her gray eyes were a combination of her father’s blue eyes and Taylor’s deep brown ones, but they had Taylor’s shaping and beauty. They were wide and serious. “Uncle Alex, did you talk to your lady? Did she say yes?”

  Alex blinked, absorbing the idea that Marit knew all about his campaign to win over Sydney Stevens. He frequently underestimated just how smart Marit was. Her solemn expression and big eyes hid a child that understood far too much of the world, which was sad, for she did not experience the innocent fun she might have otherwise enjoyed.

  “Yes, I spoke to my lady, missy Marit.” He gave her a little shake. “I think you’ve grown since I saw you just last week. You’re taller.”

  “She’s outgrown all her clothes in the last month,” Brody said, from the depths of the comfortable Craftsman chair he was sprawled in. “It’s next to impossible to keep up.”

  “Doesn’t Mia buy all her clothes?” Alex asked.

  “Athair likes to take me shopping,” Marit said. “He likes to spoil me.”

  “Does he?” Alex asked. “Spoil you, I mean.”

  Marit considered for a moment, then shook her head. “Athair and Far both make me work. Very hard work. If they really wanted to spoil me, they wouldn’t make me work so hard. Because I’m only little.” Her eyes grew wider and crystalline.

  Veris laughed as he carefully gave Aran over to Brody. “You by-passed ‘little’ four years ago. Alex isn’t fooled by the big eyes, Marit. Peddle your wares to someone who doesn’t know you as well.”

  Marit grinned and hugged Alex, her arms straining to squeeze his neck. “Uncle Alex likes little kids,” she said defensively.

  “You’re not little anymore,” Taylor pointed out. “You’re nearly six years old.”

  “Try sixty, in a six-year-old’s body,” Alex murmured. Then he put Marit back on her feet and looked at her. “Don’t grow up too fast, dear one. You’ll miss all the fun.”

  She considered him carefully. “Then being a grown-up isn’t fun for you?”

  Alex straightened up with a snap, surprised into it. He glanced at the other three adults in the room. Taylor was fussing over Alannah, her gaze on the baby. Brody was grinning at him, and Veris studied him with a raised brow. They weren’t going to help him out on this one. Alex cleared his throat. “Sometimes, no, life isn’t fun,” he told Marit.

  She frowned, processing that dire fact.

  “But the fun times make up for the bad ones,” he added hastily.

  “Okay,” Marit said slowly, in a way that told him she was going to make up her own mind about that. He hadn’t fooled her at all.

  Alex scrubbed at the back of his neck and tried again. “It’s….” He stopped again. He really hadn’t been about to say the clichéd “complicated,” had he? But that had been the word on the verge of tumbling out. He sighed. Marit was waiting for an answer with extraordinary patience for a six year old. “It’s difficult for me to explain it to you when I don’t know how much you’ll understand,” he finished.

  “Try, anyway,” Veris said softly. “We’re not the only ones who have noticed your mood lately.”

  “And your beard.” Marit scrubbed at her own cheeks with her hands. “It’s prickly,” she added.

  Alex looked around the room at everyone, unease making him shift on his feet. Everyone had noticed? Including Marit?

  “You stopped practicing medicine well over a year ago, just after we dealt with Tira in Las Vegas,” Taylor said.

  Tira was nominally their queen, but she had no love for Brody and Veris, and coveted Taylor for her time-jumping abilities. She had not caused trouble since the Council had told her to behave herself, but Alex knew Tira had not been defeated. Not yet.

  “Even after Las Vegas you said you had things to think about,” Taylor added.

  Alex nodded. Yes, it had been around then he had started questioning everything.

  “It’s not unusual to want to step of
f the world and just breathe for a while,” Brody said. “Both of us have had to meditate our way through the doldrums a few times. What is odd is that I think this is the first time you’ve ever hit this point.”

  Alex crossed his arms and laughed at himself for the wildly obvious defensive stance. “If I have been somewhat hermit-like, then I’ve been that way for a while. Now you ask why?”

  “We know why,” Veris said. “The details are yours alone, but the questions are the same. Marit is the one who asked and she’s still waiting for an answer. Why do you think life isn’t fun?”

  “Do you find life fun?” Alex shot back.

  Veris smiled. It was the rare smile that warmed everyone who saw it. It was his very private smile. Small, but filled with…something. Love, Alex presumed, for Veris’ gaze flickered across to Taylor, then over to where Brody was lounging. “I find life infinitely interesting and far richer than I ever thought possible,” Veris answered frankly.

  “Even though everything you do, you’ve done a hundred…a thousand times before?” Alex pressed.

  Veris shook his head. “I’ve never done this.” He spread his hand a little, to take in the room and everyone in it.

  “You’ve never been in love before?” Taylor asked, her tone curious.

  “There was Brody, before you,” Veris said.

  Brody laughed as he sat Aran up on his knee. “I’m in a category all my own. Damn, I must have impressed him after all.”

  Aran patted at the top of Brody’s knee with clumsy hands. Brody’s hands around his body looked huge.

  Veris grinned. Then he sobered. “I’ve never been in love like this,” he said flatly. “I’ve never lived life quite like this before. I’ve lived more centuries than you, Alex, but I’ve never lived one century like the next.” Then he smiled again. This time it was his shit-stirring expression. “And Marit is still waiting for your answer.”