Chapter 34

 

 

Malcolm’s eyes snapped open, and he glanced at the electric alarm clock on his bedside table. 3:45 AM. Three days he’d waited, and Vic never came back from the past. He’d sat up waiting for the first two nights but couldn’t hold his eyes open any longer. He’d fallen asleep against his will three hours ago, at midnight on the third night.

Would she ever come back? She might be dead over there. If that was the case, why didn’t he remember it? He ran over his memories from that time. He’d reviewed them again and again while he waited but could discover no clue that might explain the delay in her return.

The last thing he remembered was lying in Norris Gunn’s bed and Vic vaporizing under his hand when he cast the spell. His arm had thumped down on the coverlet, and he’d turned back to sleep to hide from the awful emptiness where she used to be. One thought had kept him going all these years. He had to see her again, and she hadn’t even been born yet. He’d waited three hundred years before she was born. He’d hovered around the periphery of her life, watching and dreaming and waiting.

What if he’d sent her to her death? He couldn’t live with that.

He closed his eyes and buried his face in the pillow, but he couldn’t go back to sleep. He wanted more than anything to get up and go out searching the city streets for her. She must be here, in this time. She must be here somewhere. She had to be.

Could he have made a mistake with the spell? He might have sent her back to a different time. She might reappear in a few years, or in a hundred years, and he wouldn’t know where to find her.

His soul ached from all this waiting. Three hundred years without her was more than one man could survive. He couldn’t face waiting another day.

He let out a shuddering sigh. He ought to go to the office to maintain the appearance of being CEO of Allied Chemical. He had to monitor Allied’s progress on the Cipher’s Kiss. All the Lewis men depended on Malcolm doing his job.

He couldn’t get up. The spirit had gone out of his life. Nothing mattered. The Cipher’s Kiss didn’t matter. Why should he care about making the formula when he wouldn’t have the woman he wanted?

He tried to command himself to get up, but he hated life too much. He wanted to stay in bed until doomsday. He couldn’t even lift his face out of the pillow to catch his breath.

At that moment, something weighed down his bed. He shifted on the mattress. When he raised his head, a shadow separated from the fabric of the night. It unstitched from the solid black of his room to glide toward the bed. When he strained his eyes, he beheld the incredible image of a woman sliding under the sheets. She slipped into the warmth against his chest and turned her back to scoot against him.

Malcolm sucked in his breath. Her full skirts touched his legs, and she nudged her bustle against his boxer shorts. She picked up his hand and pulled his arm around her. He held himself stiff against the intrusion, refusing to believe this was real until her scent entered his nostrils. It really was her. He couldn’t deny it.

Vic breathed against his bare chest, and he felt her whalebone corset under his hand. She guided his hand around her waist and up to her breasts, seething against him in the dark.

He couldn’t bring himself to move. Was she real, or did he just imagine this?

After a time, she lay still in his embrace. She rested her head on his pillow in front of his nose. They lay quietly for a long time, but Malcolm’s soul writhed in torment. He wanted more than anything to touch her and take her and fall head over heels for her, but some part of him resisted.

He couldn’t bear losing her again after all this time. He couldn’t unchain the padlocks around his heart to let her in after he’d erected an impenetrable barrier between himself and the pain of her absence.

She didn’t push him. She just lay there for over an hour, not saying anything.

Malcolm struggled through one tumultuous thought process after another. She’d come back. She was right here, in his bed and in his arms. He didn’t have to go out hunting for her. She wasn’t dead or injured anywhere. He hadn’t made a mistake in the spell. Everything appeared okay on the outside, but inside him, he couldn’t accept this. He couldn’t relax.

An hour later, he fell asleep. He fought it in case he woke up to find her gone. He might have dreamed the whole scene of her getting into bed with him. Pretty soon, though, he couldn’t withstand his exhaustion and he succumbed.

He woke up in the sweet fragrance of her curly hair in his face. Before he fully woke up, he buried his nose in her and inhaled the full essence of her being. The smell relaxed his reserve, and he let himself tighten his hold on her.

She undulated in his arms, and her flesh melted against him. He pulled her into him, and their bodies spoke to each other of that deep desire neither of them could resist. His member hardened inside his shorts, and she rubbed her ass against it. He caressed the smooth line of her corset down to her hips, then up to her breasts. He massaged them and enjoyed the intoxicating energy sizzling through her. She bent her head forward to expose her graceful neck and whimpered in sweet desire.

He kissed her neck, and she quivered all over. She moaned as he trailed kisses up her cheek to her ear and breathed his craven hunger into her brain. Did she know what she did to him with those quiet noises that sent hot lava pouring into his crotch?

She laced her fingers into his and forced his hand down her stomach, over her curving hip, down, down, down to the space where her skirts folded between her legs. She pushed his hand between her legs and shoved his fingers into her moist softness.

He couldn’t bear the sensation of her shuddering all over with buried need. “Lass!” he gasped.

“I want you like this,” she whispered. “I want you like we did it the first time in that crate. I want to give myself to you the way I should have given myself to you then. Please. I want it.”

Who was he to ignore that? The memory flooded back, but he wasn’t in a crate with her on the high seas. He was in his own apartment, in his own bed. He was more than half-naked. His body burned for her more than ever, and she was his. She offered herself to him in open desire.

God, was this really happening? Was he really raking his fingertips up her thighs to lift her skirts? Was she really gliding her heavenly form against him in molten passion?

She dropped her arm behind her, and her dainty fingers tickled up his leg to his shorts. His flesh stiffened to a throbbing, tingling rod inside his pants, and she darted underneath to touch it. He struggled to breathe. Yes, she really was touching him. She pulled down his shorts and stroked him to insanity. Oh, sweet Jesus, he couldn’t stand this. He needed her. He needed to get inside her, in the hot, dark, close embrace of her sweetness.

His pulsating member took on a will of its own. He bunched her skirts around her waist. Her stockings covered her legs, and her underwear concealed her magnificent flesh underneath. As badly as he wanted her, he set to work with that single-minded intent that got him to the top of the Falisa ranks in the first place. He unfastened every lace of her bodice and every button holding her dress on and peeled off her clothes one stitch at a time. He dragged out each step as long as he could to hold her in that quiescent readiness.

She sobbed and moaned in fervent arousal but didn’t try to hurry him. She quivered in anticipation and savored every slow, deliberate action.

He unlaced her corset, and she released a shuddering breath of relief. He lifted her shift over her head. Nothing remained but her underwear and stockings. He drew her ripe flesh close to him, her luscious skin pressed against his. He kicked off his shorts. They hadn’t been like this in the crate, but that didn’t matter now. So much had changed since then that they would never be the same. They could never do it like that again. They knew each other too well.

The centuries had taught him a few things about the opposite sex, and he’d had all the time he needed to imagine what she would feel like when he held her again. He took hold of her breasts and pulled her over onto her back to guide one of them into his mouth. He nibbled until she heaved off the bed to stroke her body against his chest. A patch of wetness sparkled where her hair grazed his hip.

He let go of her nipple. She lunged off the bed to try to snatch a kiss from his mouth, but he pushed her back down. This was his moment to take her the way he always wanted to. Her eyes stared at him, wide and surprised out of the dark, but she didn’t resist.

He lifted her arms above her head to arch her back. Her breasts swayed before his eyes, but he had something else in mind. He buried his face in her stomach and mouthed his way down to that dark patch where her juices called to him. His mouth watered to taste her.

She whimpered in desperation, but he refused to hurry this. She hadn’t waited three hundred years for this night the way he had. He would do this right before he let her go. He took one last mouthful of her midsection before he dove between her legs to smother his nose and mouth in warmth.

She opened to receive him. Her succulent goodness nourished the aching hunger that had consumed his soul for thousands of years. He burrowed into that slippery heaven where he could hide from all the dangers and loneliness plaguing his life all this time.

She combed her fingers into his hair and rubbed her flowery petals into his mouth. Her honey filled his soul to overflowing. He wanted to live inside her, body and soul. He never wanted to see the light of day when he could experience this joyous contentment instead.

She bucked and squealed against him. Her fingers tightened into his scalp, and she crammed him in deeper, but that could never fill her up, either.

He rose onto his hands and knees and crawled over her to kiss her ravenous lips. She smothered him in her arms and breasts and mouth. She took hold of his stiff tool and aimed him into her.

He collapsed against her, but he didn’t want her this way. At the last moment, he veered off and took his place behind her one more time. She shifted onto her side, tensing all over in excitement, and grabbed him behind his ass to haul him in.

His shaft found its way as she backed against him, and he slotted into the place where his soul rested from all care. He gave up the ghost to find his way back to that blessed garden one more time.

She snuggled into him, and her presence drove him out of his mind. He clenched her hips in white-knuckle fury. He scratched the simmering itch along his shaft against the quivering channel inside her.

She sighed in his embrace. Her insides swallowed him, and her sugary nectar smoothed the pathway to ultimate bliss.