VirtualDesire by Ann Lawrence Page A

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    She sat down hard on the chair. Why hadn’t she realized
immediately where the name had come from? Hadn’t her love of Arthurian legend
led her to take that fateful class where she’d met R. Walter? Hadn’t a love of
legend brought them together?
    Bending over, she reached for the book. It lay open to the
pages on King Arthur’s final—and mortal—battle. Sandav . The knight had
survived, one of the few to do so, because he was so beautiful men would not
fight him, just in case he was a messenger of God, an angel from heaven.
    Vad fit that description. He was beautiful in a masculine,
hard-edged way. His bones were those of a man whose genes had been bred to
perfection. His cheekbones were meant to be carved in marble or on a wooden
figurehead at the prow of a ship. Or was that always a woman? Her mind was
muzzy.
    She shot from her bedroom and stood over him before she
could stop herself, the book clutched to her chest. The light from her bedroom
painted a single golden stripe across his bare shoulder. For a moment she just
stared in sheer appreciation.
    Outside, thunder rumbled, and for a brief moment the room
flashed white as lightning split the sky and broke the spell.
    “Vad.” She touched his shoulder. He came awake in an
instant. The long knife appeared in his hand.
    “It’s me,” she whispered, sitting at his side. “You can stop
pretending now.” She pushed the knife away. “I know who you’re not.”
    Wow, she thought as he shook his hair from his eyes; he gave
new meaning to the term pillow head .
    Vad slipped the knife back in its sheath. Then his hand clamped
about her wrist. “Woman, you had only to ask if you wished to share my bed.”
    “Huh,” she said, distracted by the way the sheet pooled
across his hips.
    “Now hear me. Clearly,” he said, his voice low and rough
from sleep. “You are quite small and, I doubt not, would take up little space
to disturb my rest, but I do not want you in my bed.”
    The furnace heat of his body chilled to ice cold as he rose
from the bed. The light from her bedroom gleamed on his naked flanks as he
pulled on his leather breeches, jerking the lacing closed over a flat stomach
furred with golden hair.
    When he straightened, his hair loose about his shoulders,
his ring-adorned arms folded on his chest, she almost swallowed her tongue. The
cheekbones she’d just been musing on were hard slashes of anger.
    “If I want a woman, I ask her. I did not ask you.”
    “How dare you!” she screeched, leaping to her feet on the
sofa bed. She flapped the book at him, rocking on the thin mattress. “I was not
trying to jump your bones. I found your name, stupid. You can stop pretending.”
    “My name? Stupid? Pretending?” He raked his hair back,
dragging the braids behind his ear. His face was harsh, every line intensified
by the deep shadows. “I am not pretending.”
    “Sure.” She turned the book and thumped her finger on the
decorated page. “It’s all here. Your name—Sandav—that was really a stupid pick.
Sandav is famous. It took me a minute to remember because of…well…the spiked
punch, I guess, but I remember now. It’s all right here.” She tapped the page
again. “So now you can tell me who you really are. Come on. Is it really Nick?
Or Nicky? Nicky what? Come on. Confess.”
     
    Nausea crawled through his belly. Nicky. Nicky . The
name twisted in his mind. He heard a voice, a faraway voice—a woman’s. The dark
mist spun from the corners of the room, rose behind Gwen like the waves behind
her Music Pier. He swallowed to contain the sickness burning up his throat.
    “Vad, what’s wrong?” She jumped off the bed and extended her
hand.
    He avoided it and hurried to the bathing chamber. There he
stood at the tub, confused, looking for the water spigot. Impatiently he jerked
on the silvery handles. Water thundered into the tub. He splashed it on his
face and gulped great handfuls of the icy water.
    When she placed her hand on his