In the Wrong Year (Double-Check Your Destination Book 1)

by Amabel Daniels

  He shuddered with a low moan. “Oh…that feels good.”

  I pressed a kiss to his lips as he closed his eyes. Kept it short and sweet because anything more, anything deeper…and I’d fall too deep in him.

  “What about you? What’s waiting for you back home, Everly?”

  I studied his face, so calm and relaxed as I massaged his scalp.

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Your aunt.”

  “Yeah. But…”

  He opened his eyes. “But?”

  But maybe she could forgive me for leaving if she’s always hinted it was in my nature to do so.

  Was he asking me to choose going home where she was, or…

  “What are you afraid to ask me?”

  He smirked, rolling me to my back. “I’m not afraid…”

  Cradling his face, I waited.

  “Maybe…nervous, but not afraid.”

  “No. Of course not. The man who broke in to the Sistine Chapel and also went cave diving in Peru couldn’t be scared of anything.”

  “Snuck in, not broke in.”

  “Ask me, Jake.”

  He licked his lips, then said, “What if you came with me?”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “As…?”

  He scowled. “You need a job title?”

  “No. I meant—”

  He quieted me with a kiss. “As my…girl.”

  Your sweetheart? I hoped I didn’t grin too hard.

  “As my partner.”

  “To replace Pete?”

  He kissed me, so gently and softly. “No. He wasn’t my girl.”

  I smacked him lightly. “As your partner.”

  “I’ve been solo on missions for a while. He died ten years ago, but he’d never been my partner. My mentor at first, and even when he was alive, I’d taken on my own jobs.”

  “You don’t like being solo?”

  “I’m used to it.” He kissed along my jaw, toward my neck. “But you’re making me think having company wouldn’t be so bad.”

  I whimpered as he ground his erection against my core.

  “Your company,” he murmured.

  I pulled him back down for another kiss. Longer.

  “Everly?”

  He was calling me on it. Not answering. I couldn’t. It was too big of a choice to declare on the spot.

  “What if…”

  Stall. Stall. Stall. I wasn’t ready to answer him, to answer his invitation for adventure and the unknown.

  “What if we took this, right here, right now,” I said and kissed his chin. “And then…go from there.”

  I swooned in his tender gaze. Jake did have some patience, after all. A short nod was his agreement. When he reclaimed my lips, I hugged his neck, honestly unable to imagine letting him go.

  Yet, he yanked back up. “Are you—”

  “Protected? Yes.” I’d just given myself the preventative scan last month to trigger the pause in ovulation.

  He reared back, chilling my overheated flesh from the arousal he stoked in me. “Take that off.”

  No please? I’d been raised in a time where a man never, ever expected a woman to—

  “Now.”

  The bite in his tone thrilled me.

  Oh, I see who’s the boss.

  He quirked a brow, whipping his shirt off as I stared up at him.

  “Or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” I taunted.

  He ripped the shirt down the middle, so flimsy as the fabric was.

  I gasped at the raw hunger in his stare.

  “These.” He hooked his fingers into the waistband of my pants and yanked. “Off, now.”

  He wasn’t gentle. Not punishingly hurt or abusive, but…dominant. Ruthless. Impatient. Delirious for me, if I could chance calling it that.

  I shimmied them off, loving the fact he took control, claimed the power here.

  After always being expected to be a strong, untouchable woman, it was nice to surrender.

  His suggestion of dominance matched the cockiness and arrogance he couldn’t dial back. But…they weren’t flaws. Just imperfections that defined who he was.

  And he could be mine…?

  Naked, I lay there and shivered in his hungry stare. I burned for him, eager for him to reach for me. To take me.

  “Please.”

  Still, he looked his fill. If he got off on delaying what he wanted. Or considered playing some kind of game—

  “Pl—”

  He crushed down, covering me with his hot body. All those muscles and rough skin blanketing me. His lips silenced me. Again. And I smiled into his kiss.

  I arched up, pressing into him, demanding he never let go.

  It seemed the last thing on his mind as he plunged his tongue to taste me, ground his erection to where I needed him the most, and dragged one hand to grip my ass. I hissed at the bite of his grip, his strength only deepening the ache between my legs.

  He slanted to his side, pulling my hands off his face and directing me to grab the head of the cot.

  “Do not move. Keep your hands right there.”

  I gulped as he pushed to his knees. One corner of his lips kicked up in question. “Understand?”

  “Y-yes.”

  He removed the rest of his clothes and lowered to me before I could appreciate that fine view again.

  With no preamble, he slid down, parting my legs so wide apart my feet hung off the narrow cot.

  “Jake…” I closed my eyes and trembled as his hot mouth trailed a wet path down to my core. He was beyond wicked with his tongue and teeth, but I needed more.

  I cried out as he laid his lips to me, wasting no time to use his fingers and tongue to drive me into a panting, frenzied, mindless rush to come.

  “Jake…” His name was fast becoming my mantra.

  One more suck at my clit, and I crashed, jerking my arms up to hold his head there and pump into his face.

  Before I could even catch my breath, he sat up. In one blur, he picked me up to reverse out positions. He lay back as I straddled him, and he spanked my ass.

  “Didn’t I say not to touch?”

  Oooh. That stung. And oooh, was I primed for more. A gasp was the best I could reply with.

  “Hands on the wall.”

  I leaned forward, my breasts so swollen and raw as he pinched my nipples. He scooted back to sit up more, bumping his dick against my soaked slit. His mouth covered one breast, and I keened as he sucked my nipple in hard and fast.

  “Ohh…” I panted, scratching at the wall with my palms pressed to the cold surface.

  He lifted my hips, notching his head at my entrance.

  “Ride me, sweetheart,” he gritted out as he slammed in with one sure, hard thrust.

  I arched back, reaching back so far I could only keep my fingertips to the wall.

  His grunts mixed with my moans as I lifted up to sheath him again.

  Driven wilder than I ever could have imagined, I shivered at the unforgiving grip of his hands on my hips. He urged me to go faster, and I only strove to grind harder. Deeper.

  “Come on, sweetheart.” He groaned as I rocked faster on him.

  Once more he smacked my ass, and I came. Tears burned at my eyes from the soul-deep passion he pulled from my every cell. Losing my balance, I swayed on him.

  “That’s it.” He sat up, driving even deeper, pushing my orgasm to stretch out more. “Give it to me.”

  With another thrust up, he growled and stiffened, jerking in my core. His hands slid up my arms to grip my hands.

  Our fingers threaded together as he lowered our hands to my thighs. I panted, trying to catch my breath, and each push forward rubbed my sensitive nipples against the hardness of his chest.

  When I shivered, he released my hands to rub my back, ending in a hug.

  That was how he lowered us to sleep, our limbs entwined and our racing hearts pounding against each other’s.

  We dozed only to
wake and make love again, and after that round, we stayed out until a loud knock jolted us awake.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Where the hell am I? I brushed my hair from my face, immediately aware of the sore spots on my body and the fact we were in the bunker.

  It was 2051.

  Jake.

  Sex all night on a cot in this…

  Bunker.

  Facts slotted back into my brain, and I hustled after him, yanking my clothes on.

  I glanced at the door as someone knocked again.

  “Yo, I thought a couple of kids got in there and were screwing all night.”

  Laughter faintly filtered in from outside after the man’s call.

  Jake grunted, perhaps annoyed at the idea of anyone looking through the slit of the window on the door and seeing us in such an intimate hideaway.

  I couldn’t explain why, but his frustration charmed me. I began to giggle as I finished sliding my shoes on.

  He scowled a grumpy morning face at me, standing fully dressed and slipping the jumper and such into his pocket. “Not the way I wanted to wake up today.”

  “It’s kind of funny. I mean, he’s not wrong. We’re busted.”

  “Ready?” he asked instead of addressing my humor.

  I nodded, still smiling.

  Before he opened the door, he hauled me in for a hard kiss. “Next time, I’ll give you a different kind of wake-up call.” He squeezed my ass, then let go.

  “Come on. Open up. I unlocked this side,” the burly voice called outside.

  Jake stepped out, holding my hand. The construction worker smiled wide, laughing as we exited in an epically unique walk of shame.

  “Busy night?” he jeered as we rushed away.

  “Mind your own business,” Jake muttered under his breath.

  I squeezed his fingers as he led the way toward the street.

  Next time? I grinned behind him, hopeful about his promise.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I have an idea,” I said, shaking his hand to get his attention after we’d grabbed breakfast at a diner. We hadn’t talked about the sex last night nor what we’d do next. He didn’t push me on answering if I’d jump time with him instead of returning home either.

  Food first, it seemed. In that silence, though, I’d schemed and brainstormed plenty.

  “Shoot.”

  We walked down the sidewalk, or what used to be there.

  I appreciated how casually he deferred to me. Not simpering and too-careful like guys from my time, instead, down-to-earth and open-minded. “I want to see if my mom’s at the hospital. With me.”

  Jake stopped, pulling me to cease walking as well. “Why?”

  “Wouldn’t that explain what Freddy had been after? If I was the target, as a hostage in the big picture of an Edward versus Marcel showdown, then why wouldn’t they have snatched me from the hospital when I was born? Or any other time in my life?”

  He rubbed at his jaw.

  “Aunt Helen said my mom just dropped me off and left. I take that as a fact. I was born at South General hospital yesterday. Another fact. If Edward can be all-knowing—”

  “Tries to be all-knowing. His agents and borgs can find out everything.”

  “Okay. If Edward could have an agent seek me out as a way to get marces Pete might have left at my aunt’s or my mom’s, then wouldn’t he have used the facts of my birth earlier? If I was the target in all of this mission?

  Sighing, Jake pulled me in for a hug.

  I laughed. “Why are you so…sad?”

  “You’re smart,” he said into my hair.

  “That’s bad?”

  “It’s good. And…I’ll miss it. You.”

  But I haven’t made up my mind…

  He stepped back and took my hand. “Which way?”

  “Should be down the next street.”

  We walked in silence, and I wondered how he viewed the bustling city. Was he curious about the billboard that announced the coming inauguration for the first female president? Did he think it was interesting that half the vehicles flew overhead while others lumbered on the ground?

  In the distance, ping, ping, ping trilled out as the machinery busted up more concrete to shore up a defense against the rising sea level damage. No one walked with smartphones in their hands, pedestrians—so many more of them compared to earlier decades—looking up and facing forward. Birds didn’t fly overhead, but mosquitoes buzzed aplenty.

  If jumping time limited you to the same geographic location, it was handy that all my troubles were centered so close together. South General Hospital loomed tall and ugly ahead. Almost all the buildings were bland and hideous. Some skyscrapers had fancy windows, scrollwork of stone, and twisted metal features for an attempt at aesthetics. The transformation had only begun at my birth. As I grew up, though, everything gradually lost art and design, eschewed color as “frivolous”, and the infrastructure’s primary criteria was that it serve only the role of function and efficiency. Made for a drab, uninspiring world of gray and fiberwares.

  “How will we get in?” I asked as we walked closer, watching scrub-clad workers file in.

  “One of two ways, I think.” He let go of my hand abruptly, and I glanced at him. From his peripheral vision, he watched an armed security guard eyeing us from the entrance, a twisted smirk on her thin lips directed at where I’d held Jake’s hand.

  Right.

  Aunt Helen said when patriarchy fell… Hate only burned hotter, and judgments rooted faster, ironically. Public displays of affection—mutual, consensual, even personal gestures like the natural way Jake and I wanted to touch each other while walking—were scorned. Viewed as resistance to the overthrow of society.

  By the time I was a ten or so, it wasn’t so bad. But I remembered the first time I saw our neighbor kiss her husband as she headed off for work in the morning, leaving him to tend the house and their kids. The other neighbors exiting their houses had gasped, slurred derogatory words, one must have even called the cops on them because someone came by later to speak to him.

  Affection, love out in the open in 2060. It had given me…hope then.

  Visiting this year, though… I needed to fall into its norms.

  “Um,” Jake said, seeming peeved at having caught the guard’s attention. “We can try to sneak in the front with a crowd, get ‘lost’ somewhere in there, and grab some uniforms to blend in. Act like we’re staff and see if Valentina’s here.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t even thought about that.” It was June seventh now, not the sixth. My mom might have been discharged already. “What’s the backup plan?”

  “Pretend you’re her sister and then hide when they admit you as a visitor.”

  Hmm. It seemed I’d need to playact one way or another. “The first one.” Telling anyone I was Valentina’s relative felt weird, in the simplest sense of the word. The less I told anyone, the better, right?

  Jake’s expertise showed as we made it in without a hitch. Squashed in with a group of workers—in street clothes, not scrubs yet—we meshed into the crowd as they hurried through side doors and into a stairwell. A panel requesting retinal scans posed a slight hiccup at the last door into the facility, but I’d “solved” that problem.

  I tripped around the corner, skidding in my shoe as the mob we’d merged in walked too fast—maybe they were all late to their shifts. As I bent down to check that the shoe was tied, Jake bumped into me. Then another person, another yet. In a sort of huddle, we’d all stood up, and Jake had made sure to ease us into the hallway past the door that asked for the bio-ID access.

  “Lucky break,” I whispered as we walked down a hall. Seemed he was aiming in the direction of the arrows pointing to SUPPLIES.

  “Or maybe you’re my lucky charm,” he whispered back, daring to take my hand and squeeze it for a second.

  The door to the supplies had a retinal scan as a lock screwed to it, but a hologram sticker hovered over the panel, declaring it out of ord
er. Instead, a towel was wedged into the crack, leaving the door partly open.

  “Now that’s a lucky break,” Jake said as we headed in.

  He made sure the door shut after us, and we made quick work of changing into scrubs. From slip-on footies to cover our 2020 footwear, scrubs, up to a surgical mask and hat, we were disguised. Aptly, I’d say. Jake tucked both his jumper and the one we’d nabbed from the borg—the one that had one marce vial stored in its handle. Then he pulled it back out.

  “You hold this one.”

  In case I needed to escape? What about him? I didn’t feel right with him having the empty one.

  “Please.”

  I frowned, taking the folded-down device, and slipped it into my pocket.

  He transferred Valentina’s disabled smartphone, his knife, and cash to his other pocket.

  “Will that even work here?” I pointed at the cash.

  He stilled, like he was surprised he hadn’t considered that. “No.” Out it went, shoved onto a shelf behind some boxes. “Hopefully, we won’t be here long enough to need money.”

  Sure. We wouldn’t be here long because once we figured out if Edward’s agents were after me or marces, I’d go…

  I squashed the indecision. My heart knew where I belonged, but my brain lagged at the choice. Later.

  For now, I needed to find my mom. And me—as a newborn. The surreal logic of that wasn’t available, and I plowed on, sticking to my familiar debate freak out and panic, or deal. I was fast learning just adapting, and going with it was preferred. Panic got me nowhere.

  “Ready?” Jake asked at the door, glancing back at me.

  I nodded and raised my hand to salute. He caught my hand, tugging his mask down. “Stop doing that.” He kissed my knuckles and released me.

  “Comic relief?”

  “I’m not your captain. This is your life that might be on the line as leverage, and you have every say in this mission.” Frowning, he admitted, “I’m not calling shots on your life. I’m not…in charge.”

  I exaggerated gaping at him. “Since when?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. Playfully, almost.

  “I kinda like it when you’re in charge.”

  Licking his lips, he seemed to fight a smile.

  “Like last night—”