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

non-dominant hand and it’s been centuries. You’ll have to do it.”
    She backed up a step. “Do what?”
    “Push the arrow through and cut off the head, so you can pull it back out.”
    All around them, the sides of the tent were falling on the ground as servants unlaced them from the roof and rolled them up. It left a filmy layer of thinnest gauze as the walls.
    Brody hefted the big, rounded-head pliers. “Either you do it, or someone from this time who has no idea about infections and cleanliness does it,” he said.
    “You can’t get infections,” she said, but took the pliers anyway.
    Brody held out his arm. “You’ll be more gentle than anyone else,” he added.
    You don’t feel as much pain in vampire form . It was on the tip of her tongue, but she held it back at the last second. Now was not the time to begin that conversation.
    Brody placed his hand on her shoulder and the other on the arm of the chair. Taylor swallowed hard. “I don’t believe I’m doing this,” she muttered and took a good grip on the arrow.
    “Do it fast,” he told her.
    She put hard pressure on the shaft and felt it move through the tissues in his arm. Nausea swept over her, but she gritted her jaw and breathed hard and kept pushing. The flesh beneath was the worst, because it stretched before it gave way. Taylor was nearly hyperventilating when it was done.
    Brody, too. But his voice was calm. He pushed the links of the chainmail up his arm to expose the metal head of the arrow, now red with his blood. He gripped the other side of it with his other hand. “Use the heavy sheers to cut it off,” he told her. “You’re nearly done.”
    She picked up the sheers, still breathing heavily. With a series of cuts, she sawed the metal head off the arrow. She made sure there were no splinters hanging from the end of the arrow.
    Brody pulled it out of his arm. It made a sucking sound.
    Taylor clapped her hand over her mouth. “Where?” she tried to say, looking around wildly.
    He pointed. There was a covered bucket sitting in the corner. She staggered over to it, pulled off the lid and vomited hard and tiredly into it. When she was finished, she put the lid back on and pulled herself back onto the chest.
    Brody was naked from the waist up and wrapping a bandage around his arm. He was scowling.
    “You’re angry?” she asked.
    He shook his head.
    “For heaven’s sake, now is not the time to be coy about anything. If we’re to get out of this, we have to stick together. I’ve got to know what you’re thinking. All the time, not just when it’s convenient for you.”
    “You won’t like what I’m thinking,” he told her.
    “I’m a big girl. I can handle hearing things I don’t like. Stop being the peacemaker for once.”
    He looked up from the bandage, startled. “Is that what I do?”
    She bit her lip. “You try to protect me. A lot. Mostly from Veris.”
    “I just know what he can be like.”
    She leaned forward. “News flash. After four years, so do I.”
    “Not really. Not the worst of it. Not all of it. His disappearing act in Europe caught you by surprise.”
    She shook her head. “Surprise, no. I knew about them. Distress, yes. But not for the reasons you think. I’m working it out. Just not the way you and Veris work it out. I’m female and I’m human. Of course I’m going to work it out a different way.” She tilted her head. “So what are you going to tell me that I won’t like?”
    He tied off the bandage using his teeth and the fingers of his right hand and sat back. “I’ve always suspected you held a romanticized view of me. ‘Brody the poet.’ Today just confirmed it. You don’t see me at all. Not the real me. If you did you wouldn’t have been so shocked by what happened here just now. You would have accepted it as part of who I am. You would have known that’s what I’m like. I was a slave, I’m a soldier. I’m just a savage who happened to strike it lucky and ended up owning land and