Kiss Across Kingdoms

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Rafe stepped around her. “Mmm…” He pushed his hands inside Alex’s pants, making him groan and his eyes to drift almost closed. Alex’s hips gave a little involuntary thrust.

  Sydney pushed the trousers down his legs, unraveled the thonging around his calves and stripped the rest of his clothing and his boots away, while Rafe stroked Alex’s heavy cock.

  Then she moved around behind Rafe and removed his clothing a piece at a time as he teased Alex, until Rafe stood naked. His flesh in the moonlight was smooth and tanned. His ass was high and rounded, his shoulders flaring.

  His cock was thrusting up into the air, rigid and quivering. Alex smoothed his fingers down the tender flesh just above the base of his cock, making Rafe hiss with frustration. Then he caught Sydney’s wrist and pulled her to them. “Your turn.”

  As she only wore the kirtle and her boots, she stepped out of the boots and tossed them aside and waited. She loved being undressed by the pair of them. She loved being naked and open to whatever they wanted to do to her. She could direct neither of them. They did what they wanted, when they wanted to. It was an odd sort of dependence that should drive her crazy, yet all it did was make her crave more of it. She always felt completely safe and protected in their arms.

  “Your hair is amazing,” Rafe murmured, pulling it to one side again.

  “It makes me want to dig my fingers into it, hold you still and do many, many things to you,” Alex added.

  Sydney shivered.

  Rafe bent and circled his fingers around her ankles. Then he drew them up the length of her legs, slowly and with many detours to stroke every sensitive location on the way up, including the inside of her knees. As he worked, the hem of the kirtle rose with him.

  Alex took hold of the bunching folds and drew the kirtle over her head. She shivered again as the cool air touched her breasts. The nipples tightened even more and she grew aware of the warmth of the fire on her calves.

  Alex and Rafe drew her over to the leather blankets and laid her down. They settled on either side of her. It was when they worked together this way that she sometimes wondered if they could mind read. They seemed to understand each other so thoroughly.

  Then her thoughts scattered as they bent their heads and took the tip of a breast each into their mouths. Tongues and teeth and lips played a melody upon her and she quickly began to pant and writhe, her hips lifting compulsively in time with the aching throb in her clit. She needed release.

  Their hands were gliding over her body. They knew how to maximize their touch so that she quivered beneath their hands and they spared her nothing now. Her legs fell open at their touch. All her reserve, her independence, drained away. She became a creature drunk on pleasure and in need of more.

  Rafe pulled her over on top of him, guiding her until his cock pressed up against her pussy. Sydney shuddered as he entered her.

  Alex watched with intense concentration. His own cock was almost purple at the head, the veins along the shaft bulging. Then he pulled the leather pouch from his belt close and delved inside. One of the little pots emerged and he removed the rag stopper. With sinuous movements he dipped his fingers into the pot, then spread the contents over his cock.

  Sydney watched his fingers play along the length of his shaft and her heart thudded.

  When Alex settled behind her, Rafe pulled her against him, so that her breasts were pressed against his chest. His fingers traced her jaw and down the length of her neck, caressing gently, as Alex stroked her from behind. His fingers pushed inside her, easing the muscle and working it open.

  Sydney shivered in anticipation.

  Then his cock replaced his hand. He eased his way in and the whole time Sydney struggled to relax, to let him in. She was right on the edge of her climax already and this slow penetration was pushing her toward the peak. Just having both their cocks in her at once was deeply exciting and all her muscles wanted to clamp around them in pleasure.

  Finally, Alex was buried deeply inside her.

  Sydney closed her eyes. She was so close to coming that she was afraid that as soon as they moved, she would burst apart with it.

  “Better hurry,” Rafe said, watching her closely.

  “Mmm…” Alex said. He leaned over the two of them, propping himself up with one arm. The other hand curled over her hip, anchoring her.

  They began to thrust.

  Sydney caught her breath and held it. Her pleasure leapt upward, clawing its way to the top. She was jittering apart between them, caught by the spiral of excitement. Her eyes squeezed shut as she tried to control it, to make it last.

  It was too late. Her climax arrived like a wild animal, tearing apart her nerves and stealing her senses. She might have screamed. She wasn’t sure. All she could focus upon, her whole world for that moment, was the keening throb of her body.

  “Ah…gods!” Rafe muttered. His hips lifted as he rammed into her in short, desperate strokes. He stiffened, groaning.

  Alex lasted only a few more thrusts, then grew taut and still. She could feel his cock pulsing inside her as he came, then he bent over her, only just barely holding himself up so that he did not crush them both. He was breathing raggedly.

  They stayed together as their hearts slowed. The fire crackled next to them, warming them.

  Finally, Alex stirred and lifted himself up. He picked Sydney up and laid her back on the blanket next to Rafe. Then he spread his cloak over them and slid underneath himself.

  Rafe rolled over on his side, his leg tangling with Sydney’s. His hand settled on her stomach, the fingers moving in slow strokes.

  Alex propped himself up on his elbow, looking down at them.

  “Did that blow the cobwebs out of your brain enough to talk, now?” Rafe asked him.

  Alex smiled. “You know you can’t make me angry so soon after sex. Why are you trying?”

  Rafe shook his head. “You are still insisting on taking this suicidal course?”

  Sydney looked from one to the other of them. “Alex wasn’t joking, was he? You really are pissed at him?”

  “Not pissed,” Rafe said, with a sigh. “He’s just scaring the shit out of me with this insistence on peace at any cost.”

  “Peace?” She looked at Alex. “These war games you’ve proposed…they’ll maintain peace?”

  “I truly hope so,” Alex said quietly.

  Something clamped in her belly, making her heart jump in reaction. “There was no peace. The Vikings swept over both armies even as they were fighting each other. It’s what let the Vikings sneak across the land unnoticed….”

  Alex nodded. “Exactly. The only way to hold back the Vikings and stop them from killing Edward is if Aethelfreda and Llewelyn work together. Aethelfreda has the armies of Mercia at her back and Llewelyn has treaties and alliances with most of the kingdoms of Wales. The two of them have enough combined power to stop the invasion dead in its tracks.”

  Sydney’s fear made her sit up. The cloak dropped to her hips as she turned to look at Alex. “You’re deliberately changing history?”

  Alex sat up, too. “I saw something in the timescape,” he said evenly. “This history, the one we know—it’s wrong.”

  Her terror bloomed hot and large in her chest. It propelled her to her feet. She wanted to run around screaming, venting her panic. As she couldn’t do that, she bent and picked up the kirtle and thrust her arms and head into it and tugged it back down around her hips with jerky movements.

  When she thought she had herself back under control again, she turned to look at them.

  Alex was still sitting up. Rafe had pulled the cloak over his shoulder.

  “Are you crazy?” she demanded of Alex. Her voice shook. “There’s no wrong or right here. There’s just what happened…what must happen.”

  “It’s just one version of history, he says,” Rafe said. He sounded as unhappy as she was.

  Alex crossed his legs and threaded his fingers together. He was naked but might have been sitting there w
ith all his clothes on. She stared at him. The implacable air about him was perhaps the scariest part of it all. “You don’t care what we think, do you?” she said. “You’re going to ignore everything Brody and Veris and Taylor have ever told us about the dangers of screwing with history and you’re going to…what? Make sure the Vikings are stopped?”

  “Edward must live,” Alex said simply. “The only way he will live is if the Vikings are turned back before they pour into England.” He reached for his tunic and started to dress.

  Sydney was back to staring at him. “Do you know how insane that sounds?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Alex said. He glanced at her as he moved around the campfire, retrieving garments and putting them on. “I know I’m scaring both of you. I also know what I saw. This time we’re in is not the only way things might happen. It’s not the way things are supposed to happen.”

  “Why must he live?” Sydney demanded. “Explain it to me so that I can see what you say you saw. Whatever it was, it has convinced you to go against every principal we know about time jumping. You’re flouting every lesson learned along the way. Do you even know what will happen if you manage to pull this off?”

  “I know what will happen if I don’t,” Alex said sharply, the first sign of impatience or frustration he had shown.

  Sydney wrapped her arms around her middle, suddenly cold. “Then we need to know, too,” she said. “If we are to help you in this.”

  “Sydney, no,” Rafe said, sitting up. “You can’t think of helping him.”

  She gave him a stiff smile. “We need to hear him out, Rafe. Alex is half-way toward keeping the peace between the two kingdoms. He’s already made changes. We might have to help him finish this, if only so that we survive it.”

  “Thank you,” Alex said. He took her hand and drew her back to where Rafe was sitting. He picked up Rafe’s undershirt and tunic and tossed them to him, then helped Sydney sit down once more.

  Then he sat, too. He crossed his legs and held out his arm so that his forearm was level with the ground and his hand was stiff and flat, the palm up. “Time isn’t linear. That is just how we experience it. It’s how we make sense of what we experience. This event happens and then this one happens as a result of the first.” He touched his inner elbow. “So for us, the events, the result of those events and the result of those results follow one after another, day after day.” He moved his finger along his arm in little increments, moving closer to his wrist.

  “We see time in the timescape as an endless plane,” Rafe said.

  “This time, I didn’t,” Alex said. He laid his fingers flat on his forearm, then moved them out to one side. “Imagine that the timescape is here, spread out endlessly. That is what I saw, with events rushing forward as they do.” He brought his fingertips back to his forearm, then skimmed them down his arm, over his wrist and along his hand. When he reached the tips, he moved his travelling hand out into the air ahead of his fingers. “Events move endlessly onward into our subjective future.”

  “It’s easier to understand time that way,” Sydney admitted.

  Alex nodded. “That’s not all I saw.” He drew his hand back to the palm of the other one and touched the flesh at the base of his thumb. “This is what I saw.” He pulled his thumb away from his hand.

  “An offshoot?” Rafe asked sharply.

  Alex touched the very tip of his thumb. “That is where you and Sydney jumped from. That is where we left Brody and Veris and Marit and Taylor, where the Middle East was about to launch retaliatory nuclear strikes against Gronoya.”

  Sydney was breathing hard again. All the loose-muscled glow in her had evaporated. She stared at Alex’s thumb, almost mesmerized.

  Alex touched the tip of his thumb again. “That was where it ended,” he said softly.

  Because he had said it so softly, without emphasis, it took a moment for Sydney to understand what he meant. She caught her breath. “You mean time stopped there?”

  Rafe let out a long slow breath. “The end of that timeline.”

  “The end of things as we know it, although time would move on without anyone to witness it,” Alex said. “The loss of a single planet in the universe would make zero impact on time itself. The timescape, though, is built from human perception of passing time and here—” He touched the tip of his thumb again. “There is no one left to see it.”

  Sydney swallowed. “This is why you are trying to change things?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse.

  Alex drew his finger back along his thumb, to the base where it joined with the rest of his hand. “This is where we are right now,” he said. He drew his finger along his palm, toward the others. “And this is where we must go, if we are not to see the end of days.”

  * * * * *

  Alex helped Rafe break down the camp and saddle his horse once more. Sydney shivered inside her cloak, even though the night had not grown colder.

  “What about this Siorus?” she asked Rafe. “If you can’t trust him, if he tried to have Alex taken out, if you go back he might try something else, especially when you look as though you’re working with Alex on this.”

  “It’s Siorus,” Rafe said.

  “That’s what I said.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s shee-your-us. It’s a Welsh version of George. When you say it, it sounds like shaw-russ.”

  “She says it like an Anglo-Saxon,” Alex pointed out.

  “I am Anglo-Saxon,” she said and touched her blonde hair. “That doesn’t negate my question.”

  Rafe shook his head. “One problem at a time. I’m still trying to come to terms with the notion that I’m actually going to help Alex try to change time as we know it.”

  “I’m heading back to Chirbury with you,” Alex told her, “and I’m the one who Siorus is suspicious of. On the other hand, he doesn’t have much respect for Rhys the Scribe and that will keep him contained.”

  “For now,” Rafe added. “Once we have this rolling, maybe it doesn’t matter what he does after that.” He looked at them over the back of the horse, his dark eyes somber. “The whole idea of time jumping seemed like a short path to suicide to me, before I met Sydney and you. When we got to time jump for ourselves, there was a sense of security in knowing that while you were back in time, as long as you didn’t fuck with anything, you would be okay. Now, I don’t even have that. Who knows how it works when you’re making adjustments to history on the fly?”

  Alex rested his hand over Rafe’s on the back of the horse. “I know what I saw.”

  “And I trust you. I do,” Rafe replied. “We’re just three tiny people trying to screw with time itself. That’s not a force you want to have turn around and bite you. You’ll forgive me if my teeth keep chattering while we do this.”

  He moved around the horse and took Sydney in his arms and kissed her. He rested his head against hers. “I love you. Nothing will change that, not even time.”

  Then he let her go and kissed Alex. “If you’re wrong about this, I will never speak to you again.”

  Alex gave him a small smile. Sydney took his hand, sensing the seed of doubt and fear in him.

  “Get her home safely,” Rafe added as he eased up onto the horse. “It’s nearly dawn.” He looked up at the sky overhead. “Let the games begin.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Brody backed the big van into a lane entrance, so that it sat nose out toward the street. He eased it into neutral and kept the engine running. Through the big windscreen, he could see the back of the elaborate yard behind Rafe’s house. His black Mustang was parked on the hardstand.

  “There. See them?” Veris asked, pointing. He was sitting in the passenger seat.

  The house was silent and almost dark except for light in two of the windows on the upper floor. There was a glow of indirect light in the lower windows, which was probably the light from the dining room filtering through the formal rooms at the front of the house.

  On the lawn were three silhouettes. Men, from
their height. They were standing together, probably talking. One broke off and moved around the corner of the house and disappeared.

  “He’s gone to leave the card in the mailbox and toss the bomb into the dining room,” Brody said.

  Veris nodded, keeping his gaze on the two shadows on the lawn.

  Light flickered between them, illuminating their features for less than a second. A small flame leapt as they separated. The one holding the fire bomb ran toward the house, then threw it in a powerful overarm swing. The window shattered as the fire bomb went through, then the inside of the bedroom lit up as flames grew almost instantly.

  Brody breathed deeply. “I still don’t understand why the Council came after us.”

  “If it’s something to do with Alex and Sydney and Rafe, then we’re not going to know until they get back,” Veris said. He swiveled on the seat and peered between the seats into the back of the truck. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  Taylor looked up from the three pallets on the floor of the truck, where the comatose bodies of Rafe, Alex and Sydney lay.

  “They’re fine, but I’m no nurse,” she said. “We should get them off the street and far away from the Council, though. I don’t like lingering out here.”

  “Where to, oh wise one?” Brody asked, putting the truck back into gear.

  “An anonymous suite in a hotel somewhere that has a nice big freight bay at the back for us to smuggle these three in.” Veris tapped the side window with his knuckles. “Then we jump back and leave ourselves to sort out the rest.”

  “You wrote a note to yourself?” Brody asked.

  Veris touched his shirt pocket. “Right here where the corner is irritating me every time I breathe. I’ll notice it straight away.”

  “For screwing with history, this went very smoothly,” Brody observed. “I thought if we tried to change anything there would be earthquakes splitting the land asunder, and lighting and birds falling from trees. You know, the usual Apocalyptic stuff.”

  “We haven’t returned to our proper time yet. We don’t know what the consequences are,” Veris said. “Don’t get cocky.”