Dirty Love by Lacey Savage

differently because she'd made love to Trevor and Connor, and not to men from her own time?
    "I...” She licked her parched lips. “I don't know anything else. I've told you all I can."
    She hadn't at first, but then, as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks flittered away into months, there'd been no reason to hold onto her secrets any longer. Not that it had helped. She'd expected to be laughed at, scorned for her flights of fancy. Instead, her confession had only encouraged her captors to punish her further, to test the limits of her endurance in ways she wouldn't have imagined before being brought here.
    Wherever “here” was. She didn't know anything about the place beyond its sterile white walls, its laboratories with endless chrome surfaces and its barren, dark cells that reeked of mold and despair. A small shaft of sunlight would sometimes stream through the narrow window at the top of her cell, so she knew she wasn't underground. Beyond that, she had no idea where they'd taken her. Perhaps she was no longer even in New York.
    "How did they convince you? Did they coerce you? Did they use drugs?"
    Isy wanted to laugh, or cry. Neither would get her anywhere, so she gnawed the inside of her lip and forced her head up. Across from her, lined up along the opposite side of a long conference table, sat six people. Four men, two women. She'd never seen them before, but that didn't mean anything. She was a lab rat in a display case, poked, prodded and examined by anyone who cared to do so.
    The irony of it all came from knowing Trevor and Connor had been wrong about her. Being with them, loving them, had given her no magical powers. She was still ordinary old Isy. These people knew that, too. For all their testing, they hadn't found anything that marked her as even remotely unusual. But they tried. Oh, God, how they tried.
    "They abandoned you. Left you to us. They hate you. So why would you do it? Why give up your life for them, when they clearly don't care about you?” This new barrage of questions from a woman. Surely, another woman would understand.
    "For love,” Isy heard herself whisper, knowing the words were as insane as she must have been at the time she'd let her desire get the upper hand over her reasonable, logical mind. And what if these people were right? What if Trevor and Connor had discarded her like a soiled shirt when they realized she had no magical powers after being with them?
    "Dirty love, you mean.” A young blond man sneered and watched Isy with eyes so cold she imagined they could cut glass.
    Memories of gentle caresses and softly whispered words sliced through the chaos in her mind. She clung to the shadow of warmth those memories evoked.
    "Yes,” Isy murmured. She remembered Trevor's big hands cupping her face, Connor's teasing kisses. The memory gave her courage. She thrust her chin up a fraction of an inch. “And given the chance, I'd do it again."
    At the looks of horror that crossed the faces of those seated before her, she felt her face stretch into a grin. “And again, and again, and again."
    * * * *
    "Your men are dead."
    Isy had just taken a bite of toasted bread when the news slammed home like a bullet that ricocheted inside her skull. She tried to swallow, but the food stuck in her throat, making it hard to breathe.
    She coughed, reached for the plastic cup of filmy water that had been placed in front of her, and forced herself to drink. The lump of soggy bread finally glided down her throat, but her eyes still swam in an unfocused haze.
    "You're wrong,” she croaked out. “It's impossible."
    "We found their bodies two days ago in a parking lot behind an abandoned warehouse. Tough luck, huh?"
    The world stopped. Froze. And Isy with it.
    Her lungs couldn't draw air. Images of Trevor and Connor covered in blood, their bodies battered and twisted, crept into Isy's mind and burrowed there.
    Pain simmered through her, so sharp and acute it made it impossible to breathe. Something