A warm flush came over her. “I hardly think—”
He lifted the fabric in each hand. “This is space with Point A and Point B.” He raised his left hand, then his right. “Traveling in a straight line would take a considerable distance. Fortunately for us, space is not always flat. It bends and folds.” He folded the fabric together but kept a distance of three inches between them. “Wormholes occur naturally and artificially to connect Point A and Point B.” He brought his hands together. “That is what my engine is meant to do.”
“Artificially,” she said.
“Yes, but it malfunctioned, as you know. It folded more than space. It folded time.”
She sucked in her breath. His words were unbelievable. It was a fantastic notion directly out of a novel, but she couldn’t think of a story similar. A Christmas Carol, perhaps, when the spirits escort Ebenezer to view his own past and then his future.
It couldn’t be true, but she did not sense he lied. He told the truth. He was from the future.
“Time is out of joint,” she whispered.
“To answer your question, you cannot see the lunar base now because it will not be constructed for a few centuries.”
“You’re from the future,” she said, stunned. Reven had spun many fantastic tales, and she believed them all, but this one… “The future? Really?”
“Among other things.” His hand raked through his hair again.
Nothing about his demeanor struck her as false.
“I suppose if I can believe you are from another planet, it’s not such a stretch to imagine you are from the future,” she said.
She had so many questions. Would another disaster befall London like the Great Fire? War? Disease? Would there be cures for disease? Would women ever get the vote?
She opened her mouth to ask, but Reven held up a hand in a clear signal to cease. “No. I cannot tell you.”
“Because of paradox.”
“I probably have told you too much. I may have affected the future.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No. Your secret is safe with me. No one will believe me. They’ll say I’m a mad artist, a widow driven to flights of fancy by her loneliness, that my imagination has run amok.”
He pressed his hands to her knees and looked up at her. “They may say you are mad, but primitive Terrans are dangerous. They could injure you.”
“Lock me away in Bedlam,” she said. For the first time, fear trembled in her.
Reven rumbled low in his throat, the noise catching her by surprise. “I hate that I frightened you, but the more I share, the more at risk it makes you.”
“How will you return home?”
“Ah.” He picked up the hem of her skirt again. “The wormhole is still present but it is collapsing.” The two points drifted apart.
“How long, then?”
“Four days by my calculations,” he said.
The day after Christmas, Boxing Day. Despite their relatively fresh acquaintance, she wasn’t ready to part company with the Moon Man.
“What of my notebook?” She had pages and pages of his portrait and detailed drawings of his artifacts.
“Do not show it to anyone,” he said.
“Of course not.” She could always claim the notebook to be a product of her imagination, inspired by the stories of Verne and the like. However, she could never share that Reven was flesh and blood, from a planet called Sangrin, and lived on the moon. “It will be for my use only. But may I ask, why are your people here? Why did they come to Earth?”
He gave a thin smile. “I cannot say.”
A terrible thought ran through her mind. Perhaps his people were conquerors and claimed Earth as part of their empire. “At least tell me if you are Earth’s allies.”
“The Mahdfel are allies.”
***
“What about your family?”
Reven paused in his work. “What about them?”
“Can you tell me about them or would that be a paradox, too?”
“My father is a warrior, the same as me, as was his father before him.”
She hummed. “Is it a good living in the warrior business?”
He set down his tool and turned to face her. “The Mahdfel are all warriors, but my father is an engineer, the same as me. His work is very delicate, which surprises many, given his size. He is quite large.”
She eyed him. “You’re quite large.”
“Compared to you. You are tiny, even for a Terran.”
“I am not,” she said.
He huffed in amusement.
“He’s bigger than you? That’s hard to imagine.”
“I take after my mother. Her people are small, like Terrans,” he added.
“How flattering,” she said dryly.
“He is an engineer for the planetary defense array on Sangrin. It is a very important position. Very detailed and delicate.”
Planetary… “I understand those words but not the context,” she said.
He scratched the base of his horn, which she now recognized as his thinking gesture. “It is a type of fortress.”
“For the entire planet?” Her mind boggled.
“Yes, of course. Every planet should have one.”
“Does Earth?”
His lips pressed together.
“Right. You cannot say,” she said, answering her own question.
“It is complex to build and maintain, but a wise investment. Consider it to be like locking the door to your domicile. A good habit.”
“I don’t lock my door.” Why would she? There was no one on the moors except for the Baldrys, who came and went as they pleased.
Reven strode towards her, crossing the distance in a heartbeat. He gripped her chin and angled her face upwards, holding her gaze. “It is unsafe to leave your domicile unsecured. Promise me you will take the basic precautions. Lock. Your. Door.”
He stared down at her with a primal intensity. For a moment, she thought he might kiss her. She licked her bottom lip in anticipation, his eyes tracking the movement.
His fingers relaxed their grip on her and he stepped back. She swallowed her disappointment.
“I haven’t seen you turn the key on the door of your ship,” she countered.
“I have a bio-lock on the shuttle,” he said.
“Again, I do not understand what those words mean in that context. Bio would be biology?”
“It is…” He sighed and stepped back from her. She felt the absence of his heat. “I am the key. My biology. The shuttle unlocks at my touch.”
She clutched her notebook to her chest. “Show me, please.”
Chapter Nine
Reven
Reven removed the last available floor panel, leaving enough of the floor to support the two stasis chambers and a path. Yes, two. If he missed the wormhole, he would utilize them. He rationalized that if one malfunctioned, he needed the other available. Without the flooring underneath, the chamber would rest in a nest of wires and circuits and would overload the moment it activated.
The spare was definitely not for Elizabeth. Taking her with him was too great a risk, despite his affection for the female. The stasis chamber was not rated for continuous use for such a lengthy period of time. The slow journey home was hundreds of years, after all, not the hours or days for which the stasis chamber was designed.
He counted the salvaged panels and counted the holes in his ship. Then recounted.
He needed more.
The flooring under the stasis chamber would only grant him an additional three panels, and he needed at least six, possibly ten. Briefly, he considered manufacturing his own panel from raw materials but deemed it impractical. The abandoned barn offered some cover and space to work without worrying about a local wandering in and discovering him, but it did not have the necessary equipment.
He required tools and the ability to smelt—assuming he could even find raw material comparable to the alloy used in the shuttle. He might be better off patching with bo
lted-on steel panels. Soldering would crudely seal the joints, but it might not hold as the shuttle traversed the wormhole. If his calculations were correct, he’d arrive when and where he left, but in practice, it could spit him out anywhere.
The patches might be good enough for a short trip to the moon but they could give way during a longer voyage, which would force him into the stasis chambers.
That brought a new concern to the front of his mind, wondering if the stasis chambers could function if they were exposed to the vacuum of space. If the cold didn’t break the chambers, then grit and dust from the moon’s surface might. He could reach the moon if the patches failed, but most likely he wouldn’t survive to be woken in the correct year.
Problem after problem piled on his head.
“You have that look,” Elizabeth said from her seat at the console. With her sketchbook in her lap, she had been silently drawing all afternoon. Drawing him, he supposed.
“Show me what you’re working on,” Reven said, wanting a distraction. He reached for the sketchbook, but she pulled it close to her chest.
“It is still very rough,” she said.
“I want to see.”
“It’s rude to insist on viewing a work before it is finished.”
“So, it is a portrait? Of me?” Reven couldn’t fight the urge to toss his horns back and preen.
“No, you vain creature,” she said firmly, clutching the sketchbook tighter.
“Show me,” he insisted. “You have been drawing me for days. I must see.”
“I’ve been drawing the machines.” She stood to exit the shuttle, the fabric of her skirts rustling.
“You deserve a spanking for telling such an outrageous lie,” he said. She had blatantly stared at his form as he worked on repairs, then scratched her pencils in her book. What else could she have been sketching?
Her mouth fell open, and her eyes sparkled. “I never… You wouldn’t dare…”
In one swift move, he snatched the book and swept Elizabeth off her feet. He fell back into the chair she recently vacated and put her belly-down across his lap. One large hand in her back held her in place while he flipped through the sketchbook. Her legs kicked, offering a tantalizing glimpse of her pale legs.
“I would not disrespect your person, but do not squirm about. It tempts me,” he said. With one hand, he flipped through the book. Detailed renditions of plants filled the front pages.
She immediately stilled. “You’re not really going to spank me, are you?”
Reven snapped the book shut and Elizabeth tensed across his lap as if anticipating a blow. He rubbed her lower back, enjoying the feel of the soft wool under his palm. “I would never injure you,” he said.
Part of him wanted to ask her if that activity appealed to her, if her body tensed from anticipated pleasure or from fear. The many layers of her garments hid away any clue of her desire. He fought the urge to lift her skirt over her ass and find out. With her round cheeks exposed, he’d run his rough hands over her soft skin. Would she moan and shiver in delight? He suspected yes.
There was no point in finding out. Even if she desired his touch, he could do nothing. He would only have her as his mate. As much as Elizabeth appeared to be his mate, he could not claim her because he could not guarantee he could bring her safely back to his time. Remaining in her time was impossible. He would always be in hiding, and that was no life at all. Claiming Elizabeth only ended in heartbreak. For both their sakes, he resisted.
With a sigh, he arranged her to sit modestly in his lap, her back pressed to his chest. “May I?” he asked, waiting for her nod before opening the sketchbook again. He thumbed through the plant diagrams. “The detail is extraordinary,” he said.
A pleasing pink color rose on her face. “Thank you. Most people feel the need to express surprise at my talent.”
“Your talent is without question,” he said. The loose pages that fell from her satchel all those days ago told him of her artistic ability. She was a master with pencil, ink, and any other medium she used.
He flipped through the pages, finding detailed drawings of the shuttle’s interior. Her pencil captured the same fine detail as the sketches of the plants. Somehow, she had captured an accurate representation of the ship but made the sterile craft appear inviting. Nothing about the old shuttle was inviting yet there it was on the page.
Reven’s image filled the next several pages, everything from his profile to a full body sketch. At first, the renditions were loose, just the shape of him. His wasn’t quite built like a Terran male, so the artist needed time to figure his body out. In a sketch of him without a shirt, he recognized the evening when she invited him into her house for a bath. She captured the scarring on his back, the whorls of his tattoos, and even the hula girl in a grass skirt on his upper arm.
“This one was not done from a model, I think,” he said, finger tapping the page.
“From memory,” she replied.
“Good. I would hate to think that you are a sneaky voyeur as well as a liar.” His tone teased. She gave a weak grin and elbowed him.
He enjoyed the comfortable feel of her on his lap. Her back fit against him perfectly. He could easily imagine her curled up as they watched a film. Well, he would have to explain the evolution of photography into motion pictures, then onto holographic tech. Perhaps not a film, then, but they could curl up reading a book. His imagination ran wild, picturing Elizabeth on his lap as she swelled with their son.
He wanted that, the future it promised, more than he wanted anything, more than breath in his lungs, and it was the one thing he could never have.
The studies of him grew more detailed, often focusing on one aspect or feature. Elizabeth had rendered his horns several times, from various angles. A page held only his eyes: crinkled in laughter, open, closed, and squinted in frustration. He marveled that she could convey so many emotions with just a few lines.
He recognized himself in armor, worn for protection as he welded. The armor and tools he used seemed to hold as much interest to her as his horns, which was a shame because his horns were magnificent. Reven grinned at his own ego and the tug of competition he felt at sharing Elizabeth’s attention with his own tools.
Her most recent work, images of his hands, occupied the last pages. She portrayed his hand from every angle, clenched, opened, holding a tool, scratching the base of his horn, and even resting casually across the back of the chair.
He turned the page, only to find more renditions of his hands.
She shifted, as if nervous. “It’s not what you think.”
He looked away from her remarkable work and focused on her face. “I think you like my hands.”
That pretty pink color returned to her face.
“You have interesting hands. Everything about you is visually interesting.” The pink color deepened.
Fascinating.
“Everything?” His arm around her waist tightened, pulling her closer to him. The clean, fresh lavender scent of her soap tickled his nose.
“They’re strong and remind me of David.” She twisted to face him and spoke before he had a chance to reflect on his feelings about her comparing him to her deceased mate. “He had strong hands, too. His physique was not robust, but his hands held surprising strength and dexterity. He could hold a brush for hours without cramps or pain. He would grind pigment down to a fine powder in the pestle and never tire, yet he never lost his ability for fine detail.” She licked her lower lip, a move Reven recognized as something she did when thinking. “His touch was always gentle and firm when needed. Even if he did not have the strength for relations, he put his hands to good use. I don’t know why I told you that.” She shifted off his lap, taking the sketchbook with her.
Her words struck him as exceptionally intimate. It spoke to the comfort and security she felt in his presence. His pride rejoiced. It also spoke to a connection deeper than companionship, one laced with growing attraction. Such a confession was what one shared with
a lover, not a friend. She desired him.
The tattoos etched into his skin burned with a matching desire.
“You’re glowing!” Elizabeth snatched his hand and pushed up his sleeve, revealing the glowing tattoos that climbed up his arms like a vine. Her fingers traced the pattern. The glow of his tattoos intensified every place she made contact with his skin. Instinct urged him to tear off his garment and reveal the extent of his desire and show her how she affected his body. He burned with desire for her.
“It is nothing alarming. I am feeling emotional,” he said. Reluctantly, he pulled his arm away.
“I’ve never seen that before.”
“They’ve been covered until now.” His armor covered everything but his hand, neck, and face. Significantly short in the arms, the loose cotton shirt she provided him with did not quite cover everything.
“Does it pain you?”
He blinked, stunned at the concern in her question. “No, of course not. It is part of my biology. Do your freckles pain you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you teasing me? My freckles may not cause physical pain, but they are aesthetically unattractive, which might as well be pain.”
Reven found that hard to believe. “Your freckles are beautiful because they are yours and they make your face interesting.”
“Interesting faces do not launch a thousand ships,” she said.
That made no sense, but he could see how upset his comment made her, which was not his intention.
“Let me show you,” he said, unbuttoning the shirt.
“You don’t have to—”
Her words stopped as his shirt hit the floor. Reven couldn’t help himself and flexed his arms, enjoying the look of pure admiration on her face.
His tattoos continued up his arms, across his shoulders and down his back. He turned in place to let her see the design. Normally black against his skin, they glowed with a silver sheen. “For my people, the tattoos tell our story, who we are and our accomplishments. This was my first,” he said, pointing to a small mandala above his heart. “It is the mark of my father’s clan.”
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