Hidden Obsession

by Joanne Rock

  “You won’t be so possessive tonight, when the women are brought forward to share.” The guy gripped his sword, his knuckles ripped and raw as if he’d used them recently. “Lord Kendrick is reputed to deal harshly with any man too selfish to bring an offering for all.”

  Linnet flinched in Graham’s arms at the name. Or maybe it had been the image of women being passed around for all to share.

  But he could offer little comfort now when he needed all his attention on warning away the vipers circling them.

  “Selfish?” Graham cracked a smile with calculated superiority. “Hell, boy, don’t you know Kendrick himself locks up his favorite so that no other may touch her? Privileges are always granted to any man strong enough to fight for what’s his.”

  He tipped his head in friendly warning before slowing down his mount abruptly to let the others pass. Fortunately, they did so without turning back to lift their swords and avenge the insult Graham had delivered as politely as the situation warranted.

  Another crisis averted.

  Except that, as he watched the horses trot past, he realized that two of the riders in the group also carried women across their laps. Just like Graham.

  Only these women didn’t look to be simply hiding their faces like Linnet. They appeared to be drugged or knocked out, their bodies limp and unmoving as they were jostled by the horses’ gait over uneven terrain.

  “They share the women?” Anger simmered through him as they rode, the heat of his fury blasting away his need for Linnet the way nothing else could have. “What the hell kind of twisted bastard were you going to marry?”

  She stirred in his arms now that the other riders had disappeared from sight.

  “I don’t know, but if I remember correctly, the Kendrick lands should start shortly. There is a small creek that marks the southern border.” She squinted into the distance, shading her eyes from the setting sun.

  The creek came into view some few moments later. The scent of balefires drifted on the breeze as they closed the distance between them and whatever screwed-up skin parade passed for a party in Kendrick’s book.

  Graham dropped a kiss on Linnet’s head and gave her the squeeze he couldn’t earlier. She deserved so much better from life than this. As much as he liked her peculiar turn of phrase and her sexy medieval clothes, he wanted to see her safe and sound in the twenty-first century where men could not take such advantage of women.

  And now he had to admit that his reasons for journeying to this place on the other side of a painting hadn’t been all selfish. He would do more than solve the case of the Guardians tonight. He was going to keep Linnet away from the scumbag bastard who’d wanted to hurt her, and he’d gladly set free as many other innocent women as he could in the process.

  Whether or not he was in his jurisdiction, “protect and serve” still applied.

  SHE’D BEEN BETROTHED to a monster.

  Linnet had known it in a peripheral way all along, but as she stood on the fringes of his lewd display of carnality thinly disguised as Midsummer festivities later that night, she comprehended the depths of Burke Kendrick’s dark soul all the more completely.

  “Let me get you out of here.” Graham whispered in her ear from behind, her body pressed between his tall breadth of sinew and a fat oak tree off to one side of the gathering. A cool breeze broke the warmth of the night while they watched the “revelry.”

  Acrid smoke hung in the air from too many balefires, the scent burning her eyes while the thick clouds of gray billowed through the clearing like the wrath of God at the current sacrilege. The pagan trappings of the ceremony were not an issue since the Church turned a blind eye to many a favored old ritual practiced in the rural parts of the land.

  No, the sacrilege here came in the form of twisting a beloved ritual into something unholy, since the traditional Midsummer songs and blessings had been eschewed for a parade of feminine flesh before a gathering of unscrupulous men. At the center of the dancing women—who ranged from completely naked to covered by carefully positioned scraps of cloth—Linnet’s former captor reigned supreme. Clad in somber colors and a cape adorned with the same intricate symbol Graham had noted on her hated Initiator, Kendrick stood in the middle of the women who writhed and danced through the smoke as if drunken and dispossessed of their wits.

  “Nay. I cannot leave.” She tipped back to answer Graham as softly as possible, mindful of the revelers who conducted their rituals some forty feet away. “If even one of these women has suffered to take my place here tonight, I cannot simply walk away to leave her helpless to the fate.”

  After knowing that kind of helplessness herself, she found herself indignant—nay, furious—at the thought of another woman subjected to such bone-chilling fear by the monster parading as a man called Kendrick.

  “You’re sure as hell not getting involved in this.” Graham’s grip on her was ironclad, delivering his message more insistently than his words. “And I’m not going to be able to help her either if I think for a second that you’re contemplating moving out of this spot.”

  Unable to answer, Linnet simply stared in stunned silence as the spectacle increased in frenzy, the soft chants from the male onlookers growing louder, their hands reaching out to touch the women whereas before they had merely watched. The dancing females seemed to lose their worries and the remainder of their linen coverings at the shouted encouragement from the crowd, their movements turning more sexual as they cupped their own breasts for better display.

  Or, perhaps, for pleasure?

  “Do you think they are not unwilling?” Confused by the wanton display of overt sexuality when some of the same women had to be dragged out into the center of the clearing at the beginning of the evening, Linnet hugged her arms tighter around herself. The scene disturbed her and she feared they had not yet seen the worst of it.

  “They’re drugged.” Graham sounded sure of himself as he squinted into the smoke.

  “With an herb? With too much wine? How do you know?” She had once imbibed too liberally at a holy day feast and the spinning head she’d received in return had not inspired her to rip her clothes off and caress herself in front of an eager crowd of men.

  “I’ve seen drugs act like this in my country. You can tell by the eyes. The wild movements of their bodies.” He stroked her hair as he spoke, offering silent comfort.

  “What’s he doing?” Linnet saw Kendrick disappear into a brightly decorated tent off to one side of the circle but still in clear view of the crowd. Tension crept through her as she dreaded the answer to her question.

  Graham said nothing as they watched another man—dressed similarly to Kendrick—lead one woman into the yellow tent as well.

  Fear settled in her belly at the thought of what might take place within the walls where the others could not see. Apparently, Graham shared her thought as he tensed behind her.

  “Stay here.” Graham stepped back from her, eyes on the clearing and the yellow tent where the woman had disappeared with Kendrick. “I can help her, but only if you stay right there and don’t move. Don’t let anyone see you.”

  Before she could ask what he was doing, he kissed her hard on the mouth and then sprinted off into the night, dodging view by running from tree to tree around the perimeter of the clearing.

  She cursed him for an errant lout even as she prayed for his safe return. Someone needed to help that woman. All the women. Some men Linnet recognized to be Kendrick’s closest knights circulated among the crowd to discourage the most aggressive of the men from pulling the dancing maids into their midst, but the group shouted and strained toward the display so greatly that it couldn’t be long before they defied the knights and took turns with the women at will.

  Desperate for a glimpse of Graham, Linnet finally caught sight of him on the move again, slipping away from the ring of swords and shields the attendants had been forced to make with their weapons before they were allowed into the festivities. A small fire now burning behind Graham il
luminated his movements. Unsure what he thought to do with the little blaze set among the swords and shields when so many others were already lit around the clearing, she watched him tug a keg of ale toward the small fire and then roll it into the middle.

  Not until the ale exploded in a shower of flames did she appreciate the beauty of the plan. He’d started a fire right beside the pile of weaponry where Midsummer revelers had been asked to leave their swords. By the ensuing stampede toward the blazing blades, Linnet suspected she and Graham would now have a few moments of time to free the women.

  How wrong she was.

  As she darted toward the clearing where the dancing women now wandered dazed, aimless and momentarily unguarded, a strong arm yanked her back into the shadows.

  “I’d know this fair hair anywhere.” The cruel voice chilled her as much as the feel of chain mail biting into her back where a man—a young warrior—held her fast. “’Tis the lofty prize that would not be shared with mere mortals.”

  She struggled to look into the face of her captor and knew she was seeing the man who’d taunted Graham on the road earlier when she’d hid in his arms.

  With no such sanctuary now, she had no wits to rely upon but her own. They might have been enough if his next words hadn’t chilled her to the core.

  “I think Lord Kendrick will be most grateful to me for bringing him a prize like you.”

  That she could not allow.

  Memories of intimate imprisonment and long days of fear and anguish assailed her. With no time to think, no room for fear, Linnet only comprehended that she could not allow Kendrick to discover her presence. Closing her eyes, she simply rammed her knee upward with all the force she could muster, planting a blow to the knight’s manhood as she prayed for release.

  GRAHAM HERDED NAKED WOMEN onto the horses he’d stolen from the back of the clearing while Kendrick’s guests struggled to save their weaponry. There were probably bedrolls on some of the knights’ mounts, but he could hardly take time to dress the blank-eyed females when their lives were in danger. They were definitely drugged; some of the women pawed at him with restless hands as if they’d consumed the mother of all aphrodisiacs.

  Or as if they’d ingested the medieval equivalent of ecstasy. He’d arrested enough kids on the popular party drug to know how it played out for most people, and it mirrored exactly what he’d seen tonight. He just couldn’t add up how these women of medieval times could have ingested the drug. And holy crap, he had to have traveled to an ancient time to have seen as much medieval weaponry as he’d spied today.

  The pandemonium he’d created would wane any moment now, the initial shouts of panic already dying as a few men recovered their blades. He would never have been able to help as many of the women as he had if not for the aid of two of the females who seemed to have shaken the influence of the drug better than the others. They had steered their counterparts away from Kendrick’s knights toward Graham.

  Now he just needed to get Linnet the hell out of here, and he had two horses saved for that express purpose.

  “Graham!” A feminine voice shrieked to him from the fringe of the forest.

  Linnet.

  He heard his name through a cacophony of much louder shouts, his ear as attuned to Linnet as the rest of his body. Turning toward the sound, he half spun into another man’s blade.

  “You’ve taken our women!” The guy shouted like the indignant drunk he was, his blade unsteady against Graham’s shoulder.

  “No luck with the kind you can’t drug into submission?” Graham drop-kicked him in the solar plexus, adrenaline pumping through him so hard he needed to hit something.

  A drunken lecher guilty several times over of sexual misconduct and probably attempted sex with a minor seemed liked a damn fine target for the fury.

  Stepping heavily on the fallen guy’s chest as he sprinted away, Graham scooped up the extra sword as he moved in the direction where he’d heard Linnet’s voice. He was about to shout for her—the confused crowd controlled the fire well enough now that people were beginning to notice the women had disappeared—but then he caught sight of her.

  “Graham.” She ran toward him in nothing but her under-dress. Less than the under-dress even. A linen scrap of nothing he could see through at ten paces.

  Curses exploded from his mouth—all directed at himself—as he recognized he’d never forgive himself for walking away from her for a second. Hot on the heels of that recognition came the realization that a man pursued her.

  Not just any man. The heavy-metal-looking rat bastard who had tried to touch her on the road earlier.

  Graham seized his sword with a steady hand despite the rage exploding in his head at the thought of this son of a bitch touching her after all she’d been through with Kendrick.

  “Take a horse,” he shouted at Linnet as he steamed past her into the darkness, legs pumping with freight-train force to mow down the man who dared put fear in her eyes again. “Ride like hell.”

  He couldn’t afford to turn and see if she followed through as he’d told her, his whole focus narrowed to a lone target. He didn’t have time to mess around when Linnet needed him now.

  For a moment, he feared the arrogant excuse for a knight would turn and flee, but the guy dredged up enough gumption to draw his sword as he shouted out over the quieting crowd.

  “Lord Kendrick!” The words were an icier threat than anything this kid could muster on his own. And since Graham couldn’t wait around to draw more attention toward his escape with Linnet, he had to satisfy his bloodlust with a blow to the guy’s head using the blunt edge of his sword.

  With more than a little relish, Graham cold-cocked Heavy Metal into last year. The scumbag fell to his knees with a quiet thud, his body crumpling unnaturally on the ground.

  A cry went up from the clearing as Kendrick’s decorative tent collapsed. Possibly resulting from the support beam Graham had filched out of it when he’d ducked inside to rescue the woman and grab a handful of scrolls stashed in a satchel.

  From the middle of that clearing, at the center of the destruction and still visible in the light of five roaring balefires, a man garbed all in black stared out over his ruined party. His fury couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d rubber stamped it on his forehead.

  The desire to take him out rode Graham hard, but today was not the day to engage. Not when Kendrick had fifty-some supporters swarming around, just waiting for their swords to cool and their leader to give them orders. Graham, on the other hand, didn’t have squat for backup.

  And he couldn’t spare the time to clean out the bad guys when Linnet galloped through the forest half-naked. Altering his course, he headed back to the horse he’d kept aside for himself before anyone else spotted him. Fifty-to-one odds sucked, even if most of the fifty jerk-offs were drunk.

  Smoke and confusion hung in the air as men shouted to one another and tried to make sense of what had happened. Every now and then he’d hear a scream of pain as someone tried to retrieve their weapon, the handles no doubt red-hot from the blaze Graham had set almost on top of the swords.

  Sliding into the saddle as quietly as possible, he urged the horse forward, enjoying the feel of riding even more than driving around L.A. in his pickup. If the animal came with surround sound stereo, he’d be living large.

  And damn, but that was the least of his problems. He’d be lucky to find Linnet in the dark. He hadn’t gone a tenth of a mile when he heard her voice calling from the trees.

  The night was a shade of dark you’d never see in L.A. When the moon hid beneath the clouds, there wasn’t a hint of light anywhere now that the balefires were out of sight.

  “Over here.” She emerged from the trees as he slowed, a dark blanket thrown over her like a cape. She lowered the fabric from her head as he drew close, her pale hair catching the scant moon rays and making her look more apparition than woman.

  He touched her to be certain.

  Pulled her off her horse and into his a
rms to be even more certain. He’d ask if she was okay in a minute. He needed to feel for himself first.

  His sense of reality was all out of whack from running around in the dark lighting fires and freeing naked women. Hell, his concept of reality had been screwed from the moment he’d fallen into a freaking painting.

  “Are you all right?” He reached under the shawl of her blanket to skim a hand over her spine. Her skin felt warm and vibrant. Alive. “I never should have left you.”

  The night air blew cool against his face and he covered her up again, a belated effort to comfort her.

  “I’m so glad you did.” She smoothed her hand over his cheek grown rough without benefit of a razor. “I couldn’t bear the idea of those women suffering in my place and you freed them. I can’t tell you how victorious I feel in my heart to know they were spared a night of abuse at the hands of those men.”

  “No one suffered in your place.” How could she think that? “Kendrick would have corralled more women for his sicko games even if he’d found you.”

  “Still, I—” She shook her head, her hair spilling off his arm with the movement. “I am grateful for what you did.”

  “But I let that bastard touch you—”

  “He didn’t touch me.” A small smile touched her lips. “He only touched my garments. You may laugh at the many layers I wear, but they kept the man from getting a firm hold on me. Every time he gathered another fistful of clothes, I wriggled out from that layer until I wore nothing but my shift.”

  “And then?” Although her smile had given him hope she remained unscathed, he still braced himself for the answer.

  “And then I delivered a second crotch-bludgeoning blow to the beslubbering boar pig and ran like the wind.” Her grin was wholehearted then, so beautiful it damn near took his breath away.

  He wanted to kiss her, to drag her off into the woods and possess her completely, but the rumble of hooves in the distance made that impossible.