Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (19 page)

“He . . . he can’t find this place, can he?” she finally asked.

“No.” He made his answer unequivocal, to reassure her. “I rented it under the name Gawain Trenail. He wouldn’t know that last name, since I made it up, even if he knows my real name is Gawain.”

“And I definitely can’t go back to work.”

“No.”

“Sorry I lost my temper over that.” She clenched her lips together and shrugged apologetically. “You’re right. I would have insisted on going to work.”

He gave her a grin. “You see? I do know you.”

Her shoulders relaxed a little. She even managed a little smile.

“You won’t use any credit cards. We got rid of the cell phone. . . .” He went over a mental checklist. “You’re using my computer. Don’t use your bank account.” He saw her look of horror. “And you can’t go to the teller machine at the corner and take cash out, either. I’ll provide.”

She didn’t like that. He could tell. She was an independent little thing. Always had been. But there was no choice now. She
had
to depend on him.

“But where does that leave us? He can’t find us. We can’t find him . . . but my life, well, your life, too, if it comes to that . . . we’re just on hold.”

“We wait for tomorrow’s paper. And hope that Mordred slips up somehow.”

That just didn’t feel like enough.

Diana could listen to Gawain’s deep voice all night long telling stories of Camelot, but she wasn’t really hearing the words anymore. It was kind of him to try to distract her. But she couldn’t help being worried and her body itched with the nearness of him. He was worried, too, she could tell, but he was trying to cover it up for her sake. It looked like she had no choice but to stay here with him. The image of her red lipstick on the mirror just wouldn’t fade. She should be happy to have a protector. But he was doing it because he’d been ordered by Merlin to protect her. Now she was Gawain’s obligation. That didn’t feel good.

Among other things that didn’t feel good. She had no access to her bank account. She couldn’t call anyone. (Whom would she call? But that wasn’t the point.) She had no job. And, to add insult to injury, she was going to have to change her underwear at this rate. Or keep taking showers. Or both. Just watching him, listening to his voice, was making her wet. Did he have to be so damn virile? Any woman in her right mind would act just like that blonde in the Exploratorium today. And no doubt had. All his life. Which left things where? With her lusting after him with no hope of reciprocation. Not good.

“Life was hard,” he was saying. “Fighting the Saxons, living in caves. We were always more or less wounded.
You just kept going.” He was actually looking uncomfortable, too, for some reason. He kept readjusting himself in his chair.

“Did . . . did you have women and children with you?”

He shook his head. “Only single knights joined the Resistance. We couldn’t provide for families, and if they were left on their own the Saxons would find and torture them to punish us.”

“Sounds lonely.”

“Worse after my father told me I couldn’t go raiding anymore. And better.” He smiled. “Then I had you. You were the only family with us. My father wouldn’t leave you behind.”

“Do you wish you could go back?” He must feel lonely. He was exiled from everything he knew and loved.

But he shook his head. “I want to stay. Whatever changes I brought on by coming here don’t seem to have brought the world down.”

“I don’t actually think we’d know if they did.”

“Maybe not. I’ve been over and over this time travel thing, and I’m still not sure I get it. Would things have been different if I’d never come—if you’d never come, either? I don’t know.”

They were both thinking of Mordred, she could tell. Could one man change the world? Mordred might well be stuck here. Would it make a difference?

“Maybe if you stay too long then things do change, because you were meant to come here, but you were also meant to go back. Or maybe, if you were never meant to go back, then things don’t change at all.” She sounded like she’d had one drink too many, even to herself. She shrugged helplessly.

“I finally just quit thinking about it. You get caught in these conundrums that just have no answers.” He looked acutely uncomfortable and squirmed in his chair again.

“If you want to go back, you can always use Leonardo’s machine.” Her voice was small.

“But then you’d lose it back in the fifth century.”

She shook her head. “Leonardo’s book says it returns to where it started after a while, like a boomerang.”

“Well, I don’t intend to use it. I never want to go back to that time. I like it here. Dishwashers. Antibiotics. Central heating. Need I say more?”

“Different values. You said that bothered you.” Had he really adapted so well?

“I guess things haven’t changed all that much,” he said, sipping his Scotch. “A good man is still a good man. The strong should still protect the weak. Sometimes they do. A man should still provide for his woman, leave offspring to carry on his name, look for deeds to do that will live after him. . . .” He trailed off.

She grinned. “It’s just that now those things apply to women, too.”

He smiled with his eyes. “Maybe they always did, at least for some women. Women who were rich enough, or born well enough.”

“That’s still true, too. If you’re born really poor and you don’t have access to education, honor probably is a luxury. You’re only concerned with putting food on the table.”

“I don’t believe that. I’ve known many honorable men . . . many honorable
people
who were very poor.”

She thought about that. “You’re right. So you really fit right into this century.”

“I guess I should lighten up about sex always having to be a sacred bond,” he said, shrugging. “I mean the whole point of that was to prevent unwanted children, and birth control made that unnecessary.”

She blushed. “Yeah, sometimes a little recreational sex is okay. I . . . I did it myself once.” He looked surprised.
Well, let him.
This was the twenty-first century, and being
a virgin wasn’t a woman’s only value. “In college. How can you be a writer if you’ve never had sex? So I sneaked into a frat party and did it with one of the guys.”

Uh-oh.
He looked outraged and angry. “You were lucky you didn’t end up doing it with all of them, whether you wanted to or not,” he growled.

She shook her head. “They were all so drunk, they couldn’t see straight. The girls, too. I just left while the guy I was with was . . . in the bathroom.” She couldn’t believe she was admitting this to him. Was it because she felt she’d always known him? She knew she could depend on him, that was for sure.

Fatigue hit her all at once. Too little sleep and too much excitement. Bad excitement. And she had no desire to continue her personal revelations about her nonsex life. She must seem pathetic to him. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bed.” She pushed herself out of the wing chair. He stood also.

And she had a revelation. It was very clear why he was uncomfortable. There was a pronounced bulge in his tight jeans. She jerked her gaze to his face. He was saying, “Me, too.” But she hardly heard him.

He . . . he wanted sex. His body betrayed him. With her? He wanted sex with
her
?

No. Of course not. All this talk of sex had him excited. That was all. He was a guy. Anyone would do. Even she might do in a pinch, but she sure wasn’t the woman he longed for. Guinevere occupied that slot. That was a damping thought. “Well, good night then,” she mumbled, and pushed past him.

But once the door closed to her bedroom, she began having second thoughts. She started to undress.

Sure, he didn’t really care about her. But . . . so what? She’d had recreational sex before. Now she had no one. She was alone. She might never get another opportunity
to have a sexual experience to wipe out the memory of that awful time at Phi Kappa Chi. Or confirm it. If that was really how sex was, she ought to know, shouldn’t she? As a writer. And if she did it with Gawain, she’d know what sex was like in the fifth century. It was really research for her book.

Yeah. Who was she kidding?

If he walked in here right now and said,
I want to have sex with you,
would she turn him down?

Like
that
was going to happen.

She knew he could never
love
anyone like her. She . . . she just wanted to . . .

Oh, hell.
She wanted to be close to someone. She wanted to feel like she
meant
something to someone. Almost anyone. Even if it was just for a moment. Even if it was false, for God’s sake.

Since her father had begun drifting away from her into the sea of Alzheimer’s, she’d felt increasingly that she might not be real. She was a phantom, picked up in a suburb of Chicago, connected to no one, with no past and no future. If no one loves you—if no one even notices you—do you exist? She’d been feeling that since her father died. It hadn’t improved in the last days. It had just been lost in the rush of events. In fact, it had gotten worse. She’d been an orphan in the fifth century, flung forward in time for God knew what reason, resulting in being an orphan yet again in a Chicago suburb. Her adoptive mother died; her father drifted away and finally died, too. She had no friends, because who would want to be around a person who knew what they would say and could find things in ways other people couldn’t? She lived a fantasy life in her books, remote from real life from all indications. Indications like the fact that she couldn’t write men who resembled real men in the slightest.

She was pathetic. Gawain was
so
not coming in here.

*  *  *

Gawain was in physical pain. Sitting there all night, next to her, wanting her. And when she told him her only sexual experience was with a drunken frat rat at what was almost an orgy it had made his gut churn with anger. The guy was in the bathroom puking his guts out and left her to escape the sordid scene on her own. No wonder her sex scenes lacked feeling. Not fair that this was what she knew of men and women coupling. Sex with a woman should be caring, and gentle. For Diana especially. She should be cherished, not used and thrown aside. He wanted to take her to his bed, show her what loving a man could be like, erase the feeling that made her look like she had when she’d been talking about her first experience of sex.

He threw back the spread and stood staring at his bed. The night ahead stretched long and sterile. He’d either be awake all night or wake up to semen all over his sheets. He shook himself. Best get on with it. He unbuttoned his shirt, stripped it off, and put it in the hamper.

He couldn’t have sex with Diana, no matter that he thought he might be able to heal her. Because she didn’t want it. Because she didn’t love him. He
wanted
it to be a sacred bond when he finally made love to a woman.
How old-fashioned can you get?
About fifteen centuries old-fashioned.
I don’t want it to be recreational sex between Dilly and me. I want to wake up beside her in the morning, and roll over, and make love to her because she’s a part of me and we care about each other and we want to have children together.

The realization hit him like a load of stones.

He knew he liked the woman she’d become. She had ideas and needs and a temper and a will of her own. She was bold and curious, and . . . and he’d known her forever, and he . . . he
loved
her, by the gods. Could it be?
Of course it could. Nothing seemed more natural than that he had fallen in love with the woman Dilly had become.

But how could she feel as he did? She didn’t remember him. She’d never felt the closeness they’d formed in those long weeks she’d been bedridden. She’d known him four days. Before that she thought he was stalking her. She couldn’t love him. He sighed.

But he could make her feel treasured. He could give her a positive experience with sex.

That would mean that the sex was sacred only on one side. But did she have to pass some test before he could give her what she needed? That was just plain selfish. Of course he wished she would love him. But she couldn’t. Not right now.

The honorable thing to do here was to have sex with Diana.

Strange. But there it was. He knew it, deep down inside.

Calmly he unbuckled his belt, pulled off his boots, and unbuttoned his jeans. He didn’t carry condoms, but she was a modern woman as she kept telling him. They were all on the pill. When he was buck naked, he went to the door and turned the handle softly. He crept over to the bathroom and turned on the shower. When the steam rose, he stepped in, ducked his head under the water. His erection had eased a little. He was almost loath to touch himself lest he harden again to such a painful degree. He didn’t want to frighten her. But he must come to her smelling of soap, so soap himself he did, and tried to think of other things than what he was about to do. He was only partially successful, but that was something. He washed his hair and scrubbed under his arms in haste. He lathered his chest and belly, rubbed soap over his buttocks and thighs. He must be as clean as possible for her.

Stepping out, he toweled himself briskly, skimmed the mirror of steam, and lathered his beard. He could not let her delicate skin be scraped.

And all the time he was thinking. There was every possibility that she would reject him when he presented himself to her. So he had to have a reason she should let him into her bed. Not the real reason, but an acceptable reason, one that spoke to who she was. He stared at his own eyes in the mirror as they changed from gray-green to piercing blue.

And what would that be?

Well, start with who she was. She was a perfectionist. That’s why she didn’t think she was pretty enough. And why she revised her books so many times.

Books.
That was the answer.

He nicked himself in his haste, patted the blood away. He was as ready as he would be. Suddenly he wondered if he was up to this. What if he hurt her? What if . . . ?

“Get hold of yourself, man,” he whispered. “She needs you. Gods grant you are enough.”