Dawn Flindt - The Man From Forever

She sat on one of the rocks and faced into the center. If there’d been someone beside her, their shoulders would have touched, and she didn’t see how there would have been enough room for dancing in the middle if every rock had had an occupant. An incredible bond must have been forged here. All right, there’d been political squabbling, conflicts between Captain Jack and some of the more militant rebels, but on a cold yet peaceful night, surely the leaders had come here with a singleness of thought, a shared dream for freedom.

She rocked forward and rested her elbows on her knees, eyes closed to slits that blurred her vision and freed her from the question of who or what shared this place with her. To belong, to be part of a large clan, to put aside petty differences in order to survive, to have learned the necessity of depending on one another…

How long she’d been sitting here she couldn’t say. She didn’t think it had been more than a couple of minutes, and yet she was surprised by how quickly she’d gone from wondering if she should have brought along a can of Mace to losing herself in sensation.

She was suddenly restless, so uneasy with herself that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to conquer the emotion. It came at her more and more often these days—quiet and yet, rough questions about where her life was heading. She’d felt like that sometimes back in high school when warm spring nights and loud music and a grin from a boy sent her heart spinning out of control. She’d weathered those adolescent emotions, smothered them under work goals and ambition and the excitement of knowing that she and Dr. Grossnickle and the university that employed them were on the brink of the anthropological find of three decades. Colleagues, the press, even the bureaucrats and legal types she’d been butting heads with over excavation rights assumed she spent every waking moment immersed in exploring this primitive civilization.

What they didn’t know about was the search, a goal—or something—she couldn’t define.

She needed hard-driving music, to be behind the wheel of a speeding convertible with the wind screaming through her hair. She needed—all right, she needed a man to quiet her body.

After sucking one lungful of air after another into her, she managed to conquer the worst of her energy, but she knew it would only erupt again unless she started moving. Standing, she reached for the brochure, thinking to continue the history lesson. Then she froze.

There was someone out there—a man. Naked but for a loincloth. He clutched a gleaming black knife in strong fingers, and yet she couldn’t make herself concentrate on the weapon.

A savage. Savage.

The word slid inside her, solid and yet misty like a vivid dream that fades upon awakening. But this was no dream.

She stepped over the rock, freeing herself from the dance ring’s confinement, not so she could run, but because—

Because her legs had decided to walk toward him.

He didn’t move; she would swear to that. And yet he kept changing. It was, she finally decided, the way the sun greeted him, lent light to his dark flesh and made his ebony hair glisten. She couldn’t say how old he was; he stood too far away for her to make out his features. Still, if the truth was in his broad shoulders, the flat plane of his belly, the proud way he held his head, he was a man in his prime.

Prime. Savage. Warrior.

There wasn’t enough air at The Land Of Burned Out Fires. If he’d stolen it, she would soon have to demand he return it to her, but maybe—probably—the fault lay in her.

This wonderfully lonely land had remained locked in the past. She didn’t care why that was, didn’t care whether she ever left it. Somehow—although it was impossible—she’d found a primitive brave, and he was staring at her, and the space between them had become charged.

She moved closer, a skill so complex that it should have been beyond her, because her need to touch him, to look into his eyes, to feel his hands on her, was like an explosion inside her. She should say something, ask him to explain the impossible, but if she spoke, he might evaporate, and she needed to stretch out this moment, enlarge it until it became enough to last a lifetime.

One step, two, three, and still he remained. She could now see that he had a small scar over his right shoulder blade and the fine hairs on his arms and legs were as dark as the back of Captain Jack’s cave. His thighs—the loincloth exposed every inch of them—looked as strong and durable as the lava that dominated the land. Those legs could, she knew, lock a woman between them.

They could take her places only imagined before, awaken a gnawing beast of hunger that could only be filled by passion—raw and unadorned passion.

The air was gone again. She had to fight to breathe. The effort did something to her, snapped something deep inside and reminded her of who and where she was.

This man couldn’t be. He couldn’t!

Eyes narrowed against the sun, the warrior watched the woman race for her wagon, her car. The urge to bury the ancient knife in her and avenge what she’d done to him was powerful, and yet, now that he’d seen her up close, looked into her eyes, anger and rage had to share space with another emotion.

She’d returned. He wanted to grab her and insist she tell him why. Most of all he’d demand to know whether her presence was what had awakened him.

Belly empty, he cast around for a rabbit or other small animal, but even as he thought he detected a furtive movement, his attention returned to the woman. She’d reached her car, and although she was too far away for him to see anything of her expression, her body language told him a great deal.

She was afraid of him. Even though he was no longer near her, she continued to carry herself as if fear rode deep and full and low inside her. She might call others of her kind to her. If she did, they’d hunt him with powerful weapons and his blood would join that of his ancestors who’d died here. But he didn’t see that as something to avoid. Death, maybe, would bring him the peace he’d known as a small child.

Once again he tried to put his thoughts to finding something to eat before the strangers started swarming over what had once had been his land, but she hadn’t yet left in the fast, loud wagon he’d heard her kind call a car. Until she had, all he could do was watch. She’d stopped running, but probably only because she’d become winded. She now walked as fast as she could, an awkward and jerky movement that used much more energy than it would have if she moved with her hips.

What did he care! Let her break her leg on the ungiving rocks. If she did, the green-clad men and women who were today’s soldiers would come and bear her away. Except then she’d tell them what had made her run, and his uneasy peace would be shattered.

She’d reached her car. It took her a long time to open the door, and he guessed her fingers shook so that the task was nearly impossible. It was too late to bury his knife in her back and silence her. She’d gotten away!

A sound like a bear’s deep growl escaped his throat. Turning his back on her, he stepped around the dance ring and stood where she’d been just before she ran. What fools the strangers were! Those who didn’t laugh and whoop like stupid children, walked slowly, reverently around it. At first he’d been mystified by their actions but finally he’d decided that they must think this weed-clogged circle of rocks was something to be revered. It had been, once. But the enemy had defiled it with their presence and Cho-ocks’s magic had long ago left.

Left like everything of his time except for him.

Another growl threatened to break free, but knowing it would only tear through him like what he’d felt at his son’s death, he stifled the sound. Looking down, he imagined the exact spot where the woman had placed her boots.