TimeSlip

by Caroline McCall

  His heart fell, how the hell was he going to tell Ingrid? Sharing her bed without touching her these past few nights had been agony. But if he touched her, made love to her, he knew that he would never let her go. No, he couldn’t let that happen. It would be better for Ingrid if they made a clean break with no complications. He had plenty of time to be miserable about her when he got home.

  The lights in the room were dim. Music played low in the background, something Ingrid called jazz, and a log fire burned in the grate. That was something he would miss, that and the abundance of water for showers, instead of the sonic ones on the ships back home. The table was set for two and delicious smells wafted from the kitchen.

  “Identify smell, Com?”

  “A chemical compound. Primarily dimethyl sulphide or DMS, usually found in truffles. The black truffle is said to have aphrodisiac properties which—”

  The bedroom door opened and Ingrid emerged. “That’s enough, Com,” he hissed.

  The black lace dress she was wearing would give a Tarsian monk a hard-on for a month. The fabric skimmed over her curves like a second skin and the neckline gave him a tantalizing glimpse of pale, creamy breasts. Ingrid’s hair was loose and she had put makeup on her eyes that made them look smoky and exotic. Desire uncoiled low in his abdomen. He could almost feel the blood rushing to his cock. If this was a seduction, he was in big trouble.

  Ingrid kissed him lightly on the cheek. Her perfume wafted around him and he inhaled deeply.

  “Dinner’s almost ready,” she said. “I’ve made something special.”

  She pressed a glass of wine into his hand, brushing her fingers against his. He felt as if he’d been hit with a plasma gun. Everything about her, the slightest touch was driving him crazy. Strom took a deep gulp of wine. He would sit at the table, that would put some distance between them, and the tablecloth would conceal the growing bulge in his pants.

  Ingrid busied herself in the kitchen, chatting to him about Finn and the guys and their plans for the evening, but he found it hard to concentrate on what she was saying. His suddenly raging libido was affecting his brain function. You’re going home in thirty-six hours. Keep your hands off her. An evening alone with Ingrid was a very, very bad idea. He should have gone out with Finn and the others, but it was too late now.

  “Dinner is served.” Ingrid carried a covered dish to the table. “It’s Finn’s secret recipe—chicken with truffles.”

  Her breasts brushed his shoulder as she leaned over to serve him and Strom stifled a groan, taking another deep gulp of wine from his glass. Ingrid must have filled it up again. She was beautiful in the candlelight. Her eyes were mesmerizing and her mouth… He took another sip of wine and tried not to think about that—the way she had kissed him, the feel of her skin under his hands. Sweet merciful stars, would this evening ever be over? He finished his meal as quickly as he could without behaving like a savage. He was relieved when she disappeared for a few minutes.

  “And I have a surprise for you.”

  For him? A surprise for him? Ingrid was smiling expectantly at him and he nodded his head in agreement. She offered her hand and led him toward the bedroom. He had to stop this. Ingrid paused outside the bathroom and opened the door. Every surface was covered with tiny scented candles, and the giant tub was full of bubbling water.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “I love it,” he replied sincerely. He really did love it. He could hide in here for at least an hour and hopefully she would be asleep by then. He knew that he was acting like a coward, but he couldn’t tell Ingrid that he was leaving, not yet. He would have one more night to hold her while she slept. One more night when he could pretend that she loved him and that they would spend the rest of their lives together. He rested his forehead against the cool surface of the mirror. Before he went to her bed, he would need a very long, very cold shower.

  Ingrid closed the bathroom door behind her. She couldn’t understand it. The whole evening had gone exactly as planned. Dinner was wonderful. She had flirted outrageously with him, touched him at every opportunity and poured quite a lot of expensive red wine into him. But there was no reaction whatsoever from the viking. Nothing, nada, zilch. Oh he had looked, all right. It was hard not to miss that dark, hungry gaze, but he hadn’t laid a finger on her. Strom cared about her, she was sure of that. He slept beside her each night, so why wouldn’t he touch her?

  He had been delighted with her surprise. She knew Strom coveted the big tub, and she had no idea what a sonic shower was, but it didn’t sound very pleasant. She had pocketed the bathroom door key when he wasn’t looking. If he wouldn’t make a move, then it was up to her. This was the twenty-first century, after all. She hurried along the corridor to her bedroom. It was time to put Plan B into action.

  Ingrid looked nervously in the mirror and took a deep breath. She was really going to do this. Removing her clothes and makeup, she slipped into the pale-blue negligee. She knew he liked that one. “Rose petals,” she muttered. “Where are the rose petals?”

  Taking a handful from the box, she sprinkled them over the bed and took a last look around the room. Perfect. Now all she needed was the viking. Her fingers clutched the handle of the bathroom door. It was now or never. Ingrid stepped into the steamy room. She watched the emotions play across Strom’s face, surprise, a hint of lust, followed by a big dollop of regret. His muscular arm reached for a towel.

  “Ingrid, please don’t. I mean we can’t…”

  Shame flooded through her. She had offered herself to him on a plate and he had rejected her. What a complete idiot she was. How could she have ever thought that Strom wanted her?

  “Why?” she snapped. “Are you part of some virgin space cult?”

  That made him laugh. “No, Ingrid, it’s nothing like that. I just don’t want to have an affair with you.”

  And there it was, utter humiliation, adorned with scented candles. Strom didn’t want her. Ingrid raced to her bedroom and hastily pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Strom appeared at the door with a towel around his hips, dripping water all over the carpet.

  “Ingrid, wait, please, we need to talk about this.”

  Talk. He wanted to talk? She wanted to kill him. Ingrid pushed roughly by him, hurrying toward the door. If she didn’t get out of here soon, she was going to humiliate herself even more by crying on him. “Strom, the last thing I want to do with you is talk.”

  Rivulets of water ran down his bare chest. “But where are you going?”

  “Strom, if you don’t want me, then it’s none of your damned business.”

  She caught up with Finn at the Sugar Club. Jake and Pete were interested in all the cultural experiences Dublin had to offer, and they didn’t have burlesque in the twenty-sixth century. The show was over, but the club was still full, waiting for the DJ to start. She wriggled into the booth beside Finn.

  “Jack D, a large one would be nice, and keep ‘em coming.”

  Finn looked at her tearstained face. “Oh, Ingrid, I’m so sorry, hon. Disaster?”

  “Complete and utter.” Ingrid downed a large gulp of Finn’s drink while she waited for hers to arrive and coughed until her eyes watered. “Give this girl a medal for being the most inept seductress in history.”

  Finn put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. “You know what, hon,” he whispered. “He’s not worth it, no man is.” Finn ordered two more large ones and raised his glass to her. “Forget him, he doesn’t deserve you. Let’s get wasted.”

  Pete slid into the booth beside her. “Hi, Ingrid, I thought you were…” He flushed with embarrassment and turned away.

  Oh great, now my humiliation is complete. Did Pete know that she was trying to seduce the viking tonight? Who else had Finn told? Pete slipped away and Ingrid watched as he had a hurried conversation with Jake beside the stage, where he was talking with two of the dancers. She caught Jake’s sympathetic glance. He knew. They all knew.

  “Finn, I think I need another dr
ink.”

  Jake didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to. He put his arms around her and stroked her hair. “I’m sorry, Ingrid. I didn’t know until we got here and Finn told us that this was going to be an all-nighter.”

  When the music started up again, Finn grabbed her hand. “Come on, Ingrid, let’s dance. You can show Jake all your best moves.”

  Her protests failed. They had obviously concocted a cheer-up-Ingrid plan, and between the pair of them, they got her onto the dance floor. Jake was a good dancer. Finn, as usual, concentrated on being outrageous. Much to the amusement of the other customers, he had even managed to borrow a fan from one of the dancers and insisted that they take turns with it. Eventually, she had enough. She wanted to be miserable again. Jake followed her back to the booth.

  Ingrid took another slug out of her glass. “He didn’t want me. Strom doesn’t care about me.” Oh god, I’m going to start sniveling again.

  Jake took the glass away from her and set it down. “Ingrid, I’ve known the big guy for a long time. If he didn’t care about you, he would have slept with you.”

  There was a peculiar male logic to that statement that she couldn’t quite fathom. Ingrid grabbed her drink again and stared morosely into the glass. “Why couldn’t I have fallen for you or Pete instead?”

  Jake threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Ingrid, no one, and I mean no one would fall for Pete unless they were seriously into Tech. Hell, even I can’t understand half the things he talks about.”

  Ingrid persisted. “I mean, you would have slept with me, wouldn’t you?”

  Jake smiled. “In a nanosecond.”

  Whether he had intended it or not, she took that as an invitation. Jake’s lips were soft. His kiss was gentle, if curiously lacking in passion, but it was a balm to her earlier rejection.

  Finn nudged her. “Ingrid, Strom is here and he doesn’t look happy.”

  “Life’s too short to be happy,” she sniffed, “and besides, he’s made it very clear that he’s not interested.”

  Jake commed him silently, Boss, I know what it looks like, but she is out of control.

  Strom glared at him. I know that, he commed back. I handled things badly. That was an understatement of galactic proportions. He had monumentally messed up. Ingrid was hurt and drunk and he still hadn’t told her that they had received orders to return home. Strom cleared his throat, hoping to interrupt her explorations of Jake’s neck.

  “Ingrid, it’s late. Can we go home now?”

  Ingrid rested her head on Jake’s shoulder, and unbuttoning his shirt, she began to caress his chest. “Don’t wait up, Strom, I’ll be very late.”

  His hands clenched into fists under the table as he watched Ingrid touching Jake. Best friend or not, if Jake didn’t leave the club soon, he was going to punch him. How could he have ever believed that he could do this? He had tried to stay away from Ingrid, tried to protect her, but all he had done was hurt her.

  “Jake, return home now. That’s an order.” Jake stood up quickly. Relief was etched across his face as he made his way quickly toward the exit.

  “Where Jake goes, I go.” Ingrid stood up unsteadily. The club was beginning to sway. She really needed some fresh air.

  Jake was gone by the time they got outside. She had no idea what time it was and it was beginning to rain. A fitting end to a disastrous night.

  “Taxi,” she yelled at a passing car, but it sped by her. The clubs were emptying now and the street was full of people with the same idea. They would have to walk home. Strom offered her his arm.

  “No thank you,” she enunciated in the clear, precise tones of someone who has realized that she is far from sober. “Finn, it’s time for a song.”

  “Lead the way, girl.”

  “What is she doing?” Strom hissed.

  “She’s about to sing very, very badly. I’d say she’s reached about stage four on the Sorrenson scale of drunkenness. Finn counted the fingers on his hand. Crying, kissing a stranger, inappropriate dancing—”

  That one stopped the big guy in his tracks. “She danced? Ingrid danced in there with the naked women?”

  “I kid you not,” Finn winked. “Complete with fan, and I have the pictures to prove it.”

  Strom looked glumly at Ingrid’s swaying figure. “What happens next?”

  “Well, it can only go two ways from here, puking or unconsciousness. Oops. There she goes.”

  Ingrid’s head thumped like a bass drum as the events of the previous night replayed themselves in glorious technicolor in her memory. The disastrous seduction, the dancing, the kissing and fondling with Jake, and Strom was there to witness it. Worst of all was the memory of him carrying her home and putting her to bed. How was she ever going to face any of them again?

  By the time she had a long, hot shower, she almost felt human. She needed black coffee and a long walk on the beach. Finn was busy in the kitchen and the other three were sitting on the couch. They looked like judge, jury and executioner.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” she mumbled.

  Jake was on his feet first, sweeping her up in a hug. “I had a great time, Ingrid. Feel free to kiss me any time.”

  Jake was a sweetheart, he probably meant it too. Pete gave her a thumbs-up. Strom didn’t say a word to her, so she left.

  * * * * *

  The long stretch of beach between Sutton and Howth was one of her favorite places. At this time of the year on a Saturday morning, it was wild and empty. Ingrid walked on the ridges of damp sand, meandered around the rock pools and took deep breaths of tangy sea air, the perfect hangover cure.

  Six days. The viking had been in her life for six days. She had never felt this way before about any man and she knew in her heart and soul that she never would again. What the hell was she going to do? A gust of wind blew in from the sea, capturing her hair, tangling it wildly around her face. When she brushed it away, Strom was there.

  “Can we talk?”

  “Let me guess, Strom. You have a twenty-sixth-century device that allows you to track where I am at all times.”

  “No.” He shrugged. “I asked Finn.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “You and me, Ingrid. Us.”

  “There is no us,” she snapped. “I seem to recall that you made that pretty clear last night.”

  She stared at the rocky island across the bay, wishing that she was there instead of having this mortifying conversation with him. Strom’s hand reached for her and then it stopped in midair and dropped to his side. He couldn’t even bear to touch her. Why was he torturing her like this? He must know that she was in love with him. Why couldn’t he just leave her to her misery? Oh god, she was going to cry again. She had to get away from him.

  “Ingrid, please don’t, we’re leaving tomorrow. My orders came through last night. Raoul is back in the twenty-sixth century.”

  She knew it was coming, but not how painful his words would be. Tomorrow, her viking would be gone for good. She could feel him staring down at her face, but she refused to meet his eyes. This was bad enough without letting him realize that she was on the verge of crying. Her legs were shaking, so she sat down beside a rock pool, pretending she had developed a sudden interest in sand crabs.

  Strom sat down beside her and the silence stretched uncomfortably between them. “Ingrid, what happened last night was my fault. I should have explained why we couldn’t be together. I can’t stay here and I was afraid that you would be hurt when I left. I’ve already messed up your life enough. Believe me, it’s better this way.”

  Ingrid picked up a stick and doodled in the sand. A planet surrounded by stars. “We live in the same world, Strom. Everything beneath the sky is mine and everything above it is yours. Did you think that if we became lovers, I would try to keep you here?”

  Feeling dangerously close to tears, she dug her nails into her palm of her hand. Don’t you dare cry, Sorrenson. “I know that I can’t compete with the stars.
I know that it will hurt like hell when you’re gone. But this is our time, Strom, and you don’t have the right to take that away from me.”

  He didn’t reply. Strom’s dark eyes were full of sadness. He reached for her again. It was the first time he had held her for days and she buried her face in his chest, inhaling his scent. They clung together on the windswept beach for what seemed like an age. Finally he pulled away.

  “What if we didn’t know that I was going? What if we were a man and a woman who met on a beach, and decided to spend the afternoon together?”

  Ingrid wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket. “What if we had twenty-four hours?”

  Chapter Six

  They had the day they should have had from the very beginning. They didn’t stop touching or laughing or smiling. Strom told her about life at Fleet Academy, of the vast inky blackness of space. How Ismania looked when its seven suns set and the exquisite taste of yarna fruit on Thalsis Four.

  She told him of her Norwegian father, Sigmund, who fell in love with a ballet dancer, and of a skinny, muddy child growing up on archaeological sites around the world following her mother’s death.

  They kissed hungrily, passionately, at the end of the pier, much to the amusement of the fishermen mending their nets. When evening came, they returned to her apartment.

  “Ms. Sorrenson,” the concierge called after her. “Mr. O’Leary left a message to say that he and his friends have gone out for the evening.” Ingrid said a silent prayer of thanks to Finn as they got into the elevator.

  Strom pressed the button for the fifth floor. “Ms. Sorrenson, I believe you’re at my mercy.” His smile was wickedly teasing.

  “Why, Captain Hallstrom.” She flashed him an innocent look. “Whatever do you mean?”

  Strom’s kiss was hot, carnal. Ingrid felt his hands around her waist, lifting her up until she could wrap her legs around him. Strom pressed her against the wall of the elevator and nuzzled her neck. She could feel the hard bulge of his erection pressing against her pussy, and when she rocked against him, she was rewarded with a low male growl of approval.