Free Kiss Across Swords (Kiss Across Time Series) by Tracy Cooper-Posey

them from completing them. Raymond and his men, including Brody, were beating off the Fatimids and protecting the engines.
    Taylor sought for and found Brody’s tall figure among the allies. In his blue and white tunic, he stood out. She was shocked to realize he was liberally daubed in blood and the blades of his sword and knife were red with it. He was fighting as hard as the men he directed, and shouting orders at the same time in a parade ground voice she could hear from her sheltered position behind the seed bags.
    The fight stopped abruptly. She didn’t see the Fatimids give up but suddenly, they all laid down their arms and were backing away from the engines.
    A group of five of the Fatimids was forced to their knees in front of Brody and another man with red hair and a green tunic that Taylor guessed was Raymond, Brody’s superior. Brody had an arrow sticking out of his left arm. She hadn’t seen that happen. He was leaning on his sword as if he were tired as he spoke to the men kneeling before him.
    The Fatimids spoke quietly, never lifting their gaze from the ground at their knees.
    Brody moved with lightning-fast speed. He lifted the sword, swung it and decapitated the man and was walking away all before Taylor barely began to react.
    She clapped her hand over her mouth, sure that this time she would be physically sick. But Brody reached the tent itself and she found she had not moved from her crouch on the ground.
    Brody leaned on the sword, looking at her. “You didn’t stay in the tent,” he growled. Even his face had blood sprayed on it.
    “The arrows were shooting through the tent. I figured I was just as safe out here, behind these seed bags. They’re like sandbags.” She stared at him. Brody was nothing like she had ever seen before. Not from him. She let her gaze settle on the arrow. “Do you want me to tend to that?”
    “No, thanks.” He pushed into the tent. “Mordacai!”
    A small man with tight black curls hurried in after him and Taylor followed in behind.
    “My lord?” Mordacai asked Brody.
    “I need the wound kit and let’s open up the tent.”
    Taylor sank back down onto the chest again. “What can I do?”
    “Help me get everything off around this arrow,” Brody said shortly, as he worked at his sword belt.
    She rose again and worked the belt undone, then eased the bloody tunic off. The hauberk unlaced at the shoulders, but the arrow pierced the sleeve, so Brody shook his head. “It stays until the arrow is out. Just get my gauntlets off for me. Flexing the muscle hurts right now.”
    “Just hurts?” she asked.
    “Just hurts,” he confirmed. “It’s not fatal. Nothing is,” he added softly for her ears only. “Except spears. The spears here are basically wooden stakes with metal tips. One of those through the chest is a stake through the heart.” He caught her eye. “I saved Veris from one this morning.” He grimaced. “We recognized each other as vampire immediately.”
    Mordacai hurried in with a wooden box which he placed next to Brody and hurried away.
    “That’s why you liked each other?” Taylor asked.
    “No.” He blew out his breath. “It’s Veris. You tell me why you first liked him.”
    She tugged the gauntlets off his hands. “Because he’s so large he sucks all the air out of any room he’s in. Because you can’t look away when he’s there. Because he’s Veris.”
    “Exactly,” Brody said dryly. “Sometimes, I wonder what he saw in me.”
    “You say he and you were fighting this morning?” Taylor asked.
    “Yes.”
    Taylor thought of what she had seen of Brody out there just now, bawling out orders and leading his men. The ruthless leader who had just summarily executed the leader of the opposing side and barely remembered it now. The man who was now gripping the arrow stuck in his arm with pliers and was…
    “What are you doing ?” she asked, alarmed.
    “Pushing it through.”
    “What?”
    He held out the pliers. “It’s my