by Webb, Peggy
Humiliating tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, and Lydia dashed them away with the back of her fists. Suddenly she found a better use for her fists, she pounded them on Dragon's back.
The stallion whinnied, then reared up and pawed the air. Dragon jerked Lydia off her feet and tumbled toward the nearest haystack Flat on his back in the hay he was the sexiest man she'd ever seen, and she was sprawled atop him like a smitten scullery maid.
"I want my shoes," she said, and damned his hide, he laughed. Any fool could see perfectly well that she wanted more than her shoes.
"I have your shoes. It's for your own protection, Lydia."
"My feet hurt in those things you gave me."
"Welcome to Camelot."
He folded his hands above his head and acted as if he planned to lounge in the haystack the rest of the day. If Lydia wasn't mistaken, she was sitting on more than a man at rest, but she wasn't about to make a fool of herself and believe his condition was due to love. Love might drive her, but his motivation was more primitive. Pure lust. She could see it in his eyes.
Two could play that game. Why not turn his condition to her own advantage?
Under the guise of getting her hair out of her eyes, she swiveled and squirmed. She'd felt a few sparks with Trent, but nothing like the high-voltage shocks that went through her now. She was both amazed and awed by their intensity.
She realized she was out of her league in this dangerous game.
Lydia decided to abandon her reckless course and try reason, but from a different angle. The minute she made her move to get up, Dragon's arm snaked out. She was trapped but not daunted.
"I can't run without my shoes."
"Why do you want to run? Nobody's chasing you."
"I run to keep my body fit"
With maddening deliberation he traced her body with his hands.
"It works." There was something hot in his eyes. She couldn't look away, couldn't move, couldn't breathe. "Now, about those shoes."
Still held tightly against him, Lydia brushed her hair off her flushed face. "You mean you're willing to see reason?"
"I'm a reasonable man. I'm willing to bargain."
"To bargain?"
"Yes. What will you give in exchange for the shoes?"
Casting desperately for a solution to her dilemma, Lydia remembered his enchantment over her disc player.
"You can have the little black box."
He laughed. "I already have it"
"The money then. You can have all my money."
"Come, Lydia. You can do better than that. Offer me something I don't already have."
His words were accompanied by an enormous surge of passion. Lydia was no fool. What Dragon didn't already have, he could merely take. As he'd said on so many occasions, he was king of his castle, and everything in it belonged to him.
What was his game? Lydia stalled for time.
"You've got me between a rock and a hard place."
Dragon's laughter was low, sexy, and decidedly wicked.
"A very hard place, Lydia." He reached up and tangled his hands in her hair, pulling her close. "Now, tell me, what will you give in exchange for your shoes?"
She flicked her tongue around her lips. Pantherlike, he watched. And waited.
She was breathing like a racehorse on the final lap of the Kentucky Derby. If she had to go flying through time and space, why did she have to land in the lap of a man as dangerous as Dragon?
"I'm waiting, Lydia."
Nothing in her experience had prepared her for being sprawled atop the world's most appealing man in the middle of the fourteenth century, and in a haystack, to boot What had started out as a game with her shoes as the bargaining chip had become something far different, something so fraught with excitement and danger that Lydia dared not even think of the consequences. She dared not ask herself the hard questions about practicality and commitment.
Dragon cupped her face, and it was that touch, gentle as the kiss of dew on roses, that breached all her defenses. No woman in her right mind would do what Lydia was planning to do. But when had love ever listened to reason?
Slowly Lydia reached for the ribbons on her bodice. Dragon's gaze made her feel hot all over. With gestures worthy of a skilled courtesan, Lydia peeled the dress from her shoulders then cupped her breasts.
"This," she whispered. "I give you this."
Dragon licked the tip of his finger, then traced erotic circles around her nipples. "And what else, Lydia?"
"You want more?"
"Yes."
"How much more?"
He circled her ankles, then with maddening slowness ran his hands up her bare legs. With his thumbs circling her inner thighs, he smiled.
"I want this, Lydia." His fingers found her hot, moist center, and she arched her back, biting her lip to keep from crying out. "And this." He flung her skirts aside, rolled her over, and buried his tongue in her slick folds.
Time suspended, centuries merged, and there was only pleasure, white-hot and bone-deep. His lips slick with her love juice, Dragon lifted his head and smiled at her.
"I want it all, Lydia."
Wait, her mind screamed. Shouldn't there be more? Shouldn't there be declarations? Sweet words? Whispered promises?
But her heart had its own reasons.
Poised above her, his eyes asked the question and she said, "Yes."
There was nothing gentle about his thrust, nothing careful about the way he made love. He dominated her, possessed her, branded her. And lying there imprisoned, impaled, enraptured, she knew that her heart spoke the truth.
o0o
A shaft of sunlight pierced the gloom, and they were bathed in gold while doves cooed in the hayloft above and the stallion pawed the ground. Dragon was the ship and she was his sails, and together they plowed new waters, charted new seas.
A lusty and vigorous lover, Dragon did not release her until the sun was over the treetops. Limp and sated, she lay back against her soft bed of hay.
He adjusted her clothes, then stood looking down at her.
"It was a bargain," he said. "Nothing more."
"Nothing more," she whispered, but Dragon was already out the door.
CHAPTER TEN
On the way to get her shoes, Dragon died a thousand deaths. His lust for Lydia had taken on a life of its own, and now he must pay the consequences.
It was a bargain, nothing more, he'd told her, but in his heart he knew he did not speak the truth. The truth was far more complex, far more frightening. Lydia's scent was on his skin, and he could wash that away in the clear spring beyond the meadow. But her mark was on his heart, and nothing could ever erase it, neither time nor reason nor death. He had done more than penetrate her body; he had penetrated her soul, and now he bore it with him as he strode toward his castle. Dragon, keeper of souls. Dragon with a heart forever branded by the one woman he could never have.
But more than that, he had spilled his seed in her, not once but repeatedly. Even now she might carry his child in her belly, a child who would straddle two worlds, a child who would belong neither to his century nor to hers.
Where was his brain? Where was his honor?
All hope of simplicity had now vanished, for once he'd tasted Lydia, he understood the truth: He would starve without her. She was as necessary to him as breathing, as necessary to him as life itself.
He hastened to the dungeon to get her shoes. Then wrapping them in a sack, he hurried to find Lydia. He understood her well enough to know she would not be waiting for him in the barn. Nor was she cowering in her bedchamber.
Hiding was not her style. Boldness was. But what she had done went beyond bold into the realm of the foolhardy. Lydia was behind the barn atop Glory, the most headstrong filly in Dragon's stables. The filly pranced and snorted, pawed the ground, shook her head, and generally did her best to unseat her rider. But Lydia hung on.
Dragon leaned against the fence to watch. Once again her skirts were knotted between her legs, and
she was low over the filly's neck, patting her and speaking in a soft, soothing voice.
"Come on, girl. Settle down, now. Settle down. We're friends, pals."
Dragon didn't speak for fear of upsetting the filly. Instead he watched with growing admiration. Lydia was no expert horsewoman, but what she lacked in skill she made up for in courage. She was a woman worthy of a man's total admiration, his complete devotion. A woman worthy of bearing a man's sons.
For a moment Dragon forgot that she was a time traveler, forgot that centuries and continents separated them, forgot that she could never belong to him. In that glorious sun-soaked moment all he saw was the woman he loved.
And there, suddenly, was the simplicity of life: Love. It couldn't be planned for, reasoned with, bargained for. It merely happened. True love was an arrow that went straight to the heart, a keen sword that pierced the soul, a blazing fire that melded two people together—forever.
He left the fence and approached horse and rider.
"Where did you learn to sit a horse?"
"Whoa, girl, whoa." Lydia and the filly came to a halt a few feet from him. "On the farm in Mississippi. I'm a country girl."
"And where would this Mississippi be?"
"In the United States of America, across the Atlantic Ocean, a land that won't even be discovered until late in the next century."
Dragon was almost sorry he'd asked. His thirst for knowledge brought answers that only emphasized the painful fact that they were from two different worlds. Lydia must have sensed the same thing, for she turned the filly's head in the opposite direction and dug her heels in.
They were magnificent together, fire and ice, Lydia's red dress and red hair and the filly's pure white mane and tail streaming like banners as they raced around the enclosure. Hooves thundering, Glory whinnied, and inside the barn Dragon's own mount gave an answering whinny. On Lydia's next round, Dragon whistled sharply and Glory trotted over to stand at his side.
"How did you do that?"
"Training. A mount is worthless to a knight if it doesn't obey its master."
"Do all your mounts obey you?"
He ran his hands lightly down the length of her leg. "All of them."
Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips. "Why?"
"They know the master's touch." He circled her ankle and held her fast. "I have something you want, Lydia."
Her color got high. "On the contrary, it was merely a bargain."
His laughter startled a hen into a squawking strut across the barnyard.
"Have you forgotten so soon, Lydia?"
"Forgotten what?"
He held out her shoes and was rewarded by a wide smile.
"My running shoes. I could kiss you."
"You already did. Remember?"
"How could I forget?"
Her eyes sought his, and in the deep blue depths he saw his own pain mirrored.
"Lydia . . ." What was there to say? Pursuing the course they were on could only lead to heartbreak for both of them. "Do you want to go riding?"
"We already did that once. You have nothing else I want."
The laughter freed his spirit, and Dragon put aside all thoughts except the pleasure of her company.
"Is your appetite as lusty for all things?"
"Yes."
"Good. Wait here while I get my stallion."
"Why?"
"I'm going to show you wonders."
o0o
He already had. But Lydia didn't tell him that. He already had enough cocky self-assurance to single- handedly conquer Gaul. Or was that conquer Lydia?
What kind of situation was she getting herself into? It was bad enough to be a captive in Camelot. She'd be a fool to complicate matters by falling in love with her captor.
Dragon appeared in the doorway of the barn, a black-eyed knight mounted on a black stallion, and all Lydia could do was whisper, "Oh, help."
It was already too late to worry about complicating matters, too late to worry about falling in love. She'd already fallen. Hard.
"Are you ready, Lydia?"
Well, why not? Her situation was already hopeless. She might be zapped back to California at any minute, with no more control over her going than she'd had over her coming.
She could bemoan her fate, she could hide in the castle like a mouse, or she could spend whatever time she had left living to the hilt.
"I'm ready." She dug her heels into the filly and pranced close to Dragon. "For anything," she added, smiling.
"Can you handle any kind of terrain?"
"You name it, and I can ride it."
"Stay close, then."
Dragon thundered over the drawbridge and toward the open meadow with Lydia half a length back and close to his side. Hawks wheeled above them, and rabbits scurried from the path of the pounding hooves. Daisies and bleeding hearts and a luminescent blossom Laird had called a starflower made a rainbow-hued trail for the riders.
Lydia loved the way her silk dress felt flattened against her skin by the wind. Beside her, Dragon was picture-perfect, a knight in every sense of the word. If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe that she was a child once more, sitting in the woods on her farm, dreaming fantastic dreams.
The sky was so blue, it looked like a backdrop for a Walt Disney movie. Lydia bit her lower lip to remind herself that all this was real, Camelot and her very own knight in shining armor, to boot.
Technically he wasn't hers, of course, and never would be, but what harm was there in pretending? If only for a day.
"Is all this yours?" She yelled to be heard above the thundering hooves.
"Yes. It's all mine."
"It's unbelievably beautiful, especially the flowers."
He drew to a halt, and when he whistled for Glory to stop, Lydia almost came unseated. Laughing, Dragon lifted her off the filly as if she were nothing more than thistledown.
"What are you doing?"
"Do you always ask so many questions?"
"I never thought about it, but yes, I suppose I do."
"Today, Lydia, don't ask, just be."
"I'll try. I promise."
"Good." He plopped her down in the middle of the meadow.
"What . . . ?"
Laughing, he put a finger over her lips. Unable to resist, she flicked her tongue out and took a taste of him. Just a small one. His skin was slightly salty and wonderfully delicious, so she took another taste.
Laughter died on his lips, and he bent close, his eyes hooded. He was going to kiss her. Lydia already felt the heat of his lips, already tasted his tongue.
Suddenly he captured her ankles and put her feet into his lap.
"What are you doing?"
"If you've forgotten your promise so quickly, then perhaps it's not wise to let you have these." He pulled the shoes from a leather pouch around his waist.
"Oh, please, please ... I want to run around this lovely meadow until I fall among the flowers, exhausted."
He slipped her shoes on her feet, then worked at the laces. She loved the way a lock of dark hair fell across his forehead, loved the way the sun made his hair look like the pelt of some fine, healthy animal, loved the way his hands felt on her legs, loved the way he glanced up from time to time, his eyes shining.
When he had finished with the laces, he held her feet in his lap, caressing her ankles.
"You must not wear these shoes in front of the servants, and never outside my estate."
She was so excited, she could barely sit still. "Does that mean I'm going to get to go into the village?"
"So many questions from such a small woman."
"You didn't answer my question."
"We'll see." He ran his hands lightly upward, to her knees and beyond. She held her breath, waiting, wishing.
"And when you wear them here, you must never let anyone see."
"I understand."
"This is vital, Lydia. You would be branded a witch."
"Did you think I was a witch?"
<
br /> "Yes. For a while."
"And what do you think now?"
"What I think of you is not important, Lydia. The important issue is your safety, and as long as you are my guest I will keep you safe."
Lydia shivered. This was reality. Not some Technicolor dream of waltzing around in silks with a knight in shining armor. Everything about her screamed foreign—her shoes, her speech, her ignorance of customs, and her knowledge of Camelot's history. She would need more than Dragon to protect her, she would need the skills of an Academy Award-winning actress and the courage of King Arthur himself.
Suddenly she felt very small, very vulnerable, and very homesick.
"How will I ever get home?" she whispered.
"How did you get here?"
"I don't know." The look he gave her was skeptical. Leaning forward, she cupped his face. "You must believe me, Dragon. I really don't know."
He searched her face, looking deep into her eyes. "I believe you, Lydia."
And then he kissed her, not the hot, tongue- thrusting kiss of a lover, but the sweet, gentle kiss of a friend. With that tender touch he promised Lydia he would be at her side no matter what the future brought—her champion, her protector, her hero.
"If I had to go hurtling through time, I'm glad I landed on your doorstep," she said.
"I'm glad, too, Lydia."
o0o
A look can hold promises; a sigh, capture dreams. Late that night lying in her lonely bed with only Shadow and the moon to keep her company, Lydia remembered that moment in the meadow. The memory not only gave her the courage to face what lay ahead; it gave her hope.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For a long time the only sounds in the room were the clash of metal against metal and the labored breathing of the two men who dueled. Dragon thrust and parried with a vengeance, feeling nothing but the sword in his hand, seeing nothing except his opponent.
"I thought knights had a code of honor," Laird grumbled.
"We do."
"What does it say about dragging faithful man servants out of their beds in the middle of the night?"
"The moon is barely high."
"I've got better things to do than spar with you, you know."
"I'm sure you're going to tell me . . . Watch your left side. You're vulnerable."
