"Gabriel, I don't need to be babied."

"I will try to remember that." Ignoring her frown, he swept her hair back from her forehead. "Just as I thought. You are bleeding."

Sara blinked at the blood on his fingers. "I-I don't feel anything."

Navarre knew it was a lie. She felt heat where his hand anchored her cheek and pleasure where his arm met her shoulder. She was desperately trying to close her mind to him, but their link made that impossible. She still did not understand this.

Adrian Draycott held out a heavy piece of wool cloth. "Use this tartan."

Sara was studying the fire as Gabriel slid the wool around her shoulders and raised a soft piece of cotton to clean the blood from her forehead.

"Tell me the rest, Sara. What did these men do to you?"

Sara listened to the fire, feeling the weight of memories bleeding still. Why wouldn't he let her forget?

"Why?" He picked her thought from the air. "Because you will not forget. It gnaws inside you,"

Gabriel said.

"Stop reading my thoughts." She stood up suddenly, stiff and weary. Even now the memories were minutes-fresh, bleeding-warm. "You're right, they did hurt me. I was shunned." She smiled wryly.

"In your time, it would have been called excommunication, I suppose."

His fingers curved, gentle but inexorable about her wrist. He turned her hand and shoved up the cuff, muttering a long, harsh oath.

The scars were paler now. They didn't hurt Sara at all, at least not physically. Only her shoulder remained stiff, unhealed.

She tried to pull away, but his fingers tightened. They loosened immediately when he saw her wince. "How was this done?" His voice was soft and very dangerous.

"In the crossfire. It was chaos-my partner panicked. Things...got out of hand."

That was the official version that had gone in Sara's report. It was the version that her partner had forwarded directly to Harding after their return. At the time, while he lay bleeding from a gunshot wound, he had made it very clear he thought Sara was a detriment to the Bureau, and if he'd had his way she would have been gone already.

Sara had every word carved on her heart. But she only shrugged. "The details aren't important."

"Of course they are. Right now I hear every taunt this partner of yours made. Every threat. All because you saved the innocent ones rather than protect an adult man."

She'd forgotten that she couldn't lie to him. Not while this strange link connected them. "I had...a choice. It's done. Old news. I'm supposed to put it all behind me."

Navarre's face was only inches from hers, and Sara thought she saw torment there. It was as if he had relived her own pain that long day and night. "The man was a coward. A pig. He should be punished. It will be my pleasure, in fact."

"It's my responsibility, not yours."

He lifted her wrist, studied the track of scars, and then kissed the skin very gently.

Sara closed her eyes at the touch of his lips. The air seemed full, almost dense with energy. "I don't believe any of this." She shook her head. "Magic is for children."

"Only because there is no wonder left in your world. A true pity, Sara."

She stiffened. "Oh, really? We have trains and airplanes and fax machines. Why would we need wonder?"

"Everyone needs wonder. If you believe anything, believe in this." Adrian Draycott turned from the fireplace, studying the two of them. "I am not needed here, but one piece of advice I will give you.

Time has shifted in ways of great possibility this night. Do not waste the precious gift you have been given, because gifts may be taken in the passing of a moment."

The door closed softly.

"I'm going, too," Sara said stiffly. "I've shared my nightmares. What more is left?"

Navarre felt her anger, her confusion. He could not let her leave with so much unsaid and undone.

"There is more to be faced."

"You mean the shadows that move like oil? Things that confound every law of science? No more.

I've had enough for one night."

His fingers curled over her hand, a restraint for all that his touch was gentle. "You did not flee from the storm. You did not flinch from an attacker. Do not run now."

He felt her pulse begin to pound.

"Remember." He whispered the word, slipping over the link between them.

"No."

Gabriel felt the force of her resistance, tempered by fear and old pain. He felt every struggle her mind made.

"No more talk, Gabriel. No more magic spells and memories. I'm too tired."

He shifted, his fingers curving over her cheek. "I could change that," he said softly.

She made a broken sound and shoved him away.

The force of her indecision was like the cry of the wind and Navarre heard every note. "I know, Sara." His breath touched her cheek. "I can feel all of it."

She closed her eyes. "Are we always going to have this...awareness between us?"

"Once the link is forged, there is no way to sever it." He spoke slowly. "It was the cost of protecting you and your world."

"I don't want it." She spun, her forehead against the wall. "I don't want to feel you like this. Make it stop."

"I cannot. What has been freely given in the circling cannot be taken back." It hurt Gabriel to continue, but honesty demanded no less. "Yet I do have the skill of forgetting. If you truly wish, I can wipe all the memories away. A still, quiet pool, as if it never happened."

She didn't turn, her body taut as a drawn bowstring. "You could do that, make me forget everything that's happened here?"

"I could. If you truly wish it."

She wavered, turning her face toward the dancing fire. Such beauty and strength, the Crusader thought, caught by awe and something deeper that he had not yet put a name to.

"Everything gone," she whispered. "Good along with bad." Then she shook her head. "I won't choose forgetting. Just tell me how to accept what I can't believe in."

His fingers slid to anchor her waist. Navarre felt her shifting awareness of his body so close to hers.

With his touch, images spilled into her mind, part new and part memories. In the newness of their contact, she had not yet understood how to separate the two.

"From moment to single moment, Sara. Feel us, skin to skin. From there we will knit the past together and knot it to the future. This we can do, I promise."

His hand traced her neck.

The bond between them snapped tight, dancing and shimmering with energy forged of old joys and older pain. Sara's breath caught. Navarre saw heat spill into her face.

She tasted the passion that had slept for almost eight centuries.

"This is insane. How can I believe any of it?"

"Believe," Gabriel whispered.

She started to pull away.

And then with a broken sigh she turned. Very carefully she set one palm against his chest.

The simple gesture was like the blow of a sword. Navarre flinched at the force of it, and she missed none of his response, her hand sliding up his chest. He read her emotion in her eyes and through the dancing thread between them.

Her eyes widened, dark with wonder. "So much is here. So much that feels real to me." Her fingers traced his locked jaw. Her heat was already seducing him.

She drew a low sigh and pulled him closer. "I want you touching me." Her mouth brushed his, loosing a wave of raw hunger. Time seemed to bend and the room seemed to stretch, vast with energy, rich with memories.

Navarre forced his muscles not to move, kept his hands at his sides so he would not take. Taking would have been easy, and he did not want the easy way. Not with this woman.

He drew his thoughts back, hiding the force of his temptation.

"I can see now." She moved closer. "You're afraid you will hurt me. That we will somehow be betrayed as we were in the past."

She shivered with sudden memories of heat and terror. "I remember he had ropes to tie me and a drug. He put me inside some kind of trunk."

Navarre's hands gripped her shoulders. "You remember this?"

She nodded blindly. "I fought, but he had two other men to help him."

"You see-and yet I cannot? You are certain?"

"The images are too real to doubt. It was stifling, Gabriel."

His body was rigid with tension. "Not Adrian? He did not take you?"

"No, another. The name Philip is all I remember."

Navarre whispered a graphic oath. "I should have known. What happened to you then?"

"My nails broke and my fingers bled from my fight to escape. How much I prayed for you to come -"

Her words broke Gabriel's heart. "And I should have, my love. I was a fool of the worst sort."

"This man had great power. A very twisted man. I can see his face now. He wanted-" Her fingers closed to fists.

Gabriel didn't need her to finish. The image of her captor was blindingly clear in his mind. "Philip, bastard son of the king. The craven blackguard. If only I had known."

He held her while she shuddered, his hand in her hair.

And then she pulled away. Her face turned up to his. "I want your skin against me, Gabriel. I want to feel heat, not cold fear." She bit her lip, uncertain. Her hand closed on the smooth wool of his cloak.

She took another slow step toward him. Their bodies met.

Dizzy with hunger, Navarre summoned the willpower not to grip and seize, drinking from the well of memories.

"You won't make this easy, will you?"

His hands clenched. "I think not."

"For a man who believes he is evil, you are full of goodness."

"What goodness?" The knight closed away the thought of her body, the scent of her hair. When her tongue brushed his mouth, he closed away that sweet heat, too.

The pressure of her breasts was beyond even his control to resist. Blinded by hunger, his hands speared into her soft hair.

Sara bit his lip gently and slid her body against his with a sigh. "I loved you then, Gabriel. I see it clearly, even if you can't." She pushed him back against the wall. "Now be quiet and I'll make us both remember."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

HE WAS A MAN well versed in dealing out death but Sara had never felt safer in her life.

Through the link so much was clear now. The scattered images of horses and the smell of spices on a hot wind made perfect sense. They had been betrayed in an age of peril and war. Now they were given a second chance, even if it lasted only an hour or a night.

He didn't answer. His eyes were still haunted by what she had just told him.

She touched his jaw, forcing his gaze to hers. "I don't know if this is love, Gabriel. I don't know how we came to be here after centuries have passed or what the future holds. But I'm not going to play fair tonight." She let her desire spill between them as she explored the heat of his mouth. She found the taut muscles of his waist and slid her body closer, hearing his low oath. Her hunger became his, prowling and goading.

No going back.

She felt her buttons slide free, felt the tartan fall. Her damp clothes slid away without any help, tossed across the thick rug.