He crossed to her so quickly, it was almost as though time had folded them together again. She was suddenly enveloped in arms that gathered her up as if she weighed as much as a wisp of smoke. She was a sturdy woman, despite her willowy limbs, unused to feeling delicate around the men of her time, who had needed so much more from her than demure womanliness. Here was a man who needed her in a way no one ever had. She could feel his need, pushing against her as they kissed. His hands pressed and kneaded her hips, fondling her buttocks through the seat of her trousers. He unfastened them with a solemnity Laura found endearing, his eyes soft with wonder as they dropped to the floor. His hands slid up her sides beneath the watered silk of her blouse. Her nipples tightened deliciously as his thumbs stroked them through her camisole. She could feel a gathering sweetness low down in her body, culminating beneath the tangle of curls that shielded her sex. She was wet. She had never been so wet. She wanted him to touch her, to find the place inside of her that only another person could reach and that, despite her experience, no one ever had. There was more than one first when it came to love.
Alaric unbuttoned her blouse with a tenderness that brought an unnameable emotion to the surface of her heart. She could feel it washing through her, a searing tide of desire and vulnerability. She was not even undressed yet, and already she felt fully naked before this man, who had until only a few days before been a stranger.
“Don’t stop,” she told him.
“I’m not stopping,” he murmured. “I just don’t want to miss any part of you.”
She sighed, and smiled as he slid the camisole up over her upraised arms, flinging it aside so that it, too, was only a small crumpled thing on the floor.
Alaric gazed at her in wonder, though she was still far from naked.
“What is that … item you are wearing?” he said, awestruck. “It is most strange. And … wonderful. There is so little of it. Just like everything else you wear, it barely covers you.”
Laura laughed. She ran her hands over the garment in question. “This,” she told him, “is a brassiere.”
His eyes widened appreciatively as he reached out to stroke the filmy lace. “And those drawers,” he breathed. “They, too, are positively miniscule.”
Laura looked down at herself, admiring the curves of her bare thighs and trim calves. She sashayed a bit, turning a little pirouette so that he might take in the full effect of her modern underpinnings. “Do you like them?” she asked, laughing as he grabbed for her. “I don’t suppose ladies of your acquaintance would ever dare wear such scandalous things, though in my time, some women don’t bother wearing undergarments at all.”
“How wonderful,” he murmured, running his hands over her bared back, raking his fingernails lightly over her shoulders and up the length of her neck. He cupped the back of her head in his hands, tilting her neck so he could nuzzle her throat. “I love your hair. I love your lips. I love everything about your body.”
Laura melted to liquid in his arms, her roving hands making their own inventory of his anatomy, which was rather difficult in his fully dressed state. When her brassiere came away in his hands, and her drawers slithered to the floor, and she was utterly naked, she pressed him back against the bed before he could gather her closer, forcing him to lounge back as she stood between his knees. Alaric stared at her dazedly, swallowing hard as he took in every bare inch of her. He slid his hands over her hips, grazing the gentle convex of her belly as his fingers went to the place that ached most deeply for his touch, but she pushed them away.
“Not yet,” she said huskily. “First it’s my turn to see what you’ve been hiding under all of that beautifully starched linen.”
He groaned impatiently, but complied, his hands roaming over only the more demure parts of her exposed flesh—flank, abdomen, the full undersides of her breasts. It was a torture almost too exquisite to be borne, one she once thought she would only ever be able to imagine. And yet, it was only the beginning of what she hoped he might do to her before the night was through. Tiny incendiaries of anticipation exploded along the length of her spine. She trembled as she touched his face, her thumbs tracing the lush contours of his lips, the bold curve of his nose and jut of his jaw. He closed his eyes, and pulled her hand to his lips, suckling each finger in turn, the inside of his mouth a silken cavern she longed to fill with various parts of her, one by one, until he had had his fill.
If she didn’t see him naked in the next few moments, she would go mad.
Laura pushed his immaculately brushed dinner coat from his shoulders, tossing it aside. She unbuttoned his waistcoat dexterously, after which she reached to unfasten his trousers, pulling a snowy expanse of crumpled linen from his waistband to reveal an abdomen taut and rippling. It occurred to her that he was going to be much more complicated to undress than she had been, and the thought of all the layers of gentlemanly attire that lay between her body and his sent a deepening tremor of impatience through her. She took hold of his shirtfront, and simply tore it open. An explosion of buttons cascaded across the bedspread, and more than one seam rent in two.
“Oh dear,” she said, eyes widening. “Terribly sorry. I’ve never known my own strength.”
Alaric contemplated her with something close to astonishment, though it looked much more like delight. The golden sheen of his chest and abdomen exposed, candlelight licked his skin as Laura longed to do. Her eyes raked over him with a hunger she didn’t bother disguising, and she did what she wanted, running her mouth over his flesh as though branding him finally as her own. No other woman could ever possess him as she did.
She licked the faded hatchwork of battle scars that filigreed his flesh, from the most delicate to the cruelest. Beneath her roving tongue, Alaric shivered, the places where he had been wounded more sensitive than the flesh surrounding them. In his skin, Laura tasted not only the salt of his sweat, but the texture of his whole history. Flashes of his experiences came to her as she grazed on his skin. She saw things both beautiful and unspeakable, and swallowed them all, as though drinking in a part of his soul. Whatever happened to them, wherever they went, and no matter if they could never make love to each other again, Laura could play back the jumbled scenes of Alaric’s life on the insides of her eyelids long after the imprint of her body on his had faded into memory.
Sliding her breasts along his torso, she followed the concave between his pectorals to the hollow of his throat. She caught his mouth in a ravenous kiss, devouring his lips as though they contained some essential nutrient she must have, or die. Then she stopped suddenly, and pulled back to look at him. “I’m not a virgin,” she said, as if to explain her obvious familiarity with the body of a man. “Just so you know. Don’t expect some coquettish miss who you must mollycoddle and convince to let you ravish her. I’m a woman, with a woman’s desires.”
“Thank God,” he said, exhaling, a slow smile crinkling the corners of his delicious mouth. His amber eyes were gleaming in the half dark like polished pennies. “I don’t want to have to be a gentleman.”
“Please don’t be,” she said.
Taking her at her word, Alaric dragged her against him, the astonishing impact of her skin on his sending a jolt of electricity through his body. It was like being struck by lightning. Suddenly he felt the room shift around him, and they were neither in his world, hers, or the next. He flipped her on her back, and the rigid sleekness of his erection grazed her thigh as he parted her legs to touch her. The veil of his hair slid along her skin, and her nipples ruched into tight little buds as his tongue fondled each of them in turn before trailing lower. He spread the folds of her sex as though peeling an exotic fruit. He devoured her with the same hunger and rapt attention he would apply to a sun-ripened fruit.
“You taste like a peach,” he murmured, as her juice ran down his chin. Her fingers twined in his hair, her thighs quivering as she gasped, shuddering with pleasure.
When she came, he could feel her climax as if it was his own, and when he thrust into her, it was a collision of cosmic proportions, like an asteroid colliding with the atmosphere of Earth and burning away. He could feel the reverberations of the pleasure he had given her drawing him in, and it took everything he had to hold back. Laura gasped at the fullness as she took him in, wrapping her legs around him and drawing him deep. She rocked her hips as he thrust into her with powerful strokes, their bodies moving together with piston-like intensity and precision.
She felt like oiled satin. Her breath tasted of cloves. The scent of her skin drove him wild. He could not go deep enough. He couldn’t be close enough. There was no such thing.
Her hair tumbled over her face, and her mouth was a kiss-stung oval of delight. Alaric could feel the delightful jiggle of her breasts against him as he surged ever closer to his own crest of pleasure.
Pushing him over, Laura urged him wordlessly to shift places with her, so she could straddle him in the dominant position. He had never experienced a woman moving on top of him, and he nearly spent himself at the sight of her riding his eager cock, her straining thighs and jutting breasts sleek with perspiration. He gathered them in the cups of his hands, tweaking and rubbing her pretty nipples. She arched her back, thrusting her hips in such a way that Alaric could actually watch his shaft sliding in and out of the glistening wetness that held him. He fondled her, pressing his thumb against her hidden pearl until she slowly climaxed again. He followed swiftly in her wake, the waves of pleasure tearing through him like wildfire. He murmured hoarsely every oath and every prayer he knew, until words gave way to the guttural cry that was the first holy utterance.
Laura collapsed on top of him with a weak moan that he sucked from her lips as he withdrew and coiled himself around her, face to face, his arm cradled along her spine. They were both slick-skinned, drenched in the only substance that quenched what it had ignited.
“One doesn’t learn that in finishing school,” he murmured appreciatively into her ear, when he could speak. She giggled, hiding her face in his shoulder.
“I suppose you think me utterly wanton?” she said. “Isn’t that a word you use these days, to describe women like me?”
“There are no women like you,” he said, tucking a damp curl behind her ear.
“Not here,” she agreed, snuggling against him.
“Not anywhere,” he said.
Laura smiled, and pressed her lips to his chest. He ran his fingernails slowly up and down her back, and she nearly purred. He loved the way their skin stuck together, as though they were truly fusing into one person. His eyes grew heavy, and he blinked, afraid that if he fell asleep, she would simply disappear. He didn’t know the rules. He didn’t know if there were any. They seemed to be making them up as they went along.
“In this time,” he said, “are you truly not yet born?”
“Not for years and years, yet.”
“Then how is it you can exist, here and now with me?”
She looked up at him, her neck arched against the pillow. “I really don’t know, Alaric. I only know that I do, and that I have never felt more alive than when I’m with you.”
“If you … stayed, here, with me, what would happen when you are born?”
Laura rolled onto her back, her leg still hooked around him, and her body pressed alongside his. She cradled her head on her arm, the sinuous curve of her underarm upraised. Tiny beads of perspiration pearled her collarbone, a necklace of her own making. “I don’t know. But my time isn’t a good one, Alaric. It’s a dangerous time, when the whole world has been at war with itself. I’ve seen things I can’t erase from my mind. People have done things that take away their humanity, and now they are expected to carry on like decent citizens.”
“I know what war is,” Alaric said.
“Not war like this,” Laura said quietly. “We can never be the same, any of us. Being here with you makes me feel like none of that could ever happen.”
“Maybe it won’t,” he said gently, running his palm over her sweet flesh.
“Oh, it will,” she said. “And then it will happen again. Time isn’t the only endless cycle.”
They were quiet together then. In the distance, Alaric heard a low rumble of thunder, though no rainfall accompanied the sound—it was a dry storm he had felt in the air, and it was finally beginning to break. In counterpoint, the last strains of music from the gathering below drifted up to settle like a tender blanket on their skin. The guests would soon retire for the night, no doubt wondering to where their host had disappeared. He had a reputation for this sort of behavior, and he knew no one would be unduly alarmed. Ellen would smooth everything over. She always did.
“Poor Ellen,” Alaric murmured.
Laura stiffened slightly. And then relaxed. “Yes,” she agreed. “You must tell her … something, Alaric. This can’t go on.”
And as if summoned by the sound of her name, the door swung open, and Ellen herself stood in the doorway, her voluminous silhouette standing out in stark relief against the lamp-lit hall behind her. She held a taper high, sending forward a billow of light that illuminated the lovers in their nest of tangled sheets and twined limbs. Alaric threw his arm across Laura’s chest, as though to shield more than her nakedness. Ellen stared at them with an unreadable expression, her mouth working soundlessly. Laura and Alaric stared back
“I have been searching all over the house for you, Alaric,” she said finally, a shrill quaver creeping into her voice. “Do you care to explain yourself?”
Ellen turned to look at Laura, who scrambled up against the headboard, the bedclothes pulled up over her breasts, her eyes dark with conflicting emotions. Everything in her shrank back from this woman who had barged her way in on the most intimate moment of Laura’s life as though it belonged to her, instead. “And you,” Ellen said. “I don’t know who you are, but I think you should know that this man is, for all intents and purposes, engaged to me.”
Laura’s mouth opened, but no words came. There was absolutely nothing she could say. She felt as though her heart had been removed from her body to be served to this woman on a plate, like in a gruesome folktale. There was a raw emptiness, a gaping hole. The overbearing assurance of Ellen in her silk gown and elaborate ostrich feathers seemed to sap every ounce of courage from her body. Alaric didn’t belong to her. He could never belong to her. Not once she left this bed.
She turned to look at him, her face on fire. “Alaric?” she said hoarsely, the word seeming to come from some other person, far away.
“That isn’t true,” Alaric said in a low voice. He laced his fingers with Laura’s and gave them a reassuring squeeze, though her hand was quite limp. “And you know it, Ellen.”
“It is true now,” Ellen said, a steely calm coming into her voice. She came fully into the room, and shut the door behind her. She set the candle on the bedside table, and sat down in the delicate little chair that adorned the corner of the room as though she had every right to enter whatever room in Stonecross she liked. Which perhaps she had. In this time, anyway.
Her spine was as straight as a poker, righteous indignation lending her complexion the flaming color normally reserved for desire. Laura thought her rather lovely, but there was something missing. There was nothing inside of the carapace that made her seem a delightful lady to all who looked upon her. Laura could see that she was nothing but a lovely, stuffed sawdust doll with eyes of glass and cold, porcelain arms. Arms that had more right to hold Alaric inside of them than Laura had.
She felt a tremor of fear wash over her. Women like Ellen were powerful. A lady like that had power simply by birthright that Laura would never know, or want to. It was the power of societal position, and of entitlement. She could not compete with it.
Laura had never felt so humiliated in her life. If only Stonecross would open up and swallow her back to her own time. But Alaric was gripping her fiercely, and it was impossible to push him away while she could still hold on to him for even a few moments more.
“Do you really think I would give you up to some trollop? Did you set this up to be rid of me?” Ellen laughed, her eyes skimming with distaste over the state of the bedroom, their clothes strewn about, and their huddled, naked skin. She seemed to take delight in the way she held them hostage. For as long as she liked to sit there, looking at them, they couldn’t rise and dress. She had them at a distinct disadvantage, which gave her obvious pleasure. “Alaric, take all the trollops you like to your bed, as long as you are discreet and don’t humiliate me in public. Well, any more than you already have over the past ten years. An engagement announcement at the party tomorrow should take care of that part nicely.”
“Ellen, I am not going to marry you,” Alaric said with a steady voice. “I love Laura. I’m going to marry her. You are right, however. I owe you more apology than is possible to convey. I truly am sorry. I should not have allowed this farce to go on as long as it has. I think we both knew that it was no good, only neither of us would admit it. You should have gone and married long ago, and you still can. Any single gentleman you encounter is yours for the taking.”
Gesturing dismissively as if all the single gentlemen in the kingdom were of no consequence, Ellen shook her head scornfully. “Do you truly believe you can just marry this … this chit, and all will be well? Do you think your friends will accept her after I have told what I have seen to all who will listen? No one in polite society will have ought to do with her. She will be shunned in every drawing room and assembly house from Plymouth to London.” She angled her head to stare coldly at Laura, who had not moved during the entire exchange. “Who are you, girl?” she asked imperiously. “Who is your family, and what fortune have you, to set your cap so high? It is a fool’s errand, to spread your legs to catch a husband. If it were not, I would have tried it myself years ago.”
Finally, Laura found her voice. “My love for Alaric isn’t a trap,” she said, her heart hammering as she levelled her gaze. She would not let this woman see that she was distraught. “I don’t want to own him, or force him into anything. I only want to love him. If I thought you felt the same way, I might feel bad for taking him away from you. But you don’t, do you? He is simply a pretty plaything to add to your box of trinkets.”
Ellen stared at her haughtily, appalled by her audacity. And then smirked, shaking her head. “His love is the trap, you little fool—not for him, but for you. Can’t you feel it closing around you? Escape while you still can, and pray you don’t have a whelp in your belly to pay you back for your folly.”
Laura looked at her, all of her anger deflating. She felt nothing but pity for this foolish woman who thought love was nothing more than a sparring match. She had stood before this woman’s grave. She had seen her pitiful epitaph. It was far different to speak to a living woman over whose remains one has stood and whose future one knows than to commune with a lingering spirit. Ellen, though a living woman, filled Laura with a revulsion she never felt for Alaric when she had thought him a ghost.
“You poor thing,” she said, without thinking. “You have no idea why your life is so empty.”
“I don’t require a lesson from a little slut like you on the subject,” Ellen spat, coloring. If she had been standing closer, Laura had no doubt she would have been dealt a swift slap across the cheek with one of Ellen’s pretty white hands. She could see the way her fingers convulsed into a fist before ladylike grace got the better of them.
“Ellen,” Alaric said, his voice flooding with barely controlled fury. “Do not insult the woman I love. I will marry her, and you will leave this house as soon as it can be arranged. I am sorry for the wrongs I have done you, but malice won’t win back the years we have wasted. It’s time for us each to live our lives. Can’t you see that? And I will live mine with Laura.”
Ellen scowled, her pretty face crumpling like that of a child who has had its best toy taken away. “You won’t!” she said, stamping her lovely slippered foot. “No one will accept her. And a gentleman may not break an engagement with a lady. Everyone knows we were meant to be man and wife, and that you all but offered for me before you left for that bloody war of yours. You will marry me, Alaric Storm. Or I will ruin both of you.”
Alaric’s mouth dropped open. “You would really hold a man who doesn’t want you to the childish declarations of a boy who was about to have his head blown off on another continent, just to save face?”
Her face grew solemn. “Yes, I would. In the end, our faces are all we have.” And then, a pious smile twisted her small bud of a mouth. “And what do you think your father would say, Alaric, if you threw me over for this harlot of yours? It would kill him. You know it would. Just as you know he has always wanted me for his daughter-in-law. You know that was always his intention. If you do not agree, I will go to him right now, and tell him everything I have seen, and everything you have said to me. And he will make you do what you know is right.”
Rising triumphantly from her seat, having just dealt her trump card, Ellen looked as priggish and smug as any woman ever had who knew she had a man by a very delicate handhold. “I will leave you now to reconsider your position, and to rid yourself of this … woman. When you have quite come to your senses, Alaric, you needn’t say a word about this matter. We will pretend as though nothing has happened. Our little secret—like a bond to seal our marriage.”
She swept from the room, taking her candle with her, the door shutting so quietly behind her, it seemed like the whole altercation was merely a mirage.
Thunderstruck, Alaric turned to Laura. He looked into her eyes, taking her shoulders into his hands so that she was forced to face him. She turned her face away. If she looked at him now, it would kill her to do what she knew she must. “Don’t listen to her,” he said, in a voice so low Laura could barely hear it. “I love you. I will spend my life with you.”
“Even if I can never be anything more than a ghost, Alaric?” she said softly. “We don’t know if we can even stay in the same era together, except at this time of year. I know I seemed so certain last night, but dawn is coming. And nothing seems very possible in the cold light of morning.” She lifted her hand. It quavered in the slowly breaking light. She was turning into a shaft of light herself, dimming and shimmering. “Look at me. It’s taking all my concentration just to stay in this bed with you. If you let go of me, I will simply disappear.”
He gripped her still tighter, his fingers digging deeper into her shoulders. “But tonight,” he said urgently. “Surely tonight will be different. It’s All Hallows. If we can just find a way to keep you here.”
“And then what?” Laura said, trying to hold back her tears while her heart quietly broke. “You heard what Ellen said. I will bring you nothing but disgrace. Eventually you will hate me for it.”
“No. Never. We can go away. We can start a new life, somewhere else.”
“And your father?”
Alaric said nothing. He set his mouth in a line. “I’m not going to let you go.”
Laura smiled, leaned forward, and kissed him more deeply than she ever had. Their lips melted into a single mouth, and for that last moment, they were inseparable.
“You have no choice,” Laura said, breaking away. “I love you, Alaric. Good-bye.”
She closed her eyes then, and though Alaric dragged her against him, shaking her as though trying to rouse her from the dead, she shimmered for a moment, and was gone.