Daring Time (37 page)

It never struck her as crude, actually, but honest and always perfectly matched to their level of excitement.

She gasped in surprise when he stood and leaned down over her, spreading his hands just above her breasts.

"I'm going to lift you. I want you to put your hands back up on the top rail. That's right,"

he said when she grasped the top of the brass bedstead. He moved behind her again. Her breath froze in I her lungs when she felt him dip his knees, his hair-sprinkled thighs brushing against her own. He reached between them and she knew he grasped his heavy erection.

They both grunted in excitement when he pressed the steely, smooth head to her slit.

"Aren't you going to—?"

"I won't come in you. I promise. I want to feel you completely right now"

Hope nodded her head and gasped when she felt him push the knob of his penis into her.

His knees pressed into her spread legs and she realized how much he had to bend down to match their disproportionate height. He made it work, though. His cock slid into her hypersensitive slit, setting off little detonations of pleasure deep inside her body. She closed her eyes and moaned in pleasure when he pushed into her to the hilt. He paused and pressed tight, as though he strained to kiss the edge of her womb.

Hope's rough groan might have suggested to some that she'd never been raised as a lady.

"Brace your arms," Ryan ordered tensely. He wrapped his forearm beneath her belly and slowly lifted her feet off the floor for the second time that night. Her mouth gaped open at the sensation of him pulling her up his body. He stopped and she gasped raggedly.

It'd felt fantastic to have him in her before, but it was as if he'd just locked her in place for the perfect fit.

He leaned down over her. One hand came down and braced next to her own on the bedstead. The other held her tightly against him.

He flexed his hips.

She keened at the shock of the pleasure when he rocketed into her body. Her feet dangled in the air. Her hands were bound. She held on to the brass railing for dear life as Ryan pumped in and out of her with increasing force. His forearm held her in the air below her belly, but he didn't use it to push her body into him. Instead she just draped there, held immobile and helpless while he nailed their flesh together again and again.

Hope's hands slipped on the bedstead but she was so close to combusting, so mindless with need as he barreled into her that she barely noticed.

But Ryan did. He paused, making her groan in agony.

"Hold on tight, honey, and I'll bring us home," he muttered, his voice barely above a strained whisper.

She strengthened her grip on the rail and stiffened her arms. Ryan seemed all too ready to resume once she'd secured herself. Once again he crashed their bodies together. The entire brass bed began to rattle as a result of Ryan's forcefulness. Her lips stretched into a snarl. She cried out every time Ryan thrust deep and his pelvis whapped loudly against her ass.

"Yes, yes, yes," she chanted mindlessly each time he smacked into her.

The tension she'd been harboring finally reached the breaking point. She clenched her eyes shut and exploded as the spark from the friction ignited into a roaring flame.

Distantly, through pulsing waves of pounding pleasure, she became aware of Ryan's roar as he jumped into the conflagration with her. The knowledge only added to her firestorm of raging desire.

They still panted heavily by the time Ryan unbound her wrists. He retrieved several tissues from the bedside table and carefully wiped his semen from her back and bottom.

Afterward he pulled her over to the bed and they collapsed like two survivors from a great storm in each other's arms. He kissed and nuzzled her breasts as their bodies slowed.

Hope knew Ryan slept when she felt the warm mist of his even breath falling on her breast. She thought of being bent over, spread wide and restrained while she stared up at the headboard of the bed—a bed that she'd slept in since her eighteenth year.

Never in a million years would she have thought she'd experience such grandeur, such depths of the human experience as she had while staring at such a mundane object as the brass bed in her bedroom at 1807 Prairie Avenue.

Ryan turned his chin in his sleep, brushing his lips across her nipple. Her fingers tightened in his thick hair as a powerful wave of emotion crashed into her. Tears burned her eyelids.

She loved him. She loved him so much. Illogically, perhaps, for there really hadn't been enough time to truly understand one another's true selves.

But what was a
self
compared to a soul?

A sob shuddered through her.

She carefully lifted Ryan's head from her breast and slid a pillow beneath his cheek. He scowled slightly in his sleep, as though he hadn't cared for the replacement. Still, he didn't waken.

Hope stood and went over to the mantel, pausing at the side of the hearth. She placed her hand upon the ledge and bent over, thinking. It was actually a familiar pose of pensiveness. The fire that was usually in the hearth was warm, and she was naturally drawn to it, but her father always worried about her long skirts catching fire if she drew to close.

So she reserved her thoughts—and her tears—for the periphery of the mantel.

For the first time she allowed the image of what Ryan had looked like when she'd asked him earlier today if he'd been able to travel through the great barrier of time to reach her because of his love for her.

For a split second, he'd looked cornered—trapped at the idea of having to answer.

Profound love, even if it did exist mutually, didn't mean they could necessarily bridge the cultural differences of a century. What it meant to Ryan to care for her . . . even love her, didn't have the same consequences in the year 1906 as it did in the year 2008. As much as Hope had yet to learn about Ryan's world, that much had been made abundantly clear to her.

Hope lifted her head and stared at Ryan as he lay sleeping and peaceful upon the brass bed. Such a big, supple . .. beautiful male animal. Again, tears smarted behind her eyelids.

Is this what true love entailed? That she be willing to sacrifice everything in order to gain an even fuller, richer existence?

And what if she made the wrong choice?

She swung around abruptly and stifled a frustrated sob, pounding her fist against her thigh. The tension inside of her spirit felt nearly as untenable as the sexual friction Ryan had built in her flesh. How to soothe herself without breaking into wretched tears and disturbing Ryan while he slept so peacefully?

She decisively reached toward the carved mantel, pressing on the well-worn center of a twining branch of leaves. The secret drawer popped forward.

Who knew? Perhaps her copy of Mr. Walt Whitman's
Leaves of Grass
was still secreted inside after all these years? Hope had always read to soothe her stormy moods, and she doubted anything—even her beloved Shakespeare—would offer a better match to her volatility than Mr. Whitman's carnal prose that spoke so honestly of the joys and sufferings of the human spirit.

Hope's brow crinkled in confusion when she drew out a number of large photographs instead of
Leaves of Grass.

For several stretched moments as she looked at each one, nothing moved. Nothing in the universe. Certainly her heart didn't stir, did it?

A memory that she hadn't considered significant at the time /suddenly sprang into her consciousness. She recalled the expression on Ryan's face when she'd exited Eve Daire's storeroom just this afternoon and interrupted him as he talked.

There's something I haven't told Hope yet
—
something about some photographs I found
of her at the mansion
—

Now that Hope reflected on it, his lame explanation about the police archival photos of her didn't really adequately explain that statement.

He'd been referring to
these
photos—the ones she held in her hands at this very moment, Hope suddenly knew with certainty.

Ten seconds or thirty minutes later—she couldn't be sure because so much went through her mind in those electrical moments—she glanced over at Ryan and inhaled raggedly.

She looked at him, the photographs that shook in her hands and back to Ryan's still form.

Her path had been made clear to her.

She now knew what she had to do.

TWENTY-NINE

Ryan awoke with a start. For a few seconds he remained very still, wondering what had awakened him so abruptly. Rain spattered on the windows, but the sound was pleasant and muted. It hadn't been that which jerked him out of a deep slumber.

He was cold.

He sat up from where he'd been sprawled on the brass bed and stared around the large bedroom. The lamp was still on, allowing him to see that he was alone. Hope must have gotten up to use the bathroom.

His brows furrowed when he noticed that the bedroom door was shut.

And the door on the wardrobe where the gilt mirror hung was open.

He scuttled up off the bed, shivering in the cool dawn. He opened the bedroom door and walked down the dark hallway. The bathroom door was partially opened, the muted light of morning casting it in gray shadow. It was empty. He turned around in the silent hall, a sense of panic rising in his gut.

"Hope?"
Ryan shouted. His voice echoed through the corridor. He called her name again, but the truth already rattled hollowly in his bones.

He was alone in this tomb of a house. He raced back to the bedroom and opened the second wardrobe door. Hope's long skirt, high-necked blouse and lace-up shoes were gone.

"No,
honey," he mumbled miserably. His gaze fell on the mirror. She'd tried to go back in it. He just knew she had. But what had been the result? Was it even possible without the corresponding mirror? What if she existed in some formless state of nonexistence and couldn't return to either world?

The thought of her leaving caused a dull throb of grief in his chest, but the thought of her disappearing from
any
time—her vibrant essence being wiped from history altogether—was a far worse consideration.

Something occurred to him. He hastily pulled on a pair of jeans and raced out of the room. He peered into the thick shadows as he descended the grand staircase, his footsteps echoing hollowly off the bare walls.

He'd hardly ever seen the entry hall darkened. The chandelier continually blazed to life of its own accord, no matter whether the switch was in the on or off position. Ryan flipped the switch to turn it on.

But the crystal chandelier hung cold and lifeless.

We'll leave on the entry hall chandelier until my daughter returns home.

Jacob Stillwater's voice reverberated in his head. Ryan fell heavily to a sitting position on the stairs, the wood creaking beneath him in protest. A strange, potent mixture of relief and grief struck him like a tidal wave.

Chances were Hope'd returned safely to the year 1906. The chandelier had finally gone out. She was in her world, where she belonged. He was here in his, where he belonged.

He glanced around the gray, barren hall. The life had gone out of the house. He felt every bit as empty and hollow.

Why had she done it? He thought of the previous night, of his volatile mood, of the manner he'd insisted upon making love to her when they returned home. Had he pushed her too far? Asked too much of her?

Regret settled on him like a weight. Of course he'd asked too much of her. He'd demanded that she give every last ounce of herself, insisting that she trust him wholly even though she was still shockingly innocent when it came to matters of sex.

Wasn't it best that she was back in the home she loved with her father and friends? What could he really offer her here? A woman like Hope deserved a husband and a family. If he'd lived in the year 1906 and had been as intimate with Hope as they had been, he would be expected to marry her. He would likely even expect it of himself if he'd been raised in a culture that dictated marriage as the honorable action given what he'd done with her.

But he didn't live in Hope's time . ..
hadn't
been raised in her culture. The idea of them marrying after he'd known her for less than a week was ludicrous.

Maybe that's why she'd gone. After she'd lived in his world for a while, she must have learned what he'd already known—their respective worlds were incommensurate. Their time periods and cultures couldn't meld even if Hope and he could. Time had stepped in and had the final say, cleaving their unnatural bond.

He rose slowly from the steps, his body feeling strangely achy and old. He reentered the bedroom and stared around dully. Something struck his eye and he walked over to the fireplace.

His heart seemed to forget to beat for several seconds when he saw the photos on the mantel. Hope must have found them in the secret drawer after they'd made love last night.

Jesus, what had she thought when she saw them? She must have been shocked . ..

Furious?

Ryan tossed down the black-and-white photographs hastily. She'd drawn all the wrong conclusions, that much was certain. She hadn't left him because she'd realized their values were too different. She'd left him because she found those pictures. God only knew how she'd rationalized their existence.

He spun around, suddenly galvanized into action. If Hope had chosen to leave because she saw the impossibility of their being together, that was one thing. But it was another thing altogether for her to have fled last night because she'd been disillusioned by those photographs.

Disillusioned by him.

He had to go back, Ryan thought frantically as he opened the wardrobe, looking for viable clothing to wear for the time period. If Hope had done it, surely he could. The thought of her existing back in her world and believing that he'd tricked her into having sex so they could be photographed was just too god-awful. He searched for something to wear, his impatience and frustration mounting.