Timeslip

by Clare London

  He stared at me. “Of course not.” His voice seemed shaky. “I only drink tea.”

  I nodded. “And there’s none of that in the kitchen.”

  He frowned again, as if I were speaking an alien language. “Of course there is.”

  “Not green tea,” I said bluntly. And as I nudged past him out of my cubicle, I had the rather mean satisfaction of seeing his face blanch almost as white as his starched shirt collar.

  * * * *

  That night, it happened again.

  I thought it was the beer. You know—too much of it? I’d had a hell of a day trying to get up to speed with Colin’s work, then checking on the report formats with Ellen. And all the time, having to put up with their teasing, alternating between relief it wasn’t them going into the meeting with Mr Impossible-To-Please and sympathy for my eventual yet inevitable downfall. Even Bernard took time off from burying himself in accounting software trials to come and smirk.

  So I stumbled home at the end of the day, fit for nothing but beans on toast and a beer. Then another. I turned on some late-night horror flick and gripped a cushion for moral support when the resurrected ghoul guy bit someone’s head off. But I was determined to stay awake.

  It was as if I was scared to go to bed.

  Had to, in the end. I dropped off on the couch and woke in the middle of a cheesy detective series, with a wet lap. I’d spilled half my fourth beer over my sweats. Grumpy, in that half-land between waking and sleeping, I dragged myself for a wash, pulled on some clean boxers, and went to bed.

  I looked around the flat several times, checking I’d cleared away the spilled beer and the washing up. I closed the bedroom window tight, telling myself I didn’t need fresh air tonight. What the hell? Did I think someone was going to get through my thrice-locked front door, negotiate the creaky floorboard in the middle of the living room, open my bedroom door, which stuck slightly in damp weather, then climb into my bed under two blankets to get beside me—all without me noticing?

  But that’s what he did.

  Like the difference between blinking and not, Marcus was suddenly there in the bedroom. But this time he’d already lifted up the edge of the sheet and was sliding in underneath it. He lay down, wriggled a bit on the mattress, then turned his back to me.

  “Shit!” I lurched up to sitting.

  Marcus stared back at me over his shoulder, eyes wide and dark. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Me? “Me?” Marcus Armstrong was lying in my bed, beside me, and—bloody hell, I’d just realised—with nothing on but a pair of snug white briefs. “What are you doing here?” I scrabbled up the blankets around me. Bad move: that just exposed him more. His skin was shadowed in the dim light of the bedroom, dark against the white sheets. His long, slim legs stretched out to the foot of the mattress, and he hugged the pillow close, as if it was a familiar position for sleep.

  Nothing on but his briefs…

  “What I’m doing is trying to sleep,” he snapped. “While you’re…what? Trying out a cocoon for size?”

  “Where the fuck did you come from?” I looked around wildly. Nothing else had moved in the room. The door was closed. No noise from the living room, no warning alarms from outside the building. He’d just…appeared.

  “Have you been drinking?” He wrinkled his nose. “I can smell beer. You have work tomorrow, you know.”

  I just stared. “This is my flat,” I said. “My bedroom.” My voice was increasing in both volume and pitch. “My bed!”

  Marcus gave a deep sigh. He rolled over to face me, then pulled himself to sitting. Our shoulders brushed, and I felt that same rush of excitement and desire that had ambushed me the previous night. I could smell the day’s sweat on his skin, the shampoo in his hair. It smelled a lot like the one that was currently in my shower.

  Coincidence, of course. Why would it be anything else? This was the man who’d railroaded me today in the office, had struck fear and hysteria into the hearts of my friends and colleagues, had bullied me into a job I was pretty sure I’d fuck up, and who so obviously didn’t care a toss either way.

  Who’d never even noticed me before.

  “Kevin?”

  “Marcus?” I sounded rather snappy, too.

  He sighed again. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  I gaped. That was another piece of water-cooler gossip. The perfect Marcus Armstrong had never—ever—apologised to anyone in the office.

  “Please.” He looked genuinely upset. “I just don’t think. You’re right.”

  I am?

  “I’m just wrapped up in my own worries. It’s hard for me to share them with anyone. That’s the way I always used to be. You know…before.” He gazed at me as if I would understand this. “But that’s no excuse. I’m tense about the new job, and the presentation, and…I’m taking it out on you. When I should be drawing strength from you.”

  Great jumping balls of paranormal!

  “Marcus….” I started slowly because firstly, my throat was tight with shock and a not inconsiderable fear, and secondly, I realised the lunacy of talking to a man who couldn’t be in my room, but who was, and who had…nothing on but his briefs. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine.” He smiled and put his hand on my arm. “Of course I am, when I’m here.”

  “Ah.” I cleared my throat. I couldn’t move away from him without falling out of bed. “That’s the thing, you see. Do you really know where you are?”

  He laughed, but he looked bemused. “I’m at your flat.”

  “And?”

  He glanced around the room. “In bed, as usual. I know I’m late home again, but there’s nothing else different. What’s this all about?”

  In bed, as usual.

  “Marcus, this isn’t usual for me.”

  He just stared. His fingers tightened on my arm.

  “I’m not used to you…appearing like this. Being here. Being in my bed. This is…”

  “What?” His voice was oddly clipped.

  “Weird,” I said. Immediately wished I’d chosen a better word. Then thought, fuck it, wasn’t I the one being spooked? “This isn’t real, you know.”

  He shifted suddenly and clumsily, but instead of dropping his hand, he put the other one on my other arm, and held tight. I didn’t know whether to be afraid of someone who…well, wasn’t really there. And he wasn’t, was he? So how come I could smell his skin, could feel the tension in his muscles as he gripped me, could see the small bead of sweat on his upper lip as he…?

  Leaned in and kissed me.

  Time stopped. My heart stopped, though it started again with a kick—and then started racing. I probably should have pulled away, or thumped him one.

  But I didn’t.

  Instead, I let my hands rest on his broad shoulders, and I kissed him back. Hard. His lips were just as firm as last night, but this time I met them full-on, and tasted every bit. His tongue flickered at my lower lip until I opened my mouth an inch. Then he thrust in, finding my tongue and nudging against it. I could hear panting and I think it was mine. He gave a soft, slow moan that went right to my groin.

  I tried to wriggle closer but I was thoroughly tangled in the bedding. With a low laugh, Marcus broke from the kiss and helped me pull myself free of my protective blankets. I stared into his shining eyes, dark and full of need for me. His lips glinted in the dim light, his teeth white in contrast. There were shadows on his cheeks where his skin was flushed. I had his arms around me and his warmth pressed against me from chest to hip.

  Why the hell would I seek protection from this?

  He pushed me back down in the bed and rolled on top of me. It was just about this time my fevered brain reminded me we were both in bed…with nothing on but our underwear. My cock was thick and needy and trying to push its way out through a placket that this pair of boxers didn’t have. The growl in the back of his throat made me hard, his kisses made me hungry, the way he fit against me made my heart ache with desire for him. He was har
d, too, I couldn’t mistake it. His cock swelled the front of his briefs and nudged against my belly.

  My wonderings about his preferences were answered very nicely, thank you, God.

  “Kevin?” He pulled back for a second, a thin trail of saliva clinging between our lips. “This is real, isn’t it?”

  I pulled him back down against me, pressing my lips to his neck. I slid a hand down his back to his arse and squeezed the tight muscle. “Yes,” I gasped. “Oh, fuck, yes.”

  He smiled, his eyes gone suddenly wild like an autumn storm. “Kevin, I want…”

  And then he was gone. Again.

  Just like last night.

  I waited half a minute before my heart rested back to its usual pace. I lay on my back with a vicious hard-on, my fists clenched, my mind in a whirl.

  “Never had a wet dream like that before,” I joked aloud to the silent room.

  I’d fallen into a trap of my own making. I’d spent so many fruitless hours thinking and wondering about Marcus Armstrong, and not because I had an eye on my less than glorious career at the firm. But because I truly did have one huge, almighty crush on him. Since the first day I saw him, I knew I was in trouble, because the fascination and the desire was stronger than anything I’d ever felt for a man before. Happy on my own? Yeah, I’d had to be—because the only man I wanted didn’t know I even existed beyond coffee-stained monthly billing reports.

  Now I’d had him in my bed, holding me, kissing me—wanting to do more. Somehow I’d created this dream from my longings, because that was all it could be. In my daily, waking hours, he’d never given any indication he’d like to do anything remotely intimate at all. Yeah. This was a cruel dream, right?

  A nightmare, more like.

  I rolled over onto my front, lying on the uncomfortably wet patch on the front of my boxers, squashing my painful erection and—along with it—my stupid, embarrassing, hopeless hopes.

  * * * *

  “So why does he keep coming around to your cubicle?” Colin sat perched on the edge of my desk, his morning ebullience not really what I wanted after my miserable night.

  “You poor bastard.” Bernard shook his head at me, leaning against my cubicle wall.

  “Your hours are numbered.” Ellen yawned beside Bernard, her first-of-the-morning cup of coffee tilting perilously over my files.

  “What do you mean?” I’d only just arrived at work, late and listless. I had a hell of a headache and I didn’t need the three Stooges greeting me. I hadn’t slept much after…well, after the previous night’s adventure in Weird City. I’d watched more rubbish on TV and drunk another couple of beers, and finally fallen asleep on the sofa in the small hours of the morning. When the alarm shrieked from my bedroom to wake me for work, I’d woken to a hangover and homicidal thoughts.

  “What do you mean, he keeps coming around?” I swivelled my chair and peered at the time on my computer. “I’m not that late.”

  “No.” Colin was obviously trying not to sound too excited, but he couldn’t resist the thought of melodrama, even at my expense. “I came in early today to get started on the new Atkinson account, and—” He lowered his voice with an exaggerated glance over his shoulder. “He was already in his office.”

  “At exactly 7:02?” I suggested, morosely.

  “Yeah. Whatever.” I saw Colin trade shrugs with Bernard over my bent head. “But then he came out of his office and walked up here.”

  “On his way to the kitchen. Or the bloody executive toilet.”

  “No!” Colin wriggled with agitation. “He stopped right here, outside your cubicle, and looked in. Then…” He drew a deep breath, as if delivering the coup de grace, and said, “He went back to his office.”

  “And did it again a half hour later,” Bernard added. “I was bringing up some software appraisals for the sales department, and I saw him.”

  I glanced at Ellen, usually the steadiest of my friends.

  “It’s true, Kevin. He came around again, just fifteen minutes ago. I was here to see if you wanted to go through the slides for the presentation. Armstrong was standing outside your cubicle, looking…” She raised her palms upward, then dropped them again.

  “What?” Colin said. “Looking what?”

  Ellen peered at me, a strange look in her eyes. “Sort of confused. Like he wasn’t sure why he was there.”

  Someone coughed behind her, and she jumped like she’d been shot.

  “Miss Stonebridge, isn’t it?”

  “Oh shit,” Colin muttered. Bernard went a strange sickly colour and immediately straightened his posture.

  Ellen’s eyes were wide and her expression panicky. She turned slowly. “Good morning, Mar—Mr Armstrong.”

  Marcus stood in the opening. Hell’s bells, the cubicle was so small, there wouldn’t have been room for him inside. Our eyes met, then he glanced back at the others. “Have you transferred to this department, Miss Stonebridge? More specifically, to this actual cubicle? And you felt the need to bring clerical support?”

  Colin looked like he was about to wet himself but was too scared even to do that. Bernard wrung his hands together. Ellen’s mouth opened, but it took her three attempts before she could speak. “We just came to help Kevin…Mr Cooper…with the presentation for Friday, Mr Armstrong.”

  “And we’re going…” Colin started.

  “Now,” Bernard finished, pushing Colin firmly in front of him as they tried to squeeze out of the cubicle without brushing against Marcus.

  Frowning, Marcus let them all go. He turned back and glared at me.

  “What?” I said sharply. “You’ve sprung this on me with only a couple of days’ notice, so I’m researching where I can. Okay?”

  To my astonishment, he flushed. “I understand that approach, Mr Cooper. If you feel that works best for you…”

  “And for fuc—for goodness sake, call me Kevin. Not good at the formal stuff.”

  Not from the man in bed with me last night, his tongue down my throat.

  I dropped my gaze, expecting Marcus to storm back to his office and immediately draft the e-mail for firing me on the grounds of gross misconduct. After a couple of seconds, I realised he was still there. In fact, he’d taken a couple of steps further into my cubicle.

  I looked up again. He stood there in another of his superb suits, the man in charge, smart and bright and disapproving. And an expression of turmoil in his eyes.

  Something made me stupidly aggressive. “Can I help you? I’ll do my best on this presentation, you’ll have to trust me. I may not be the sharpest tool in the toolbox, but I get there in the end. And Sherringhams will be suitably impressed on the day, I’m sure.”

  “I’m sure,” he repeated quietly. He kept staring at me.

  I sighed and swung my chair around to face him. “Okay. I’m sorry I was so fuc—so rude. I had a bad night, but I’m over it now.”

  “So did I,” he said, startling me again. “But I’m not sure I am.”

  “Am…?”

  “Over it.”

  And when I just sat there, gaping again, he lifted a hand and, with a grimace, gestured for me to join him in the corridor. “Will you come for a coffee, Mr Cooper?”

  * * * *

  I don’t think the kitchen had ever seen such a thing. As we walked in, the three people sitting there leaped to their feet in a scraping of chairs, and vanished like Peter Rabbit caught in the cabbage patch. A couple of them looked back over their shoulder with expressions of sympathy. Maybe they thought I was headed for an exit interview. I wasn’t sure what I was there for myself, to be honest.

  I poured a coffee and offered the pot to Marcus, who refused with a curt shake of the head. He sat down on one of the plastic chairs, rather gingerly. “I…”

  “Only drink tea, right.”

  He looked disturbed. “How did you know what tea I like? Yesterday, you said…there’s no green tea in the kitchen.”

  “Lucky guess, that’s all.”

  He frow
ned. “There’s something odd about you, Mr Coop—Kevin. But I don’t know whether you’re insubordinate, insufferable, or just plain…”

  “Weird?” I said softly.

  His eyes widened. To my shock, he looked scared. I wanted to go over and put my arms around him. Shows how disturbed I was, didn’t it?

  “I need to get back to the presentation work,” I said, stirring some sugar into my coffee. I’d lost count of the spoonfuls. “A lot of it’s new to me. I’ve only worked in billings so far.”

  “I know,” he interrupted. “I’ve seen you.” When I stared back across at him, he looked just as surprised, as if he hadn’t meant to say that. And, my God, as I continued to stare, a deep flush began creeping up his neck.

  Wonder of wonders!

  “I mean,” he said, obviously searching for an excuse for such a personal comment. “I examined all my staff’s appraisals to date. You have a good grasp of incomplete records.”

  Bloody well had to, considering some of the timesheets his guys put in, I wanted to joke. But the serious look in his eye stopped me. “So?”

  “So…what?”

  “So you asked me here for coffee, didn’t drink any, talked some nonsense about tea and my modest career. And you find me insubordinate but with some promise in the accounting department. So what’s this all about?”

  It was an echo of his own words last night, when I told him his visit to my flat wasn’t real. And as it wasn’t real, he wouldn’t remember, would he? So why did his whole body go tense?

  I recalled the times he came up the corridor and looked into my cubicle. I’ve seen you.

  No, I was reading too much into it. A hope and a dream, combined—they weren’t enough. I put down my coffee with a sigh. It was like treacle: even I didn’t drink it that sweet. “I’ll go back now.”

  He stood abruptly. “Wait.”

  Not many people would ignore that imperious tone, and I wasn’t one of them.

  “You also said…you had a bad night.”

  My turn to tense up. Surely this wasn’t an admission that weird things were happening to him, too? No, this was my problem alone. “I just had a bad dream, that’s all.”

  He sucked in a breath, but by then I’d turned my head away. I could remember how he smelled, how he sounded, how his skin felt under my fingertips in the night. Or rather, how my “other” Marcus felt. Bad, bad news. I was thinking of him possessively now. A man who was a virtual stranger and my boss, who could easily have me fired—or worse, make me leave my job just because I had some stupid crush on him that was causing me vivid hallucinations…