“Which president are we talking about?”
Cáel laughed. “The only one with any real power left. Worlds Assembly.”
“Him?” Ryan picked the bottom of Cáel’s glass up and hoisted it up to Cáel’s mouth, assisting Cáel’s grip.
Cáel drank and cleared his throat. The whiskey had stopped burning with each mouthful by the top of the second bottle. Now it just tasted very smooth and mellow.
“Why’d’you say that?” Ryan asked. “He’s a good man.”
“’cause he’s a vamp hater,” Cáel replied. He shook his head. “A great man, ‘cept for he’s flawed.”
Ryan was staring at him. “That’s...he comes off like he’s Henry Kissinger. How could you know that?”
Cáel shrugged. “We were lovers for nearly a year. Then I found out.” He shuddered and drank. He reached for the bottle to refill and realized that Ryan was still staring at him.
“Lovers? You?” Ryan said.
“Think you’ve got a corner on the market, Irishman?” Cáel topped up Ryan’s glass. “Not everyone goes for poetic lilts, you know.”
Ryan half-laughed. He picked up his drink. “So...what is this, then? Are we on a date?”
Cáel’s stomach seemed to drop out from his body with a sickening, electrifying rush. It had nothing to do with the whiskey. He let his hand drop away from the glass and looked at Ryan, wishing his heart would quieten. “Do you want it to be?”
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About the Author
Tracy Cooper-Posey is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author. She writes erotic vampire romances, hot romantic suspense, paranormal and urban fantasy romances. She has published over 50 novels since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.
She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book Of The Year and Byzantine Heartbreak was a 2012 winner. She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.
She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.
Her website can be found at http://TracyCooperPosey.com
Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Blood Knot Series (Urban Fantasy Paranormal Series)
Blood Knot
Blood Stone
Blood Unleashed (Upcoming)
Blood Revealed (Upcoming)
Beloved Bloody Time Series (Paranormal Futuristic Time Travel)
Bannockburn Binding
Byzantine Heartbreak
Romani Armada
Kiss Across Time Series (Paranormal Time Travel)
Kiss Across Time
Kiss Across Swords
Kiss Across Chains
Guardian Bonds (Gargoyle Paranormal Series)
Carson’s Night
Beauty’s Beasts
Sabrina’s Clan (Upcoming)
Destiny’s Trinities (Urban Fantasy Romance Series)
Beth’s Acceptance
Mia’s Return
Sera’s Gift
Short Paranormals
Solstice Surrender
Eva’s Last Dance
Guns ‘n’ Lovers Series (Romantic Suspense)
Red Leopard
Black Heart
Blue Knight
White Dawn (Upcoming)
Silver Noon (Upcoming)
Golden Day (Upcoming)
Go-get-‘em Women (Short Romantic Suspense Series)
The Royal Talisman
Delly’s Last Night
Vivian’s Return
Ningaloo Nights
Sian’s Run (Upcoming)
Jewells of the Morrow series (Historical Romantic Suspense)
Diana By The Moon
Heart of Vengeance
The Perilous Maiden (Upcoming)
To Soothe a Savage Heart (Upcoming)
The Cherlebury Rose (Upcoming)
The Duchess of Winter (Upcoming)
Despite The Sands Of Time (Upcoming)
Scandalous Sirens (Historical Romance Series)
Forbidden
Dangerous Beauty
Rhys Davies’ untitled story (Upcoming)
Romantic Thrillers Series
Fatal Wild Child
Dead Again
Dead Double
Terror Stash
Contemporary Romances
Lucifer’s Lover
An Inconvenient Lover
The Sherlock Holmes Series
Chronicles of the Lost Years
The Case of the Reluctant Agent
For reviews, excerpts, and more about each title, visit Tracy’s site and click on each title in turn: http://tracycooperposey.com/books/tracys-trilogies-series/
Copyright Information
This is an original publication of Tracy Cooper-Posey
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2013 by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Text design by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Cover design by Dar Albert
Wicked Smart Designs
http://wickedsmartdesigns.com
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
FIRST EDITION: July 2013
Cooper-Posey, Tracy
Kiss Across Chains/Tracy Cooper-Posey—1st Ed.
Romance—Fiction
Paranormal – Fiction
Vampires – Fiction
Later…or Earlier
Jordanian Oasis, 1099 A.D.
Because of the inordinate amount of sleep she’d got, Taylor found herself wide awake just as daylight was creeping into the oasis. She was the only one awake, she suspected and possibly the only human to watch the herd of ibex silently creep past the sleeping men and file down to the water’s edge to drink.
There were hundreds of the miniature deer-like creatures, with their long spiral horns and dainty noses. There were so many, they made the ground they covered look like a moving carpet of brown fur punctured with raked backed needles.
Food, Taylor realized, carefully rolling over onto her knees so her mail didn’t jingle. She reached for the bow and quiver of arrows lying nearby and picked them up. Moving silently on bare feet she crept toward the edge of the reeds that lined the oasis on her side. The ibex were drinking on the other side and at the moment she was no threat, although they
had seen her.
As she moved away from the protection of her tree, her gaze was caught by a darker man-sized shape at the corner of her eyes and she turned to face it, lifting her bow almost automatically in a defensive movement, even though there was no arrow nocked yet.
Alexander stood barely ten yards away from her, looking around the oasis with a puzzled expression…and dawning excitement. It was Alexander, but he was different. There were changes about him that Taylor knew it would take careful study to pinpoint. He looked…. She struggled for the word, then found it. Stronger.
Alexander wasn’t alone. He had one arm around a stunningly beautiful blonde woman. She wasn’t just pretty. She was bone-deep, classically striking in an old Hollywood glamorous way. She glowed.
But there was a deep puzzlement on her face, and a growing fear.
“I think,” Alexander said, using medieval French, “that you are supposed to say, now, that you’re not wearing a red shirt.”
Taylor dropped her bow and staggered forward through the sand toward them. “Alexander?” she whispered. “Is this ‘live long and prosper’?”
He gripped her wrist. “Taylor!”
Her heart lurched. Taylor. Not Tyra. Not ‘my lady’.
“What year?” she said. “Quickly, what year is it for you?”
He told her.
Taylor squeezed his wrist with her other hand. Her heart wouldn’t slow down. Neither would her mind, as she tried to calculate the implications, the meanings, the incredible consequences. “You’re from my future,” she told him.
He looked around. “I came here to tell you how to shoot Ibex.”
Taylor shuddered. That hadn’t happened yet. It was in her future. He really was from her future. “I’m a jumper here myself. I don’t know how this messes with history. You need to go back.”
Taylor looked at the blonde, who was frowning heavily. She was utterly lost in this conversation and Taylor had no time to explain it. It would take way too long. “Alexander will explain everything,” she told her. He’ll bring you to me and I’ll explain more. You and I have a lot to talk about. You are the only other one like me I’ve ever met.”
The blonde’s very blue eyes narrowed. “You’re speaking…English. Then what were you speaking before? Where are we?” Her eyes narrowed. “I know you. You’re the woman who lives with that rock singer.”
Taylor’s heart lurched. “Don’t say any more,” she said urgently. “Whatever you know about me, it’s from my future.”
The woman’s lips parted in surprise. She turned to Alexander. “Alex?”
His arm around her tightened. “I’m going to kiss you again, Sydney, and you need to think of your apartment and wine and relaxing and going home. Then we’ll be back there again. You have to trust me for just a moment more.”
She glanced at Taylor. Taylor nodded. “He is telling you the truth. Do as he says and you’ll get home.”
Sydney nodded, looking around the oasis once more, sizing it up with a quick, sweeping glance. She pressed her full lips together. “Fine,” she said, although her voice shook.
Alexander slid his hand gently under her hair, to cup her face. He leaned in and pressed his lips against hers. Her eyes drifted closed and Taylor heard her soft moan, just before the blonde disappeared, right in front of her eyes.
Her heart hammering, Taylor turned and hurried back to the edge of the water, to plant her arrows down in the sand and wait for Alexander to recover his senses and tell her how to hunt Ibex.
She waited and thought about how this changed…oh, only everything.