by BETH KERY
He'd been preoccupied all day with the final details of Jim Donahue's downfall but thoughts of Hope had never really left him. It felt a little bizarre to be entertaining concerns and worries about such an ephemeral woman when the very real details of his job demanded his attention. But just behind the scenes of his awareness he'd been forming a plan to try to contact her tonight.
Just like he had last night, he took another hot bath in the deep claw-footed tub. He had to admit he was getting used to bathing, the hot water loosening his muscles after his daily workout in the gym beyond what a shower could do. He was hyperalert the entire time for sounds of Hope, but she remained distressingly absent.
Afterward he opened the wardrobe door wide and stared into the antique mirror. He willed Hope to appear, but only his tense face looked back at him.
He left the wardrobe door open so that he could keep an eye on the mirror and sprawled on the newly assembled brass bed, watching the ten o'clock news on the portable television that used to sit on the kitchen counter in his loft.
Once he looked back at the television after glancing at the mirror for the hundredth time only to see Jim Donahue's beefy face filling the screen. He spoke at a local charity event for Children's Memorial Hospital. Ryan sat up slightly in bed, his attention narrowing to a sharp focus like a predator's when it sights prey.
Donahue still carried the vestiges of handsomeness, but his body and face were going to fat. He was already a big man—maybe an inch or two shorter than Ryan—but the rich foods and alcohol that his lifestyle afforded him and which he partook of liberally were finally taking their toll. At forty-eight years old, Donahue was a heart attack waiting to happen.
Maybe a prison diet would tack on a few extra years to his worthless life, Ryan thought with a sense of grim satisfaction as Donahue flashed a sharklike smile at the end of the sound bite. It really steamed him to see scum like Donahue being kowtowed to by the press as a community leader and respectable businessman.
For Ramiro's sake, Ryan hoped his partner wasn't watching the sickening display.
He irritably clicked off the television and stood to look into the mirror again.
"Hope. I need to speak with you. You're in danger," he said, feeling like an idiot for talking to himself but just desperate enough not to care.
Two more nights. All he had was two more nights.
He stalked across the room and picked up the leather-bound book of sonnets. He'd already checked the pages once this evening for some kind of message—hadn't Hope said she'd seen what he'd written? But there was nothing. Although he hadn't completely ruled out writing her a message of warning, he'd rather give her such an alarming message in person.
He needed more than just to leave her a message. He needed to reach her.
Protect her.
When he approached the mirror again there was still no sign of her, but Ryan noticed that the band of fogginess at the edge of the glass was definitely narrower. He ran his hand along the filmy band. He'd wondered if it wasn't decreasing last night, but tonight it was evident that it was.
Did the clarifying mirror somehow relate to his connection to Hope?
"Hope, please" he entreated, feeling foolish.
Feeling helpless.
How the hell could he reach her?
As he stood there and talked to himself, wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue sweats, his skin roughening as he caught a chill in the drafty old house, Ryan started to wonder if he wasn't losing it.
Should he schedule an appointment with one of the police counselors? He and Ramiro had put in a lot of long hours on the Jim Donahue investigation. Maybe the stress was finally getting to him!
Maybe his visions of the delectable Hope Stillwater were all part and parcel of a stress-induced psychosis?
If that were the case, his libido must be playing a major part in his hallucinations. He recalled the way Hope had looked last night bared to the waist, her flawless skin dewed with moisture, her high, full breasts quivering slightly as she trembled. Or when he'd seen her in the mirror wearing that sinfully sheer gown, her large, pink nipples pressing against a fabric so translucent it did nothing to cover the triangle of dark hair between her shapely thighs.
Ryan groaned as his cock stiffened against his thigh. He shoved his hand down his sweatpants and fisted it, trying to alleviate the pain of lust that had sliced through him at the graphic memories of Hope. How was it that the daughter of a wealthy social reformist minister wore such a revealing garment?
And more important, why had Hope Stillwater been in those erotic photographs?
It had been a mistake to think of those photos, Ryan realized as he withdrew his cock and shoved the waistband of his sweats below his balls. He stroked the length of his penis as he stared into the mirror, but he wasn't really seeing himself masturbate. Instead he was imagining those erotic images of Hope: her thighs spread wide and her lips opened in a silent keen of pleasure as her pussy was being eaten; the crop frozen in the action of smacking against the voluptuous curve of a white, shapely breast crowned with a stiffened, distended nipple.
God, what he wouldn't give to tie down that gorgeous creature and make her scream with need and desire.
He groaned as his pistoning motions on his cock became more rapid. He briefly considered getting the photographs out of the bedside drawer where he'd placed them and bringing himself off several times just like he had the night he'd found them. But he found that his imagination was all too sufficient when it came to fantasizing about Hope.
So he remained in place, his right hand jacking his cock with more and more force. If only it were her small, elegant hand caressing the straining column of flesh. He squeezed just beneath the head and a stream of clear pre-cum oozed out of the slit. He imag-lined the liquid melting on Hope's pink tongue as she looked up at him with huge, velvety eyes that always seemed to convey a sense of her innocence and a profoundly carnal nature all at once.
The image was so real he groaned roughly. A light seemed to flash. He opened his eyelids, startled, only to find that it was no longer his own image staring back at him from the mirror.
Hope stood there, her cheeks flushed a bright, vivid pink. She once again wore the tiny, sheer gown.
And her hand was every bit as busy between her thighs as Ryan's was.
FIVE
Hope turned the last page in her book of sonnets and set it down dispiritedly on her bedside table. What had she really expected, after all? Ryan hadn't told her to try to communicate with him using the book. Instead he'd specifically mentioned the mirror.
Her gaze traveled to the opened wardrobe door. Despite the fact that she'd been quite busy today—taking up her post at Central Station and planning her father's birthday celebration with the housekeeper— she'd still managed to stare into the depths of the gilded mirror at least a hundred times today.
Never once, however, had she caught a glimpse of Ryan's handsome face.
The memory of how he'd looked standing in that tub, like a naked statue of some warrior god come to life, left her breathless yet again.
It surprised her a little that she believed wholeheartedly that he was a man from the future. Hope supposed the reason for the relative ease for her faith in the impossible was Ryan himself. There was something about him that she couldn't see with her eyes or put precisely into words, but she sensed it nonetheless.
Ryan Vincent Daire was different. He wasn't of her world.
There was something else she knew about him instinctively. She desired him. Hope supposed desire is what one called this overpowering need and hunger that overcame her in his presence, anyway.
And even in his absence.
She had said she would use the mirror to try to contact him again, but what, exactly was she supposed to do to penetrate the barrier of time? All she possessed were her too brief memories of him ... and her desire.
She stood slowly from the brass bed. A moment later she extricated the balled-up Marlborough gown
from the deep recesses of her wardrobe.
The last time she'd seen Ryan in the mirror she'd been wearing the Marlborough gown and he'd been looking at her with a mixture of surprise and stark arousal. Hope had become all too familiar with that addicting hot look in his eyes when he'd studied her half-naked body last night in the bathroom. She moved quickly before she could change her mind, locking her bedroom door and lifting her cotton nightgown over her head.
The Marlborough gown slipped over the sensitive skin of her breasts and belly, finally tickling the tops of her thighs as it settled on her naked body as lightly as a lover's whisper.
Her throat spasmed convulsively when she once again stood before the gilded mirror. Did Ryan enjoy seeing her in the Marlborough gown? What sort of women did a man who lived in the twenty-first century find attractive?
At five feet six inches, Hope considered herself relatively tall for a woman. But Ryan towered over her. Were people perhaps larger in the future? He was so big. Everywhere.
Her cheeks and chest flushed with color when she pictured his long, shapely penis. Hope knew she had nothing to compare Ryan to except the statues she'd studied in France, Italy and Greece during her grand tour with an avid curiosity that could not be termed wholly artistic in nature. From what little knowledge she possessed, however, she suspected very strongly that most men were not as fortunate in their proportions as Ryan.
Or sheer beauty.
Not just of his genitals, Hope thought as her color deepened. All of him. There'd been a scar on his left shoulder, the whiteness of it contrasting with the darker surrounding skin.
She'd ached to touch that old injury, to feel his smooth, thick skin and the beat of his heart beneath her fingertips. He was male power personified—all those firm, rounded, delineated muscles on his chest, shoulders and arms, those strong thighs dusted with dark, crinkly hair. His testicles had hung like ripe, round fruit between his thighs.
And his penis .. .
Surely it wasn't possible to put such a large member inside of a woman, was it? But it must be so, Hope thought with wonder and increasing arousal as she lifted the hem of the Marlborough gown and stared at the thatch of hair between her thighs. The thought of Ryan's penis coming into such close, intimate contact with her body made her groan in stark arousal.
That forbidden piece of flesh that nestled so secretly between her thighs ached with longing. She slid a finger between the tender folds and found herself to be creamy. Her finger glided easily over her aroused genitals. She understood why she'd grown wet—that her body instinctively readied itself to accept a man when she became excited.
Her body prepared itself to receive Ryan.
Even though she couldn't see or touch him, she trusted the knowledge of her body. She rubbed herself with increasing desire, thinking of those electrifying, steamy moments as she looked her fill at not just any naked male, but the most glorious specimen of manhood she'd ever conjured up in her admittedly overactive imagination.
Would it hurt to have intercourse with Ryan? Hope wouldn't are if it did. She had learned from various sources—the most honest and matter-of-fact of which was Addie Sampson, the madam of the Marlborough Club—that if the man was patient and skilled at arousing a woman, the discomfort for her the first time was minimal and short-lived.
Hope had little doubt that Ryan would be a skilled lover. He made her so aroused and hungry and he'd never so much as touched her.
She burned to join with him ... to discover the raptures of sex. surely it must be awe-inspiring if everyone thought about it so much—whether they be preaching the sinfulness of it or lining up to spend a last hard-earned dollar on it at one of the Levee District whorehouses. Even her idol William Shakespeare seemed quite preoccupied by the topic.
She closed her eyes and imagined touching Ryan's hard muscles with her fingertips. She pictured the hot look that would gleam in his eyes if she placed her lips on his chest, ribs and belly and discovered his textures with that sensitive flesh as well.
A soft moan vibrated her throat when she imagined him pushing that engorged pillar of flesh into her body.
She wanted to touch him, to merge with him so much that her desire focused her will to a powerful white-hot flame. Something flashed in her room and her eyelids flew open in surprise. She looked around in slight disorientation only to find that everything was as it should be—
She gasped. Everything was not as it should be, or at least, not as it had been. Her room looked as it always did, with the fire crackling in the fireplace and her bedclothes tossed back on her bed. But it was no longer her own reflection that looked back at her through the looking glass.
"Ryan," she called out in shock when she saw him standing in the mirror, their distance from each other only two or three feet. She was so stunned at the apparition that it took her a moment to realize what he was doing and to recall what she'd been doing the moment before she saw him. She gaped when she took in the swollen organ in his hand.
Her own flesh sharply twanged with arousal beneath her fingertips.
She took a step forward and reached in blind need for him, her face collapsing in anguish when it encountered hard glass.
"No," she whispered in profound frustration. But at least his image hadn't disappeared.
Her hand tightened into a claw on the mirror. When she saw his tensed expression she noticed that her fingertips had smeared a thin coat of liquid on the glass.
The juices from her sex smeared on the mirror, put on display for Ryan to see. '
His stare on her fingers felt palpable. His lips shaped the word Hope, but she heard nothing. He released his penis. Hope watched in fascination as the heavy head of his member pulled the stalk down, although it still remained suspended in the air at a downward angle.
She licked her lower lip in nervous excitement, starting when Ryan pressed his hand to the other side of the mirror.
She glanced up, held prisoner by his gaze.
"Hope," he repeated, although she only saw his lips move, never hearing the sound. The degree of longing and frustration she saw in his singular eyes made her want to weep.
"Ryan, why can't I touch you?" she whispered shakily. She was hardly aware of what she was doing as she pressed closer to the mirror . . . closer to him. She whimpered in desperate need when she saw his erection spring up at her movement. He came closer, too, and lowered his dark head. He stood so near his eyes looked like millions of sea green, cerulean blue and aquamarine points of light when she looked up at him. She saw that the continuous beard and mustache had been clipped very short and neat. The nearly black hair looked sleek as it encircled and highlighted his hard yet sensual mouth. It would be such a pleasure to trace her fingertip over it.
She raised a hand and pressed her finger to the glass just over his angular chin. He inched even closer. Hope glanced down and saw that the smooth head of his penis pressed directly against the glass. She looked up quickly, her cheeks heating with embarrassment and arousal. He said something. She strained to read his lips, but out of everything he uttered she only comprehended one word.
Danger.
Her lack of comprehension and confusion must have shown on her face because Ryan cursed silently.
Damn.
She'd understood that word perfectly well, especially since she shared in the stark frustration behind his exclamation.
For a moment he seemed indecisive, but then he glanced pointedly at his hand where it pressed against hers on the glass, as though he tried to tell her something. The barrier of the mirror and 102 years separated them, however, and she felt uncertainty swell in her breast as she followed his gaze.
His hand was so much larger than hers. Her own fit in his palm, her fingertips reaching only his second knuckle. She shivered with excitement when she realized this was the same hand that had been holding his dense erection when she first spied him. Was it her imagination, or could she feel heat emanating from the cool surface?
She started in s
urprise.
It'd seemed for a split second that her hand had sunk into the surface of the mirror.
She glanced up into Ryan's face and could tell by his rigid expression that he had felt that give in the solid object as well. His lips shaped her name once again. He held her gaze and began to lower his hand. Hope followed his movement even as her gaze remained fixed on his fiery eyes. She definitely sensed heat now coming from the smooth surface of the mirror and followed it unerringly.
They both glanced down when their hands reached the area over their bellies and continued to slide down the mirror. Hope stopped breathing when Ryan fisted the stalk of his ruddy penis and pressed the head directly into the space over her opened palm.
She cried out sharply, raw need scraping at her throat. Heat scorched the center of her palm, but she pressed closer . . . desperate with wanting. His arm moved and she realized he stroked himself as he shared in her arousal. Her fingers rose to her own sex. She strummed slick, burning flesh.
He lowered his other hand and made a protective cupping motion over the juncture of her thighs. Hope whimpered shakily.
They pleasured themselves, separate but connected. Their eyes held. Ryan's hot, almost furious gaze left her in little doubt that he longed to be touching her as much as Hope wished she could touch him.
When his hand moved more rapidly between his thighs, her actions matched his pace.
Desire swelled both in her sex and her chest, feeling like it would burst out of her.
She cried out in alarmed excitement when she felt a new, divine friction between her thighs. Her hips pressed instinctively against the pressure even as the fingers over Ryan's cock reached more insistently.
The solid pane of the mirror gave way to her desire.