by Jadyn Chase
He poured a portion of tea into his saucer, blew on it, and sipped. I watched the outdated ritual with interest. He covered all the bases with this act of his.
“You didn’t tell me if you had a sweetheart back in 1840,” I prompted. “Did you leave behind a broken-hearted lover or two?”
A beautiful blush washed over his cheeks. “I’m afraid not.”
“Go on,” I teased. “A handsome fellow like you must have broken a few hearts.”
“Quite the reverse, Rosie. I fell in love with two young ladies, both of whom nurtured my affections, only to leave me devastated by marrying other men.”
I gaped at him in horror. “You’re kidding.”
“Sadly, no. I wish I was. I had all but given up on finding a woman to share my heart with. I had resigned myself to surviving on local trollops and houses of ill repute.”
“Wow,” I breathed. “That is so not what we normally think of as Victorian masculinity.”
“Why should it be otherwise? Men can fall in love and have their hearts broken as easily as women. I don’t see that being Victorian has anything to do with it.”
“You’re right.” I set my teacup aside without drinking any of it. Now that he brought it up, I did seem hellbent to use him and discard him afterwards. Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea after all. “If that’s the case, why did you kiss me outside the shop?”
“You’re different.” He eyed me over his cup and saucer. “I don’t see you in the same light.”
I colored and lowered my eyes. “I see. You don’t see me as a prospect. Is that it?”
“Quite the contrary. I get the feeling you wouldn’t lead me on in that way. You would never give me your affections, only to break my heart. If you didn’t care for me, you would simply tell me so. Am I right? I highly doubt you would have let me kiss you in the first instance.”
I smiled, but I couldn’t look at him for long. “You’re right. I wouldn’t lead you on.”
“So…..” A faint hint of mirth crept into his eyes. “Why did you let me kiss you?”
“I…. I don’t really know.” I couldn’t think when he looked at me like that. “I wanted to. I…. find you attractive. That’s all.”
“That’s all? Did you bring me up here to kiss me?”
“No.” I whirled in a confusion of emotion. “I mean, yes. I brought you up here to do that and a lot more. I suppose you already know why I brought you up here.”
“Not really. That’s why I’m asking.”
My cheeks glowed with warmth. He made me so happy I couldn’t stop smiling at him. “How about we start with kissing and see where it leads?”
“I can agree to that.” He put his cup down. “How shall we begin?”
I laughed again. I never approached a guy like this before, but what the hell, right? I scooted down the couch so I sat right next to him. We examined each other with clinical reserve.
I kept smirking at him. He caught me out trying to pounce on him. I ought to feel guilty about that, but I didn’t. I wanted…. him. I wanted to do this. I wanted to have some fun with him while it lasted.
His lips and cheeks quivered suppressing his grin. He knew what we were going to do. Maybe he viewed me as a trollop, too. That word made me want to burst out laughing, but it also gave me a license to pounce on him. If that’s all I was, so be it. At least I wouldn’t break his heart making him believe I was anything else.
At the same moment, we both leaned together and kissed. This was no innocent peck on the lips. It began as a gentle exploration of the possibilities. From there, it escalated into a dreamy enjoyment of softness and intimacy.
We dallied in that for a long time. Our lips plucked and danced together. All at once, his hand came to rest against my cheek and the dam burst. My mouth sagged open and his tongue slithered in. A volcanic rush of heat flooded my mind and body and I sank into his embrace. His arms closed around me in ways I could never imagine.
The next thing I knew, he cradled me and supported me swaying in magical delirium. We dove headfirst into wild, passionate kissing that seemed to never end.
He rocked me back and tilted over me, but even that seemed right. He supported me in mindless waves of lips and tongues all mixed up together. I couldn’t think of anything but him. He held me suspended somewhere between Heaven and Earth, between the world I knew and a world where limitless possibilities came close enough to grasp and to make real.
When I opened my eyes, I found him studying me with those intense blue eyes of his. His lips kept me breathless and wanting more, but his eyes left nothing hidden. Rather than deluding anyone or misconstruing this experience for something it wasn’t, they revealed a deeper truth. I wanted that truth. I wanted only the truth with him.
He sat me up and our lips parted, but that inextricable bond holding me in his sway didn’t slacken. I drifted into a place where the inevitability of our union took control of the situation.
Without stopping to think it over, I climbed onto my knees and straddled his lap. I sat down on him and let my mouth sink into the place it belonged. I released the restraints holding me back. I dropped all the inhibitions that might suggest this wasn’t a good idea.
The minute I did that, my body erupted into unstoppable passion. I undulated against him. I wanted to stroke him with every part of myself. My breasts and stomach and crotch and mouth and eyes—they all craved him at once. Every spinning kiss sent a wave of rippling desire down me to my slit.
His package hardened between my legs and I ground against it for all I was worth. I just didn’t care anymore if he put me in the same camp with trollops and houses of ill repute. What did those outdated notions mean now, anyway?
He cradled both my cheeks in his warm palms and steered my mouth into his. He didn’t throw me off or huff in offended propriety, so he must be liking it, too.
He didn’t escalate, though. This was all mine. I peeled my shirt over my head and unhooked my bra. He gazed up at me from below, but he didn’t dive in to devour me. When I kissed him, he accepted it with good grace. I guess I had to do this myself and take charge.
I took his hands and placed them on my breasts. I wanted him to touch me, to take me. He massaged them until I moaned. I grabbed his head and shoved my chest in his face. I stuffed one nipple into his mouth. Oh, yeah, that was good!
My crotch ached with desire. I wanted him inside me, but he didn’t take it to the next level. He never did. I started to wonder if he might not have any experience with sex at all.
This was my deal. I wanted this and I wasn’t letting him out of my apartment until he satisfied me. I hauled my breast out of his mouth and stood up. I kicked off my jeans until I stood before him naked as the day I was born. He gazed up at me with huge eyes, but I didn’t come this far to be looked at.
I went down on my knees and went to work on his pants. I unbuttoned them and scooched them down his thighs. His meat jumped out standing straight up. I drew them down to his feet and took off his shoes.
He gaped at me in surprise, but I didn’t take my eyes off his face. I wanted him to see me do this. I wanted to see him. I wanted to enjoy the delicious astonishment of realization taking hold of him.
When I stood up again, I lifted his shirt. He raised his arms to let me take it off. Then I sat down again. Now nothing stood between us and the deed itself.
I smashed my saturated flesh against the stiff rod of his shaft and descended on his mouth. I kissed him as never before. He was all mine. I could do what I wanted with him. He put himself in my hands—or was it the other way around?
He squeezed my breasts without being asked. He stroked one hand down my hip to my ass and guided my thrusting motions against his tool. His stiffness plowed open my petals and coated the distended veins with creamy juice.
Fuck, he felt so good! Just another inch and…..Holy fuck, he was inside! He drilled in deep against my innermost anatomy and I sat down with all my weight. I wanted all of him inside me right now. My
essence flowed around him.
When I broke off his mouth, his eyes hovered before me, bottomless, terrible, all-seeing. If I ever suspected I was in charge here, that idea sailed straight out of my mind. He held me captive with his gaze. He let me break myself on his body, but he didn’t break. I might hurl myself at him in all my terrible passion, but I couldn’t touch him.
His hardness plunged into me with every blistering rush. I couldn’t sit down on his shaft hard enough or deep enough to satisfy my insatiable craving. I heard myself screaming, shrieking, yelping, whining. I couldn’t stop. I wanted a quick fix and wound up getting so much more. I got…. I couldn’t tell right now what I got.
He took me somewhere I couldn’t fathom. Did he know? Did he realize when we first kissed that he would shatter me like this? Did he do it on purpose? Did he know I would never be the same when I sat down on that hot, hard stick of his?
His nostrils flared. I couldn’t move. I had to stare at my fate unfolding in those eyes. He had to take hold of me by the back of the neck and draw me into his mouth. I melted at the touch and ruptured on cataclysmic orgasms. I sobbed and whimpered into his mouth, but he wouldn’t release me. He kept me swaying and rocking and plunging on his wicked spike.
When I sagged against him, he took over. He strapped both arms around my ribs and heaved me aloft. He held me in position while he slammed into me from below. I couldn’t kiss him anymore. I could only stare at his face chiseled out of granite. When I looked into his eyes, I realized I couldn’t fight this. He swept me out of my mind and out of this world.
8
Alexander
I woke up to an almighty crash of breaking crockery. I started upright to find myself in Rosie’s bedroom. The door communicating to the living room afforded a clear view of the kitchen beyond. A faint, muffled, “Shit!” sounded from out of sight.
While I watched, her head popped up. She bobbed into view, ducked, and reemerged. She fossicked around behind the counter doing something or other.
I lay back in bed and watched. Did I really just spend the night in her bed? All those fevered dreams of her immaculate body moving against mine couldn’t be the product of alcohol. I didn’t drink enough for that.
No, it really happened. Her scent clung to my skin and hands and hair. I smelled her even now. Before I could fall into a reverie about all the delicious things we did together, she lunged upright again and darted into the bedroom. She gasped once when she saw me awake. Then she bolted for her closet and stuck her head into it.
“I’m late for work,” she called from the depths. “I have to go. You can look after yourself, can’t you? Crap! Where’s my……oh, bloody hell! There it is.”
She carried on half a conversation with someone inside the closet. Perhaps a wicked pixie or some such entity hid her things when she most needed them.
She pulled out again and waved at me. “I gotta go. Come by the store later if you want to and we’ll look up that information I told you about. Okay? Bye.”
She rushed me, kissed me on the cheek, and charged out of the apartment. A moment later, the door slammed and left me in silence. Now I could float back into fantasies of last night.
She really was a magical lover. Her sweetness intoxicated me and filled me with lust to take her again. That wouldn’t happen now, though. What if it never happened again?
I could almost forget her voluptuous body moving over me, her sumptuous breasts grazing my cheeks—almost, but not quite. I could never forget the cosmic delirium of her eyes misting over with passion. I could never forget the unstoppable significance of her fingertips tracing over my skin.
She wouldn’t lead me to believe she loved me if she didn’t. She didn’t play those games. I knew that when I first approached her. I wanted that kind of honesty—her kind of honesty—and that was what I got.
Her eyes and skin and hands told me she loved me. They told me she was wrong. No living man could misread signals like that.
How did I feel about that? If last night offered any indication, we would fall head over heels and live happily ever after. Did I really want to do that with a woman who would treat matters of propriety and reputation so frivolously? Why should I take her propriety and her reputation into account when she clearly didn’t?
She said those things didn’t matter in this time. Whether she did or not, I couldn’t discount them as though they meant nothing. That put an entirely different construction on the events of last night. If she didn’t have to worry about her reputation, why should she want to love me or any man? Why shouldn’t she throw herself at whomever she desired and leave in the morning? What was to stop her doing the same thing to me?
Without realizing the moment when it happened, I got out of bed and put my clothes back on. I got so engrossed in considering the Rosie Situation that I went through the motions automatically.
I drifted out of the apartment. I had no reason to stay there without her in it. I found myself wandering the streets of Dover examining all the incredible changes that swept the town.
These cars, as modern people called them, whizzed about the streets without the aid of horses. Other vehicles soared overhead. Noise and activity, blinking lights and other inexplicable devices crowded the once-peaceful hamlet.
The whole situation seemed so fantastic I hesitated to trust my senses. What if I’d gone insane and only thought I woke up in Dover Castle? What if this whole identity of Alexander Lincoln Shelton belonged to some fevered miasma that would evaporate when the Doctors of Medicine cured me of my malaise?
Would Rosie lose interest in me then? Would I lose interest in her? Perhaps I would discover I was married with children of my own. I would find I was nothing more than a Kentish bricklayer slaving every day to put food in my little ones’ mouths.
Did I want her—a woman of vastly inferior social station and an American at that? I ought to hold myself to a higher standard even if my parents and their society no longer carried any weight in this century. Great God, what was I thinking defiling myself with the likes of her?
I stopped at the shore to gaze out at the sea. The White Cliffs stretched into the farthest distance. If only they could answer my questions, I might be able to decide what to do.
If I was insane, I wanted to know. I wanted to know the truth of who I was even if I had to spend the rest of my life laying bricks. That would be better than swimming around in this interminable uncertainty. Maybe if I found out for sure I was a bricklayer, Rosie would decide to leave me to my fate and never speak to me again.
Even that would be better than not knowing. I wouldn’t have to dream about her anymore. I wouldn’t have to wonder if I was doing the right thing, by her or myself, by enjoying her without reputation and propriety.
I meandered down the Cliffs spiraling from one thought to the next and back again. I circled the same basic concepts again and again as if that could help me come to some conclusion.
Why on Earth should I question spending the night with Rosie? What could I possibly offer her beyond that? I had no home, no income, no family, no title. When it came right down to brass tacks, I couldn’t even offer her propriety and reputation. I had none of my own anymore.
If the twins were to be believed, I was, in fact, this hideous dragon marauding and destroying in a blood-thirsty rage whenever it emerged. What woman would want to get involved with that?
I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She delighted me and not just with her body. Her beauty, her intelligence, her kindness all beguiled me. Without the considerations of reputation and class, I couldn’t think of one reason not to enjoy her. When it came to anything beyond that, that was where I got bogged down in complications.
I halted to search the horizon but still came up empty. I turned away disheartened. When I did, I spotted her shop across the road. Sagittarius. She invited me to stop by to research my origins. Did I dare to go in there?
Perhaps she said that only to be polite. Then again, I wouldn’t get my quest
ions answered anywhere else. If she threw me out, at least I would know how she really felt.
That presented the problem of crossing the road. Cars screamed. Heavy freight vehicles rumbled. Tiny two-wheeled contraptions buzzed. The whole scene confounded the mind, but if I wanted to see Rosie, I had to take courage and do this.
I remarked the way Rosie looked right and left when approaching one of these predicaments. I stood at the roadside for more than an hour—at least it seemed that long. I checked to my right and then to my left, but I still couldn’t muster the nerve to step out.
Then, out of nowhere, another man came strolling down the footpath on the opposite side. He stopped in front of Rosie’s shop and peered through the front window. She didn’t see him, and he showed no indication of seeing her. She continued to work behind the counter.
The sight gave me all the impetus I needed. The mere possibility that another man might enter the shop and talk to her in my place was not to be born. At the next remotely adequate gap in the traffic, I took a deep breath and plunged. I bolted across the road and screeched to a halt next to the man.
His eyes widened, but I only grinned and nodded catching my breath. I puffed out my chest and strode into the shop as though I owned the place. If he or anyone else had tried to tell me I didn’t, I would have torn his head off.
Rosie’s countenance brightened when I appeared. She hustled around the counter to my side. “You’re here! I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I cast a hateful glare over my shoulder, but the man was gone.
She crossed to a table against the back wall. A huge tome lay open on top. “This is the article I wanted to show you. I found it the other day. Apparently, witchcraft in your time wasn’t a really big thing the way it was in the Middle Ages. By the time the Industrial Revolution hit, people started to move away from being afraid of witches and black magic and hexes and all that. People got really interested in parlor magic tricks and stuff. Correct me if I’m wrong. You’re the expert here.”