Until Forever (7 page)

R
oseleen slowly tilted her head back on her shoulders, and there he was, Thorn Blooddrinker, sitting on one of the lower branches in the tree above her. His legs were swinging back and forth, reminding her of a little boy. But there was nothing childlike about the smile he gave her. It was broad and distinctly wicked-looking, telling her exactly what he was thinking—that he figured his long abstinence would soon be over.

For a moment, she stared at him blankly, while her emotions readjusted from dejection to—well, she certainly didn’t feel dejected now. Acute nervousness would be an apt description of the feelings that were quickly taking over.

Had she really thought she could handle this man? He came from a race of the most aggressive, war-minded, barbaric men history had ever produced, men so arrogant that they believed in a heaven that was exclusively for
them, and could only be entered if they died in battle, with weapons in hand. That alone said so much about the way they must have thought, the way
this
man thought.

She’d be running for her car in a moment, if she didn’t curb the direction of her thoughts, so she blurted out, “How did you get up there?” and hoped the question would distract him from
his
thoughts as well.

The very loose, thin white tunic he was wearing wasn’t tied at the neck and nearly slipped off his shoulder as he shrugged in response. A good portion of his chest was bare, and his dark brown leggings were tucked into soft high boots that were cross-gartered to his knees. He would have looked very casual, almost harmless, if there weren’t a scabbard attached to his wide belt. It was empty, but the vicious-looking, long-bladed dagger right next to it kept her from being relieved about that.

And then she had an answer from him, of sorts, “You may summon me, but I choose where to set my feet, and I chose not to set them down for the moment.”

That he would be setting them down right in front of her when he got around to dropping from that tree made her leap up and move out of his jumping distance. His laugh was soft, knowing. He knew exactly what she was feeling, how apprehensive he made her. Hardly conducive to a good bargaining position—for her.

She was wearing a long, ankle-length skirt
today in a blue and yellow floral design, with a yellow silk tank top that she hadn’t bothered tucking in or belting, and sandals. She would have worn long sleeves if the weather weren’t so warm, so this was as close as she could get to what he was more accustomed to seeing women wear. After all, women’s knees hadn’t made an appearance out of the bedroom until this century, and it wasn’t until the last century that a few had bravely worn men’s pants. And she had no idea in
what
century he’d last been summoned—another thing she meant to find out.

She was wearing her glasses like battle armor, and her hair was even more tightly bunned than usual, just for good measure. She’d known she had been taking a risk that he would feel challenged to remove her glasses and hairpins again, but getting the message across that she had no intention of deliberately trying to attract him was more important.

Now she squared her shoulders and tried to correct the cowardly impression she’d just given him. And in the tone that managed to get two-hundred-and-fifty-pound jocks sitting up straighter in their chairs, she said, “I wish to talk to you, Thorn.”

He wasn’t impressed. In fact, his expression, just before he pushed off of that tree limb, said he was amused. “You may do so—after.”

He’d dropped to the ground about six feet away from her, but unfortunately, that wasn’t
where he stayed. But she stood her ground as he approached. Running just wasn’t going to lend conviction to her ultimatum, which had to come out immediately, before he closed the gap between them.

“One more step, and you’ll never get back to where you come from.”

He stopped, about two feet away from her, within reaching distance, but he didn’t reach. Instead, he was looking at the ground between them as if he expected a trap to open up there and swallow him whole. Since it appeared to be no more than it was, soft grass with a few pink flowers, he looked elsewhere, all around him in fact, and his very tenseness told her he wasn’t discounting the possibility that an entire army was hiding in the wheatfields.

Without looking at her, still trying to find the tip of an arrow or the flash of a sword, he said urgently, “Explain, lady. What will keep me here?”

She considered running then, because after what she
knew
he’d just been thinking she was certain he’d be enraged by what she was about to say. She said it anyway.

“I will.”

His eyes came slowly back to her. At first, they were confused, then merely curious.

“You will? How will you?”

She had to clear her throat to get out, “By not saying the words that will release you.”

Still he showed no anger. Actually, he
seemed amused. “So you would keep me with you?”

The conclusion he’d drawn startled her, and she narrowed her eyes on him to show that she didn’t share his amusement. “I don’t think you understand. All I want from you, Thorn, is answers to my questions—and for you to keep your hands to yourself. If we can agree on that, you’ll be back where you came from in no time at all.”

“I cannot agree to that.”

For some reason, she hadn’t expected a flat refusal, and it threw her into a panic. “Why not?” she demanded, her voice rising.

“Because I want you.”

The effect of those simple words was dramatic. Roseleen’s knees almost buckled under her. She made a sound very like a groan. And what his penetrating blue gaze was doing to her insides…

“And you want me,” he added.

“That’s not—that’s beside the—I
can’t
agree to your terms!”

His expression hardened. “You would hold me here and not see to my hunger?”

“I anticipated your hunger. There is a basket behind you, full of food.”

“’Tis not that hunger I refer to, lady, and well you know it.”

There was anger in his voice now, and plenty of it. Oddly enough, it bolstered her own courage.

“Your hunger for food is the only one of your needs I am willing to satisfy,” she told
him firmly. “I’ll provide you with that and a bed to sleep in—the operative word being
sleep
. What
you
were suggesting is out of the question. We barely know each other.”

“I have tasted you and found you to my liking. What more need I know?”

It was happening again, spirals of heat turning in her belly. But there was also heat in her cheeks. He was barbaric in his bluntness. She wondered if he even knew how to approach a subject with tact.

“Then let me rephrase that,” she said. “
I
barely know
you
—and don’t bother mentioning taste again. That subject is no longer under debate. You’ll keep your hands
and
your person off me, or—or you’ll never see your Valhalla again.”

“My person?”

She was amazed that she’d finally managed to sound stern and unaffected, especially since she was now dying of embarrassment. “Your body,” she clarified, and even more color flooded her cheeks, then more still when he threw back his head for a hearty laugh.

“’Twas wise of you to mention both, lady. Very well, I will not jump on you. Give me leave now to depart, and I will answer your questions.”

That was too easy a turnabout. “I’m supposed to trust you? I don’t think so. I’ll give you what you want just as soon as you give me what I want.”

“And I am to trust you?”

“At the moment, Thorn, I believe I hold the
upper hand. I really don’t want to keep you long. I just want my curiosity satisfied—fully.”

“And will you appease mine?”

She had gotten his agreement to her terms, but she didn’t relax until she heard that. Appease his curiosity? Just what the doctor ordered. Finally, something that she could offer him in return, to assuage the guilt she was feeling for coercing his cooperation.

“Certainly,” she said, and even gave him a tentative smile. “What would you like to know?”

“In what time do you live?”

“This is the twentieth century.”

He snorted, looking around. “’Tis not much different from the last century I was summoned to.”

Since that was just what she had hoped he would think when she had found this meadow, she made no comment to that and asked instead, “What year was that?”

“Seventeen and twenty-three ’twas named, and I like these new times not—unless…Have you a war for me to test my skill in?”

Now why wasn’t she surprised that that was one of his first questions? She shook her head mentally. Vikings, always eager for a fight. She was going to have to keep that in mind at
all
times.

“I’m afraid modern wars are not what you would be used to, Thorn,” she was forced to tell him. “The weaponry you may have encountered in the seventeen hundreds, pistols
and explosives, are much more sophisticated now.” She could see that he wasn’t quite following her, probably because he didn’t understand the words
sophisticated
and
explosives
, so she added, “Swords are no longer used. No one likes to get that close to the enemy in a war these days, and besides, this country happens to be at peace.”

The word
peace
apparently didn’t please him. His disappointment was obvious. “And what country is this, that you have brought me to?”

“England.”

At that he grinned. “The English, they are never long at peace.”

History supported that statement, so she was compelled to point out, “Since a third world war would likely wipe out the human race, countries are a bit more diplomatic nowadays, England included.”

“There was a
world
war? And I missed it?”

She rolled her eyes over this new disappointment he was displaying. “You wouldn’t have liked the last one, or the one before it. Forget it, Thorn, you aren’t going to find a handy war around here.”

And to make sure she got his mind off battles, she added, “It’s been more than a couple of centuries since you were last summoned, and a world of differences has taken place since then. At no time in history has change ever been so dramatic as in this century. Some changes you’ll like, most you probably won’t.
For instance, what you were thinking of doing to me is illegal without my permission.”

“Illegal?”

“Against the law.”

He grinned now. “I make my own law, lady, with my sword arm to back it up.”

She shook her head at him. “Sorry, but you can’t do things like that here.”

His expression said he’d do things however he pleased. She decided they could go round and round with that subject and get nowhere. She didn’t want him arrested, she merely wanted some answers from him. And besides, she never should have introduced
that
subject again.

But he changed the subject himself. “I have already seen some of these differences you mention. That painting of William, ’tis amazing how lifelike it was.”

Hearing that, she could no longer doubt that his first appearance had been in her classroom in the States. Not that she was still doubting his existence. He was real enough. But the questions of why and how still boggled her mind.

Her own questions would have to wait, however, because it had already occurred to her that if she got him interested in this time period, then he wouldn’t mind sticking around long enough to share his knowledge of the past.

So she said, “That wasn’t a painting, but a blowup of a photograph,” and when he just
stared at her blankly, she added, “Come, I’ll show you.”

She moved back to the blanket and knelt down in front of her purse to search through it. She didn’t notice that he had come to hunker down right next to her until she lifted out what she’d been looking for, her wallet, and turned to find him—mere inches away from her.

He wasn’t watching what she was doing, he was staring at her face, and for a long moment, she got caught by his eyes, and couldn’t manage to break the contact. The heat she’d felt earlier was back again, and so was the churning in her belly. She imagined lifting her hand to his cheek, then wrapping it around his neck to draw his lips to hers. Her breath suspended. She could almost taste him…

Roseleen snapped her eyes shut. Dear God, she had to be crazy to want to keep him around when he had such control over her body—no, she corrected herself, she had to be crazy not to put into action what she’d just imagined. She groaned inwardly at such contradictory thoughts. If only she’d been raised differently, if only he were a
normal
man, unable to disappear and appear at the whim of a sword.

When she looked at him again, he was grinning at her. He knew. He knew exactly what he’d done to her, and he was the very image of a man confident that he’d be getting what he wanted in the near future.

“You had something to show me, lady?”

Did she? Yes, the pictures in her wallet. Think of that, think of astounding him, think of keeping him so bedazzled with modern wonders that he would have no time to work his sensual magic on her.

She opened her wallet, then the snapshot section of it, and practically shoved the first picture under his nose, then flipped another over, then another. “These are photographs of people I know, my parents; my brother, David; Gail, who’s my best friend; Bar—damn, I can’t believe I still have that one in there.” She slid out the snapshot of Barry, which she’d forgotten until now, and began ripping it into little pieces. “Shows you how often I look at my own snapshots,” she added in a grumble.

“Why would you do that?”

She leaned over to shove what was now no more than rubbish in her hand, to the bottom of the picnic basket, before she answered him. “Tear up a picture? Because I can’t stand the man in it.”

“But ’twas costly, was it not?”

“Not at all. What I was trying to explain to you is that the poster you saw in my classroom the night you first appeared was no more than an enlargement or blowup of a photograph similar to these. No artist painted it. And it certainly wasn’t William the Bastard who posed for it. Photos are taken with a camera, a little boxlike device that’s been around for more than a century now, and I certainly wish I had an instant one here to
show you, because it could produce your own image—”