Charbonneau glanced at Justin, who just laughed. “You’ll get used to him.”
“He isn’t afraid of me…us, at all.”
“Why should I be afraid?” Justin said, as if Charbonneau had spoken to him directly. “You look like you fed recently and now you’re with the Agency, you’ve got a vested interest in keeping things sweet between vamps and humans. And you’ll never again be without red juice.”
“Synthetic blood,” Justin translated, even before Charbonneau could look at him helplessly.
“And you need me to get across to the satellite,” Tinker continued, seemingly without drawing breath, “So I figure you’re not about to extend your fangs near me.” An outer door lock just ahead lay open, the interior of a small ship visible beyond it. “Here we go, it’s a bit tight, but hey, you guys used to sleep in coffins, right? This’ll feel like a dance hall to you.”
* * * * *
Rob MacKenzie freshly bathed was impossible to resist.
He had left Tally tied up and hoisted upon the tent pole, her hands so high up she didn’t have a hope of lifting herself off the peg. Then he had posted a guard outside the tent while he had taken himself off to the river to bathe.
However, he had won over her eternal soul by returning with a steaming bucket of hot water and soap. But he had not left her alone to bathe. He had washed her himself.
“Ye still intend to free ye manservant the moment I turn my back, Tally. So wash ye I will.”
“Of course, I would steal away even buck naked and soapy to free Leuwis,” she pointed out.
Rob grinned as he ran the cloth over her body in a lingering swipe. “I never can tell what yer nimble mind might come up with next, Tally. I can’t afford to take any chances with ye.”
After he had washed every inch of her, he dried her with a soft clean cloth, shucking off his hastily clad and damp kilt to do the work properly. By then, her hunger for his body that never seemed to properly sleep had risen once more and Tally reached for Rob, running her hands over his shoulders and arms and chest. Rob dropped the cloth and gathered her to him, all pretence gone. His lips seared a path from her mouth to her throat, down to her chest. She realized she had been swept up off her feet as his mouth closed around her nipple.
Furs touched her back and legs. She had been laid down. And still Rob bent over her, his hands and mouth working their swift magic.
Tally roused herself. “No,” she murmured. “My turn.” She pushed at his shoulder. Then again, harder.
Rob sat back, a small smile on his lips. “Your turn?” His blue eyes sparkled with amusement.
Tally pushed on his shoulder again. It was like trying to move a mountain. This was one of the drawbacks of travelling. As a temporary human, she lost all her strength and power. Normally, she would have been able to throw Rob across the burn with little effort. With simple human muscle power, she was pathetically weak. “Lie down,” she ordered.
He lifted a brow, but obeyed. His cock was already stirring. Lengthening.
Tally spread his thighs and knelt between them and his cock jerked and stiffened perceptively. She smiled. “Now who is anticipating?” she crooned, running her fingers down his chest.
Rob’s eyes gleamed in the low light of the tent. “A man’s mind can guess what lies ahead, given our positions.”
Tally hid her smile and bent to slide her tongue along the long length of his shaft and swirl it around the tip of his cock.
Rob sucked in his breath.
Quickly, she curled her hand around the base of his cock and plunged the head into her mouth, as deep as she could take it.
Rob’s hips lifted off the furs as he groaned in reaction. His hand buried itself in her hair in a convulsive jerk.
Tally began to slide her mouth up and down the shaft, letting her lips bump over the flaring ridge of the head, and fluttering her tongue along the underside. She kept up a gentle suction.
Rob moaned and his cock grew more swollen and rigid in her hand. His hips twitched and his breathing became more ragged.
“Tally…” he murmured, with a desperate note.
It was the sign she had been waiting for. She reached between her legs and gathered on her fingers copious amounts of her own lubricant. She was very wet.
Then she reached between Rob’s thighs with her moistened fingers. She found and circled his anus.
He cried out in surprise.
She gently thrust her fingers into him.
Rob moaned and his climax hit immediately. His anus muscle clamped down hard on her fingers and his come blasted into her mouth in salty streaks. His hand in her hair curled into a tight fist before it loosened and fell to the furs.
“Ah Christ, Tally,” he said breathlessly. “I should have known ye would find a way to surprise me.”
She sat up. “Just surprise you, Rob?”
He hoisted himself onto one elbow and looked up at her. “I’ve given up on trying to judge ye, or anything we do, sweet Tally. How can any of it be wrong or evil if it feels so good?” He gave a half smile. “I just wonder when yer going to run out of ideas.”
She leaned over and kissed him. “There’s always more where that came from.”
“Ye are such a beauty,” he murmured and his big hand reached up to brush her hair away from her face. “The kind of beauty that drives men wild and makes them fight wars for the lack of it.”
“There is no such thing. You’re teasing me,” she whispered. All the same, she felt a glow in her heart that he would think such a thing of her.
“I would fight for ye.”
She laughed a little and he shook her to silence her.
Then she really looked into his eyes and her amusement faded. There in his eyes, she could read his heart, his soul….
“No, you cannot. Not for me.” She gripped his shoulder. “Not for me, Rob.”
“For you and no-one else.” His voice was a low rumble that she could feel against her hand.
Abruptly, painful tears pricked at her eyes. “I would break your heart,” she whispered.
“No, you wouldn’t.” He spoke with complete assurance. “I have watched ye for a week, Natália mine. I know ye. Ye would not deliberately hurt me. Ye think I don’t understand women, that I have not seen the glances you have sent me. Ye’re wrong.”
Real fear leapt in her chest. “You can’t possibly know me.”
“Not the facts, no. They still remain a mystery, but the truth—that I know. I know who ye are puts you in a dilemma you’ve spent a week trying to sort out in ye mind.”
She drew very still. “You know that?” she whispered weakly.
“I’d be the fool if I dinna notice what’s before my eyes.” His fingertips swept across her brow. “I’m not as foolish as all that.”
The prickling in her eyes turned to hard, searing tears. “There is no future for us,” she whispered. “None.”
Rob sat up and cupped her face with his hands. “Hush, my lover.” His lips touched hers. “D’ye know nothing of the Scots? We’ve been fighting against the longest odds this blasted world could throw at us for generations. Ye think a little thing like ye heritage could keep me from ye?”
Her tears fell, scalding her cheeks. “Rob, you don’t know…you can’t fight this, what I am.”
Rob brushed her tears away. “I don’t care what ye are, who ye are, where ye came from. I have ye now. I’ll fight any man to keep ye.” He held up his wrist, the one with the rope binding it. “I’ll fight this…whatever this is, that ye won’t tell me yet.” He kissed her. “Ye will tell me, Tally. Soon. I see it in yer eyes when ye think I’m not looking.”
Tally sat, unable to find anything to say. Rob’s observations were so uncannily accurate, she shivered in fear.
“You can’t fight it,” she said at last, and her voice sounded pathetically weak after Rob’s firm pronouncement. “You really can’t fight this.”
He shook his head. “There’s always a way, Tally.”
&nb
sp; Tally pressed her lips together. Not always, she whispered mentally.
* * * * *
Tinker made lining up with an object hurtling through space at fifty metres a second seem extraordinarily easy.
The streamlined, elongated space station they approached housed the Chronometric Conservation Agency and the headquarters for Chronologic Touring Inc., the commercial arm of the Agency. It was a huge building, sprawling as only buildings in space can spread. Charbonneau watched the construction overshadow their tiny vessel as they slipped alongside it, matching speed.
There were navigation lights all along the side, flashing for Tinker’s guidance. He nodded, pleased. “‘kay, final approach,” he murmured.
“This is the fun bit,” Justin told Charbonneau, as the craft began a slow roll, the nose dipping “down” in relationship to the station. The ship rolled right through one hundred and eighty degrees until it was facing the opposite direction, although to Charbonneau’s senses, it was the station that had turned, while he had remained still.
“Speed still matches,” Justin said to Tinker. “Well done.”
“There’s a reason you pay me big bucks,” Tinker said off-handedly, studying his monitors. “Thirty metres. Twenty. Ten.”
Charbonneau realized the station was looming larger beside them. The ship shuddered and a dull ‘thunk’ sounded. He knew without being told they had arrived. The sound had been docking clamps.
“Squared away, done for the day,” Tinker sang and hopped out of his chair to land two-footed on the deck. Artificial gravity had returned. The boy grinned. “Wish I were a fly on the wall for your welcome.”
Justin cuffed him lightly across the head. “Stop stirring trouble where there is none.” He glanced at Charbonneau. “Ignore him. Tinker is always looking for ways to upset vampires.”
“Coz you can’t, moron,” Tinker said, writing rapidly and confidently on a hard copy board, as he glanced at dials—the good captain recording his flight properly. That gave Charbonneau more confidence than anything since he’d stepped onto the beanstalk. Tinker, despite his youth and brashness, was skilled and responsible. So far, the Agency had impressed him with the calibre of its people and the thought put into everything they did.
Even though he had expected nothing else, the confirmation was reassuring.
Justin glared at Tinker, then unlocked the pressure door and shoved hard with his shoulder. The door swung open and more hands grabbed the edge from the other side and pulled it all the way open.
Beyond was a small room with a few chairs, a low table and reading boards. A typical, mind-numbing waiting room. “After you,” Justin said, waving Charbonneau forward.
He stepped through the door into the waiting room, where two men in armoralls were already disappearing through a side service door, their job done.
Charbonneau glanced back at Justin, looking for guidance on where to go. That was when he saw the view beyond the air lock.
The ferry lay alongside the station, for the airlock was perpendicular to the walls. The wall of the waiting room on the other side of the lock was pure window, and the view took Charbonneau’s breath away.
He gazed upon Earth at night. They were too high up for individual lights to be seen, but where man gathered, there were glowing masses of light. On the right-hand edge of the globe, sunlight danced, but did not quite lift itself over the curve. Unlike Halfway station, this view was unobstructed.
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Justin murmured, by his side. He pointed. “That dark mass in the middle is the Pacific Ocean.” He moved his hand to the left, where orange glowed brightly. “Australia coming up.” To the right, where more light glistened. “South America leaving. We’re in solar-synchronous orbit, always on the dark side of the earth. Half-way Station passes us every twenty-four hours, as it is in geo-synchronous orbit.”
“And this is the hard way to get here?” Charbonneau murmured, staring in wonder at the planet hanging over him.
“Oh, not harder. Just longer.” Justin grinned. “Ready?”
“What’s next?”
“Time to meet your new employer.”
Chapter Six
“The situation isn’t even classified as urgent yet,” Nayara added, as Christian adjusted a complicated double belt around his waist and re-settled the sword at his hip, underneath the big cloak over his shoulders. The belts sat over a robe that ended just above soft leather boots. Nayara could see a linen shirt peeking beneath the robe. Everything was embroidered and embellished and glowed with wealth.
“You don’t know that time at all,” Nayara ventured.
“I’ve been there,” Christian replied. “How do you think I got the marker from her?”
“Demyan knows the time much better. He travels there frequently, he knows the language—”
Christian rattled off a short sentence in a language Nayara didn’t recognize. “I don’t know much Gaelic,” he added. “But Scots will serve me everywhere but the remote highlands.”
Christian the linguist. Nayara sighed, her last argument defeated.
Brenden, their security chief, strode over from his glassed-in office and dropped a reading board down on the desk next to Christian. “Tally is just overdue, man. You know how this goes. If you don’t give her time to sort things out for herself, you might make it worse.”
Christian looked up from adjusting his clothing. “It’s already worse.”
“What, you know that in your gut?” Brenden curled the corner of his mouth up in distaste. His opinion of travellers who used gut-instinct was well-known. Brenden relied on data, facts and information even if those facts were slender and the data scanty. Brenden believed a vampire lost any sense of true instinct when they lost their humanity. All they were left with was an ability to guess…and guess wrong. So he never guessed and he crucified travellers who did so on his watch.
Christian’s jaw flexed and tightened. “Tally has been travelling for how long, Brenden? Thirty years? More?”
Brenden frowned. “Thirty-three, next month.”
“Has she ever, in those thirty-three years, once been late to return?”
Brenden’s frown deepened. “I’d have to look it up.”
“Don’t bother,” Christian said, picking up the reading board. “The answer is no. Despite some hair-raising disasters and tourists gone astray, Tally has coped.” He glanced at the board. “She’s been in 1314 for nearly five weeks when it was supposed to be a day trip.” He looked at Brenden, then at Nayara. “If someone of Tally’s calibre hasn’t returned after five weeks, you can be certain there’s something seriously wrong.”
Nayara nodded at Brenden, who crossed his arms over his great chest and glared at Christian. “We should be sending an issues expert in,” he growled.
“By all means, send them if you wish,” Christian replied, with a graceful nod of his head. He turned and headed for the arrival chambers. “Tell them they can catch up with me.”
Brenden swore softly as he watched Christian walk away.
Nayara patted his arm. “Leave it be,” she told him. “Christian is good at his job. He’ll get her out, Brenden.”
“He shouldn’t be going anywhere near her!” Brenden growled. He curled his hand into a fist. “I wish someone would get around to explaining how vampires still manage to fuck up their lives over matters of hormones when they don’t have any hormones left in their systems that still work.”
“You know that’s not why he’s going back—”
“Bullshit,” Brenden interjected.
“What’s bullshit?” Ryan asked, from behind them.
Nayara stepped aside to include Ryan in their conversation and explained where Christian was going.
Ryan rubbed his temple thoughtfully. “Nayara is right,” he told Brenden. “Christian has all the right skills. He can get Tally out of just about anything and he can call for help if he needs it. Why he’s doing it is irrelevant.”
Brenden scowled.
&n
bsp; Ryan patted the big man’s shoulder. “If it helps, think of what Tally will do to Christian when she realizes that he has come to her rescue.”
Brenden grinned. “She’ll scrag him,” he said dreamily. “Or worse.”
“Exactly,” Ryan replied. “So relax, big guy.”
Brenden went back to his office, his head high, happy.
Nayara picked up the reading board and handed it to Ryan. “What was it you didn’t say to Brenden?”
Ryan blinked. “You caught that?”
“You held something back. A thought occurred to you that you nearly spoke aloud, but you changed your mind and spoke about Christian’s skills instead.”
Ryan nodded. He glanced toward Brenden’s office, then the workstations surrounding them. Some were occupied, but none of them near enough to hear him. He lowered his voice anyway. “It occurred to me that Demyan, who would be the most obvious one to send back for Tally, has spent nearly all his life passing as some sort of fighter. Military, para-military, mercenary. He would find a way to extract Tally from her situation, I have no doubt. But Christian has other skills and if she has been in 1314 for five weeks, unable to jump back, then he might be more useful.”
“What skills?”
Ryan grimaced. “In at least three centuries of his life, he’s been a medical doctor.”
* * * * *
Tally held her hand out so the sunlight spilling in from the opening of the tent illuminated the back of it and examined the flesh carefully. It looked healthy, soft and unmarked. No liver spots. No wrinkles.
“Whatever are ye doing, Tally?” Rob asked, his arm sliding around her waist from behind. As she wore only her kirtle and was bare beneath that, she could feel every inch of him pressed against her. She tried to harden her heart before the warmth spilled through her.
Bannockburn Binding (Beloved Bloody Time) Page 6
