Timeless (Pandora Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Rousseau.
    “Do you always talk so much?”
    Charlotte rounded her shoulders and tucked her arms close to her sides as she led him through the mostly deserted streets. “Yes, and before you ask, yes, I talk to myself a lot, too.”
    “Why would I ask that?” The female confused him, but she also fascinated him. Vane couldn’t remember meeting anyone quite like her in his nearly five thousand years. “Wait, why do you talk to yourself?”
    “Because I’m fascinating and insightful, and I enjoy my own company.”
    “You’re being facetious?”
    “More sarcastic, but I suppose facetious works as well.”
    Vane stared down at the sidewalk with a furrowed brow. “You’re angry?”
    Humans were so very strange. Rarely did they say what they actually meant. Instead, they relied on body language and awkward subtext to illustrate their emotions, which all seemed rather unnecessary and confounding.
    “No.” Charlotte huffed as she swiped her wet, raven-colored hair back from her face. “I’m tired. I’m cold. I’m hungry. I just had the mother of bad dates, and I think I might be going crazy.” She bit down on the corner of her bottom lip and breathed deeply through her nose. “I’m not mad, though.”
    That explanation, Vane understood. Presented with specific problems, he at least had a chance of correcting a few of the woman’s grievances. “Just a minute.” Sliding his jacket off, he draped it over Charlotte’s shoulders and pulled it tight around her. “Now, you’re warm. What was the next complaint?”
    “They weren’t complaints,” she argued, but she snuggled down into his leather coat and sighed. Light spilled from the windows of a nearby café, illuminating Charlotte’s flushed cheeks and reflecting off the water droplets in her hair. “Thank you…Vane. Can I call you Vane? I mean, I know it’s your name, but maybe you prefer Lieutenant or Shiva or Lieutenant Shiva. I don’t want to be presumptuous. If you don’t like—”
    “Vane is fine,” he interrupted. Great galaxies, she can talk. “I believe you said you were also tired, hungry, and…crazy.” He didn’t quite understand that last one, but the other two he could rectify. “This place serves food, correct?”
    Charlotte nodded, and for once, she did so silently.
    “I don’t have any currency from your…um, from your country, but I could sit with you while you eat and rest.” He watched her nose crinkle as she smiled—such an odd thing for him to notice. “Is that acceptable?”
    “That’s perfectly acceptable.” Instead of entering the building, she started walking again. “I really just want to go home,” she said when he fell into step beside her. “When I get there, I might never leave.”
    “You’re scared.”
    This time, he didn’t have to question her emotion. The female’s lower lip quivered when she spoke, and tension bled from every word as she clutched her bag to her chest like a lifeline.
    Vane wanted to say something to reassure her, to comfort her. Until he retrieved the Jewel of Atrea and delivered the Morphling to Nekron to face charges, however, nothing was certain. In fact, the longer he remained in the past, the more uncertain the future became.
    “Charlotte, I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
    Damn it. Vane didn’t know what had compelled him to say it, and worse, now said, he couldn’t take it back.
    “Because that’s your job?”
    “Yes.” The half-truth tasted bitter on his tongue. “I was sent here to protect you.”
    “You said that before, but I still don’t know what it means. Who sent you?”
    “My commander.”
    “Are you being purposely evasive?”
    Yes. “No.”
    “So, are you Navy? Army? I’m betting Marines.”
    “Special forces,” he interjected. Dishonesty had never suited him, but he couldn’t very well tell her he’d traveled through time from an alien planet. “Uh, very top secret.”
    Humans had made great strides during the twenty-first