Time of the Draig (33 page)

Faolan lifted his gaze to take in the angry woman who only came up to his chest. Her face showed many hours in the daylight, many more than when they had parted.
Has she somehow lived for weeks in the open so close to me?
Her dark hair was longer. He would swear it.

His eyes stuck on the braided belt that bound the dagger to her hip. The head of the dragon peered at him over the small scabbard. The dragon’s eye mocked his lack of clarity. Questions and confusion rattled in his fogged brain while wetness could be felt on his cheeks.

The hard stone floor of the hall met his knees as he lost his struggle for balance. Clanging rang through the room when his sword dropped from his hand. Without thought, he reached out and wrapped his arms around Samantha’s waist. Her body stiffened in his grasp before a gentle hand rested on his weary head.

“Samantha?” Faolan questioned in a voice choked with a sob.

He felt her body shake within his arms as he rested his head against her hip. Soft fingertips ran through his wind-tangled hair with the same caresses his body knew from falling asleep within her arms. Only his Samantha touched him with such care.

Boomer’s deep laughter rumbled through the air. “Looks like he’s finally catching on, Sam. Give the man a break. After all, we did just come back from the dead.”

Faolan heard footsteps as the men left the hall. Jeff’s request to meet in the morning had no meaning to him. His hands gripped tightly to the fabric of her skirts. In his mind, if Samantha were a vision to float away, he would keep her from leaving by force of will alone.

The soft voice called to him, “Faolan.” His name on her lips resulted in another sob from him, and he pulled her closer in his already firm hold.

“You’re starting to crush me,” Samantha said. He heard the smile in her voice. “Please stand up now.”

Whatever she wished, he would deliver. His hands shifted to loosen their grip but locked again on the fabric covering her delicate hips. First one knee rose and then the other until he found his footing. His eyes stayed locked on the dagger. Only his wife would ever hold his dagger. Such was the way of his family.

A sigh escaped him when her hand cupped his cheek to force his gaze to meet hers. Her sharp green eyes searched his with no sign of anger. A lone tear fell from her eye, and he reached out tentatively to touch the moisture.

His hands moved roughly up her sides to hold her face within his grasp, all the while afraid any loss of contact would make her vanish. Faolan swallowed hard. “Are you real, my heart? Are you? My need for you to be real is more than I can bear.”

Soft laughter mocked his plea. Samantha looked up at him and smirked. “Now that’s the welcome home I was looking for.”

With no further delay, Faolan yanked her roughly into his arms and buried his face in her lavender-scented hair. A shudder wracked his frame as she wrapped her arms around his neck. His grip tightened to lift her off her feet and spin them around in circles. Only when she pleaded with him to stop did her feet touch the floor.

Faolan felt the large hand on his shoulder and turned to face the dark mountain. With Samantha’s hand tucked within his, he pulled the massive man in for as large an embrace as one free arm would allow.

“Thank you, Boomer, for bringing my Samantha back to me. The sight of you both safe within my walls is a gift beyond measure.”

Laughter left his lips when Boomer kissed the top of his head and berated his lack of intelligence. Faolan grasped Boomer’s neck and placed a hard kiss on the mountain’s cheek. Only family could insult with such love and laughter.

Panic seized his heart as he realized he had let go of Samantha. Faolan whirled to behold her vision next to him. Relief surged through him as she quickly stepped into his arms and rested her head against his chest.

She murmured against his shirt, “I missed you. It feels like a lifetime since I was with you.”

He smiled and breathed in her scent and relished the sensation of her small hands clinging to his back.

“I have something for you, brother,” Boomer said as he disturbed the moment.

Faolan lifted his head enough to view the man with the notion of dismissing any gift. All he had ever wanted was safe within his arms. The sight of the incredibly long sword made him gasp.

“In the far fields, we took down the final assault party and the man whom we assume led the strike on your lands. He had this,” Boomer explained and held the weapon out for inspection. The pommel held the same dragon he bore on his skin and on the dagger, the serpent with a head on each end. The weapon bore a bright blue gem in the eyes of the beast. “As soon as I saw it, I thought you might like it.”

Faolan removed his hand that was wrapped in Samantha’s soft hair to take the weapon. Testing the weight of the massive blade, he tipped it up and down. His wife stepped out of his reach, though she kept her hand on his side as if she too could not bear any separation.

“It’s a broadsword. You need two hands to wield it properly,” Samantha said.

Marvel and awe filled him at the balance and heft of a weapon that had been fashioned by dragon gods.
Such a blade could not possibly come from the forge of a mere man
. His eyes closed in horror for a moment at the thought of Samantha face to face with a man who would carry such weaponry into battle.

When he started to protest that Boomer had the right to it as battle won, the dark mountain laughed. “It doesn’t match any of my tattoos, and Sam’s too tiny to handle it.”

His wife barked sharp words at the man and then laughed at the truth. The weapon was nearly as long as she was.

With gratitude for the gift and so much more, Faolan bowed his head and said, “Thank you, for everything.”

Boomer chuckled and turned to the stairway. “Thank me tomorrow for the rest.” When Boomer reached the first step, he said, “Sam, don’t be offended if I stay away tomorrow. Think I may need a little space.”

She chuckled. “You say that now, but by afternoon, you’ll be missing me.”

The blade shifted to one hand so he could wrap his arm around his wife. “You will nay see your guard on the morrow, wife. I plan to keep you locked within our chamber for days.”

Boomer’s gaze held Samantha’s, and Faolan wondered at the unspoken communication they shared. The dark mountain said, “Miller mentioned some rest would do you good.”

Her hand tightened in his, though her eyes never sought his. Faolan led her up the stairs in silence, wondering how she would answer his questions. His heart sang in relief to know she was by his side and safe. His heart also needed to know why. Too much was still unspoken between them.

Chapter 25

Samantha heard the bolt slide into place after the sound of the chamber door closing. After so many weeks in the primitive hut, the comfortable chamber still felt foreign. The bedding was rumpled after the nap Dana had insisted she take after bathing. Sleep had come despite the ache the empty side of the bed had caused.

“My plan had been to come to you through the trees after the door closed,” Samantha said with a hushed voice. “Boomer wouldn’t let me leave until Miller had given the okay, and your grandmother had armed men keep me from leaving on my own.”

Something wasn’t right between them. Faolan had finally lifted from his stupor and wrapped her in his arms. There had been no kiss. In the quiet of the long nights in the hut, she had imagined their reunion. No matter how it played out in her mind, it had always started with a kiss. Since they married, he had kissed her after every parting, even if one of them had only been gone for minutes. Time had crashed down on them and almost separated them permanently. She knew there should have been a kiss.

A sigh left her lips when she felt the light touch to her hair from behind. No firm grasp or confident hold, only a tentative whisper of contact. Not exactly an auspicious beginning from the man who had promised to keep her locked in the chamber for days.

“Are there more of you?” Faolan questioned.

“No,” she said with no hesitation. Her gaze shifted to the leather bag on the table before the fire. There was no need to log in with the laptop to confirm the belief. She had finally caught up with time.

“Are you my wife?” Faolan asked with noticeable apprehension.

Forcing her feet to shift, Samantha turned to face him. His eyes were wary and regarded her with suspicion. Maybe his stunned and stupefied reaction to her presence in the hall wasn’t over.

“I was in this very chamber when you tricked me into agreeing what happened that night was a marriage,” Samantha replied with a small smirk. A sigh left her lips as his gaze softened, and she noted a look she recognized.
He clearly remembers the night I’m talking about
. The mixed phrases echoed in her mind,
Does this please you? Say you are mine.

Faolan stepped closer to her and lifted his hand to brush his knuckles across her cheek. “Then explain it to me.” His voice was odd and carried an air of hurt.

Weariness settled over her at the notion of summing up the complexities of parallel time streams, quantum doors, and the paradox of her simultaneous existence in vocabulary he would comprehend. Yet she respected the fact he wasn’t willing to settle for less. Though he lived in a simple time and place, his mind could have been brilliant with the proper education.

“Do you mind if we sit down?” Samantha asked and moved to the chairs before the burning fire. Miller was right; fatigue still weighed her down after the fever. The life she carried probably added more.

Settling into the chair on the right side of the table, she waited for Faolan to sit in the other before she began. The fact that he had not pulled her into his lap did not go unnoticed. It took far too much effort to push aside the idea that maybe he didn’t want her to be there.

Samantha began tentatively, “I entered this time with Boomer, Jeff, and the rest of the men on the day we met. Despite our rude introduction, we came home with you anyway.” She relaxed slightly as a small grin touched the corners of the lips that had yet to touch her.

“Today when Boomer and I traveled back to my lab to regain UNK005, the larger, we came back at the time we initially left.” The explanation continued with how it had been the only method to travel back to his time and place.

She rehashed the method for establishing her link to the lab. The two orbs were connected regardless of their location in time and space. A signature of the connection had been the key to her success; she basically followed the proverbial particle string connecting them.

“In a way, the door had never closed. I just couldn’t see the opening because I was so focused on how to create a new passage.” Boomer was correct, as she always missed the obvious.

When Faolan nodded with her explanation, she continued, “My laptop was supposed to localize the connection, to create a link between this time and the lab.” Samantha shuddered. “I failed at that. My hardware was far too primitive to contain the flux of energy, so the door I made in the field this morning collapsed as soon as both UNK005s were together.”

“You said that if the door this day closed, there would be no returning to me,” Faolan said with his gaze boring into hers.

“I meant what I said. There was no way I would risk the integrity of the time-space continuum by opening a third door. The risks would have been too great.”

“Yet you sit in my chamber,” Faolan said with his hands closed into fists.

The singular pronoun
my
stung, like a slap across her face. Samantha closed her eyes and tilted her head from side to side in a weak attempt to loosen the tension building in her body. Doubt crept through her at the idea he may never truly grasp how she came to be there. Hurt took up residence in her chest when she dared to glance at him. The man who had clung to her skirts a few minutes ago in the hall was nowhere to be seen.

“Boomer and I were trapped in my lab. We eliminated the initial threat of the colonel and his men quickly. It was Boomer who thought of using the door that first brought me to you.” It had all happened so fast, the fight, the grabbing of UNK005 from the mainframe, the blaring of the base’s alarms, and the leap into the jungle that brought them to Faolan’s time.

“You speak, yet you explain little,” Faolan murmured as his gaze slid to the fire.

Frustration boiled inside her belly. “Do you not believe I’m real?”

Faolan’s hands lifted to tear at his wind-tangled hair. “I ken you are Samantha, if only due to inane prattling about matters I will never ken.” She stayed still at the harsh intake of his breath. “Do you think I care about how you defy the gods of time? It matters nay how you came to be here, yet I follow what happened. You left this morn and escaped a certain death by entering the door that first brought you to my place many weeks ago. I am no simple-minded fool.”

His anger at the comprehension of the complicated time travel baffled her. Cheeks flushed with hostility were nothing compared to the rage in his eyes.
But why?
The man should be celebrating her return, not sitting there pissed off.

Faolan’s harsh whisper filled the quiet chamber. “You expect me to be pleased that you prefer the hut to my fine keep? I offered you all that I have, and you seem content to steal scraps from the bounty of my table. My wife should prefer to be at my side.” His brown eyes bore into hers. “Explain this to me.”

The answer clicked into place in her mind. Once again she had missed the obvious. Faolan, for all of his ability to understand her mad ramblings and quantum tangents, or at least tolerate them, had been put off by only one concept since they had met. He had walked away from her when she had not acknowledged his wanting to be at her side after the login session that had left her sedated and unconscious for over a day. She had explained theories and probabilities while they picnicked in a glade when all he wanted to know was would she have called their drunken night a marriage, had it not been interrupted. The man before her needed to be needed. He was mad at her for staying away, for the weeks of hiding on his land.

“Do you think I stayed away from you by choice?” Samantha asked with disbelief.

“No weapons were raised to bar you from entering my gates,” Faolan hissed. “Nay that you even thought of coming to me.”

Her temper flared at the asinine statement. Samantha jumped to her feet and stood before Faolan, who smugly sat back in his chair. His posture attempted to diminish anything she might say.

“How dare you?” Samantha spat at him. “Boomer and I stayed away to protect this time. We didn’t belong here until today.”

“My wife does nay belong living like a beggar unless she prefers such an existence,” Faolan sneered at her.

Hands that were balled into fists sat on her hips. “I was not your wife yet. Well, that’s not true.” Her head shook to make sense of the argument that threatened to get out of control. “The woman who slept in that hut was your wife, I am your wife. You, however, were not yet married. You hadn’t even met me when Boomer and I escaped the lab today and wound up here on the day we first met.” That last sentence wiped the hostility off his face even as it gave her brain a cramp. The paradox of two of her in one time stream mixed with rage was not creating a rational line of thought.

Her hands rose over her head to add dramatic flair to the question. “If I had shown up in the field where we met, weeks ago, and claimed to be your wife, what would you have done? Would you have been able to understand two of me, one who claimed a marriage that had not yet happened and one who fought the notion of us being together because it threatened my mission of returning to the lab?” Anger fled as she took in the lost look on Faolan’s face. A softer voice said, “You can’t even accept my return tonight.” Samantha closed her eyes, no longer wanting to see anything on his face.

She felt his hands grip the fabric of her skirt at the hips. Her senses ignored the sounds of his body shifting in the chair and the legs that settled against the thighs of her standing form. Her mind cursed the whimper that left her throat when his forehead settled against her breastbone and the flesh that sang out in delight at his ragged breath on her skin.

Time ceased to exist with them locked together. Her only resistance was in refusing to allow her hands to touch his hair. Another rejection would kill what was left of her. For just a moment, she missed the isolation of the lab. In her domain, she hadn’t been emotionally vulnerable. Since meeting Faolan, that’s all she ever seemed to be.

The fabric at her hips pulled with his tightening grip. Faolan asked, “Did you wish to return to me?”

The question tore at her heart. Once he had asked if she wanted to try to return to him. The “yes” had reluctantly spilled from her lips. As she stood before him, it took all of her strength to reply. “Yes, Faolan, I wanted to return to you every moment of every day I spent on your lands.”
That’s not entirely true.
She amended, “Except for the day you and Kagen stopped at the loch after visiting with your sister and mother. That day I wanted to beat you senseless.”

She felt his head lift from her chest and cursed the loss of his touch, even if it wasn’t the caress she wanted.

“Open your eyes and see me,” Faolan requested.

His brown gaze had softened and questioned her last statement. Samantha asked, “Is that what you want?”

His head shook in a lack of understanding.

Though she kept her eyes open, her gaze settled over his head. “At the loch that day Kagen spoke of a marriage your mother wanted to arrange for you. Is that what you want? You yourself said the lass was one a man would seek in his bed night after night.” She offered a quick explanation of she and Boomer being hidden in the rocks that day.

Faolan’s laughter was like a knife in her chest. He said, “While my thoughts may nay recall exactly what I said, I believe I told Kagen I wished for only you.”

“Is this something you decided before or after you stole kisses in the garden?” Samantha mumbled. Her back stiffened as she taunted him, not really wanting the answer.

Faolan surprised her by scooping her off her feet and settling her onto his lap. She wanted to push away, but her body disagreed since it had his strong arms wrapped around her. Her own weakness disgusted her.

“At the time you were unwilling to admit I held a place in your heart,” Faolan replied with a whisper to her hair. “The lass is nothing to me.”

The quip about kissing young women who mean nothing died in her throat when his hands cupped her cheeks and forced her gaze to his. “For the last time, explain it to me.”

Her brow furrowed as she questioned the best way to sum it up. “I wanted to come back to you the moment I re-entered this time. The only way to ensure you and I would marry was to wait for it to happen just as it did. The only way for us to be together was to wait until the time was right for this me to reappear.” Samantha sighed at the reality. “It was torture to be so close to you and not go to you. There were more times than I care to mention that Boomer had to restrain me.”

Faolan held her face and glanced at the leather bag on the table, the one containing the UNK005s. “You will stay with me for all of time.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement to be verified.

Samantha nodded within his hold. “I need to log in again to make certain everything is exactly how it should be, but I have no plans on leaving this time. The question is, do I stay in this place?”

The harsh question had been softened by the amused smile on her face. She had done her part; Faolan had to meet her half way.

“My wife stays by my side.”

She stared into his eyes as she spoke. “Then you had better make sure you stop kissing lasses who mean nothing to you.”

His soft laughter answered. Without breaking the lock of their gazes, he said, “The last woman I kissed was my wife in a field this afternoon. She should have been too tired to travel across time. I gave her little time for sleep last night.”

Samantha let her gaze drop to his lips, and she smiled at the grin she found. Her truth came out in a breathy whisper. “It has been over a moon and a half since I have kissed you.” She knew his weakness. He loved it when she spoke in his terms and references.

“Then I need to remind you how ‘tis done, my heart.”

The brush of his lips against hers sent sparks through her body and she thought it was the most perfect kiss ever given. Until she compared it to the next one and finally the kiss she had dreamed of for so many nights. The kiss that stole all coherent thought and left her breathless and wanting more.

Breathless, and satisfied Faolan was in the same condition, she said, “That was for the first night we were separated. There have been many more nights apart, for me at least.”

“Too much has happened since we entered our chamber this night. Are we at peace, or are we still fighting?” Faolan asked.