Ancient Ties (3 page)

Janney felt a large heated presence. Raising her head, she saw Marek kneeling in front of her. He took her cold and shaking hands in his warm, steady ones and gently asked, “What happened right before you came in the door? Where were you?

Look at me, Janney Forrester,” his voice commanded gently.

“Where were you?”

Janney blinked as if coming into the light out of a dark room. Not knowing what was happening to her was making her crazy. Marek and Augusta were the only solid pieces in this whole bizarre puzzle. She’d heard his questions, and knew that he was trying to help her regain control. God, she needed to be in control again.

Shuddering with fear that hovered too closely, she held his gaze and hands as if her life depended on it and whispered, “I was at the doorway. Outside the door. That door, but there was no door, only an empty doorway,” she pointed, clinging to what she knew for sure. “It was all overgrown with weeds and vines. I

walked through grass and wild flowers up to that door. It was all open, and I could see the ruins inside here. It didn’t look like this. It smelled of dust. There was no roof. The tiles were broken. The fountain didn’t work.” Her voice traveled up in pitch again. “But when I stepped in, it was perfect. Like it had been restored. Like it is now. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Marek glanced at the door. Helping her up gently, his hand firmly around her waist, he walked with her to the door. They stepped out together. The courtyard. They stepped back inside.

He urged her through alone. It was the same scene. She leaned against the doorframe turning her back to the street. She couldn’t bear to look out there again. Janney finally realized that she was lost, trapped in a nightmare.

Mt. Olympus

“Well, that takes care of that,” the Goddess of Love chirped, gleefully dusting off her palms. Venus reclined back on her chaise with a self-satisfied expression on her dazzling face.

“What takes care of what?” the God of War asked. Mars reluctantly turned his concentration from the current battle being waged on the ground by General Gaius Cassius against Parthia.

“I brought the woman back from her time to his.”

“Whose?”

“Marek Benin’s.”

“Why in all the heavens would you do that?”

“Because I have the power.” Venus always enjoyed having the last word over Mars.

Marek was familiar with strategizing warfare and solving whatever problems came up, but he had never known a precedent for what just happened. Augusta seemed to believe the woman’s story, but Marek wasn’t so sure it was true.

Travel through time was impossible. So Marek told himself.

But how did that explain this woman and her insistence on what had been outside the front door? How did that explain her clothing that was like nothing he’d ever seen before? No stranger to a woman’s body, he did like the way it molded to her curves, the soft white, clingy covering over her breasts accentuating her attributes in a way that was almost more desirable than if she’d been naked.

Mmm…almost.
He rolled his eyes. Well, obviously naked would be better.

Strange blue cloth tightly sheathed her long legs all the way down to her feet. The big white, puffy things on her feet looked clumsy and ungainly, but she was able to move around silently on them.

Marek decided to watch her carefully, which was certainly no hardship. Her face was fine-boned—soft, pink, round apple cheeks—determined, pointed chin. Her eyes, the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, were at times pale with uncertainty, then bright with fascination at her surroundings. Spellbound, he watched.

Something caused her breasts to be thrust out like that, and a man would have to be blind to miss the hard nipples right there in the centers. His fingers flexed, craving to touch them. He could almost feel their velvety softness on his lips.

Hades!

Augusta had taken control of Janney Forrester, had invited her into the peristyle. Before showing her around, she took Janney to a bedroom and urged her to change into a tunic and stola. No one else in the villa had seen her yet, and until they figured out what was going on, it would be better if the servants didn’t suspect anything odd. Marek had sent for Gaius, his friend and mentor, Augusta’s husband. Gaius would help sort this mess out. Marek had a feeling that this woman presented a much bigger problem than any of them could ever imagine.

As Janney wandered around the peristyle, after Augusta left to see to the evening meal, Marek stood guard. Legs solidly planted, arms crossed over his chest, he scowled and glared. She was not going to leave his sight. If he had to perform his self-imposed guard duty, a beautiful woman was a pleasant change from scruffy enemy Celts.

Occasionally, she would glance over her shoulder to see where he stood and throw him a suspicious look. Why she was suspicious, he didn’t know. If she planned to rob the villa, she would never get away with it.

Marek continued to observe. She seemed at times to forget his presence and peered at carvings, benches, and the fountain with a near reverence, even tracing patterns of curves and hollows with her fingers.

Hmm.

Marek’s face flamed. His jaw dropped open in surprise.

He’d seen a lot during his long years in the army and he’d never been embarrassed before. But the sensuous drag of her fingers along the ridges of carved flowers felt like she had placed her hand on his hip bone and traced across his tightly clenching stomach muscles.

Zeus!

He froze and gaped idiotically at Janney when she encountered the statue of a nude Hermes, one hand on its hip, the opposite knee cocked forward. She stopped stock-still before the cool, smooth marble. Her gaze rose to the top. When her

gaze lowered to Hermes’ middle, she squinted, bit her lower lip, and stared at the god’s larger-than-life penis. Marek squirmed awkwardly, shifting his feet on the gravel pathway.

At the sound, Janney turned, looked directly at him, and flushed brightly. Their eyes locked. Gods, what was happening to him? He couldn’t breathe with wanting to grab this woman and prove to her that he was every bit as impressive as the statue.

“Umm.” She chewed on her lower lip. Blinked.

Marek suddenly realized he wanted to chew on her lower lip. To suck on it.

“Umm,” she murmured again, lost in his eyes.

And her upper lip…

Like a bolt of lightning it ripped through his belly and Marek gasped as if in pain. He turned on his heel and stomped off. Slamming the door to his bedroom, he stood in the center of the room, aghast.

Good Gods! I’m insane.

Marek Benin Verus had never run from a woman in his life.

And he didn’t this time either. But what had he done? Shaking.

He was shaking.

Stop!
He ordered himself to think. Cut off the emotions and think. Yes, he wanted the woman. Naturally, he did. What sane man wouldn’t want her? That innocent face surrounded by all that curly, yellow hair and the body of a goddess. Marek hated that he was completely unnerved by her. This was a first for him.

Women were a means to assuaging physical desires, but this one…

Marek knew her. Oh, not her name, nor specifically her face. She’d been in his dreams, though. Since his breakdown, he’d awakened many mornings, hot and agitated, wondering what was wrong. It wasn’t unusual to awaken aroused, but remnants of the fantasy of a bright presence touching his body, the voice a mere gentle hum filtering through his brain, stayed with him even after he woke. The shock of the dream becoming reality, staggered him. Why had this woman invaded his dreams?

What plan did the Gods have? Because Marek knew without a

doubt that she had been brought to him by the Gods. The question was why?

Humph. Do the reasons matter? The woman has been sent to me. I
will have her. The omen is too strong to dismiss.

The yellow-haired woman was a gift to him from the Gods.

He was sure he had it all figured out.

Full dark now, the sun had set long ago, and Marek settled himself on a bench in the shadows of the colonnade surrounding the garden. A soft breeze flickering the three flaming oil lamps placed around the perimeter, did not reach him. The fragrance of roses and flowers he couldn’t really name filled the cool, open space. Since his breakdown in battle and restlessness in the nights, he often tried to persuade sleep to come by trusting that the peaceful peristyle, the murmur and patter of the fountain would soothe him. Most often, it failed. However, tonight he realized that he hadn’t, not once since the woman had appeared this morning, thought about his own problems.

Marek sat in the dark; elbows balanced on spread knees, and adjusted his cuff. His scalp prickled with an unfamiliar feeling. How had the woman found it outside the villa, and as she claimed, in her own time? He had lost it; somehow, the catch loosened. There were many places it could have been. But how was it found almost two thousand years into the future?

While watching the doorway to Janney Forrester’s sleeping room, he nursed a goblet of wine, the flagon next to him on the marble bench. He had not been interested in women for quite a while now. Unfortunately, their particular comfort, and he’d tried every method known to man to help him sleep at night, did nothing for him. Augusta, one of the few people who even knew about his son, suggested sending for Leonidas. His son might help him forget that one young, dead warrior. When Marek last visited Rome five years before, Leonidas was ten years of age. It had been hard for Marek to leave him. He remembered himself at that age. His mother had still been alive, his father off in the

army—as Marek himself was now. The heavy gold cuff on his wrist was the only physical remembrance of his father.

Fifteen years before, despondent by the death of his beloved wife, Mellona, in childbirth, Marek’s guilt and grief were overwhelming. She had been a tiny, delicate thing and putting her through pregnancy and childbirth had killed her. So, he’d tried to do what he thought best at the time. Ashamed that even though he loved his son, he could not properly care for him, he’d married Solita, as a wife of convenience. She was a good woman, Mellona’s closest friend, and she would nurture his son until he was grown. Marek had retreated to the army, back to what he knew best, back to what he’d been before marrying Mellona. Augusta and Gaius Marcellus, his closest friends in Britannia—or even in the Roman Empire—never berated him for leaving his son with another woman and returning to the frontier.

Why now, after all the years he’d been a soldier, had he broken down in battle? Marek could hardly accept the truth of it.

As the knot in his chest tightened, he shook his head to push down the humiliation that came every time he remembered.

He’d shamed himself before his men with his episode—he refused to call it a breakdown.

The last thing he recalled was the boy dying in his arms.

He’d been told the rest—the crying, the physical weakness. All that was left now was bitterness, disgust, fear. The fear was the worst. Marek had not feared anything in a good long time. He’d always been in control—over himself and his men. He vowed he would be again. He would get through this and go into battle again.

Marek had sent for his son and prayed that he would come.

He was considered a grown man now at fifteen, old enough himself to marry—or to fight. Leonidas was his blood. His and Mellona’s. Marek hoped that Leonidas would forgive him for leaving Rome and understand that he’d had a job to do. Fight and train. Marek was a soldier. That is what he was. All he was.

All he had needed to be. Except that now he needed, finally, to be a father.

Marek didn’t move a muscle when Janney Forrester’s door opened and she slipped out. She stood still, orienting herself, then moved slowly toward the villa’s entryway. Marek admired her reconnaissance methods. He would have done it exactly the same way. The woman was a marvel.

Marek welcomed the return of sexual interest, welcomed the heat this woman generated. Sometime during the evening meal, he had made the decision. He would have her—one way or the other. His fingers flexed, craving to touch her, the backs of his hands prickled with the phantom feel of the riotous yellow curls around her head sliding across them. Her eyes, dark as the sky at dusk with anger, and soft with passion.

By Zeus
!

The urge to devour the woman nearly unbalanced him. She had changed back into her own clothing, and he could see the outline of her breasts, her flat stomach, and an enticingly rounded bottom.

He did not welcome the possibility that she might not come to his bed. With other women, that had never been in question.

But this whole situation was entirely different. What if she disappeared out the front door, as she seemed to want to do?

Not wishing to give away his presence just yet, he stealthily eased himself off the bench to follow. Marek hadn’t realized how tense he was until he saw Janney close the front door again after looking out. Grimacing, and fully disgusted with himself, his heart nevertheless thudded heavily with relief. The woman disconcerted him, but he firmly believed that the Gods had brought her here and they weren’t taking her away—just yet anyway. He silently slumped back into an alcove as she passed back into the peristyle to settle on a bench.

Marek needed to think, to plan. He would take her to his villa when he left to go home. Then she’d be away from the portal to her own time. She would be in his control and soon in his bed. He absolutely refused to consider defeat.

Janney hadn’t slept. She couldn’t. Slipping out of the room Augusta had given her, she found herself enveloped in near darkness. Flickering lamps threw weird shadows around the garden, the only other light a full moon and about a million stars. Except for the snapping flames and percolating fountain, all was quiet as she stole through to the entry. She needed to check the doorway, had to find a way out of this nightmare.