"I don't see anyone around here," he says as he slides his breaches down. I avert my eyes. I was still wearing the T-shirt and jeans that I had been wearing when I first arrived. No one had cared enough at the palace thus far to get me something else to wear and I was grateful I wasn't wearing a dress in the moment. It would be a little bit harder for him to get my clothes off in my jeans.

  "Let's see what body you’re hiding under those clothes. Didn't your mother ever tell you girls shouldn’t try and dress like men?"

  I want to respond that I haven't seen my mother since I was little girl, but I don’t think it would be useful in this situation. I had a random thought that she hadn’t been able to teach me very much before she disappeared. But that was obviously the insane part of me speaking since a rational person wouldn’t have even thought of something like that at a time like this.

  He begins to pull on my shirt to try and rip it off, and I’m unleashed. Like a wildcat, I scratch and claw, coursing my nails against whatever skin I can get a hold of. He growls as I draw blood on his face, and he grabs a small dagger from around his waist.

  He lashes out with it, shredding my shirt and a piece of my shoulder in the process. I cry out in pain. Blood starts seeping through my shirt. He pauses for a second and just stares at me with a hungry grin as if the blood seeping from my shoulder has turned him on. He pushes me to the ground. I can feel the cold of the ground soaking into my back. He presses his heavy boot against my throat as he leans over me. I try to gasp in breaths.

  He uses the knife again to tear the rest of my shirt until it falls to the ground. I’ve never felt such vulnerability as I do laying there in nothing but a bra and my jeans.

  He examines my plain black bra closely with admiring eyes.

  "I've never seen this contraption before," he comments tracing the top of my breasts with the tip of his finger. I thrash against him once again, but I’m powerless as he presses down harder on my neck.

  "I have to say I like how this looks on you. I think I'll like what’s underneath even better though," he murmurs with a smile.

  The brunette guard is still standing by the cell door, shifting his weight around nervously. He peeks his head out the cell door to check that the hallway is still clear.

  "Hurry up and finish... then it's my turn. And then we need to get out of here," he says, a mix of fear and excitement in his voice.

  The blonde guard laughs and looks over at him. "I'm not gonna hurry my time with this pretty little thing. Besides, everyone in the palace is asleep at this time of night."

  He takes the knife and begins to saw at the middle strap of my bra. Despite the fact that I’m bleeding, and my windpipe feels like it’s going to be crushed, I start to try and fight back again. I’m forced to stop when his boot pushes all the way down and I lose the ability to breathe at all.

  I weakly cry out when his knife finishes popping open the front of my bra and my bare breasts are open for his perusal. I cover my chest with my hands.

  My face turns red in shame and disgust. Tears stream down my face as I start to plead, "Please don't do this."

  He is in the middle of trying to pry my hands away from my chest when footsteps sound down the hall, catching all of our attention and giving me a glimmer of hope. I look out the cell door and see James standing there, his face contorted in rage like I have never seen before.

  The brunette guard who was supposed to be on watch by the door has a longsword protruding out of his chest. James pulls it out as the guard sinks to his knees, blood beginning to gurgle out of his mouth. He starts to advance towards us. I can smell the sharp stench of urine as the blonde guard wets himself in fear.

  “Your Majesty, we were just…”

  “You were just what, going to rape this prisoner? I don't believe that's ever been allowed in this palace since I’ve come to power,” James replies, his eyes glittering with malice and hatred.

  “Please your Majesty,” the guard cries out, his words an echo of my earlier pleas to him a moment ago. James doesn’t seem affected though, and without sparing a thought, he lifts his arm and with a fluid swing chops the guard’s head off with one slice.

  I gasp. I had never seen that before.

  The guard lay sprawled out in front of me, his blood soaking my jeans.

  Scarily, I felt that same rush of happiness as I had when I had shot those men dead with Landon. I was glad that these guards would pay for what they had done. Insanely happy in fact.

  The room was silent for a moment as James's gaze turned toward mine, regret evident in his features.

  Regret soon gave way to hunger as he scanned my body. Looking down I realized that I had forgotten about the fact that I was supposed to be holding the scraps of my shirt over my breasts and they were uncovered at the moment. It was more of my skin then he had ever actually seen.

  “Keep yourself covered as much as you can," he ordered. "And what are you even wearing?"

  I didn't bother responding that my clothes were the latest rage in the 21st century. I didn't think he would find that amusing at the moment.

  “Guard,” he barked down the hall.

  It took a few minutes for one to appear, and the guard who did appear, looked incredibly nervous.

  "Why were these two down here?" James asks, imperiously gesturing to the bleeding corpses scattered around the prison cell.

  The guard shifts guiltily, and I realize that he must have been asked by the other guards to stay away so that they could play with me. The sickness surges up in my stomach. As far as I was concerned, he was no better than them.

  "I... I’m not sure Your Majesty," he stutters, fear evident in his face.

  Liar.

  James snorts. "I highly doubt that," he replies.

  Without taking a breath, he once again picks up the sword he had used earlier, and he impales the guard with it. A look of shock crosses the guard's face as he stares down at the sword that is now in his stomach, disbelief at the fact that he was dying all over his face.

  I was surprised by James' actions. He had never been bloodthirsty or quick to act on anger during the time that I had known him. Right now, he has a look of satisfaction all over his face.

  I couldn't judge though; I probably had the same look of satisfaction all over my features as well.

  James pulls the keys from the pocket of the guard he had just killed and uses them to unlock the thick iron cuffs that are around my wrists.

  "I obviously can't leave you down here," he says roughly, as if he didn't want me to mistake him letting me out of the cell for kindness but rather as a necessity. I still say nothing.

  I still wanted to explain myself to James, but right now I was exhausted.

  Exhausted actually seemed too tame a word to describe how I feel at the moment. I was always tired on days that I was pulled across the eternities. Combine that with the emotional wreckage of leaving a man that I'd fallen in love with behind and the stress and anxiety caused by reuniting with a past love who seemed to hate me, it was a recipe for disaster on both my body and my psyche.

  I follow behind him. He’s walking strangely, angling his body as if he wanted to make sure that we couldn’t accidently touch at all. I have the absurd desire to reach out and grab his hand, but I manage to hold myself back.

  We walk up the faded stone stairs that lead out of the dungeons. The guards hadn’t been lying, the palace really does seem to be asleep. A door opens up ahead and James’ friend, Richard steps into the hallway, clad in a long robe. He rubs his eyes wearily.

  “Everything all right, Your Majesty?” he asks.

  “Servants are needed to clean up a mess in the prison cells,” James says casually, greatly understating the massacre that would actually be waiting for whatever unsuspecting soul was sent down there.

  Richard’s eyes widen, and he quickly looks more awake. Obviously, he understands what James is really saying. I wondered how often such a scene had to be cleaned up down there.

  Richard finally notices that I’m standing behind James. James was the tallest of my lovers, and he easily hid me from sight if I was standing behind him. I had always loved how petite he made me feel.

  Richard begins to open his mouth to ask about me, his eyes assessing me closely. Evidently, he hadn’t been too concerned about my return earlier when I was being marched out of the Throne Room, but now that I was with the King of England in the middle of the night...looking a mess, I had garnered his attention.

  “Just get someone to clean it up,” James orders before Richard can speak, stepping back in front of me to hide me from view. Richard rushes past us to obey James’ order.

  “I’m sure you remember him,” James says stiffly as we start to walk again. Richard is now my top advisor.”

  I nod even though he can’t see the nod since I’m still behind him. That made sense to me that Richard would have such a prestigious position now that James was the king. He had always been one of James’ closest friends.

  James leads me to what I realize are the King's chambers...his chambers now. I had never been inside this set of rooms as James had a different set of rooms when he was the Prince. I look at him curiously as I walk inside and see him watching me closely. I wasn’t sure what I was doing here. He wants me to sleep in the same room with him? That seemed like pretty big progress considering the fact that a second ago he hated me. The scowl that was still etched all over his face seemed to suggest that hadn’t changed.

  James walks to the door and closes it behind us. He leans heavily against it, laying his head back and closing his eyes.

  It’s like a mask has fallen from his features as soon as were cocooned in his room allowing me to see how he really feels. Exhausted. Confused. Distraught.

  I take a step towards him, still holding my shirt closed in front of me.

  “James,” I whisper, hoping the love and longing was distinguishable in my voice.

  “I can’t,” he whispers. “I can’t talk about it with you tonight.”

  He opens his eyes. The blue vulnerability of them cuts right through me. “Can I just hold you tonight and we not speak? It’s one of the things that haunted me over the last six years, the fact that I never knew what it was like to have you in my bed, to know what it felt like to wake up to you.”

  My eyes widen. We were going to that step already? I was all for it, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t ready for that.

  “Just to sleep,” he clarifies, a breath of heat flashing in his eyes at the thoughts he knew I was having. He walks towards the bed, pulling his white silk shirt off his body as he does so. He casually drops it on the floor behind him.

  My breath gets caught in my throat. He was even better than I had remembered. The only time that I had seen him without a shirt was when we went swimming, and back then he was younger, slenderer. This was a man standing in front of me, every inch of him tan, rippling muscles that begged me to touch them. I could feel my hands shaking at my sides from the need to reach out.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” he growls.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, my question coming out in a breathy whisper that blare my feelings loud and clear.

  “Like you want to eat me,” he says. “Get over here.”

  He grabs one of his silk shirts from a dresser on the far wall. “You can wear this, and we’ll find you proper clothes in the morning.”

  He was bossier than I remembered. It reminded me of Landon and a little pang went through me.

  “What did you think about just then?” he asks, watching me closely.

  “Just an old memory,” I say, smiling sadly. I walk towards the bed and take the shirt.

  I turn away from him. Peeking over my shoulder I see that he is steadfastly watching, obviously with no intentions to look away and give me privacy. His eyes dare me to keep going.

  Amazing even myself, I let my ripped shirt and bra slide off my arms, baring my naked back to him. I can hear his breath quicken behind me. I slide off my jeans next until I’m standing completely bare except for the tiny lace pink thong I had been wearing that morning. I hear him give a soft moan behind me. Thinking that I had tortured us both enough, I slide on the shirt, admiring its fine craftsmanship and the delicious way it feels on my skin.

  Turning around, I have to stifle a gasp as I see how flushed and out of breath James appears, a large bulge pushing against his pants. Averting my eyes, I slide into the bed. It feels like heaven against my aching body. Evidently it was good to be King.

  Sliding across the bed so James can get in behind me, I feel a little like a bride on her wedding night than someone who gave up her virginity centuries ago.

  I’m nervous, and James looks nervous as well. When I lay down, he tentatively slips an arm around me, pulling my body close to him.

  We fit perfectly. Like two parts of a whole. Just like I always thought we would.

  He buries his face in my hair, a lazy sound of contentment coming from him that helps ease my troubled mind.

  Here at least tonight we could forget about all the questions and the trouble and everything else that would face us when the bright light of morning came.

  Tonight, it was just us, just as we always were.

  "I missed you,” he murmurs against my hair. A sob gets caught in my throat.

  "Me too."

  It seems too simple of a response for how I really felt. If only he could see into my heart, see all the pain and agony I had felt those first years after I had left England, after I left him. Then there would never be a doubt in his mind that I had loved him, that I still loved him. That I have loved him more than anyone else has ever loved a man. He had been my whole life. We had been on the cusp of starting an amazing adventure together. And then it all disappeared.

  I’m surprised when I hear his breathing steady, signaling that he had fallen asleep. His head is nestled into my neck, his arm grips my body tightly. I wanted to stay up as long as possible just so I could memorize this...how it felt.

  I knew what would happen in the morning, all of James’ walls would be back up. All the questions would be asked, and I would have to come up with an answer. My mind races as I think about trying to tell him about my past.

  In retrospect I shouldn't have been so angry with Liam that he didn’t believe me. It was an incredible story. The idea that someone was involuntarily thrown across time; it just sounded too crazy to be true. And here in the 1400s, it seemed even less likely that someone would believe something like that. I mean I'm pretty sure that people in this age still believe that the earth is flat. To get people that still believe that to believe in the impossible idea of time travel...it didn’t even seem possible.

  I sigh.

  James was never going to forgive me when he heard my story. He would probably commit me in fact.

  His arms tighten around me and I snuggle in deeper behind him.

  I listen to the sound of his breathing. I memorize how it feels to be in his arms so that when the inevitable comes, either that he doesn’t believe my story and I lost him for good, or I disappear again, I would have this memory. I would have this night.

  Home. That’s what he felt like to me.

  I breathe him in—deep, healing breaths.

  I feel myself slide into sleep with each long inhale and the soothing monologue of his breath that almost sounds like a whisper in my ear. Surrounded by him, I welcome the surrender into oblivion where Juliet Caris wasn’t broken, and James Kensington is my lover. Exhaustion takes over then.

  I eventually fall into a restless sleep, images of my past creeping in like monsters in the night as usual.

  And then I dream of him.

  “Hello love."

  I recognize the voice, its soft. smooth, gentle cadence a balm to my broken heart. I open my eyes and I’m not surprised when I see Gabriel standing in front of me. He’s often with me in my dreams, haunting me like a specter. I always wondered why I dreamed of him the most. Maybe it was because I had experienced the most complete life with him. We had been married, had a family, been parents together. At that thought, I look around desperately, even though I know that Colin won’t be there.

  For some reason he was never there in my dreams. It was like my poor psyche wanted to protect me from images of him, knowing that he was my hardest loss.

  "It’s so hard out there,” I tell him, reaching out to him for comfort.

  As usual Gabriel is there for me. He folds me into his arm, and I sigh as I inhale the scent of leather and rust that will never cease to remind me of him.

  "It'll get better my love," he says as he softly strokes my back.

  "How do you know?" I ask desperately, looking up into his sapphire colored eyes.

  He gives me that gentle trademark Gabriel grin. It was the smile of a man that was confident in his place in the world, and confident of my place with him.

  "Because my Juliet doesn't stop until it's okay. You'll find a way back to me. I know it."

  "How long will you wait for me?" I ask a bit desperately, soaking in every characteristic of his face.

  "As long as it takes."

  My eyes open as the faint strands of dawn brush against my face. We had forgotten to close the drapes in our exhaustion last night.

  I was now laying on top of James. My arms are wrapped around his neck, and my legs are intertwined with his. Both of his arms are wrapped around my waist.

  This is how we would have woken up every morning, I was sure of it.

  He shifts in his sleep so that our bodies are even closer together. I can feel his morning hardness against my leg, and it sends a slight flutter through my stomach.

  The door to the bedroom suddenly flies open. I flip over in surprise at the abrupt intrusion wondering who could possibly be inviting themselves into the King’s quarters.

  It was her.

  The exquisite beauty from yesterday. Once again, she was dressed in royal finery...a dress befitting a Queen in fact.

  But she couldn’t be the Queen.

  James obviously slept alone. What red-blooded woman would ever let a man like James sleep alone if he was hers.

 

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