by Linsey Hall
His footsteps sounded behind her as he approached. “They’re weapons that I’ve collected from other Mytheans over the years. They doona mean too much to mortals.”
Her gaze passed over the crosses, pendants, talismans, and other less identifiable items that hung below the weapons on copper hangers, and landed on fine leather straps looped over another copper spike. “And those?”
“Maoin straps. They’re like magical handcuffs. They’re enchanted to negate the strength of whoever is bound.”
“Interesting.” Knowing that she was past a reasonable amount of delay, she turned to face him.
He coughed, rubbed a hand across his mouth.
“It’s all I had,” she said, surprised and gratified at his response and the heat in his eyes as they swept up and down her form.
It had still been a stupid idea, but at least she didn’t feel like an idiot, especially considering how flawless he looked. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to look more at the breadth of his chest or at the hint of stubble shadowing his strong chin.
“Well—” His gaze shifted around the room like he wanted it to land anywhere but on her. But inevitably it was drawn back. “Are you ready to start?”
“Yes. After what happened out on the road, I want to know if I really do have a knack for this.”
“You were supposed to stay in the car.”
“And you need to stop being so protective. I can do this. I have to do this. There’s something within me, something new that likes violence—that’s very good at violence. I want to get used to it, to be able to control it when it does come out.”
He nodded, his expression approving.
“So, what will we start with—small weapons?” she asked.
“Hand-to-hand, then move on to weapons later, depending on how naturally proficient you are. You won’t always have a weapon when you are attacked. Better be prepared to use your fists.” He lifted her hands, and her breath caught in her lungs. “Your feet.” He tapped one of her feet with his. “And your brain.” He tapped her forehead with a finger.
She scowled, but a grin followed.
His big hand enveloped hers and a shiver raced up her arm. He drew her to the center of the mat. “Because of your size, you’re going to have to rely on speed and cleverness.”
Standing so close, she couldn’t help but notice how much taller he was than she, and broader. And that there was a faint scar right at the bridge of his nose where it had once been broken.
“I know you’ll have no trouble with cleverness, but the speed? I’m no’ so sure.”
She wasn’t either, but decided to keep her mouth shut.
“You won’t be able to do much damage through brute strength, so you’ll have to focus on doing the most damage possible with what you’ve got. Use your opponent’s body against him.”
“Or her.”
“Or her. Aim for sensitive areas—knees or groin—or if you can reach his face, go for the neck, eyes, nose, or ears.”
Her hand flashed up quickly, smacking him in the ear.
He jerked. “Damn it.”
She stifled a grin. “Sorry.”
He rubbed his ear and glowered at her, then gave her another approving nod. “Good. You used surprise. And doona apologize. You canna hurt me.”
“Not yet.”
“No’ ever,” he corrected, making her grit her teeth.
That’s what you think. She felt her competitive streak—normally reserved for academic endeavors—coming out.
“Even though you’re small, you can use your weight to your advantage. With the right leverage and a bit of physics, there are ways to bring even large opponents to their knees.”
She nodded, then lunged at him, thrusting her elbow into his throat. He caught on barely in time, sidestepping to take the blow to the side of his throat instead of the center where she’d aimed. He staggered backward, coughing. Before she could revel in her success and consider a second move, he grabbed her and spun her around, jerking her back against his chest.
“Ah, ah, lassie. Mythean Guardian here, remember? I like that you fight dirty, but it’s going to be harder to pull one over on me now. But points for sneakiness.”
His voice, rough from the blow, sent shivers down her spine. She was surrounded by his arms and chest, hot as a flame. Was he flirting with her?
Yes, she decided. Yes, he was.
“How did you learn to do that?” he asked.
She swallowed, tried to focus on her answer and not on the feel of him. “I didn’t. You said leverage and physics, so I put the force of my body behind my elbow, ensuring that the force would be focused on a small surface area and act upon you most strongly. Then I aimed for a delicate area.”
“Like I thought, no problem with cleverness.” He released her.
“Okay, now what?” She was eager to continue the lessons. There were scarier things out there than the trees that scratched at the windows. With each new skill, each new bit of information, the helplessness leached away and she felt her courage growing.
“I have a feeling you’re a natural. Let’s practice,” Cadan said. “I’m going to come at you like an assailant. Try to fend me off.”
They practiced for hours, until Diana was tired but certain her skill in combat wasn’t a fluke. It was totally weird, but she was a natural. Maybe her body really did remember things that her mind didn’t. More than that, she couldn’t shake the flashes of recognition when she looked at Cadan.
Especially now that she’d tackled him to the ground and sat astride him. Normally, she’d have hopped up and he’d have issued another challenge. But she couldn’t make herself move.
“Why do you seem so familiar?” she asked, unable to take her eyes off his face. So handsome. But so strangely familiar, even though she was certain she’d never met him before.
“We’ve been around each other a lot. Now get off.” His voice was tight.
She shook her head. His body was huge and hard beneath hers, and he looked up at her with surprised heat in his eyes.
“I really do think there is a lot you aren’t telling me,” she said, then tentatively ran her hands down his chest to see what he would do.
His jaw tensed and his hands shot up to grip her thighs, almost reflexively, as if he would stop her but didn’t quite want to. She decided that distracting him from his objections would be an excellent way to get him relaxed enough to answer her questions about Verulamium, which she couldn’t get off her mind.
And being on top, in control, sent a wild and heady power streaking through her veins. The proof of his attraction—the hard shaft now pressed against her, the light mist of sweat at his brow, his shallow breaths—gave her courage. So she braced herself for rejection, clung to hope, and said, “I have a question.”
“You have a lot of questions,” he said, his voice pained and his gaze racing over her form.
“True. I’m a historian, after all. Which leads me to my question. Why is it,” she asked, as she ran a hand over his hard chest, “that you are so very large?”
He could push her off him at any moment, but from the way he looked at her, eyes fierce, he wouldn’t be doing so anytime soon. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re over three hundred years old. And you’re nearly six and a half feet tall. You shouldn’t be this tall. Three hundred years ago, hardly anyone had your height. Were you really this big back then?” She ached to put her hands on the bronzed flesh she’d revealed, but resisted.
“Wisely noted,” he said as he squeezed her thighs.
Had he spread them slightly apart? She shivered.
“I wasn’t always this tall. But as a guardian, we’re meant to protect. To be the strongest in this world.” He paused to draw in a deep breath. “So we grow. As the average mortal height increases, so does ours.”
“Ah, I see.” She bit her lip, her gaze drawn once again to the expanse of his chest, and gave in to temptation. She ran both hands over his pecs, nearly sighing at the feel of
hot, hard muscles beneath her palms. A small noise strangled in his throat.
“And why is it that you’re so, well, muscular? Were you always this strong?” She was buttering him up with compliments, but she was genuinely interested. She’d get to the real questions soon enough.
He shrugged. “Aye.”
Wow, so this is how he had looked three hundred years ago? Three hundred years. Or older? Much, much older? The idea was so terrifying and so insane that her mind backed away from it immediately. It couldn’t be, and with him here to distract her, it was easy to force something so awful to the back of her mind.
~~~
He was a dead man.
Cadan stared at Diana perched above him and all his good intentions to maintain his distance for her safety fled his mind. He knew, knew, that if his judgment was compromised again as it had been so many years ago, she would suffer an equally horrific fate.
But everything about her clouded his senses. The feel of her, the look of her, the smell of her, and the sound of her all reminded him that it had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. Even longer since he’d been with one who made him feel more than simple lust. Two thousand years, to be precise. And Diana was turning out to be more than he’d thought. Much more.
Now he was pinned beneath her, the heat of her making his cock twitch. He had to get up, push her off, but she immobilized him. Not with her strength—hers was nothing compared to his—but with her will. Just a minute longer. Then he would move.
But she leaned down then, pressing herself against his chest, and whispered close to his ear, “Are all the guardians built like you?”
The feel of her warm breath, the brush of her lips, made a shudder run down his spine. Unable to stop himself from experiencing this pleasure just once, he ground himself against her. He forced himself to still, but not before he heard the small noise of surprised approval at his ear.
Fuck, what was her game? But he nodded once in answer to her question, surprised to hear her laugh low in her throat.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she purred as she rubbed herself against him. “I think that you—” She ran her hands down his sides and his muscles tensed at her touch. “—are unique.”
She began to press small, hot kisses along the side of his neck, lightning shooting through him to his cock every time he felt her mouth. He groaned when her tongue darted out, tasting him.
“Make me yours, Cadan.”
Aye. Mine. Always mine.
“Who are you?” His voice was raspy, nearly broken. He’d have been embarrassed if he’d had any blood left in his brain to keep it operational.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.” Her voice was husky, desire thick in her tone. She glanced down at his mouth.
“You’re different—” He nearly groaned when her small pink tongue darted out and wetted her top lip. “—than you were before.”
She smiled and raised a hand to run it through his hair. “You caught me by surprise, then, that’s all. This time—” She fisted her hand in his hair. “—I’m in control.”
The warrior in him, the leader, the commander, boiled at the idea, but the man in him, the one trapped beneath the temptress who licked and bit and stared at him with endless eyes, thought, Aye.
The internal battle tore at him, one side determined to throw her off and tear her clothes away, pounding into her until she begged, the other desperate to stay beneath her and see what she did next. A small voice, that of reason and logic, told him to get away from her, quickly, before this went too far.
“And I suppose that I want to know something now,” she said.
“What do you want to know?” Alarm pushed at the edges of his desire.
“What is it about you that’s so familiar to me?”
And with that, he remembered his reservations. She’d remember who he was. Who she was. And then everything would be over. Diana—his hope of atoning for his sins—everything would be destroyed because he couldn’t keep his cock in his pants.
“Nothing. There’s nothing about me. And this is over.” He used guilt to crush his regret as he dragged his hands from her full hips up to her waist and lifted her off him.
“What?” Surprise was clear in her voice as he set her on the ground next to him and surged to his feet.
“I doona want you.” His heart tore at the sight of her looking up at him, shock in her eyes, but he forced himself to spin on his heel and walk out of the gym.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lightning struck for Diana again three days later. She’d come to the gym a bit early today because she just had to get out of the library. The books had revealed no clues, and worse, she was almost certain that some of them were missing from the shelves. The only person who could have moved them was Cadan.
The idea that he might be hiding things from her stressed her to the point that physical activity seemed like a really good idea. So she’d come here to practice with the small sword he’d loaned her a couple of days ago. She was a natural. Not like someone with unusual skill. Like someone who’d had otherworldly powers handed down from a past life.
She was certain now that her body remembered things that her mind didn’t. As she stared up at the wall of weapons that had distracted her from her practice, she was having the same feeling she’d had when she’d looked upon the image of Verulamium.
“What are you doing here so early?” Cadan asked from behind her.
She jumped, startled out of her trance. She hadn’t seen him since this morning in the library. They’d circled each other the last three days. He, probably wary that she’d jump him again, and she, scared of falling for him when she knew there was more that he wasn’t telling her. He’d kissed her twice now. He wanted her, yet he kept pushing her away. Maybe it was because of university rules, as he’d said. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was hiding something.
“I’m looking at that sword,” she said.
She pointed up at a blade high on the wall. It was in a cluster of the oldest weapons in the room. Its dented and scratched iron blade spoke of the lives it must have taken, though the hilt, with its swirling scrollwork, was still in fairly good condition. More than that, the decoration could be used to date the weapon.
“I recognize that sword,” she said. “I know I do. Where is it from?”
~~~
Dare he tell her the truth? It was a distinctive blade; it wouldn’t take her long to catch him if he lied. And after the lie about Verulamium, Cadan couldn’t risk another. Yet, the idea of telling another lie made his stomach turn. He told himself he was doing it to protect her, that she wasn’t ready to face Boudica’s challenges. But it still made him ill to lie to her repeatedly.
“It’s a sword from southern Britain.” He settled on truth and hoped she wouldn’t make the connection.
“Can I hold it?” Her voice was quiet, thoughtful.
Nay. “Aye.”
He strode over and reached up, carefully drawing the old sword away from the wall. It was a typical Celtic sword from Boudica’s homeland, one that she would have seen her men use on the battlefield. Her blade had been different, suited to her size and status, but this simple implement told tales of her past life as well.
He placed it gently in her palm, and she gasped slightly when it touched her skin. Her fingers closed tightly around the hilt.
“It’s familiar,” she said, awe in her voice as she slowly twirled a figure eight in the air. “I recognize this type of sword.”
“This type of blade was used for a long stretch of time.”
“Yes, but not as long as the stretch of time I’ve been researching. A few hundred years, no more.”
“More or less.”
“What’s the date on it?” Her gaze was clear and penetrating as she looked at him.
Gods, what should he say? Telling her could lead her closer to her identity, but the sword was so distinctive that twenty minutes with a weapons book and she’d know. If she f
erreted out the truth, she’d never trust him again. Hell, she barely trusted him as it was.
“No’ sure, exactly.” It slipped off his tongue. Coward.
She arched an eyebrow. “Really? I have a hard time believing that. Everything in here is organized by type, and from the looks of the styles and conditions of the weapons, by date as well.”
Damn it. He glanced hastily up at the wall as if to check for a date. If he lied now, she’d know he was up to something. “Ah, around one hundred AD, give or take a century.”
She looked up at him sharply. “One hundred AD?”
He jerked his head in assent.
She flipped the sword and turned it around on him until the blade pressed into his stomach. He froze. If she wanted to pierce him, fine. It wouldn’t kill him, and maybe he deserved it. For lying—or hell, for telling the truth and putting her that much closer.
“You’re going to take me to Verulamium. I know it’s important, and you’re going to take me.”
“Nay, I’m no’.”
She pushed the blade harder, glancing down at it apprehensively before glaring back up at him. It didn’t break the skin, but it was close.
“You are, or I swear to God I’m going by myself.”
“And how would do that?”
“Steal your car. Call your boss. Walk out the front door and hope for the best. I’d figure it out.”
She was bluffing. That was it. But her eyes gleamed with a slightly crazed, desperate look. He shifted uncomfortably. The lassie was trouble. “You would no’.”
“Try me. I’m not going to sit around here while you hide things from me. And don’t think I’m not aware that’s what you’re doing. That’s twice you’ve refused to take me, and twice I’ve found something that points me in the direction of the first century AD. I’d bet tenure on the fact that I was a Celt, but there were a hell of a lot of Celts. I want to know why I’m drawn to a Roman fort.”
“Well, you weren’t Roman.”
“Don’t try to distract me. Why are you keeping things from me? Are you on my side or not?”
He’d have been angry that she questioned his loyalty if he wasn’t already burning with the deceit. “I’m just trying to keep you safe.”