The dream has returned, although different this time. I had never had dreams as vivid and upsetting before I moved into my great-aunt’s house in Boston. From the first, I thought it was just because the house was old, but the dreams persisted and had gotten stronger and more frequent once I had decided to work on the Arabia excavation. Last night, I vividly saw the pages of the magazine opened to a two-page spread of the Steamboat Arabia. Are the dreams what led me to the Arabia, or are they somehow connected to Jake? Have the dreams begun again because I was temporarily separated from the Arabia when Jake and I missed the boat at Waverly?
The dream may have been prompted by recent events, but it is the man from the dream that is the most stunning. Tall, lean and dark haired, he has invaded my dreams from the beginning but was never quite clear enough to see. His deep voice and rumbling words were always indistinguishable. But this time, he was familiar, achingly so…
I’m lost. There’s no doubt about it and I don’t even want to think about what that means. I feel as if I’m floating between two worlds. Both are at once familiar and foreign and I have no idea what to do about it. Am I actually dreaming this whole adventure?
If the Arabia didn’t sink, I wouldn’t have been at the archeological dig and therefore wouldn’t have come here. I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to get back to my present, I can’t change history. But is that huge, world-view history, or personal history? I can manage to leave the world history alone, but yeah, my personal history has certainly changed.
Bri shot straight up in bed; gasping and shaking uncontrollably. She knew her eyes were open but the pitch black of night eliminated any chance that she could see. Sweat trickled down her back as she tried to find a landmark to anchor herself.
“It was just a dream,” she whispered, her throat scratchy. Hugging a pillow to her chest, rocking quietly, she reached over to turn on the lamp at her bedside, only to find none. It took long seconds to realize she wasn’t in her own home in Boston, or even in a bed in a strange town, but on board the Arabia.
“Are you all right?” His movement was only a shift in the air and she wondered if he was part of her dream. She shivered in awareness.
“You’re here?” Was she speaking to the man in her dream, or a ghost? With a shaking hand, she brushed the hair out of her eyes.
“Of course. Well, yes, I am here at the moment.” He sat beside her and took her hand, brushing his fingers down her cheek.
She wavered, trying to separate dream from reality. Yet there was something intimately familiar in his profile, in the way he leaned toward her to press a gentle kiss to her brow before she felt the mattress give as he stood.
“Don’t go.” She twined her fingers with his to keep him beside her. She couldn’t explain the dream, but didn’t want to slide back into it again.
She turned, her lips searching in the dark for him. She skimmed kisses along his jaw, rough from a day’s whiskers. He groaned but didn’t retreat and she grew bolder, laying a hand on his thigh as her mouth settled on his.
That was not the right word, she hazily thought as she drowned in the sweetness, which turned quickly to heat. Her heart, definitely not quiet or settled, pounded so loudly he had to hear. Jake was the one constant in a world turned awry. His lips were firm, and hot, and though she had initiated the kiss, he swiftly took over. She was so tired of trying to understand, to control, even to dare hope things would return to normal once they reached Parkville, so she happily gave herself over to his care.
Something had led Jake back to the stateroom that evening, though he didn’t usually spend any more time than necessary in Brianna’s presence. Now he knew why. It seemed as though he had wanted her forever, and he had fought against it. Now, his tongue skimmed along the seam of her lips, seducing, until she opened for him. She was more than he had imagined – soft and hot, like molten silk beneath his questing tongue. She had driven him crazy with her good deeds, but now he realized it was her very presence that drove him to distraction. He brought an arm around her shoulders and bore her back onto the bed, never releasing her lips from his. His hand shook slightly as it slid up her ribcage to where her breast filled his palm with soft flesh; shook because he was trying to contain his urgency; shook because it had been far too long since he had felt a beautiful woman beneath him.
He didn’t want to rush. Indeed, he wanted to savor every moment, every touch. Her hands pushed and jerked until his coat fell away. She tugged his shirt from his trousers and her hot hands skimmed up his bare back. Even then he might have been able to maintain some degree of control but for her gasping breath and her needy, “Hurry. Please.”
He gathered her nightclothes up, up and over her head. There was little light coming through the window from the sliver of moon, but it was enough to have him stop and wonder. She was beautiful…no, more than that. A Greek goddess; a siren. Her hair spilled across the pillow in a wave of gold, framing her face and cascading over her shoulders. She had a body made for loving. High, firm breasts, a narrow waist, and soft curving thighs that beckoned a man to settle between them. He lifted a tendril of hair from the curve of her breast and, twining it around his finger, bent to kiss her pale skin.
Her shiver made him bold. Skimming his tongue along the gentle swell of flesh, he circled slowly, closing in on the peak. His teeth grazed the erect and quivering nipple before he sucked it deeper, laving it with his tongue, fighting to hold her when she squirmed beneath him.
Some things a man never forgot, he mused. Like a woman’s fragrance; the smell of arousal that had his heart beating rapidly in his chest and had his hands seeking the treasure that was uniquely female. He cupped her, sliding a finger deep into her heat to tease and to explore. And to send her soaring. As his thumb rubbed the little nub of her femininity, she moaned his name, lifting her hips to draw him even closer.
“Now,” she whimpered, her hands clawing at him, trying to drag him over her.
Though Jake wanted to finish her; to know he could still give a woman the ultimate pleasure, he was throbbing almost painfully and didn’t know how long he could hold off. That moment came when she managed to undo his trousers. He added a little pressure to his explorations and was rewarded by her cry; just before she latched onto his shaft with a hot, sliding hand.
As quickly as his shaking hands allowed, he jerked down his trousers and slid between her welcoming legs. While he would have gone slowly, not knowing her experience, the moment the tip of his shaft touched her outer lips, she heaved up her hips, clamped onto his backside, and took him fully. He wondered if he had died and gone to heaven.
* * *
Bri sighed, knowing she wouldn’t change a thing about what they had done. Jake had tried to be gentle, but she hadn’t wanted consideration, or tenderness. She had craved the mindless bliss he had given her, yet she knew she had satisfied him in turn. Her lips curved in a smile. She hadn’t even given him time to completely remove his trousers.
She tucked the whole experience into the back of her mind, to take out later and relive. Later, when he was no longer lying at her side, or when she was no longer here on the Arabia. While there was no doubt she would share his bed for however long she was here, that didn’t solve her problem.
Her brain hurt trying to figure out the impossibilities of how she got here, why she was here, and whether she could get back.
“What’s wrong?” Jake rolled toward her and circled her waist with a strong, bare arm. She didn’t realize she had groaned out loud.
His warm hand caressed her bare midriff and slowly, sensuously slid upward to cup her breast until she couldn’t think at all.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, his breath tickling her ear. “Was I too rough?”
Bri almost laughed. The first time had been a maniacal rush headlong over a cliff with neither of them bothering with finesse. The last, Jake had so tenderly taken her to the heights of ecstasy she had almost felt as though he were a phantom lover, reminding her of the dream she had recently had.
“Just thinking,” she murmured.
He gave a short laugh. “I have to concentrate just on breathing. You have a way of making me forget even that.”
She rolled over to look at him. Through the early morning haze sifting through the small cabin window, she could almost see a resemblance to the man in her dreams. Was that the connection? Had she somehow come here because of her dreams; because Jake had called to her over the ripples of time? But why had she come to him?
She had assumed her presence on the Arabia was directly connected to the excavation in which she had been participating. She twisted the tiny ring she wore on her pinkie. Now, she wondered if it was Jake, not the Arabia; or perhaps because Jake was on the Arabia. It was just too confusing.
“Brianna, where are your thoughts?”
“Hmm?”
He pulled her closer and she could feel his erection against her thigh.
“Here I am trying to seduce you, and you seem a hundred miles away.”
More like a hundred years.
She lightly kissed his chin. “Perhaps you weren’t trying hard enough.” She smiled into eyes the color of green fields in summer. “Perhaps you need to try harder.”
He growled and she found herself flat on her back with his hips wedged between her thighs.
“I am as hard as a hickory stick and aching so that I am liable to burst if you don’t come back to me and let me love you.”
“Kiss me, Jake, and quit talking so much.”
He obliged, his lips firm and hot on hers and she gave herself up to the wonder of him. She slid her hands across his broad shoulders and down his back, feeling the muscles quiver in the wake of her massaging fingers. As she caressed his spine and moved lower still, she raised her knees and planted her feet flat on the bed, lifting her hips to his.
He deepened the kiss, his tongue seeking entry but it was a penetration of a different kind that had her aching. As wet and ready as she was, he still stole her breath. Slowly, as his tongue dueled with hers, he captured her body, inch after luscious inch.
* * *
They lay in a rumpled heap of sheets and covers; exhausted and yet too wound up to sleep. At least she was. Turning her head slightly, she studied Jake’s profile. His eyes were closed, his lips curved in a satisfied smile. So like a male, she thought. His hair, normally combed back in a distinguished manner, curled over his ears and dark locks fell over his forehead. He looked like a little boy, silently savoring a stolen candy or bit of adventure. She laughed lightly, for it had been more than just a bit of adventure.
“Are you laughing at the fact I think I have died?” He turned his head, trying for a one eyed stare, but he was anything but ferocious.
His words reminded her of the ghost and her smile immediately faded.
“What is it, Brianna?” He propped himself on an elbow, head in hand, and used the other to turn her chin so she could do nothing but look at him.
“A dream I keep having,” she began, and tried to turn away but he held her firm. With a sigh, she determined she might as well tell him, at least some of it.
“It always took place in my house; my bed, in Boston, but not last night.” She scanned the small cabin and felt…something she couldn’t put a finger on. She shivered and Jake drew her closer.
“Sh, it’s all right now. I have you.” His voice was so like what she had heard in her dream. Perhaps she was foisting Jake’s characteristics onto her ghost because Jake was familiar to her.
Why me? She wondered silently. She believed in ghosts; she just didn’t fear them. Her auntie had often spoken of a ghost that she thought haunted the house, but in all the years Bri visited in her youth, she had never had occasion to confront it.
“There was a magazine article, about the Arabia,” she started, but hesitated because the article had been about the unearthing of the Arabia, not about its travels on the Missouri River.
In her mind, she saw the pages of the magazine flutter. Somehow everything in this was connected, yet she couldn’t for the life of her figure it out.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said instead. It wasn’t hard to summon a smile and forget the dream; forget the life she had mysteriously left behind. Especially when Jake’s warm hand drifted to her hips to tug her against him. She gave up the struggle and surrendered to his charms.