“Who was she?” I bellowed after them, achieving nothing but the venting of my spleen. “Who the hell was she?” No one answered me, of course. Drat them all.
“Well, I’m not going to stand for being left clueless about important episodes from the past yet again. I’ve had it! I’m going to find out what’s going on if it kills me. Again. Which it won’t. Oh hell, now I’m talking to myself while in a vision. How pathetic is that?”
I looked around me, trying to figure out where exactly I was. It was fall, judging by the color of the leaves on the trees in the little town that straggled down the hill below me. Behind was a large mound flattened at the top, bearing a circular stone and wood tower, all of which was surrounded by a tall wooden stockade. “Motte and bailey castle,” I murmured, racking my frequently incomplete memory for the time period of such structures.
All I could remember was that they were popular well before the century I was born. I took a deep breath and marched up the hill to the tower keep, automatically moving around people and objects that weren’t really there, all the while muttering to myself about dragons and their stubborn ways, with an emphasis on one ebony-eyed wyvern in particular.
The stone and wood keep wasn’t much to look at, not nearly so grand as my father’s stone keep had been. I paused before the door to the main tower where I knew the keep’s owner would reside, and considered who might live there. “Has to be the black dragons, since Constantine mentioned Alexei. And Baltic wasn’t yet the heir, which means he probably slept in the garrison with all the other soldiers and unmarried men.”
When I was a girl living with the humans I thought of as my family, my sister and I were strictly forbidden from ever stepping so much as one toe into the soldiers’ barracks. Many were the times that we lay together in bed, speculating just what went on in the forbidden lower level of the keep, but a healthy respect for our mother kept us out of such a tantalizing spot.
Later, when Baltic and I finally found each other, and he had built Dauva (his stronghold in Latvia), I stayed out of the men’s quarters by habit. Although I could have claimed the right as Baltic’s mate to visit it, it had never occurred to me to break the rules and see just what went on in such a place. My upbringing had been too strong to overcome.
“We’ve come a long way, baby,” I paraphrased as I strode into the lower level of the keep, looking around with interest. There were pallets everywhere, stuffed with straw and strewn with items of clothing and armor. Some men were asleep on them, while others huddled in a circle dicing, and farther into the smoky, ill-lit room, another group squatted next to braziers, clutching tankards and talking quietly to themselves. “This is somewhat disappointing,” I told the visions of dragons from the past. “Where are the racy sights of naked men doing terribly immoral things that my mother always swore were what went on down here? Where are the camp followers enticing men into lustful acts? Where are the orgies?”
“The human woman who raised you had no knowledge of dragonkin,” a voice said loudly behind me.
I spun around to see Baltic—my Baltic—in the doorway, his hands on his hips as he glanced around the room.
“Came back, did you? I knew you couldn’t stay away from the past.”
He rolled his eyes at the teasing note in my voice, striding over to me. “I returned for you when you did not come with me, as a proper mate should.”
“Uh-huh. So, which pallet was yours?”
“Why do you care?”
I smiled up at his frown. “I want to see where you curled up at night.”
“Why?” he asked again.
“Because it’s something from your past, and kind of wicked, at least according to my mother. It’s where you were naked and slept and had naughty thoughts. And speaking of naughty thoughts, just who is this female you were supposed to take as a mate?”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me deeper into the room, where a jointed wooden screen marked a separate sleeping area, affording it a goodly amount of privacy, even if it was not a closed room proper. “I did not sleep with the others. I was accorded a place here.”
“Because of your father, you mean?”
He nodded. I sat on the long, narrow bed and looked around the living quarters, bouncing slightly as I did so. “You had a real bed, one stuffed with feathers, although the ropes holding your mattress are kind of squeaky. Is that the same chest you had at Dauva?”
“Yes. Are you done? I wish to return to the pub. I have many things to do.”
I slid my hand down the bear-fur covering of the bed, and leaned back on my elbows. “Did you entertain in this little private room, my love? Did you have girls here?”
He wanted to roll his eyes again—I could tell—but Baltic, always keeping a firm grip on how many times he gave in to that act, instead beetled his brows at me. “Do you wish to know how many lovers I had before you?”
“No. I just want to know if any of them ever shared this little love nest.”
“No.”
“Ah. Good.” I smiled and kicked off my sandals, rubbing my legs and feet along the fur in what I hoped was a seductive manner. “Perhaps you’d like to change that?”
Interest kindled in his eyes even as his lips were about to chastise me for wasting his valuable time. “Are you sure you would not prefer to wait until such time as I was with a lover?” he asked me with a completely deadpan face. “I know how it inflames you to engage in lovemaking while others are present.”
“Oh!” I sat up and slapped my hand on the skin. “I do not have kinky sex fantasies! Just because I thought it was kind of fun for us to make love with the vision version of our past selves doesn’t mean I am a swinger! I would never want to see you with another woman! Unless it was my past self…er…I wasn’t yet born at the time of this vision, was I?”
“No.”
“OK, then. It’s just you and me. In your old bed. With the guys in the garrison just beyond that screen.”
He gave in and gave another eye roll, but removed his clothing as he did so. “I will indulge you, but only because we have been separated, and it is the way of dragons to claim their mates upon return.”
I giggled as I squirmed my way out of my shirt. “You already did that when you returned at three o’clock this morning. Twice. In a way that left me utterly breathless for hours.”
“And yet you seem to have your breath again,” he murmured as he whisked off the last of his clothing, kneeling on the bed to stroke a hand up my belly to my breasts.
I reached for him, shivering with pleasure as I slid my hands along the muscles of his arms and shoulders. “I expect you can do something about that.”
“Perhaps,” he murmured, his cheeks nuzzling my breasts at the same time as his hands busied themselves with removing my bra.
One hand slid down to the waistband of my jeans, about to unzip them, but a sudden shadow looming overhead had me gasping.
The black-haired Baltic of the past stormed into the room, quickly removed his clothing, and flung himself down onto the bed, right on top of where I lay.
“Whoa now,” I said, scooting to the very edge, looking down at the naked man who had once been my Baltic. “That startled me. Er…is he going to be here for a while?”
“How the hell do I know?” Baltic rolled off me, a decidedly disgruntled expression darkening his face.
“Well, he’s you. Don’t you remember how long you were here?”
The look he gave me spoke volumes, and none of them expounded on the brilliance of my thinking. “No, mate, I don’t happen to remember what I did every single day of my more than one thousand years of existence.”
“You weren’t resurrected until almost forty years ago, so you missed three hundred years,” I pointed out, watching with interest as the past Baltic tossed and turned before lying on his back, his hands behind his head. I couldn’t help but glance downward.
“Ysolde,” Baltic said warningly.
“I was just looking, not comparing. B
esides, I already told you that your resurrected form was a bit more robust, so you have nothing to glare at me about, not to mention the fact that this is the very same body I used to ogle in the past.”
“Come,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Well, I had planned…never mind. I suppose having him right there wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Nor desirable. We will continue this in our own bedroom later.”
Reluctantly, I climbed off the bed and accepted the clothing Baltic handed me. As we put on our clothing, I glanced back at his former self with a bit of sadness. “Although if you were to lie down in exactly the same spot that he was…”
The lecture he gave me as he dragged me out of the keep and down the bailey was potent, but not worthy of repeating, and of course, absolutely unwarranted. “And in the future, you will cease involving me in your visions. Do you understand?”
“Pfft,” I told him, pinching him on the behind as he strolled around the corner of the hut next to the practice yard. “You’re so limited in your ability to enjoy different things.”
“I have more important things to do with my time,” he called back as he disappeared.
“Nothing is more important than the job your father gave me. Hey, speaking of that, you never told me who that woman was. Baltic? Who was she?”
“Who’s who?” a voice asked behind me. I spun around, staggering slightly when the world spun with me for a few moments, finally resolving itself into a familiar, if uninspiring, bedroom atop the old pub. “Are you all right? You look funny, like you smell cabbage cooking.”
“I’m fine, lovey.” I smiled at the brown-haired boy watching me with eyes that always seemed far too old for their nine years. “And there’s nothing wrong with cabbage, despite your stepfather’s insistence that it was put on this earth only to try his patience. That stir-fried cabbage with peanut sauce that Pavel made last night was to die for, which you’d know if you had tried it.”
Brom wrinkled up his nose. Always a placid child, if a tad bit eccentric, in the month that had passed since our house had been destroyed, he seemed to have adopted Baltic as a hero figure. I’d caught him more than once watching Baltic closely, as if fascinated with the way a wyvern acted, but I think it went deeper than mere curiosity about the dragons with whom we now found ourselves living. He’d started parroting Baltic’s likes and dislikes, even going so far as to spurn food I knew he didn’t really mind.
“Are you going into London today?”
“Nice change of subject, and yes, I am.” I shook off the last few dregs of anger over the idea that the First Dragon had tried to force Baltic into taking a mate, and finished putting away the shirts I’d bought in a local shop. “Where is Nico taking you today?”
“He wants to go see a history museum.” Brom looked thoughtful. “It has ships and stuff, but no bodies, although Nico says there might be some surgeon’s tools. When are we going to get our own house so I can set up my lab again? You said you’d start looking right away, and it’s been forever.”
“Four weeks is hardly forever.” I smiled and gave him one of the three daily hugs he allowed. “But I’ll ask Baltic again about a house. Would you mind if we lived outside of England? He’s likely to want to be near Dauva in order to oversee the rebuilding, and I hate to make him travel between here and Riga all the time.”
“Are there mummies in…” His face screwed up in thought.
“Latvia?” I finished. “I have no idea, although it is close enough to visit St. Petersburg, which I know has some fine museums. Whether or not they have mummies is beyond me. You can ask Nico, though. Perhaps he’ll know.”
“OK. Will he come with us? Because he’s a green dragon, and not in Baltic’s sept, I mean.”
“I’m sure Drake will give him permission, since he’s agreed to let Nico tutor you for a year. Oh, you haven’t had your allowance yet, have you? Let me get my purse.”
Brom’s expression turned painful for a few seconds before his shoulders sagged, and he said with obvious reluctance, “Baltic gave it to me this morning when he got home from Nepal.”
“Uh-huh. And were you going to tell me that, or just let me give you more?”
His lips twitched. “Well…no. But if you wanted to give me more, that would be OK.”
I laughed and gave his shoulder a little pat. “I’m sorry to have burst a burgeoning scheme to get money from both of us, but you really don’t need more than one weekly allowance.”
“How am I going to buy supplies when we get a house?” he asked as I herded him before me back into the narrow hallway. The floor and walls, wooden and uneven, made me feel as if I were walking at an angle. I didn’t complain, though; I found the small pub run by some human friends of Pavel, Baltic’s second-in-command, charming and quaint in its Elizabethan Englishness. Baltic insisted we would be safe there should Thala, his former lieutenant, decide to try to kill us again. I had no doubt that he would keep us safe no matter where we were located, but like Brom, I was growing tired of such a transient lifestyle, and I yearned for my own home where we could settle down once and for all.
“When we have room for you to set up another mummification lab, I’ll buy you some supplies. Although, really, Brom, couldn’t you find some other hobby than mummifying animals?”
“You said it was illegal to mummify a human,” he pointed out as I tapped on the door to his tutor’s room. “Besides, I don’t know where to find a dead person.”
Nico, an auburn-haired, studious green dragon who had charge of Brom’s education for the last few months, greeted me and grabbed up a small backpack. “Did Brom tell you that we’re going to the naval museum today?”
“Yes, despite the fact that it won’t have bodies.” I shared a smile with Nico before reminding Brom to behave himself. “I won’t be back until just before dinner, but Pavel said he was going to cook up something special, so be home by six.”
“Absolutely,” Nico agreed, and with a glance at his watch, hustled Brom down the stairs. I heard the rumble of male voices drift upward after them, and waited, wondering how best to broach the subject of my vision.
Baltic appeared at the head of the stairs, his hand quickly whipping away from his pocket as he spotted me.
“You didn’t!” I said, frowning as he approached, Pavel on his heels. “Baltic, really, it’s too bad of you!”
Guilt chased across his face, followed immediately by a look of pure seduction as he swept me up in his arms and bathed me in dragon fire. “Chérie, what is it you’re frowning over? Could it be that you have missed me in the last five minutes as much as I’ve missed you?”
“Whenever you call me chérie, I know you’re feeling guilty about something,” I said, melting against him even as I giggled a little. “Of course I missed you, and not just for the last five minutes. It’s been a hellish twelve days while you were trying to find Thala, not only because I was worried sick about you, but because you weren’t here to drive me wild with desire, but that’s not the point. Brom did not need more money. And don’t deny you gave him some, because I saw you putting your wallet away.”
“We’ve spoken of this subject already,” he murmured against my lips, pulling me brazenly against his hips. “If you are good today, I will allow you to have your wanton way with me later.”
“If I’m good…” I released my outrage at such a statement, and almost purred as I let him kiss me, amused that he thought he could distract me in such a way before I realized that he had a very good record of doing just that.
I gave myself up to the sensation of his fire sinking into me, of the hardness of his body against mine, of his scent, that masculine, spicy scent that seemed to kindle my own dragon fire. And when his mouth moved against mine, I knew I didn’t stand a chance. I kissed him with all the passion I possessed, making him growl into my mouth as I tugged on his hair, wordlessly demanding more of his dragon fire.
Pavel passed by us, murmuring something about waiting for Balt
ic in the sitting room, but even that didn’t stop me from welcoming Baltic’s fire with a little moan of my own. His tongue burned as it swept inside my mouth, his chest and legs hard when he pushed me up against the wall. I clung to his shoulders, rubbing myself against him, pulling hard first on my fire, and when that didn’t come, on his, to bathe us both in heat.
“Ysolde, if you do not stop attempting to seduce me in the hallway, I will take you right here,” Baltic said in a low voice filled with passion. “And while I would be happy to fulfill this latest of your secret fantasies, we risk shocking anyone who comes upstairs.”
I slid one hand down to pinch his adorable behind. “For the last time, you incredibly sexy dragon, I do not have sexual fantasies that are anything but perfectly ordinary, and certainly do not involve voyeurism. And before you say it, no one would have seen us in the keep, not even your past self. I will admit, though, that parts of me are still humming after the way you greeted me this morning when you arrived home. That was quite the homecoming.”
“I merely gave you the attention you were due.” Baltic raised an eyebrow seconds before he dived for my chest, his mouth and hands hot on my breasts. I squirmed against him, shifting his hands so I could have better access to his chest and wondering if we had time to indulge our need for each other, but at that moment, my phone vibrated in my pocket and bellowed out a recording of one word: “Ysolde!”
Baltic raised his head from where he was licking the valley between my breasts, frowning something fierce. “Mate! I thought I told you to change your alarm sound.”
I giggled against his mouth and nipped his bottom lip. “But it’s so perfect! Nothing catches my attention more than your saying my name. And speaking of attention, I want to talk to you about that vision.”
He ignored the emphasis I put on the words, wrapping his arms around my waist and lifting me off the ground as he squeezed tightly. “You try my patience, woman. I have no time for reminders of what happened in the past. I have lost twelve days chasing Thala, and there is much work that I must accomplish in a short amount of time.”