The Art of Stealing Time: A Time Thief Novel

by Katie MacAlister

  “Not why are you upset that the horse is trying to bite your foot; why are you so upset that it will take us a day to reach the camp? Is it your mothers that you are worried about, or something else?”

  I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. The man had the most uncanny knack of seeming to know what I was thinking. “Of course I’m worried about my mothers. They’re prisoners, held by a man who evidently doesn’t have a problem stealing someone’s deer, dog, and bird. I wonder if that’s why there are so many dogs at Ethan’s camp? I bet no one spays and neuters their pets here.”

  “That was an excellent change of subject. It almost sucked me in,” Gregory commented.

  Damn him.

  “All right, let’s just get this out into the open, then, shall we?” I took a deep breath, corrected Bottom’s course when he decided that a butterfly flitting past us was a deadly threat and attempted to shoot off at a forty-five-degree angle, and said with as much composure as I could muster, “You wish for me to sleep with you.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  I looked at him in surprise, embarrassment making my cheeks go bright red.

  “I’m willing to sleep with you, instead, if that makes it any better.”

  “You . . . no, I said . . . Wait a minute. That’s the same thing!”

  He smiled. “If I told you that I love that you are just a little bit gullible, would you consider that an insult?”

  “Yes! It’s very insulting.” We rode in silence for two minutes. “I am not gullible. I just believe that people are telling the truth.”

  Gregory pursed his lips, but said nothing.

  “Fine, I’m gullible! But that’s better than being jaded and weary of life.”

  “It is indeed. Now, let us discuss the sleeping arrangements. I prefer to sleep on the left side, but if we are unable to find accommodations that give a certain amount of shelter, I am more than happy to take the outside. For protection, you understand. Not, I hasten to add, that you need protection, especially as you are armed, and all I was given was a cloak, but just as a general courtesy. Do you have a preference as to sexual position?”

  “We are not having sex.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  I gawked. “There is a word for what you’re thinking!”

  “Yes: seduction.”

  “Ha! Seduction implies consent on both sides. I do not wish to have sex with you.” That lie lasted for about four seconds before it irritated me so much I had to take it back. “Gah! Fine, I may wish to have sex with you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to.”

  “I enjoy many sexual positions, but in this I’m happy to defer to your tastes.” He didn’t even look at me as we rode, a somewhat dreamy expression on his face. “You straddling on top of me would be an excellent starting choice, because you would be able to set the pace. Also, your breasts would be free for me to enjoy.”

  “You are insane. No sex, Gregory. None. Talking about it won’t make me change my mind.”

  “Now, the reversed version of that—with you still on top of me, but facing in the opposite direction, is also enticing. Again, you would have free rein of the tempo, while presenting me with the view of your derriere. I enjoy looking at your derriere clothed, so I can only imagine that the sight of it unclothed will be even more spectacular.”

  “I do not have a spectacular butt. It’s just a butt, a normal butt, a butt that you can find on any woman.” A mental vision of me riding Gregory was hard to dislodge from my mind, so I let myself enjoy it for a few minutes. What was the harm in indulging in a little fantasy?

  “The traditional position of you beneath me also has its charms,” he continued, still not looking at me. I was grateful for that, since my blush seemed to be a permanent part of me now. “You are not a tiny woman, so I won’t feel like I am squashing you. That’s always off-putting. No, you are built so that we might indulge ourselves in a manner that would allow our movements to achieve maximum extension, if you will.”

  I imagined just how flexible he could be, and what maximum extension he could achieve once he really got going. My tongue suddenly seemed too big for my mouth.

  “Now, for middle-of-the-night action, side by side, with you draping one of those long, long legs over my hip, would be appropriate. By then we will have sated the most immediate of desires and can settle in for long, lazy lovemaking. I find that I have quite a bit of stamina in the side-by-side position.”

  I shifted in the saddle. It was suddenly very chafing, rubbing me uncomfortably in locations that desperately wanted Gregory’s touch. While lying on my side next to him.

  “I wonder . . .” He thought for a moment. “I wonder if it would be possible to rig up some sort of a swing. All that would be needed would be a couple of young trees, some rope, and padding for the seat. That would allow me to stand, and you to wrap your legs—long, as I believe I’ve mentioned—around my hips, bringing a new depth of motion to the experience. Hmm.”

  My mouth went dry at the thought.

  “Right,” I said, pressing Bottom’s side with my heels. “That’s it. You can sit there and think all the smutty thoughts you want about being flexible, and having extension, and touching my breasts, and the long, sensual sweep of your back right where it meets your hips, and how the muscles in your thighs and chest and arms move when you walk, which you do on purpose, I have no doubt, and all the other enticing bits of you, but I’ll have no part in it! I’m going to get to Ethan’s camp so I can check on my mothers and not have sex with you, no matter how good it will be, because you’re the Watch, and sooner or later, my moms will do something that will make you want to arrest them, and then I’ll have to do something horrible to you, and I don’t want that because other than the whole Watch thing, you’re really nice, and I believe that you’d have excellent extension and flexibility.”

  Bottom leaped forward before I finished the last sentence, so it came out as a bit of a shriek, but I felt better for saying it. For about eight minutes. Then Bottom, in full canter, shied at a family of adorably fluffy bunnies, and I went sailing off the side of him to land in a patch of mossy wildflowers.

  I lay there staring up at the blue sky, green willow branches dappling me with shade. Bottom, relieved of my presence, stopped and began cropping the grass. I wondered how long it would take Gregory’s slower horse to reach us. I wondered if Mabel could even canter, so broad in the beam was she.

  Overhead, a few bits of gauzy clouds gathered and formed into a shape that was vaguely horselike.

  “Three minutes and change,” I said aloud when Gregory’s face blocked out my view of the sky. “I had only reached one hundred and ninety-two Mississippi.”

  He tickled my nose with a pink flower, and lay down beside me. “You think I’m nice?”

  Trust him to focus on that first. “Any other man, a man of honor and consideration, a man who claims to have superb manners, would have asked me if I was hurt before pandering to his ego.”

  “But you do think I’m nice?” A high breeze made the clouds shift their shape into that of a petaled flower.

  “Yes,” I said, wanting to laugh and run away at the same time.

  “Excellent. I like you a great deal, too. Enough that I looked you over to make sure you weren’t hurt before I spoke.”

  The wispy white clouds overhead drifted lazily into the shape of a heart. “I’m not hurt. Moss is very forgiving. Bottom shied at bunnies.”

  “He appears to be an extremely high-strung horse. Do you really wish for me to be gone out of your life despite all my niceness?”

  The clouds melted into the blue sky. I rolled over onto my side to study Gregory. “That depends. Can you promise me that you won’t arrest my mothers?”

  His eye crinkles smoothed out. “No, I can’t.”

  I rolled onto my back again. There was nary a wisp of cloud in the sky, and yet I felt as if I was standing in the middle of the biggest, blackest thunderstorm ever. “Thank you for being honest.”


  “I will always be honest with you, Gwen, even when it is something that I know you do not want to hear.”

  Despite the words, the sincerity in his voice touched something inside me. I wanted so badly to throw caution to the wind and just give in to the urges my body was making. I wanted to forget there was a world outside of Anwyn. I wanted to remove the fear for my mothers that had been my constant companion for the last half of my life.

  I wanted desperately to be in love with Gregory, and to let him cherish me as instinct told me he would.

  Tears stung behind my eyes. “It isn’t fair,” escaped my lips, and the second it did, I was ashamed of how juvenile it sounded.

  “No, it isn’t,” Gregory said, and brushed my cheek with the flower. “I’ve found that life seldom is. Gwen, if I—”

  “No.” I rolled over to put my fingers across his mouth. He kissed them. “This isn’t your problem, Gregory. You are what you are. You have a job to do, and I am not going to ask you to shirk your duty just so we can be together.”

  “You make it all so black and white,” he said against my fingertips, opening his lips to suck one inside. The swirl of his tongue against the pad of my finger made my entire body tingle. “As if it came down to having you or having my job.”

  “Doesn’t it?” It took a great deal of mental strength to speak, but I managed to get the two words out, and I was proud of that fact.

  “No. There are shades in between that you don’t seem to see.”

  I pulled my fingers away, suddenly chilled and tingle-less. “Because I’m not one of your people, you mean?”

  “That is a very minor shade of gray, and not one that concerns me.”

  “But it is still there.” I took the flower he held and tucked it behind his ear. “Tell me, what if I changed my mind and wanted to have a relationship with you? What if I wanted the whole nine yards, marriage, kids, eternity spent together. What would your family say to that?”

  He smiled, making the eye crinkles return. “A few months ago my grandmother would have had the biggest fit you had ever in your life seen. She would have banned me from the family, named us both mahrime, and forbidden anyone to ever mention either us or our children again. She would have notified all the other Traveller families of this exile and demanded that they honor it. We would have, in effect, ceased to exist for every living Traveller.”

  “What’s changed in the last few months that would alter that?”

  “Many things, but mostly me.”

  I thought about what he said. “And you consider the annihilation of your heritage not of concern?”

  “It wouldn’t happen. Not only am I my grandmother’s favorite out of all my cousins, but Peter has done much to soften her previous view on marriage to outsiders. She might raise a fuss, but she’d soon come about. She did so with Peter, and although things are not overly affectionate between them, she has named him as family before the annual gathering of Travellers.”

  I bit back the urge to say “Bully for her,” and instead contented myself with a simple “It proves my point, however. We aren’t meant to be together, Gregory.”

  He reached out and put a hand on my breast. I stared down at it in shock for a second or two. I couldn’t believe he just stuck out his hand and copped a grope! Then the tingling started again, and I watched in amazement as he lifted his hand about half an inch from my breast. Little snakes of blue-white light snapped and twisted like miniature lightning.

  “That . . . that’s not just static electricity, is it?” I asked, wondering why a shock to my boob wasn’t hurting me. On the contrary, the sensation of his hand above my breast just made it feel warm and tingly, and very, very sensitized.

  “In a way, yes.” His hand slid down my breastbone to my stomach, still not actually touching me but leaving a trail of electricity that sent out tendrils of pleasure all over my body. “Travellers can harness lightning, which is basically just a very large static charge that explodes with a tremendous amount of energy. This is a very personalized version of that.”

  “So this is something you do often?” I asked, watching with concern as his hand moved lower and hovered over my pubic bone. I was half braced to move away if the mini-lightning touched sensitive parts, but just as it did elsewhere, the electricity that came from his hand triggered only an arousing sensation that buzzed up and down my skin. “Oooh,” I said in a long breath as his hand circled my crotch before moving on down one leg.

  “No. I’ve never been able to manufacture porraimos with another woman. My cousin and I were speaking of this just the other day. He said he can with his wife, but I’ve always heard that it’s a rare phenomenon.” He waggled his fingers over the tip of my shoe, and inside it my toes wiggled in happiness. Then he moved to the other leg and started up it. My crotch was extremely happy at the thought of a return visit.

  “Porraimos? That’s the word for . . . er . . . personal lightning?”

  “The word itself means many things. One definition is ‘devouring.’ Another is ‘opening,’ and that is what it means to Travellers—it means to open oneself up to another person, and to the elements, and to all that is or will ever be. That it happens at all proves just how wrong you are.”

  I clutched handfuls of grass as he swirled lightning over my groin, belly, and breasts. The sensation of tingling moved into heat, making me feel as if I was burning from the inside out. “In what way?” I managed to gasp out, my back arching as he held both hands about an inch above my breasts.

  “Porraimos only happens when the two people share an inalienable bond.” He leaned down, his mouth claiming mine at the same time his hands closed on my needy breasts. Even through my shirt and the mail, his touch made the fire inside me roar to an inferno of desire. I pulled his body down onto mine, kissing him for all I was worth, sliding my hands under his shirt in order to stroke the smooth swoops and valleys of muscles that made up his back. Carefully, I twined my tongue around his, careful to avoid the spot where his tooth was missing even though I knew the wound had long since healed.

  His words echoed in my head, going around and around until they became a chant. We were meant for each other. We had a rare bond, one that few people experienced. It would be the sheerest folly to discard such a gift, wouldn’t it?

  It would. I gave myself up to the feelings that his touch had triggered, feelings that whipped through me until I felt like I was caught in an whirlwind of passion, desire, and heat so great I thought it would surely consume me.

  “Gwen, tell me now if you really do not want me,” he said against my lips, his hand pulling the mail up my body. “Because I won’t be able to stop if I kiss you just one more time.”

  I said nothing, but wrapped one leg around him and kissed him with the power of all my tangled emotions. I knew what I was doing wasn’t smart, wasn’t the least bit wise, and certainly was going to mean a world of trouble not only for myself and my mothers but for my heart, but at that moment nothing really mattered but Gregory.

  And then suddenly he was gone, having leaped up off me with a strangled oath. I sat up, bereft, my body still humming its happy little song of anticipation. Gregory stood twisted to the side, trying to see behind him.

  “Your damned horse bit my ass!” His face was filled with outrage as he turned to show me the tear in his pants.

  I collapsed laughing when he charged over to where Bottom was standing, an innocent expression on his horsey face while Gregory threatened him with all sorts of dire punishments. I was well aware that I’d just had a very, very narrow escape.

  The question was whether I would be so lucky the next time.

  NINE

  “How’s your behind?”

  Gregory pulled his thoughts from the dark place they’d gone ever since the scene some hours earlier, and experimentally flexed a butt cheek. “It’s better. No thanks to that carnivore you’ve been riding.”

  Gwen stifled a giggle, but he heard it nonetheless, and he managed to share a sour look
between both her and the horse she led, all the while adopting a martyred air.

  “Sorry,” she said with contriteness that didn’t for one minute fool him. “I know that being on the receiving end of those teeth isn’t funny, but if you could have seen the look on your face when he did it . . .”

  Her words trailed away again, leaving her throat working as she fought to keep from laughing out loud.

  He thinned his lips and looked straight ahead. They were walking the horses in order to let them have a break from constant riding, and he had found the exercise beneficial to his thoughts. If nothing else, marching across the landscape made it hard for one to be aroused. “It’s not the bite I object to so much as it is the interruption. I can now attest to the fact that it’s impossible to seduce a sweetly ripe maiden when one’s ass has been manhandled. Or in this case, horsehandled.”

  Gwen lost her fight and whooped with laughter.

  “Sorry,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “‘Horsehandled’ pushed me over the edge.”

  “Delighted to provide amusement.” He tried to preserve his injured mien, but failed. Even if his posterior was the one that had suffered the abuse, it had been a very funny—if wholly frustrating—moment.

  “Ugh.” Gwen pulled her mail shirt out from her plump, tempting breasts and tried to generate a breeze. “Not to be gross, but I’m just a giant ball of sweat in this mail. I don’t suppose there’s an afterlife hotel around here where I can take a shower?”

  “I doubt that any such facility exists. However . . .” He squinted into the distance. “Yes, the woman at the stables said we should let the horses have a rest at a small lake. We are more than halfway to the camp, assuming that water ahead is the lake she mentioned.”

  “A lake.” She made a face that turned into a shrug. “It’s no hot shower, but if there aren’t leeches or water moccasins or anything icky like that, it sounds like heaven. Ha. Afterlife. Heaven.”

  He looked at her.

  She gave him a wry smile that made his stomach turn over. “Sorry. My jokes are suffering the effect of the heat, too.”