Ladies Prefer Rogues: Four Novellas of Time-Travel Passion Page 5
And if Daniel thought she believed he was from the future, he was dumber than he obviously thought she was. His story was riddled with holes big enough to drive a truck through. If he and his brothers were on such an important mission to save mankind from becoming extinct, why did he seem more interested in kissing her than helping his brothers search for their precious animal?
She suddenly gasped in midthrow and lowered her hand. “Ohmigod, he’s playing me. If his story is even remotely true, then he’s been buttering me up in hopes that I’ll help them find the animal they need. The no-good, conniving sneak,” she muttered, winding her arm back and spiking the rock at the ledge again.
This time it hit so hard it shattered into pieces and sent tiny missiles flying in every direction. One of the pieces sailed into the air and smacked a seagull soaring in to see if it was food she was throwing. The bird gave a strangled squawk and tumbled straight into the ocean, only to bob to the surface in bewilderment as several more gulls landed beside it, thinking their friend had found something to eat.
“Jeesh, I’m sorry!” Isobel shouted, shoving her hands in her pockets.
“Is it customary to apologize to an animal you’re trying to kill?” Daniel asked.
Isobel turned with a gasp, tripped over her own feet, and fell into the surf just as a wave slammed into her back and washed over her head. “Dammit, you can’t sneak up on a person like that!” she cried, getting to her feet and slogging back onto the beach.
But then she had to scramble up the bluff and grab his arm when she realized he’d started down to rescue her. “You’re not well enough to be out here. I don’t care how good you feel, you’re going to burst your kidney wide open.”
He wrapped his arm over her shoulder for support and allowed her to lead him to a boulder to sit down. “I’m sorry I startled you,” he said, unzipping his jacket and peeking inside.
Isobel saw Snuggles peeking up at him.
“Can I set her down out here?” he asked, eyeing the gulls edging closer in hopes the new arrival had brought food. “Or will those large birds carry her off and have her for dinner?” He looked up at Isobel. “Aren’t rabbits prey animals?”
“Yes. But seagulls are not raptors. They eat mostly crustaceans—or whatever food they can beg or steal from people. It’s okay to set Snugs down. She won’t go far.”
Isobel shed her soaked jacket and tossed it on the pebbled beach. Then she pulled her hair free, bent over, and began fluffing the water out of it with her fingers.
“You’re shivering,” he said. “Here, let me give you my jacket.”
She straightened to glare at him. “Keep it. The last thing I need is for you to catch pneumonia.”
“You’re still angry,” he said, sincerely surprised. “I apologized for groping you during our nap.” He shot her a boyish grin. “But you were so warm and plump and inviting, my hand instinctively wandered to you without my permission.”
She stopped fluffing her hair again. “Did you just call me plump?”
His boyish grin turned outright lecherous, and he actually nodded. “Trust me, Isobel, if you were not so beautifully plump, I wouldn’t be spending every moment wanting to run my mouth over every centimeter of you,” he said, his voice dropping several octaves. “Or imagining how sweet your skin must taste or what it would feel like to have you writhing beneath me as I slid deep inside your heat, and let your soft, plump body consume me.”
Despite being soaked to the skin and standing in fifty-degree air, Isobel felt like an ice cube in a pot of boiling water. Was this guy for real? Because, honest to God, she could practically feel herself consuming him.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he continued gutturally, his piercing gaze holding her trapped in a realm of salacious possibilities. “And like an explorer, I want to map every line and curve and dip of your body, and turn the passion of your blushes into flames of desire,” he whispered, the deep cadence of his voice sharpening the mental image of his words. “And hear your cries of ecstasy as you shudder around me with the force of an exploding nova.”
He dropped his gaze to her blouse plastered against her breasts, then his darkened eyes returned to hers. “I want you, Isobel. Badly. So I suggest that you run while you still can.”
“W-what?”
“Because if you don’t leave immediately, I will have you right here on the beach.”
He thought she could run? Hell, it was all she could do to breathe.
“Go!” he snapped, making her flinch and effectively getting her moving.
Isobel frantically scrambled up over the bluff in a daze of confusion and no small amount of horror—both of which were aimed at herself. Because, honest to God, she had wanted him to make love to her right there on the beach, so she could shudder around him like an exploding nova.
She was halfway to the cabin before she suddenly stopped, turned around, and marched back to the bluff. “For your information,” she called down to him, “I am not plump. I have a body mass index of twenty-two, and that’s considered perfect. And I wouldn’t have let you have me, anyway, because I’ve sworn off men.”
He stood up. “Do not test me, Isobel,” he said roughly. “As I am determined to keep my promise not to hurt you.”
She took a step back, preparing to make a run for it again, but something in his voice gave her pause. He was fighting more than an overabundance of testosterone; it sounded as if he was equally determined not to hurt . . . himself?
She turned and quietly walked to the cabin, no longer fleeing in horror but still confused. Was it possible Daniel was coming to actually like her?
Impossible. They’d known each other less than twenty-four hours.
But she had saved his life. Could he have one of those syndromes—like the Stockholm syndrome, where captives came to feel affection for their captors—that was making him feel affection for her? Maybe he was battling a misguided sense of gratitude, or even adoration, that had manifested as . . . lust.
But she was the captive; she should be the one enamored with him.
Isobel stepped into the warmth of the cabin and softly closed the door. “So what if I do think he’s to-die-for good looking and totally hot?” she said into the silence as she took off her blouse. “Other than his tall tale that he’s from the moon, he’s certainly a far cry from the losers I’ve been dating.” She unzipped her wet jeans and peeled them down with a snort. “Which isn’t saying much. I’ve dated every eligible male in a fifty-mile radius, and not one of them ever made my heart race the way Daniel does just by looking at me.”
She kicked her pants toward the woodstove, went to the supplies in the corner, and found the duffle bag she’d packed. “My God,” she muttered, “I damn near had an orgasm just picturing him sliding into me.”
And she probably would have had three by now, if he’d followed through instead of chased her off.
She took a shuddering breath and pulled a sweater down over her head. “Okay, young lady, get a grip on yourself. You’ve sworn off men, remember?”
She paused in the act of stepping into a pair of dry jeans. If she was facing a prolonged bout of dates with pint containers of ice cream, and Daniel would be disappearing back into the ether in a few days, why not kick off her celibacy by having a torrid little affair with him?
Hesure as hell seemed willing. And he certainly seemed physically capable, considering how fast he’d healed. And maybe Moonlanders really had perfected the art of lovemaking, and he could give her some really hot memories to keep her warm on the long, lonely nights ahead. And who knew, maybe there was even a thing or two she could teach him.
Yeah, she didn’t have to swear off all men.
Isobel finished pulling up her pants with a smile of anticipation. “So I guess that means you better start sleeping with one eye open, Mr. Moonlander, because you’re no longer the only person on this island with wandering hands.”
Daniel sat back down on the boulder and hung his head i
n his hands with a heavy sigh. Christ, that had been close. He really had been seconds away from stripping Isobel naked and making rough, unrestrained love to her right here on the beach.
After which he would have carried her to the cabin and made love to her again.
And then he would have spent the next four days trying to persuade her that he wasn’t a brute.
He snorted. “Say it enough times and maybe you’ll eventually persuade yourself.”
The tiny black rabbit hopped over and sat up on her haunches, nudging his leg with her front paws. Daniel picked her up and tucked her inside his jacket with a humorless laugh. “I can see why Isobel is fond of you, little one. You’ve even managed to get me talking to myself. It must be your long ears,” he murmured, stroking her ears against the soft fur of her back. “They encourage speech. And now I also understand Isobel’s claim that pets have health benefits, as I am growing calm just holding you.”
He ducked his head to look the rabbit in the eye. “Isobel stirs my senses like no other woman ever has. And it’s not just her beauty. Even when she’s not especially pleased with me she’s still tender and caring, her concern for my welfare always winning over her anger.”
Daniel looked out at the ocean, once again awed by the vast expanse of water, and took a deep breath of fresh, fragrant air that was being filtered by nature instead of machines. He couldn’t wait for his people to come here and witness such colorful beauty and abundance for themselves.
“So, my little friend,” he said, stroking the rabbit’s fur as he eyed the large birds edging closer, “do you have any suggestions as to how I can keep my hands off Isobel?” He rubbed his stubbled chin on the rabbit’s head. “For it’s not physically that I fear I might hurt her, but emotionally. I know only too well that when a woman gives her body to a man, there is a danger that her heart will follow. And it’s obvious that Isobel is a passionately generous and caring woman, and I worry she may come to care for me more than she should.”
He lifted the rabbit to look into her dark, fluid eyes. “And in four days, when I have no choice but to return to my natural time, she could be heartbroken.” He hugged Snuggles to his neck and closed his eyes. “Just as I fear I may be.”
Seven
Daniel eyed the plate Isobel had set in front of him, then leaned to the side and eyed the plate she’d set on the floor for Snuggles. And then he scowled at the bowl of delicious-smelling broth sitting in front of her. “Is there any particular reason the rabbit and I are eating the same food, but you are not?” he asked.
“Yup,” she said, taking a noisy slurp of the broth. She closed her eyes and made a sound of pleasure, then dipped her spoon into the broth again.
Daniel reached across the table and stilled her hand on its way to her mouth. “And that reason would be?” he asked.
She lowered the spoon to her bowl. “Because recovering from major surgery is not exactly the best time to introduce a body to new food.” She arched a delicate brow. “You said there aren’t any animals on the moon, so that means your digestive system has only had plant-based protein.”
She reached across the table and picked up his fork, drove it into the pile of green foliage and diced orange . . . things, and held it up to his mouth. “Like Snuggles, you are essentially a herbivore, and the only thing I had in my fridge when Noah raided it was lettuce and carrots. It’s this or nothing.” She set the fork on his plate when he refused to open his mouth and be fed like an infant. “Or, you can chance having your intestines blow up,” she said, taking another loud slurp of broth.
Daniel finally picked up his fork but hesitated. “What is making it wet?”
“Olive oil.” She nodded toward the floor where the rabbit was eagerly munching her dinner. “Eat up. It’ll make your chest hair soft and shiny, just like Snugs’ fur.”
Daniel hid his consternation by filling his mouth with foliage. Something had changed between the time he’d sent Isobel running from the beach and when he’d returned to the cabin an hour later. She hadn’t been leery of him as he’d expected; in fact, she’d been outright solicitous. And smiley. And unusually quiet.
Which only served to put him on guard.
“So your parents and brother are waiting for you back—I mean forward—in 2243?” she asked. “Where are they, exactly, location-wise?”
“Right here,” he said after swallowing, deciding that he liked the earthy taste of olive oil—though not the bitter aftertaste it left. “Wherever we’re standing when we activate our links is where we will be standing when we arrive in our new time. We left from this island.”
“But then how did you get to the mainland when you arrived here? You couldn’t know there would be a boat on the island, could you?”
“We swam the eight kilometers to the mainland.” He grinned. “Apparently Micah found a boat to borrow to bring us here this morning.”
“But how did you know this island wouldn’t be inhabited when you suddenly . . . what, do you step out of the ether or something?”
Daniel swallowed his next bite. “We don’t step out of anything, we simply materialize. And we took an educated guess the island would be deserted, based on what we knew of this time and this area.” He grinned. “Though it’s quite run down, the cabin being here was a pleasant surprise.”
She leaned forward. “Okay, I can understand why you picked the sparsely populated Maine coast, but why this particular year?”
“Because it was far enough back in time from when the first strain of the plague showed up, which made it our best chance of finding the animal we need without contaminating ourselves.”
“Why couldn’t someone from the twenty-second century simply come back and stop the plague from happening to begin with?”
“Breaching time wasn’t possible back then. Moonlander scientists developed the technology just thirty years ago.”
“Then why didn’t one of the Moonlanders come back and warn everyone about what was happening, so they could create a vaccine before it was too late?”
“Time travel is still a very new technology, and we haven’t yet explored all the ramifications of using it. But our scientists believe it’s imperative that we not alter the past in any substantial way, because we can’t predict what rippling effect it could cause. We dare use time travel only to impact our own futures.
She set down her spoon. “When all the people die, do the animals die, too?”
“Not all species. But when the last humans disappeared, the nuclear energy reactors eventually deteriorated and spread radiation into the atmosphere, and the Earth went through what we’ve been calling a Cataclysm.” He shrugged. “Which in turned altered the DNA of many of the animals that did survive. So we made sure we came back both before the super-germ existed and the animals hadn’t mutated. But we also had to make sure it was late enough that we would have access to science advanced enough to help us find which animal we need.”
“Um . . . if you’re worried the plague is still hanging around in 2243, aren’t you afraid that you and your family could get infected?” She gasped. “And that you’d bring it to this century and infect us?” she asked, her eyes widening in alarm.
Daniel shook his head. “We know the four of us didn’t carry it back to this time.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because we exist. Mankind wouldn’t have survived more than a decade if we brought it here, so there never would have been a colony on the moon to begin with.” He set his fork down to rest his elbows on the table. “That’s what I meant about not altering the past, Isobel; if we have an impact during one of our visits, it would then be part of recorded history.”
“Can you travel forward in time?”
He picked up his fork again. “We don’t know for certain, but all our data points to it being possible, although it does appear to be a one-way journey.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“Because anyone who has ever activated a time link se
t on a future date has never returned.”
Isobel started devising her plan of seduction right after dinner, even though she was pretty sure starting an affair with Daniel wouldn’t require any more effort than taking off her clothes. Still, there wasn’t any reason her soft, plump, inviting body—that he wanted to feel writhing beneath him—couldn’t be presented in its best light.
And what better light was there for lovemaking than the soft glow of a kerosene lamp? Especially if she set it on the table in the center of the cabin, well away from the bed, so it could cast interesting shadows over every line and curve and dip of her body that he wanted to map like an explorer.
Isobel splashed some of the spring water she was using to wash the dishes onto her face, then ran her wet hand down her neck. Good Lord, she was growing hot again just remembering the sensuous images he’d conjured up on the beach this afternoon. If he could make her melt with just words, there was a very real danger she’d go off like a Fourth of July rocket if he did run his mouth over every square centimeter of her.
“I’m going outside to sit and watch the moon come up,” he said from behind her.
Isobel yelped, spinning in surprise and splashing water all over herself, and him, and Snuggles peeking out of his jacket.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though his grin said he was anything but. “I don’t mean to keep startling you.”
“You walk like a cat,” she muttered, wiping her face on her sleeve. “Why don’t you whistle or something to warn a person you’re around.”
“Whistle?”
She dropped her arm and blinked up at him. “You don’t know how to whistle?”
“I assume it’s some sort of noise I should make?”
Isobel puckered her lips and whistled a few notes of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, but stopped the moment she realized he’d locked his gaze on her mouth and his eyes had darkened. “Er, that’s whistling,” she whispered, her own gaze going to his mouth as she imagined those lips kissing every square centimeter of her body.