The Isis Knot

by Hanna Martine

  Now he made a little choking sound.

  “I told you about the skeletons,” she said, “and how I blacked out after touching that one. What I haven’t said, what I couldn’t remember until Elizabeth attacked me and I saved you, was that when I came out of the cave, Malik was waiting for me. He knew, he knew, exactly what would happen to me inside that cave. He knew the cuff and that skeleton would give me some kind of magic. But it isn’t just healing. It’s death, too. I felt it when Elizabeth came after me. It wanted to kill her, right then and there. And I could’ve done it, if I’d just released my control.”

  A shudder passed through her. She reached out and snatched the rum, taking down a huge gulp. She barely even felt it.

  “And Malik knew what would happen. Not only did he know, but he was planning to use me. Control me. He got into my head somehow, like a snake burrowing between my ears. He made me kill. There was an innocent man there, the driver who’d taken us up into the hills to the cave, and Malik forced me to kill that man with my mind. Just to prove that I could.”

  One of William’s hands went into his hair and stayed there, clutching at the roots.

  “I did it because I didn’t know I could stop it. I felt completely powerless against him. He called me ‘his little weapon, his little cure,’ and he could manipulate me by inserting himself into my head. When it was done, I struggled. Fought. I remember crawling away from him, and him laughing at my back. There was an empty sorrow inside one half of me and a gleeful, evil joy inside the other. He grabbed my ankle, yanking me backward. I flopped onto my back, ready to fight again. He was looming over me and I knew I was trapped. Possibly forever. But over his shoulder I could see a star. A single star.”

  William’s hand slowly slid away from his head to drop into his lap.

  “It was so bright. Brighter than the sun. And it was calling to me in the most beautiful woman’s voice, though I had no idea what she was saying. I answered inside my mind. I remember smiling through tears. There was a flash of white light. It swallowed me. And then I woke up here. In 1819 New South Wales. With no memory.”

  “Sirius,” he whispered, though his lips barely moved. “Sirius brought you here.”

  Then he took the rum bottle from her and chugged down a couple shots’ worth. Bringing his legs up, he set his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. He sat that way for a long time, so long she had no idea whether to keep talking or to try to touch him or to walk away. She wished she could at least see his eyes.

  And then suddenly, she could. They were clear and wide and searching.

  “It changes a lot,” she said, “doesn’t it?”

  He exhaled. “Does it?”

  “I’m not crazy. I think there are too many coincidences between us for you to believe that. Deep down, you must know that what I’ve said is the truth, that I’m not insane—”

  “Sera.” He held up a hand and closed his eyes. He drew one breath. Then another. And then opened his eyes. “I have questioned my sanity every single day for the past eighteen years, ever since I tried to steal your gold from Samuel Oliver. I’ve endured my own madness and illness and poverty and disgrace. I cannot question you, and I will not judge.” His head fell back against the rock. “I will believe you, for all the reasons you said. And because you have believed me.” Another deep breath. “And because this is supposed to happen.”

  “What is?”

  “Us.”

  The rum made her tingle all over, made her brain and heart and body be consumed by his presence. She’d told him everything, and now he was staring at her in a way that felt like he was boring into her soul through the gateway of her eyes. The magnetism of him was already so powerful, but the alcohol heightened everything—the shiver in her blood, the trap of his gaze, the warmth between her legs.

  She felt herself swaying, lost in him.

  And then he looked away. He turned his face to the sky and she watched his throat move as he swallowed. She wanted to put her mouth there, to know how the movement felt on her lips.

  He let out a low, short laugh that had little to do with humor. “Sirius.”

  She, too, turned to the sky and tried not to think about how even though he was no longer looking at her, his presence was this winch, constantly pulling her in. She was almost shaking with the restraint of not touching him.

  “Is that it?” she asked.

  “No. That’s the Southern Cross.”

  Talk of the stars was doing nothing to calm her. She’d opened the floodgates of truth, he was still here next to her, her brain was all floaty, and her body was screaming for him to touch her.

  “Where exactly?” she asked.

  He raised a sun-darkened arm and pointed to the sky. “Just there.” He leaned in closer and his breath brushed her neck. “It looks like a diamond tilted on its side.”

  Her eyes followed the line of his arm and found the constellation that appeared on the modern-day Australian flag. Everything else about her was tuned to his proximity. Her need for him now bordered on pain.

  When his arm dropped and he calmly sagged against the rock, she had to breathe carefully to control her desire, which was riding high and potent. Almost out of her control. Did he feel nothing? Or had her truth destroyed any measure of sexual need in his body?

  “This feels oddly familiar,” he murmured, “sitting with you in the open night air, looking up at the sky.”

  She gasped, because it did feel familiar. And though that scared her, it didn’t hold a candle to how badly her body wanted this man inside her. She was almost crazed with it, which didn’t make sense, given all that she’d just thrown in his lap. Maybe that was it, that rush of release, that gush of adrenaline over accomplishing something huge and having come out unscathed on the other side. Maybe…

  Something touched her hand. A light brush that ignited a million fires all over her body. She looked down. His fingers slid over hers. She lifted her eyes, and he was looking directly into her, his silent question screaming loudly: Can I have you?

  Neither of them breathed. Sera rose to her knees, but it felt more like she was being lifted by great wings, her bones hollow and light. Between their bodies, the rum bottle toppled over, the fiery liquid glugging into the dirt. She looked down on William now, and his eyes positively shone, like twin stars. His breathing started up again, his bare chest punching into motion, and she reached out to touch him.

  He was cool and warm at the same time, and his flesh pebbled underneath her palm. She slid her hand from the hard, flat plane of his chest to his neck. There his pulse belied his calm, and she could feel the pounding tempo, set against the still way he watched her. The vibrations beneath her fingers mixed with the strange and wonderful drumbeats already wedging their way through her own body.

  She’d always wanted to touch his hair, those frantic waves that hung over his eyes, so she did. Her hand dove into the damp strands at the exact moment he reached for her. But not for her face.

  He wrapped an arm around her thigh and pulled her onto his lap. She straddled him, hovering over his legs, her muscles shaking from her restraint. When his fingers curved around the backs of her thighs, all that restraint disintegrated.

  She shoved her other hand into his hair and kissed him. Hard.

  His beard tore at her face, and she’d never felt anything more sensational. His tongue tasted of rum, sharp and illicit. The sweet, clean scent of the river enveloped them. He groaned into her mouth, and she’d never known that lust had a sound.

  They devoured each other, pure and simple. Desperate. Sloppy. Perfect.

  Every part of her wanted this man. Knew this man. Every part of her reached for him, needed him. Every part and then some, like there were pieces of herself floating just above her skin and they, too, clung to him like magnets.

  It was more than familiarity, more than their story. This desire burned hot and real. Everything about it felt right.

  His hands clenched on her thighs with clear ne
ed. She tightened her arms around his neck and lowered her hips to his body. Breath hissed through her nose as her clit pressed against his cock, hard and huge beneath their layers of convict-issued pants.

  When he flexed upward, pushing himself harder into her, she gasped and pulled her mouth away from his. Foreheads pressed together, she told herself to breathe. Told herself to maintain control. But the night had grown chilly and he was lava hot. This time he arched up, his mouth claiming hers, his tongue making long, slow sweeps. Such a change from her urgent attack. His tempered pace did nothing to cool either of them down, and the kiss turned ferocious.

  He was the one to pull away this time, and it made her whimper. “Don’t stop,” she heard herself beg.

  But then his mouth trailed down her neck and softly clamped on the secret spot beneath her ear. “Never,” he whispered.

  He kept kissing her, kept tasting her, as his hands finally drifted up from her thighs to her ribs. When his knuckles grazed the underside of her breasts, the motion of his mouth paused. And when his fingertips skimmed over her nipples, he let out such a sound of pleasure that it had her head dropping to the crook of his neck. Her tongue darted out to taste his skin, and suddenly she was flying, completely incoherent of any thought that did not involve William Everard.

  As her tongue traveled around his ear, he abandoned the tentative brush of her nipples. His palms made dramatic sweeps across her flesh, touching her with power.

  How could someone so new feel so much like a man she’d known forever and missed with all her heart? Why, after she’d told him something so huge and outrageous, were they able to place it aside for the sake of base desire? And why, since this was happening so incredibly fast, her world having been yanked out from underneath her, was she so readily and eagerly accepting a connection with such a strange man?

  Because this is a homecoming. You were meant to find him again. And he was meant to be inside you.

  The thought came to her so suddenly, so fiercely that she went motionless. The way his body stilled dared her to think that he’d thought the same.

  “What’s happening to us?” she whispered against his mouth.

  “Us…” He echoed, the same word he’d used earlier. “Does it matter now? It is only about us.”

  She leaned back so she could see his face. “What do you feel?”

  The strangest urge came to her—the urge to call him another name. A bizarre name. She swallowed it back.

  Savage sexual need expanded his pupils. His tongue pushed against his lower lip as he stared into her eyes.

  And then his hand was skimming around her ass, dipping low, touching her from behind. Sliding over top of the rough linen of her pants and making her shudder from heels to hairline.

  She felt him everywhere. Swirling through her mind. In her mouth that longed to taste him. In her fingertips that needed to touch him. In the sensitive, wet place that desperately wanted him to come home.

  He kissed her, harsh and open and frenetic. There was a shift of their bodies as he scooted out from underneath her and laid her down on the ground. His hair dangled against his cheeks and chin, and over his shoulder stretched the star-filled universe. She didn’t think she’d ever seen anything so lovely.

  Then he clamped her wrists in his hands and held them down. She’d never craved anything in her whole life more than his weight on top of her, and yet he hovered.

  “You would like to know what I feel?” he drawled.

  “Yes.” She strained upward, trying to kiss him, but he pulled back his head.

  “I feel this.”

  His hips scooped downward and he ground his cock into her. The thin layers of fabric nearly dissolved from the heat between them. A shiver of beautiful sensation rippled through her. A low moan escaped her throat and wound its way around their bodies.

  He was still staring into her eyes as he said, “I feel you, Sera.”

  His hips dipped again, giving her a long, luxurious slide, another insistent push. Bending down, he sucked on her bottom lip. Her arm muscles quivered with the need to touch him, but he continued to hold her down.

  “But it’s not just your body,” he added. “There’s another part of you I can sense. Your mind or your soul or…”

  His words trailed off as his mouth found her throat. At last he released her wrists. One of her hands gripped the flexing muscles of his ass. The other reached between them and stroked him over his pants. Yes. This. This was what she needed. She tugged at the rope holding up his pants, loosened it, and slid her hand inside. Took him in her palm. He shuddered.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “I feel that, too.”

  “There’s something else. Something inside me.” His tongue made a hot, wet line to her ear as he rocked harder into her hand. “It’s like a song. Never-ending. Beautiful and urgent. It pushes me toward you, calling you to me. I want—”

  He cut himself off, going stiff again, then pressed his body up to hover over her again. His gaze searched her face as his brow furrowed.

  “You want what?” She reluctantly removed her hand.

  “I want…” He licked his lips. “I have the strangest urge to call you by a different name.”

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that, yet she was. She took his face in her hands, loving the feeling of the soft hair against her palms.

  “So do I,” she whispered. “Say it.”

  He pushed away, rocking back to sit on his heels. With the rope of his pants undone, they gaped open, sagging low, exposing the long, lean expanse of him from shoulders to hip bones. His hands made fists on his thighs, and when his eyes met hers again, they were no longer filled with lust, but with confusion.

  She pulled in her legs and came to kneel before him. “Say it,” she whispered again.

  He searched her face for several long moments, and then said, “Ramsesh.”

  At the sound of that name, Sera’s soul sang in recognition.

  She touched one hand to her heart, feeling what beat there, knowing that the name William had spoken somehow did belong to her. She spread her other hand across his chest, letting his heartbeat seep into her fingertips.

  The name that had come to her so suddenly only minutes earlier returned, and this time she did not swallow it back. “Amonteh.”

  William’s head sagged on his neck. His shoulders rounded. Sera came closer and wrapped her arms around him. His arms slid loosely around her lower back as his forehead rested on her shoulder.

  “The skeletons…” Though his voice was muffled, she heard him plainly. Understood exactly what he meant.

  Ramsesh and Amonteh. The poor couple who’d been buried in that simple tomb. The dead Egyptian woman who’d once worn the cuff now secured around Sera’s arm.

  Deep arousal still made her body pulse with debilitating need. She could not turn it on and off like a switch, and by the erection still pressing against her, it seemed William could not either. The alcohol buzz and the proximity to him only heightened it more, but now it churned together with this new revelation and she had no idea what to listen to. The driving need of her empty body? Or the surreal story swirling around in her head, and all the accompanying questions that came with it?

  Just moments ago she’d been lost in her want for this man, so sure in her desire that she’d been easily able to accept everything. Blinded by lust. But whose need was she feeling exactly? Did she truly know this man well enough to want him in the way she did? Or was she merely a pawn for this ancient woman Ramsesh, who clearly owned a part of her? Could Sera claim any rights to her faculties, or had she lost her free will when Malik had sent her into that cave?

  Against her, William’s body slackened. As if in disappointment. Or realization of the same.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He sagged even more. “My Spectre. He finally has a name.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Down by the fire, Jem cried out in his sleep. William recognized the sound—the dream of being a
t Riley’s mercy again. The pain. The fear. The humiliation.

  Again, the lad’s presence slid a chilled knife between William and Sera. Again, she edged away from him and he knew that this moment, in all its beautiful revelation, was gone.

  With a groan he pried himself away from her and picked his way back down to Jem. It took him a little while to calm Jem down, but it took much, much longer for his desire for Sera to cool. As he sat quietly next to the lad as his shudders subsided, she lay down on the opposite side of the fire, and he watched her drift into sleep. Even after her eyes closed he continued to watch her, listening to the Spec—Amonteh—and concentrating on parsing out what the dead man fed him, and what William felt of his own accord.

  When the sun rose, he still wasn’t sure which was which. And by the troubled look in the eyes of the woman who claimed to be from two hundred years in the future, she didn’t know either.

  That afternoon, as they trudged along the river toward Sydney, William felt Jem’s presence greater than ever. The lad was a barrier between Sera and him, a muzzle over their mouths. The need to be alone with her—and this time to talk, to ask questions, to pick apart their mystery piece by piece—muddled his mind and made his speech curt.

  More than once he’d been tempted to leave Jem at a faraway settlement or farm. But then he remembered that Jem was a bolter, too, and that if Jem were to wander back into the colonist’s world, he would be hanged as such. William also needed Jem’s forging abilities. And then there was Riley. Jem still had healing to do, and since William had taken it upon himself months ago to see that done, he would not turn his back on the lad now.

  William spoke little on their walk east, but Sera filled in the spaces. Her voice reminded him of the sultry smoke in the old opium palaces he’d once frequented—low and lingering and addictive. She didn’t attempt to talk with him, however, instead focusing light questions at Jem: “Where were you born?” “Who taught you to read?”

  It was clear to William she was trying to reach out to him, but he couldn’t quite figure out why, when just yesterday her frustration over the lad’s presence had outweighed his own.