Glimpse Time Travel: Enemy Of Mine Part 14

"No." She shook her head stubbornly. "No, sometimes, as awful as it is, there isn't anything we can do. You're not at fault. You did everything you could for her."

"I wish there was more I could have done."

Another tear surfed down her alabaster cheek. "I know, honey, but you did the best you could."

"That's the second time you called me honey."

She smiled through her tears. "Yes."

"I like being called honey."

"Good."

She took him by his shoulder and guided his head to lie on her chest. Night jasmine surrounded him, comforted him. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s made excellent pillows, but he thought he'd keep that to himself. The odd thing was he felt exhausted. He should have been enthralled she had listened and not run, not judged him, and had especially not judged his beautiful Julia, whom he still protected even in her death. Further, Erva seemed to comprehend like no one ever had before. But he was mentally and bodily fatigued. He found his lids closing of their own accord, and soon enough sleep took him into a calm darkness, where he found Erva there, already holding him.

Chapter 15.

Erva woke to a dark room, yet silver-white moonlight poured through windows, allowing her to see she still slept on a couch with huge Will on her chest. He stirred, holding her tighter, adjusting his head against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Smiling, she pulled some of his dark hair away from his face. She'd never dated anyone with such long hair. It touched his shoulders when not tied in the fierce knot at the nape of his neck. Will lifted his head. Even without much light, she saw his blue eyes morph into dazzling azure when their gazes met.

"Darling," he whispered and pulled himself up to kiss her.

Only his lips met hers. His body hovered too far away now. How she ached for him to be on her again. He was heavy, probably made from steel, but she had gotten used to it, had liked his weight considerably. She playfully slid her tongue along his bottom lip, then he opened for her. She plunged inside. He tasted of nutmeg and slightly of rum-the punch they'd had at the party. She'd watched him with the libation and noticed he sipped his one gla.s.s all night through.

How had the rumors started that he was a drunkard? Were they like the rumors of his being a rake? Were they completely false? Wait. Erva reminded herself, as Will's own tongue invaded her mouth. She didn't know about Miss Emma and Miss Lydia yet. Trying to focus on rumors though was difficult as Will began to kiss down her neck. Hot, sweet desire rushed through her body, warming her, chilling her, zeroing her awareness to what Will might do next. He kissed along her open neckline, then one of his large hands cupped her breast.

"Oh," she gasped and arched into his hold.

His thumb rubbed her nipple until it made a high, tight peak. Erva kept glancing down at the s.p.a.ce between their bodies. His legs were between hers, but she worried he'd never lower back on her, which her body purred for. Will swept to the other breast, and she instantly arched into that caress as well. He was a tender man, so careful when he touched her. Almost too much so, because she needed his body on hers, needed more pressure. She could clearly see his tented breeches. He wanted her.

When he reached up and kissed her lips again, she desperately reached for him, pulling him closer, closer, until...

"Ah," she moaned as his erection fit against her. Even through her skirts and his breeches, she felt his hardness. She rocked against him, making him emit a growl from deep in his chest.

The apex of her legs grew with moist need, so hot. One of his hands remained on her breast and caressed her at the same time he swayed against her hips. It was such blissful agony to feel his caress, yet have so many layers of clothes between them. She tore at his coat, finally unb.u.t.toning it and ripping it from his wide shoulders. G.o.d, he was burning inside it. Erva felt his too hot chest and arms, like molten steel, then unb.u.t.toned his waistcoat. It took an eternity, and, she surmised, it was no wonder he was so hot, he wore a million layers. He released himself of his collar and with one hand unfastened his s.h.i.+rt too. She tugged it free from his breeches, and in one move he lifted it over his head and threw it aside.

Oh, the beauty of his chiseled chest and the ridges of muscles down his stomach. Her fingers found the firmness of his pectorals and the bone valley of his sternum. She felt his heart thundering under her palm. Glancing up at him, she smiled. Softly, he lowered his pelvis to meet hers again, while she held his heart. He rocked into her and gave her a smile himself when she moaned.

"You're so beautiful," he whispered.

And she felt it. For once, she felt that in his eyes she radiated femininity, but it was more than that. She felt beautiful because he'd accepted her. Well, what she'd told him of herself, she admitted. But even so, there were many a man in her own time who, once they'd found out she worked at Harvard and not as a secretary, had walked away. Not only had Will accepted her, he seemed to like that she was well educated. G.o.d, that was s.e.xy, to have a man actually want her to have brain too.

He kissed her, letting his breath and tongue meet hers. Lingering over her lips for a moment, he thrust against her again. Slowly he found a rhythm, and she clung to his shoulders as his swaying increased in tempo. He kissed her ear, then down her neck, biting once. She arched her back and laughed at the way his teeth sc.r.a.ped against her sensitive skin. He lifted himself and smiled at her.

"Like that?"

"Yes," she answered breathily.

He found the other side of her neck and kissed and licked her, until she started to wiggle and thought about protesting, but finally he bit her there too. Then he nibbled her again. She rocked and arched and mewled and pulled him closer all at once.

He lifted himself again. "The pretty lady likes to be bitten, hmm?"

She didn't answer, but smiled as she combed her fingers through his hair. She pulled slightly, and he closed his eyes with a growl. He leaned down and nipped and licked at her neck and around her chest. Cupping her breast, he took her nipple in his mouth, through all her clothes as he had in the carriage, and she whispered, "Will."

She'd never done that before. Never had a man's name been on the tip of her tongue, ready to say when she least expected. It only amped his ferocity of suckling her breast, and she lifted her back off the couch in response. He released her and tried to pull down her dress's neckline. But she'd been sewn in, and it wouldn't budge. After a few frustrating seconds she said, "Just tear it off."

He lifted himself again, his head c.o.c.ked.

"Please," she trembled with her need for him. "Just tear it off."

He braced himself away from her, which made her body feel dull and almost in literal pain without his so close. Then he gripped around the stomacher and pulled. Hearing the fabric tear was surprisingly erotic, and with each rip her hips reared to meet his. With a little more effort, she was free from her dress, but her idiotic corset was in her way now. He reached around her, fiddling with her laces.

"Tear it off too. Tear it all off."

He looked down at her and slowly smiled. Pulling, straining, he rent something. She heard the laces popping off her loosening corset. In a couple more jerks, she was free. He threw the corset down and set to work on her flimsy s.h.i.+ft, which ripped as if it were no more than paper. After chucking that to the side too, he then glanced at her.

His nostrils flared. His eyes darkened. She was nearly nude, except for the stockings, and with him between her legs, she felt more naked than ever before. He stared, his jaw punching.

"Oh my G.o.d," he whispered.

She awkwardly tried to cover her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and stomach, but he drew her hands aside.

"Darling, I'm sorry, but now I'm certain you're a figment of my imagination. You're too d.a.m.ned beautiful to be anything other."

She giggled, and he groaned.

"Even that was the most lovely sight I've ever seen."

She reached out for his hands. Catching one hand she pulled until he maneuvered to linger over her again. With the one hand she held, she placed it over her breast.

They both moaned.

"You're so soft, so silky," he whispered.

"Touch me."

He ma.s.saged her breast, then found her nipple and pinched. She arched into this new sensation of her skin against his. Almost out of her mind with need, she stopped breathing when his mouth found her other nipple. He sucked and then rolled his tongue over her bud. Her hips rocked up, and met his stomach. He lifted his head and found her other breast, switching his hands too. She swayed up again, and felt his hard torso, but not quite what her body sought. The hand that had been on her breast, slowly moved down, finding her hip, caressing her leg, then tilted to inside her thigh.

She moaned, feeling her spine tingle in antic.i.p.ation. Hot golden liquid poured from her, and when he finally slid his hand over her center she cried out his name again. First he explored, then he found her c.l.i.toris and made tiny, tight circles, making her close her eyes and feel that all she was, were the parts of her body he touched. He left her breast and found her lips again, kissing her senseless while his finger kept rubbing between her legs.

She huffed on his face, finding kissing hard to follow as he accelerated his rhythm. He stopped kissing her to hover over her.

"So beautiful." His voice was so low and part growl, part groan.

She couldn't respond with words. She could hardly control her moans any longer, listening to what felt like another woman pant and whimper for him. His fingers slid between her folds and found her opening.

"Oh, so wet," he whispered.

Gliding one finger into her easily, he growled as she arched.

Surprisingly, he retracted his finger. His talented hands caught her by the waist and moved her tense body to sit up on the couch. With a little more finagling, he pulled her hips to the edge of the seat, made sure her head rested on the top cus.h.i.+on, then knelt on the floor between her spread wide legs. He lifted one leg at a time, staring at her with a c.o.c.ky grin, placing her knees on his shoulders. Then he kissed one of her stocking-clad thighs, lifting until he was so close to her center again, she whimpered when he left to kiss her other thigh.

He bit the soft flesh of her leg, and she precariously rocked forward, her hips almost out of control. His chuckle sounded animalistic and so male. He bit again, and she jerked with an intense reaction. As she began to moan in earnest, he found her center again. His tongue licked her c.l.i.toris over and over, as she reached down and caressed his hair. She arched as his clever tongue slid down and around her opening. He kept teasing her by licking her little nub, then circling down around, just touching her interiorly, then back up to do it all over again. On the fourth round he reached up and found her breast, caressing it, finding her nipple and gently pinching. She held his hand, ensuring he kept doing what he was, as she looked down, and saw that he was watching her. He licked her c.l.i.t, his eyes taking in everything, then slid two fingers into her.

Being on the very edge of the couch, she couldn't buck into him as she wanted to, but her hips did try to sway into his digits. The two of his fingers stretched her, made her feel so right. He slid in and out at the same time he licked, her back arching off the couch. Her legs opened even more, making her feel that the only thing keeping her on earth were her heels dug into his back, and her head thrown back on the cus.h.i.+on. He kept his rhythm, making her tighten around his fingers, feeling every move he made as it intensified more and more. Her stomach fluttered and glued down, preparing for her o.r.g.a.s.m. How she hadn't burst before then was only from sheer will, since she wanted this to last for an eternity. But he kept going faster, applying more pressure, her internal muscles tightened all the more. He rolled her nipple between his fingers, and she snapped. Rocking into his face, she moaned into the cras.h.i.+ng waves of her o.r.g.a.s.m. He slowed his pace slightly, but she kept coming as he licked her again and again.

Her body finally subsided, yet began to shudder and somehow simultaneously felt completely boneless. He lifted her and settled her on his lap. She still trembled, and he kissed along her hairline. Through it all, she felt hollow and lonely without him still inside her. His hands tenderly soothed as the shaking slowly waned.

d.a.m.n, that was good. That had been the best o.r.g.a.s.m she'd ever had. And one of her friends had bought her an amazing j.a.panese d.i.l.d.o after her divorce that had made her think she might never have s.e.x with a man again. But this...what she had just experienced had been so mind-blowing, so- It was then she vaguely remembered reading something about men of the time, especially rakes, taking their time learning how best not only to seduce a woman into bed, but to keep her there, to keep her coming back for more. Erva's lips had been in a perma-grin, but now she felt the corners of her mouth melt. Sure, he'd told her that he hadn't been a rake while his wife was alive, but he'd been a widower for ten years now. He must have had other lovers. And like an idiot, she'd never asked him about Misses Emma and Lydia.

G.o.d, she felt like a fool. She'd just opened to him-literally, simply because he'd been so vulnerable. But she still had no answers for now. Was he a womanizer now? Did she just turn into another notch on his bedpost? Although Mrs. Jacobs had said to the contrary, how did she know what Will was up to when he was out of the house?

Why had she fallen for him so fast? Was he practiced at being the sad widower, the man who had such a miserable story it turned women into putty in his hands? Granted, she thought what he had told her about his wife was the truth. But a rake, a real a.s.shole of a man, would use the truth for his own needs, wouldn't he?

It would be so like her to fall for an a.s.s like that. She sprang from his lap, finding her legs still wobbly like a newborn colt's. G.o.d, she had come until she thought her head might explode. Well, it was, with the spiral of thoughts spinning through her. She'd broken the rules with a man she hardly knew. She'd had s.e.x, oral s.e.x, after knowing him for a little more than day. d.a.m.n it. And-and he was going to die in a few days too!

Jezebel, harlot, s.l.u.t...the names tore through her psyche.

She fetched her dress as he slowly stood.

"Erva," he whispered.

Trying to cover herself with her torn dress, she wouldn't look at him when she said, "I never do this kind of thing."

"I-I rushed things. I'm sorry. I came at you like a charging bull."

She shook her head. "I never do this kind of thing."

"I'm sorry, darling."

She stared at him, trying to ascertain if that word was so sweet because he'd said it to many other women before. Was it a well-worn word, one that he knew how to say with the perfect amount of vulnerability and masculine possessiveness?

She backed away from him, but he followed.

"Erva, mayhap you could-"

"I never do this kind of thing." G.o.d, why couldn't she find something else to say?

He nodded. "I-I understand. I-"

She backed away even more, feeling her mother's disgusted sneer from more than two hundred years away. Shaking her head, she receded her way to the door, then unlatched it and raced to her own chamber, slamming her own door behind. It was cold and so dark in the room. s.l.u.t, raced through her mind. She stood not far from the entrance, beginning to cry.

A soft knock sounded.

"Erva, please, can we talk about this?"

Will's voice was patient, but strained.

She shook her head, tears flicking to the floor. "No."

"Please, darling."

"Not-not right now. I can't talk right now." And she couldn't. Her throat had tightened to the point where she wondered if she would ever breathe again.

He sighed. "All right." Something softly thumped against the door, and she thought it might be his forehead leaning against it. "I'm sorry, darling. I-I-we'll talk in the morning then."

She wasn't sure if she could. All she could do was stand there, staring at the door with a torn dress for a covering, a dress she'd asked to be ripped apart. It was a fitting metaphor, she thought, for how she'd shed her coverings, her s.h.i.+eld, given away so much to man she didn't really know. She'd asked for it too. Deep shame had set in by then, and she could only struggle with the word, "Okay," for a response.

He softly chuckled. "I have yet to learn what that means, my darling." There was a brief pause, but then he said, "I wish you a good night's rest. Good night, sweetling."

She melted into a puddle of self-incrimination, embarra.s.sment, and far too old emotional baggage in the middle of the floor.

Chapter 16.

Rolling over in her feather bed completely without Will, feeling too cold to sleep even though piled high with blankets, Erva thought of her past. Her reaction, what she had done with Will...all of it sent her reeling back as if she'd fallen in an Alice in Wonderland hole. She couldn't help but think about when she'd been so small, a child herself.

She hadn't meant to be a tomboy while growing up; hadn't played football with her dad to impress him; hadn't clung to him when he was home because he was her favorite parent. On the contrary, she wors.h.i.+pped her beautiful mother. But her mom, Judith, had never let her close.

When Erva was six, her father had been deployed to the Middle East, close to Beirut. At the time, the civil unrest made it impossible for families to come with their soldiers, so Erva and Judith were to stay stateside. Erva was actually excited to be alone with her mother. Maybe, her young mind had worked out, Judith would finally pay attention to her, now that they had only each other. However, Erva saw even less of her mother than if her father had been home. It had been the loneliest year of her life. Until her father had died.

Erva never understood why her mother didn't love her. Well, her mother had said she loved her a few times, when her father had been alive. But not since then. In high school, Erva had juggled how to please her mother with precision. She'd watch for any sign of discontent then abandon whatever she was doing-all to gain some sort of acceptance, some love from her mom. Long jumping and shot put were easy to give up. However, as the years pa.s.sed, and if Erva enjoyed the activity enough, if it gave her comfort, like skeet shooting had, then she'd keep it a secret. Secret keeping was as normal to Erva as chocolate chip cookies would have been to any other kid. She didn't view her secrets as lies, not until later in her life. While she had been young, secrets were the only way to survive.

Killing herself in ballet cla.s.ses, piano, and voice rehearsals were just a couple b.a.l.l.s to add in the air. Erva knew her mother approved of those things. Being good in school wasn't required, but her mother didn't sneer at it either. Schoolwork, not socializing, became so precious to Erva that excellent grades came naturally. Yet when her mother raised an eyebrow at all As, Erva changed her report card to reflect a few Bs too. Ben, Erva's best friend, had laughed and said she was the only kid in America to change her grade point average to something less than what she had actually achieved. This was the pattern of her life-she could only excel at things Judith approved of, nothing else.

When Erva received news that she had gotten a full scholars.h.i.+p to West Point, she lied to her mother and said that an upstate New York college had taken her. Her mother would go to The City, but never venture to where Erva went to college. Erva should have known better than to worry about that, but she had, and had taken great precautions to prevent her mother from knowing that she was graduating from a military organization, even if it was one of the top schools in the nation. She joined the Army, in which she told her mother she was living in Monterey, California trying to make it in a small town ballet company, when in reality she'd been in her language cla.s.ses. While Erva had been a.s.signed numerous Middle-Eastern countries during her time in the Army, she'd told her mother that she was trying to make it as a piano accompanist abroad. Her mother never visited her, never asked to. Annapolis for her Master's, then Harvard for her PhD, all the while Erva had tried to keep her life a secret from her mother. Finally, when she reached thirty, Erva had had enough of the lies and thought she was grown up enough to tell her mother the truth. She lived in Boston while she worked through the PhD program. Judith had been quiet for several moments, but then sighed wearily on the phone, saying, "G.o.d, Erva, when are you going to do something special with your life?"

It had been one of the b.a.l.l.s in the air: Erva had never known what it would take to win her mother over, what was special enough, and lastly what it would take to make her mother love her. She'd thought being her mother's clone would work while in middle school, but Judith would scoff at her choice of clothes and makeup. Erva had thought that by being a ballerina she could at least get a hug. But she'd broken three of her toes for nothing, no sympathy from her mother. She'd kept the skeet compet.i.tions a secret, which had helped her get the full ride scholars.h.i.+p to West Point. Only, when Judith had found out from Ben's mom that she'd won a compet.i.tion, many compet.i.tions, Erva's mother had been beside herself, screaming at Erva that she'd never marry, since men didn't like that sort of thing.

Judith's words had become a curse for Erva. Granted, she'd married. Unfortunately, she'd married a man who didn't approve of women doing "those sorts of things." Cliff had been everything Erva's mother had warned her about-a womanizer, a man who hadn't appreciated her, or even respected her, a man whom Judith had approved of.

Through the years Ben had worked at his art, then became an interior designer, where the worlds he'd created on paper would come alive. He'd also gone to therapy, because of bullies that haunted him, and he talked Erva into going too. She'd learned to identify her patterns, like finding a husband who would disapprove of her and ultimately reject her. She'd learned how to stop making friends who wound up so much like her mother. She'd learned to trust the people who had proven themselves to her, like Ben and his partner Bill who had become her family. She'd absorbed so much, but applying everything she'd learned was still new.

Her instincts had roared to let Will in, to trust him. But she didn't know him. Further, everything in the books she'd read indicated he was not a man to trust, not with her heart at least. Ben had once asked after her divorce if she would like to have a fling with a man, just use him for s.e.x. But she knew she wasn't built for that. She didn't judge others who would, but she knew once she took off her clothes, she'd fall in love. Oh G.o.d, what had she just done?

Tossing again on the bed, she finally huffed and threw off the covers, then strode toward an open window in her white nightgown. A tear cascaded down her cheek. All her life she'd struggled and fought for love. But this had come so easily. Naturally. That had to be wrong. But why did it feel so right then?

She wished Clio or Erato would show up and take her away. This hurt too much. Why did she let herself care so much about Will? He would die! In just a couple days now.