“Holy shit!” I exclaimed and looked at the clock. “It's been four hours!” I looked back at the painting. “Four hours. It felt like fifteen minutes.”
Shaky legs took me back to the gladiator. I stared at the leather armor. I'd gotten all the details right. The audience behind him was blurred; no faces to be seen. But his face was perfect. Bordered by the cheek visors and rim of his helm, it looked as if it were a framed piece of art. And that was appropriate. He was brutally handsome. He still looked fierce, especially with the blood all over him now painted a bright red, but his appeal was undeniable. Those eyes. Dark brown like mine, almost black. They stared right through me. I could almost hear his voice.
Shaking myself, I tore my gaze away from the gladiator and went to the medieval knight. I suddenly knew what was missing from his portrait. I picked up a brush and drew it through paint. It took me seconds to add, and I wasn't sure if it was even historically accurate, but it needed to be there. Because it was the key to deciphering the whole picture.
When I finished, the banner—held by another man—formed an ominous background for the knight. It was simple as far as emblems went. Black with three ostrich feathers. The emblem of the Black Prince of England. The Prince who would never become King.
Suddenly, it all clicked. The Black Prince. The Oriflamme. The mounted knights. I hurried to my laptop—the one I kept in the studio in case I needed to look up reference pictures—andtyped in those keywords. Immediately, a list came up featuring the same battle over and over. The Battle of Poitiers.
The French had been doing well. The English were mostly on foot and getting tromped. But then the fight turned. A huge group of the French fled. King John II remained behind and continued the battle, the Oriflamme unfurled above him. And then a small group of mounted English knights, only 160 strong, came at the French Army from behind. Thinking they were surrounded, the French panicked and fled, leaving behind their King. King John was captured along with his 14-year-old son, Philip.
My fingers flew over the keyboard. The knight was hard to find. First, I thought to look for the man who had captured the King, but the capture had been a cluster fuck of men fighting to be the one to take King John. That man wasn't the commander of the mounted knights.
At last, I found a name. I couldn't be sure if he had led the mounted force, but it was likely. Sir John Chandos, Viscount of Saint-Sauveur, Constable of Aquitaine, Senechal of Poitou, and the close friend of Edward, the Black Prince. Sir John had been the mastermind behind many of Prince Edward's triumphs, including the Battle of Poitiers. He was killed in a minor skirmish in 1369, and his death was regretted by both sides. If that isn't a testament to the kind of man he was, I don't know what is. But if that isn't good enough, there's this quote from a historian of his age; “Never since a hundred years did there exist among the English one more courteous, nor fuller of every virtue and good quality than him.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered as I stared at a drawing of Sir John. I couldn't tell what color his eyes were, but he had dark hair, just like my painting. “Is this real? Did I paint you withoutknowing who you were?” I cocked my head at him. “And if I did, why? Why did I paint any of you?” I looked at the other paintings. “Men who died hundreds of years ago.” I focused on my nemesis. “And you! Who the fuck are you? Why can't I finish you?”
With a heavy sigh, I went back to the sink to clean my paintbrushes. That fantasy or whatever it was kept haunting me. I kept thinking about the way the gladiator touched me. How rough he'd been, but with a strange tenderness beneath it. As if he wanted to be gentle but didn't know how.
“Lomasi,” a man whispered, the voice deep and dark.
I gasped. The paintbrushes fell into the metal sink with a clatter. The water kept running. But I didn't turn to search the room. I knew he wasn't there. It may have felt as if the voice were real, but it was only in my head. A memory. From that fucking fantasy! He had spoken. He had said my name. My real name.
“Stop it!” I snapped at myself. “So what? It's all you, you idiot. The fantasy came from you, so of course, he'd know your name. Fuck, I'm going nuts. Love is actually driving me insane.”
I went back to the kitchen where my food waited in the microwave. It was lukewarm, but I wasn't hungry anymore. I put it back in its container and then into the fridge before heading up to my bedroom. Stripping in the dark room, I thought of the gladiator again. I decided that fantasizing about him was better than thinking about Rune. There was no pain in this fantasy.
So, I continued to undress until I was naked. Then I crawled onto the bed, laid back, and closed my eyes. He was there instantly, his dark stare devouring my body. I spread my legs, and he palmed my sex. Rubbed, then gripped it—took thewhole of it into his hand and squeezed. I moaned and lifted my hips, pressing into his grip. Damn, it felt real.
The gladiator bent over me, the mass of him covering me. There was only him. His bulk. His eyes. His cock. It bobbed and wept. Thick but not too long. I couldn't see his balls beneath. With a growl, he shoved my thighs apart and dropped onto his belly. Face pressed up against me, he tongued the seam of my sex, then split it. He wasn't masterful about it, but his need to taste me was evident, and his desire led him into strong licks that had me shuddering. I tried to lift my hips to ride his mouth, but he held me down easily.
And then he was on his knees and that thick cock was slamming into me again. In reality, my hand went to my sex and rubbed, but in my fantasy, the gladiator went wild. He slammed into me over and over, and then yanked his shaft out of my body and rolled me onto my belly. I got up on my hands and knees, arching my back to lift my ass. He spread my cheeks and rubbed his wet dick between them. Pushed against that other place. Rune had done this with me a few times, and I had enjoyed it more than I expected, but I wasn't going to think about him. I focused on my gladiator and felt my body stretch around him.
The fantasy escaped me, filling my mind faster than I could imagine it. My hand fell away from my sex. My real body was left behind. There was only the me beneath the gladiator. Only the pleasure he gave me. Until there was more.
The gladiator wrapped his hands around my waist and rolled me again. But this time, he went with me, positioning me on his chest. He spread his legs and bent his knees, pulling my legs apart. My sex dripped, wetting his cock and making his penetration even slicker. I moaned and writhed.
But then I felt other hands.
I looked down to see two other men in bed with me. The medieval knight and my nemesis. It was my nemesis who knelt between my thighs, naked. His cock was in his hand, and it seemed perfectly normal for him to slide it over my sex, wet it, then shove forward. Soon, the two men were moving in perfect harmony, one going in while the other pulled out. Sir John knelt to the side, as naked as we were, but he didn't join in. Not at first. He only stroked himself as he watched. But then he came to me and offered himself. I opened my mouth. The taste of him filled me along with his flesh—clean, aroused man. He was long, instantly hitting the back of my throat, but he eased back instead of gagging me. I rolled my stare upward to meet his and discovered a surprising adoration in them. He caressed my cheek as if I were precious, even as the other men slammed into me. Oddly enough, it was his tenderness that sent me over.
I screamed as I came, my whole body shaking, and my gaze happened to the left. There, standing in the opening of my Chinese bed, just behind Sir John, was the crusader. His eyes held no desire, nor was he naked. He stood in full armor, chin lifted and stare condemning. A shaft of light shone upon him. If I hadn't known who the Gods were, I would have been convinced that the Christian God was bathing this man in his blessing. And scorning me.
The crusader's stare sent me jolting out of my fantasy.
Panting, a sheen of sweat coating me, I stared up at the carved roof of my bed. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
Chapter Seventeen
Someone was following me.
I had gone out for ice cream after dinner and was on my way home when I heard the footsteps. I glanced back to see a man in his early twenties with a slim build. I didn't think much of it. Then he started to get closer. I sped up. He sped up. I looked back and found him staring at me. It was not a pleasant stare. I dropped my ice cream and ran.
It turned out that my instincts were on point. The guy chased me. Panic took over. I couldn't think straight, didn't know where to go. I just kept heading home, even knowing that the guy would catch up to me when I dealt with the door. I should have gone into a restaurant or a shop. But I just kept running.
Until I slammed into a solid chest.
Strong hands steadied me, and I looked up into a pair of moss-green eyes. They were magnetic, those eyes, but I was able to expand my focus to include the rest of his face. And what a face. Great Gods, the man was beautiful. I had assumed that at close range his handsome features would lose something. That was normal. But no. They were even more magnificent from this perspective. Classically handsome, that's what an expert might call him at first glance. His nose certainly fit the title—the longslope of it creating a strong line down the center of his face, accentuating a noble brow instead of the thick forehead usually found on a man his size. But his lips were too full, too sensual to be called classic and the long lashes around his eyes were too feminine. These two points of softness were exactly what was needed to offset his hard jaw and the carved angles of his cheekbones. It was the kind of face that made movies into masterpieces. A face that could send people to their knees—in multiple ways. Mine were certainly trembling.
