Tied With a Bow

right arm held her waist, his left pressed across her collarbone. She felt something prick her skin and realized that his left hand held a knife, the blade lying against the column of her throat. Her coat gaped open, exposing her skin. Ears buzzing, she tried to move.
    From between the trees, a second man appeared in front of her. He was stunning in a different way from the first. His face lacked any traces of feminine beauty but was no less compelling. The moonlight shone like a spotlight on his bronze skin and on the damp golden brown waves skimming his shoulders. He, too, was bare-chested and bloody, with a dagger in hand, but he was taller and broader than the man at her back.
    The lighter one pressed his hips against her bottom. Through the thin material of her swimsuit, his erection probed her. Startled, she jerked forward.
    Ugh! What the hell?
    “Let go of me,” she snapped, trying to squirm free as he whispered foreign words in her ear. “I said let go of me, you creep!”
    The bronze one narrowed gold-flecked brown eyes and gave a sharp jerk of his head at the one behind her. The wrist over her collarbone slid down slowly toward her chest, the tip of the dagger snagging and cutting her bikini strap. The blade peeled the material away from her breast.
    She cursed, struggling to escape, and the knife nicked her skin. The slice stung, then burned. She froze and sucked in a breath.
    The bronze one scowled and clenched his jaw, his liquid brown eyes capturing her gaze. “He thinks to taunt me with your naked beauty, but no distraction will prevent me from avenging every injury he visits upon you and on those who came before.”
    Her jaw dropped. “What? I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to be part of it,” she said.
    The bronze one moved too fast for her eyes to follow, but suddenly they were fighting and she was caught between them, pinned in place by their battling bodies. She could do nothing, not even breathe.
    “Stop!” she screamed and sat bolt upright. Panting and shaken, her mind raced.
    A damn dream, she realized. Just a nightmare!
    Her eyes darted around the room, finding the familiar . . . her Christmas tree strung with white lights and covered with plump bulbs, the wrapped gifts beneath it, the scent of gingerbread and vanilla icing.
    Harry Connick Jr. crooned carols, and an empty wineglass sat next to the stack of photographs she’d been reviewing for inclusion in the article she’d been working on. The door to the deck was closed, bolted. She wore a navy nightshirt and thick socks, not a wet bikini.
    Her galloping heart faltered, and she pushed back her sweat-dampened hair.
    “More dreams of him and that ring,” she murmured, trying to shake off a sense of foreboding as her heart churned.
    The dreams are getting closer together. She rubbed her arms.
    In college, she’d found an antique ring while walking through a deserted section of campus. She’d felt compelled to slide the crude ring on, and it had circled her thumb possessively as she studied it. The ring’s raised feature had been a coin capturing the image of a long-dead Roman emperor, and there’d been a deep scratch scoring the coin’s face, as if someone had tried to X the emperor out.
    Only after she’d stared for a long time did the realization dawn that the grit on the ring wasn’t dirt. It was dried blood. She’d taken the ring off, but she couldn’t bring herself to simply turn it in to campus security’s Lost and Found collection.
    Being a journalism major, she’d investigated, trying to determine how the ring had been lost and by whom. There had been no recent fights or assaults, no missing persons, and no inquiries or postings about a lost ring.
    “It’s like this ring fell from the sky,” she’d told a friend, and the image stuck. Kate pictured it falling and landing with a thunk. She saw the fresh blood on its surface explode outward into tiny flecks as it struck the ground. The vision was so vivid that at moments she could almost believe she’d seen the ring fall rather than having found it on the ground while walking.
    Then, three days after she’d discovered the ring, it disappeared from her dorm room and she’d begun dreaming about the bronze-skinned man. Often she dreamed of him standing on rooftops or swooping through the air. He either wore the ring or dropped it.
    Sometimes in her dreams, he wasn’t alone; she was in his arms. They kissed in places she’d never been. And