His quiet laughter sent riffles of air across her neck and made her smile in the dark. He liked to bait her, but she supposed she made it easy.
“That, my good doctor, is when you speak very fast and your eyes turn the color of exotic spices. Like treasures from the Silk Road, worth a ransom of gold and pearls.”
When he talked about her with the voice of temptation, the one she thought of as his prelude-to-a-kiss voice, and he showed that he listened to everything she said and cared enough to remember...he had her.
“That’s what I can’t resist.”
Even without light she knew his lips were only inches from hers, so she did what she’d wanted to for so long that she marveled at the self-control it had taken to wait until this moment, and she kissed him. Her lips found his, and they shared the hunger and intensity of two people who wanted to become part of each other as much as they wanted to live. Her mouth, her heart, her whole being seemed to melt into him as he crushed her body to his.
He must’ve leaned against the wall, because he easily slid her up and down the hard planes of his chest and abs. It wasn’t enough. With her hands locked around his neck, she stretched, her toes barely on the ground, until he squeezed her buttocks and lifted her, raising and lowering her body again and again past the length of his need. Nearly dizzy with greed for his touch, she tried to fit herself against his thrusts, and still they kissed.
And then his mouth was gone and his hands left her standing on her own, between his spread legs, but without his support.
“Ahh.” He shuddered and she thought she heard his head thunk into the stone tunnel wall. “This is...this is the worst possible...”
“I know.” Her body clamored for more of his heat, but intellectually she accepted the ludicrous, crazy absurdity of their position and timing. They had to stop.
“We can’t. We have to go.”
“I know,” she whispered a second time.
Connected as they were, he ought to understand she didn’t want to walk away from him, but she wouldn’t head into a fight they could avoid. “Let’s back off.”
“Okay.” His words vibrated along her skin. “We’ll try it your way.”
His answer didn’t feel like she’d scored a victory. She couldn’t feel triumphant when the thought that drummed in her head was, Please, don’t let my way be a mistake.
If Wulf had kept his pistol instead of arming Theresa with it when they’d started upstream a quarter-hour ago, maybe its textured grip would have been his lifeline to the twenty-first century. Without that anchor, the watery rush below sucked him back to the beginning, to that Danish swamp, and the day his world changed.
Pushing after his brother Iovor, he told himself ’twas only the swamp’s foul air wet his tunic under his iron-ringed byrnie, but the evil of this fen touched fear to his back until he sweated. He was no boy to believe himself safe from death, nor yet a hero assured of Valhalla.
Ahead Iovor followed their liege Beowulf in the place of honor, and a score of warriors trailed behind. In the Kingdom of the Spear-Danes their leader had become the great man Iovor had foreseen when they cast their lots with this adventure. Now they, the two sons of a drunken lackwit, offspring of a man who had traded his shield and honor for a horn of barley ale, walked as the right and left hands of a hero. When telling of these deeds, every hall’s skald would recite the names Iovor and Wulf alongside the name of their great lord.
Vines dripped from trees like a net to catch the unwary. Water as dark as moss seeped in their tracks, and broken branches, their tips painted with black blood, showed the path. He knew himself to be a tall man compared to most, but these jagged sticks stabbed air above his head. They marked the height of the creature’s shoulder, where Beowulf had split its arm from the sinews and left a gaping death wound.
Two nights ago Grendel had rampaged this route to find doom in their lord’s grasp and returned bloody to die in the fen. Last night the beast’s hell-mother had beaten this way carrying a thane of King Hrothgar. This day Beowulf led his line of Geats-men to seek Grendel’s corpse and make a second death mound from its dam. Or die trying.
Iovor halted. From habit Wulf closed on his brother and turned, back to back, spear and shield held before him to guard his brother as his brother guarded him. Despite seven suns at the oar bench with the others, rowing to reach the Kingdom of the Spear-Danes, he did not know how the men about him fought in a forest. He wouldn’t risk his man-wick on a gamble that this crew of misfits could stand against evil that came in the night.
He had faith only in Lord Beowulf, in his brother and in the spear in his own right hand.
Wulf’s hand flexed with the need to hold something to keep him in the present and far away from the ancient swamp that stalked his memories. His front pockets yielded his compass, a coil of wire and a lighter, which reminded him of the aerosol spray he’d grabbed at the shop and jammed in his back pocket. The cool metal of the can in his palm was completely modern and, paired with the lighter in his other hand, a damn fine weapon.
Minutes later an out-of-place scent, like soap or deodorant, wafted from a side tunnel. Whirling, he brought the aerosol and the lighter together, thumbs on both buttons, at the same time stinging pain punctured his shoulder.
Whoosh. A salvo of flame erupted from his can.
Bang-Bang-Bang. In between the punch of shots—Theresa’s, he prayed—Wulf saw a man beat at a fiery halo and knew he’d fried his target. The pain-filled scream moved with the burning man as he staggered into the catwalk’s railing. Brittle iron gave fast, and the attacker plunged to the rushing water, but a different fire, something that felt cold and hot simultaneously, rippled and spread from Wulf’s shoulder. They’d jabbed something in him.
Before the afterimage faded from Wulf’s corneas, he heard another burst. Bang-Bang-Bang. His pistol had held nine rounds. How many did Theresa still have? He couldn’t add. His left arm hung like a wrung-out dick. Only muscle memory took his right hand to his ankle sheath. His eye twitched and he jerked to dislodge a hairy, leggy thing that had dropped onto his cheek. No—wait—nothing crawled on his face. That was the poison.
Bang-Bang-Bang.
A weight leaped onto his back, but Wulf dipped his shoulder and allowed momentum to carry the attacker forward while slashing his knife into the man’s inner thigh.
More screams. Farther away. Why had he moved so far from the fight? Had to get back.
Cold pressed on his cheek. Hard. Metal?
He was a puny thirteen-summer lad pulling a bench oar for the first time. The weight wouldn’t shift. Over his head red-and-white sails soared. The whale road through the sea welcomed him home. A woman, his mother, her arms whitecaps raised to embrace him.
His mother was dead. Cold.
Salt tears pulled at him. Please. Theresa. Please. Pull me back. Pull.
Chapter Fifteen