VirtualDesire

by Ann Lawrence

  “And you can explain your dryer-sheet fetish.” She made a low, musical sound of laughter in her throat.

  It did not please him to amuse her. “What is a fetish?”

  “A passion for something,” she said, and walked away.

  As he watched the sway of her skirts, he imagined she could define all the words he did not know if given the proper persuasion.

  A sudden hush fell over the crowd. Only the pulsing beat of the music continued. Gwen looked toward the door, in the direction of everyone’s gaze. A blond man of about twenty stood in the doorway, his hair and Tolemac warrior costume drenched with rain. With a collective sigh, the crowd turned away.

  “Uh-oh. I think the model from the agency is here,” Gwen said to Neil. That made it more certain than ever that her other warrior was a practical joke waiting to happen. She hurried to the dripping young man, who stood not much taller than she did. “I’m Gwen Marlowe.” She held out her hand, but he ignored it as he tossed his dripping blond hair off his face.

  “I’m Vad, and your directions stink,” he said. “I got off the wrong exit of the Atlantic City Expressway and I’ve been driving…”

  Gwen tuned him out. He was a fairly attractive young man, but she was sure Tolemac warriors didn’t whine. “Look. Have a cup of punch.” She snagged one from a passing warrior and offered it to the model. Maybe a few cups later, he’d be bearable—unless Neil had weeded out all the spiked stuff. While he sniffed the cup, she slunk away.

  An hour later, the crowd fell silent again, eyes on the door. She ignored them. All the Vads were in the house. “Holy mackerel!” Mrs. Hill cried, and ran past her.

  “Gee, what’d you do to get him here? Sell your soul to the devil?” Neil asked.

  Gwen turned around. Another warrior was making an entrance. This man, who easily stood an inch or two taller than Vad, scanned the crowd with a frown. His hair was a sun-streaked brown, pulled back and secured at his nape. His black-and-white costume was a twin of Vad’s. A sword hung at his side. There was nothing of the prop about it, however.

  The three heartbeats of silence ended. In a squealing rush, women hurtled in the newcomer’s direction.

  “It’s Kered!” Liz cried, and hugged Gwen in an embrace that would bruise. “Who’d have believed it? Does this mean Tolemac Wars I will be available again? Just think…two Tolemac warriors in one room.”

  Gwen glanced at the short, wet version of Vad busily gorging himself at the buffet. “Don’t you mean three?” Gwen muttered, and disentangled herself from Liz’s vise-like grip. “I guess the practical joke is just about to crank up a notch. Now, where’s Kered hiding my dear friend Maggie?”

  “Why didn’t you do some promo on this meeting of the two Tolemac warriors?” Liz asked, quickly loading new film.

  But Gwen didn’t need to worry about her answer. Liz was flying across the room, camera over her head, flash working overtime.

  Gwen turned to Neil. “He hates publicity. I didn’t really think he’d come. And where’s Maggie?”

  “Don’t bother about that right now. Look.” Neil held her arm.

  Warrior God Number One was stealing away with Warrior God Number Two. “Damn, they can’t leave,” she said.

  But Neil held her still. “Let them go.”

  A wall of fans followed the two men to one of the rank of double glass doors, but Kered turned at the door and held up his hands. As if by magic, the crowd halted. He closed the doors in their faces.

  Her warriors had deserted her.

  “They’re still outside. Stop checking on them.” With a groan, Neil swept a pile of fake snow into a dustpan. “We’ll never get this cleaned up. And were you into the punch again? You can’t stand still.”

  “I’m not drunk. And you disposed of the punch, remember? I’m just worried about Vad out there in the rain. He felt kinda feverish this afternoon.”

  “Did he?”

  Neil’s grin annoyed her. “I was just helping him shave, and he felt hot.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she muttered. Neil was right. She couldn’t stop pacing. Her ball had completely collapsed when the two Tolemac warriors had gone outside. And she’d never even awarded the prize for best costume or best Vad look-alike, as the soggy Vad had informed her before departing in a huff.

  She knew her Vad and Kered were only a few feet away outside, standing at a railing, their faces to the icy wind, because they were illuminated on a regular basis by the flashes of jagged lightning.

  Uncannily, not one guest had trespassed on their intense conversation, but the ball had died with their exit nonetheless.

  “I am sorry, my friend,” Kered said. “I will not be returning to Tolemac.”

  Vad gripped the iron railing and felt waves of grief as huge as those splashing below wash over him. He had crossed the ice fields in vain and had known it since Gwen had mentioned that Maggie was with child. Kered would never leave her now. So be it. He would survive this as he had survived so much else—being orphaned, fighting for his place at Kered’s side, the curse of his face.

  No one must ever know how he felt. No one. With a deep breath, he turned to his friend. “You have not been here even one conjunction and already your speech is deteriorating—”

  “Vad. You must listen. This is where you belong, too.”

  “No, do not try to convince me again to remain here with you. My honor lies in Tolemac. If you choose not to return, then it is left to me to prove us innocent of the council’s charges or our names will be forever inscribed in the rolls of traitors. My sword displayed there for all to see.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This matters! Here. Now. This place.” Kered clamped a hand over his on the slick railing.

  “What is here for me? If it is as you say, and I came from here at some time, long ago in my childhood, then where is my family?”

  Kered’s hand on his reminded him too poignantly of years of friendship, years of serving beneath this man, trusting him, obeying his commands, looking up to him not just as a leader, but as a brother. Now his life felt blasted in a furnace of betrayal.

  “I’m sorry, my friend. I tracked them down and they’re dead, but I could show you their graves.”

  “Graves? What use have I of graves?” Vad’s jaw ached from clenching his teeth. Long moments of silence reigned between them. “So I have only you, as was true for so many conjunctions. My adoptive brother…my commander, fellow traitor.”

  “You’re not a traitor! Neither am I. This is where I belong. It is not dishonorable to follow what you know in your heart is right. One day you will understand. No matter your ties there, you will find a need to be here—”

  “You are tied to a woman, not a place!”

  Kered nodded. “And the need I have for my new family. The place doesn’t matter, as long as I’m with Maggie, and I know she’s safe.” He shook his head. “I can’t explain it.”

  “Then give me the jeweled dagger, and I will leave you to your chosen life.” Every muscle in Vad’s neck ached. He wanted to lash out, to howl with the pain of finding his friend, but losing him at the same time.

  Kered frowned. “So be it. I’ll search for the dagger. I’m sure Maggie must have it. I just sent her home this morning because her grandmother has broken her hip, and Maggie wanted to help care for her. I know she would want me to take you out there to see her.”

  But Vad shook his head. He looked out at the sea. How far could he go and not be lost completely?

  “Vad, I’ll find the dagger; I promise. But you must make a promise, too.”

  “What promise do you desire of me?” Vad asked. How many promises had been made and broken in the name of friendship?

  “If you won’t come with me, stay here until I find the dagger. That’s all.”

  Vad nodded. How long would he have to wait? Long enough to be seduced by the women, the strange food, the hypnotizing music, to want to remain? “Do what you must to find the blade. It is all
I have to prove my innocence.”

  Gwen pressed her face to the window. Both men were as rigid as soldiers at attention.

  “I’m going out there.” She jerked the door open and was nearly blown off her feet. Vad was at her side in an instant, shoving the door closed for her. “You’re soaking wet—both of you. Vad’s been ill. He shouldn’t be out here.” She had to shout over the wind and a low rumble of thunder.

  “I am not returning to the festivities,” Vad said. Something in his tone told her he meant it.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll all go back to my place, then.” She pointed to the gleam of light that was her apartment, a couple of blocks away.

  Kered shook his head. “I can’t stay. I have to tell Maggie Vad’s here and have her look for something…at home.”

  “Really? Maggie’s not here?” Gwen braced herself for Maggie to leap out of the shadows and yell “Surprise!”

  “That’s right. Vad can fill you in. Now I have to go and secure something Vad needs for his quest.”

  With a sudden turnabout, she smiled and clapped. “You guys are really good. Superb. Do you do amateur theater back home?”

  “We’re not acting,” Kered said.

  “Oh, sure. And he’s really Vad.” She swallowed a laugh.

  “Yes. He is Vad,” Kered said. “But he’s Nicholas Sandav, too.”

  Chapter Six

  Gwen tossed and turned and knotted herself in her sheets. The fact that the most beautiful man on the East Coast was sleeping on her sofa bed shouldn’t be keeping her awake, but it was. Her mind kept returning to that moment when the shower had washed him clean.

  “Oh, brother, whoever spiked that punch should be ashamed of himself. I’m really going to feel it tomorrow.” She threw off the covers, got out of bed, and turned on a small desk lamp so she could look for a book to read that would put Sleeping Beauty out of her mind. Far out of her mind. How she wished Maggie had not gone home. Maggie could be persuaded to tell the truth.

  When would Vad admit he was just a guy playing a role and not a man tragically pulled into the Tolemac Wars game when he was a child, as Kered so adamantly claimed? A child thought lost forever. A child named Nicholas Sandav, whose parents died before learning the truth that their son had survived—in another world. What incredible imaginations!

  Vad’s name also disturbed her sleep. Not as much as his body, but almost as much. Where had she heard that name before? Nicholas Sandav…

  To be honest, she could not imagine calling him Nick. Vad he looked like, and Vad he was.

  Her fingers danced along a row of books and settled on one R. Walter had given her the first—and only—Christmas they’d spent together. After that, he’d spent them all with her sister Pam. Jingle all the way.

  The notation inside brought a lump to her throat. For Gwen, as legendary as any heroine. Oh, sure, she thought. Until he met Pam, anyway, and broke her heart—a heart that had not healed until she’d met Bob. She looked at her bare finger. Each night she took off her wedding ring and placed it in her jewelry box. Each morning she put it back on. Bob would have laughed at her sentimentality. He was one man who did not believe in dwelling on the past.

  She settled at the desk and thumbed through the book, flipping here and there at random. The book was beautifully illustrated with examples of Celtic art. She lost herself in the familiar legends that had colored her world, inspired her fabric designs, and added so much romantic mystery to her college years. With delight she pulled the light close, examining the intricate lines and forms that decorated shields and caldrons, much like the designs engraved on Vad’s knife. And his ring.

  Then she gasped and jumped to her feet, dropping the book.

  Sandav.

  She sat down hard on the chair. Why hadn’t she realized immediately where the name had come from? Hadn’t her love of Arthurian legend led her to take that fateful class where she’d met R. Walter? Hadn’t a love of legend brought them together?

  Bending over, she reached for the book. It lay open to the pages on King Arthur’s final—and mortal—battle. Sandav. The knight had survived, one of the few to do so, because he was so beautiful men would not fight him, just in case he was a messenger of God, an angel from heaven.

  Vad fit that description. He was beautiful in a masculine, hard-edged way. His bones were those of a man whose genes had been bred to perfection. His cheekbones were meant to be carved in marble or on a wooden figurehead at the prow of a ship. Or was that always a woman? Her mind was muzzy.

  She shot from her bedroom and stood over him before she could stop herself, the book clutched to her chest. The light from her bedroom painted a single golden stripe across his bare shoulder. For a moment she just stared in sheer appreciation.

  Outside, thunder rumbled, and for a brief moment the room flashed white as lightning split the sky and broke the spell.

  “Vad.” She touched his shoulder. He came awake in an instant. The long knife appeared in his hand.

  “It’s me,” she whispered, sitting at his side. “You can stop pretending now.” She pushed the knife away. “I know who you’re not.”

  Wow, she thought as he shook his hair from his eyes; he gave new meaning to the term pillow head.

  Vad slipped the knife back in its sheath. Then his hand clamped about her wrist. “Woman, you had only to ask if you wished to share my bed.”

  “Huh,” she said, distracted by the way the sheet pooled across his hips.

  “Now hear me. Clearly,” he said, his voice low and rough from sleep. “You are quite small and, I doubt not, would take up little space to disturb my rest, but I do not want you in my bed.”

  The furnace heat of his body chilled to ice cold as he rose from the bed. The light from her bedroom gleamed on his naked flanks as he pulled on his leather breeches, jerking the lacing closed over a flat stomach furred with golden hair.

  When he straightened, his hair loose about his shoulders, his ring-adorned arms folded on his chest, she almost swallowed her tongue. The cheekbones she’d just been musing on were hard slashes of anger.

  “If I want a woman, I ask her. I did not ask you.”

  “How dare you!” she screeched, leaping to her feet on the sofa bed. She flapped the book at him, rocking on the thin mattress. “I was not trying to jump your bones. I found your name, stupid. You can stop pretending.”

  “My name? Stupid? Pretending?” He raked his hair back, dragging the braids behind his ear. His face was harsh, every line intensified by the deep shadows. “I am not pretending.”

  “Sure.” She turned the book and thumped her finger on the decorated page. “It’s all here. Your name—Sandav—that was really a stupid pick. Sandav is famous. It took me a minute to remember because of…well…the spiked punch, I guess, but I remember now. It’s all right here.” She tapped the page again. “So now you can tell me who you really are. Come on. Is it really Nick? Or Nicky? Nicky what? Come on. Confess.”

  Nausea crawled through his belly. Nicky. Nicky. The name twisted in his mind. He heard a voice, a faraway voice—a woman’s. The dark mist spun from the corners of the room, rose behind Gwen like the waves behind her Music Pier. He swallowed to contain the sickness burning up his throat.

  “Vad, what’s wrong?” She jumped off the bed and extended her hand.

  He avoided it and hurried to the bathing chamber. There he stood at the tub, confused, looking for the water spigot. Impatiently he jerked on the silvery handles. Water thundered into the tub. He splashed it on his face and gulped great handfuls of the icy water.

  When she placed her hand on his back, it was like an iron brand laid on his skin to sear and scar. “Nilrem’s throat,” he swore, twisting from her touch. “Have you some evil power that you can burn with your fingertips?”

  “It’s you. You’re burning up.” She placed a palm on his cheek. “Are you sick?”

  Incongruously, her hand, which a moment ago had scalded, felt cool and soothing on his skin.

>   “I don’t get it,” she said. “I could have sworn…”

  “What is it you could have sworn? That I was a liar?” How could a woman be so sweet-faced, so alluring one moment, so infuriating the next?

  “Look. I just read through my legends, and Sandav is there. Vad is part of Sandav —backward. What did your family—”

  “My name is Vad. I have no family.” Her touch was light, a dance on his forearm.

  “I know. Kered said they were dead, years ago. I’m sorry. When I lost Bob, I thought I’d never get over it. Now where are you really from?”

  “I am from Tolemac. I crossed the ice fields.” Anger and amusement warred on her face.

  “Sure. Stick to that story. I almost believed you guys. You were so sincere—the way you greeted each other, your intensity. But I’m not in a ball gown, under the influence of too much Tolemac punch. You can drop the act. It’s stupid and childish.”

  Her words were small hammers smiting his honor. “I am stupid and childish?”

  “Never mind.” She ruffled her hair with her hands, causing it to stand up like a cock’s comb. “I didn’t mean it. Wait here.”

  She dashed away in a twirl of her white gown. He heard the door bang shut.

  As unsteady as he felt, he went into the room to the strange bed she’d pulled from the padded bench. He’d wasted several long moments under it, examining the way it worked. Now he just wanted to sink onto its lumpy surface and sleep this nightmare away.

  The mist no longer swirled through the room. He was dressed and sheathing his blades when she burst through the door again, her hand extended before her.

  He froze. The blood in his veins felt as cold as the ice fields. In her hand was the jeweled dagger. “Where did you find it?” He could barely say the words. Men were willing to ruin a warrior’s life for this blade.

  “Here. Take it. Isn’t this what you were on a quest to find? Well, here it is.” She shoved it into his hands.

  “Where did you find it?” he repeated. The blade was smaller than he remembered. The gold handle was studded with gems of poor quality. He turned it over and over in his hands.