A Knight to Remember by Bridget Essex

it’s in danger of attacking me.   I breathe out for a long moment, try to keep my jaw from dropping onto the ground.   Maiden.   Protect me?   The idea of her protecting me shouldn’t ignite a very serious fire that races through my heart (and between my legs), not because I need protecting…but that she would have thought of such a thing in regards to me.   Like she’s actually thinking about me.   And my safety.
    That’s so…thoughtful.
    “That’s very sweet of you,” I manage, then, not exactly certain what to say. “But…I don’t need protecting.   And it’s a mall.   The only slightly aggressive thing in there is the lotion salespeople.”
    Virago gazes at me with her piercing blue eyes, and then nods her head, inclining it toward me with a graceful bend, her wolf tail and long, silken black hair pooling over her shoulder and over her right breast.   “I will do as my lady asks of me,” she says softly, and then she’s unbuckling the scabbard from across her breasts, and pulling it over her head in one smooth motion that, for the rest of my life, I’ll see in my happiest dreams.   She’s grace personified.   I wish I didn’t notice that so much.
    “Thank you,” I manage, unlocking my back door and opening it for her.   Virago sets the sword down gently on the back seat, as if she’s setting a relic on an altar and not a gigantic sword on a polyester car seat that’s covered with clumps of shed dog hair.
    And then we’re headed, together, for the mall.
    “So we’ll get you a jacket, and a shirt, and pants, and some shoes and some underwear…”   I tick the items off my fingers and hold the door open for her.   Virago stops at that, brow raised, and does a little bow, then, hand at the top of the door, the curve of her body complementing mine as she leans over me, the heat of her skin so close I can feel it.
    “After you , m’lady,” she says, inclining her beautiful head and leaning down a little as she whispers those soft, low words into my ear.
    Okay.   Would that be considered a come on?   Could it be anything but?   I shiver a little as her warm breath drifts over the skin of my neck, and I breathe out, walking through the door, trying not to redden.   But after I walk through, Virago continues to hold the door open for a woman and a stroller, and a gaggle of teenagers, and then a little old man who pushes his walker ahead of him.   So I really shouldn’t feel special.   But she certainly didn’t whisper in anyone else’s ear!   Right?
    Holly.   Seriously.   You’re grasping at straws here.   I hold onto my frappe’s straw, actually, taking another sip.   I realize at that moment that I am literally grasping at straws.
    “Are you from the Knights of Valor Festival?” asks one of the teenagers, a slight brunette with a boy-band-of-the-hour t-shirt and braces, beaming up at Virago as she pauses in the mall’s entryway.   Virago follows her through the door, head cocked, looking to me with brows up, eyes appraising.
    “Yes!   She is!”   I tell the teen, and I take Virago’s arm, my fingers curling around the smooth, warm leather of her gauntlets as I lead her through the second door, into the mall proper, leaving the teenagers behind.
    I’m about to start power walking down the mall corridor toward J. C. Penney’s, but I pause, because Virago is pausing.   She’s gazing out at the mall that opens up in front of us with wide eyes, with perfect full lips slightly parted in wonder.
    Huh.   It probably would look kind of weird to someone not from this world.
    It’s pretty much like any mall I’ve ever been to.   There are free-standing particle-board kiosks with people hawking cell phone cases, overpriced lotion and free piercings to go with your new silver earrings.   There’s the fountain in the middle of the mall corridor, right beneath the big skylight dome that looks as if it was (and it really was ) built in the eighties, with the cartoon