Ladies Prefer Rogues: Four Novellas of Time-Travel Passion Read online

  “I may be gone awhile,” he growled, turning away and striding to the door.

  She gripped the counter and closed her eyes on a sigh. Maybe having an affair with him wasn’t such a good idea. Since she couldn’t remember ever being this flustered over a man before . . . well, what if he ruined her for all men? What if after making love to Daniel, every other man paled in comparison?

  “Yeah, right,” she said with a snort, squaring her shoulders. “He puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like every other man.”

  But he sure filled them out nicer than most. And she couldn’t have helped but notice how ripped his body was when she’d been rooting around inside it. She honestly hadn’t found one ounce of extraneous fat, though she had found plenty of muscle. And a blind woman couldn’t miss how broad his shoulders are.

  Or how soft his shadowy chest hair looks.

  God, she loved chest hair on a man. It made her want to run her fingers all through it, and kiss it, and feel it tickling her naked breasts as . . .

  Isobel pushed away from the counter with renewed resolve and ran to the bed and straightened the blankets Micah had suggested she bring. She fluffed the pillows she had insisted on bringing, then grabbed the lamp and carried it over to the table. Then she went over and dug through her duffle bag to find her toiletries, and after a peek out the window to see Daniel making his way toward the bluff, she stripped off her clothes.

  Washing up in spring water certainly cooled her down, and brushing out her hair until it flowed like silk calmed her considerably. She stuffed everything back in her ditty bag, gathered her clothes off the floor, then carried them to the corner.

  She stopped in midstep. “Damn. Snuggles,” she muttered. She pulled everything out of her duffle bag, arranged a sweater in it like a nest, then carried it over to the bed and set it on the table where the lamp had been. But then she rotated it so the opening was facing the counter. “Sorry, Snug-a-bug, but last I knew, lovemaking wasn’t a spectator sport.”

  She ran to the window to see Daniel sitting on a log, watching the sun drop into the ocean as Snuggles sniffed through the crisp leaves at his feet. She lit the kerosene lamp on the table, then looked around. It was a rickety old cabin someone had built half a century ago, and the Maine coastal storms had taken their toll. Still, it kept out the weather, and she couldn’t think of a cozier place to cozy up to a Moonlander.

  Well, except maybe her comfortable bed at home.

  She added two of the punky old logs she’d found out back to the woodstove, closed the damper to keep them from burning up too quickly, then looked around again. “What else?” she asked out loud. “Think of the five senses,” she instructed, holding up a finger for each. “Sight; the kerosene lamp will do nicely. Sound; let’s hope my cries of ecstasy are music to his ears. Smell.” She snorted. “I hope Daniel gets turned on by the odor of deodorant soap. As for touch and taste, those are a given.” She suddenly gasped. “Ohmigod. Protection!”

  She ran back to the pile of clothes and started searching though her toiletries again. “Come on, please let there be some condoms in the bottom,” she pleaded, digging deeper as she tried to remember her last sleepover. Only sleepovers were usually at her house, since half the men she dated still lived with their mothers. “Yes!” she cried, pulling out a sleeve of three. But then she went rooting through the bottom of the bag again. “Three condoms for a four-day affair just isn’t going to cut it.”

  Coming up empty but for the three in her hand, Isobel stood up with a sigh. “I don’t suppose time-traveling warriors pack that kind of protection, so I guess that means I’m about to find out how creative Moonlanders really are when it comes to lovemaking.”

  Taking a deep breath, she walked back to the bed, tucked one of the condoms under her pillow, then stuffed the other two in the duffle bag under Snug’s nest. “There, the stage is set and we’re ready for the show to begin, folks.”

  She crawled into bed, fanned her hair across the pillow, arranged her boobs—that she had to admit were pleasingly plump—so that a good deal of cleavage showed just above the blanket, then settled in to wait for the leading man to arrive.

  And she waited.

  And waited.

  Until she eventually fell asleep.

  Eight

  Isobel woke up with a scream when something brushed her arm, and she came up swinging at the dark shadow looming above her.

  “Dammit, woman, would you stop!” Daniel snapped, catching her fist before it could make contact with his belly. “You’re starting to give me a complex.”

  “You’re supposed to whistle,” she snapped back, tugging her hand free to pull the blanket higher around her.

  “I’ve been trying to for the last hour, but I can’t seem to make my lips work the way you do. Here, I fear Snuggles may have gotten chilled,” he said, trying to tuck the rabbit under the blanket again.

  “No, put her in the duffle bag,” Isobel told him, gesturing toward the bedside table. “She likes cuddling up in my sweater.”

  Daniel frowned at her, hugging Snuggles back to his chest. He looked around the dimly lit cabin, and sighed. “She can sleep with me, then,” he said, heading toward the pile of clothes in the corner.

  “No, wait,” Isobel called out. She took a fortifying breath and scooted over and patted the bed beside her. “There’s no reason we can’t share the bed.” When he stopped and turned to her, she let the blanket slip just enough to reveal one naked shoulder and lowered her voice to what she hoped was a sultry tone. “There’s plenty of room for both of us. And it’s going to be chilly in here by morning, so I thought we could share our . . . our body heat,” she ended in a whisper, her courage deserting her when she saw his eyes darken—not with lust, but with . . . oh, God, he actually looked angry.

  “Go back to sleep, Isobel.”

  She immediately recoiled, prickles of heat rushing to her cheeks as she realized he had just flat-out rejected her. Suddenly feeling her chin starting to quiver, she turned onto her stomach and pulled the blanket over her head to bury her face in her pillow. What in hell had she been thinking! No wonder only losers dated her; she obviously had the seductive wiles of a gnat. Isobel pressed deeper into the pillow to muffle a sob when she heard him mutter something nasty under his breath.

  So now how was she supposed to get up and get dressed, if he was lying on her clothes? Because there was no way she was going to let him sleep on the floor after she’d spent five hours sweating bullets to save his sorry, miserable life.

  The no-good, ungrateful jerk.

  She felt the bed dip, and his hand settle across her back. “Isobel. Look at me.”

  “G-go away,” she sniffled into the pillow.

  “I need to—Christ, are you crying?”

  “No. Go away!”

  “Isobel.”

  She tightened her grip on the blanket when he attempted to pull it down. “I’ve decided I deserve the bed tonight for saving your miserable life,” she said, trying to sound appropriately dismissive. “Go sleep in the corner with your new best friend.”

  He stopped tugging on the blanket and his hand returned to her back, only lower, settling on her backside. “Are you not concerned I might catch a chill on the floor and take a turn for the worse?”

  She tried to slide out from under his touch, but he pressed heavier, then started caressing her. So she reared up to her hands and knees as she pulled the blanket around herself, then scooted backward off the end of the bed. “Fine! You take the bed and I’ll sleep in the corner.”

  Her toes hadn’t quite touched the floor when she suddenly found herself swept off her feet and plastered against his chest. “What the—Are you nuts? You’re going to burst open your side!”

  “Hush, Isobel,” he whispered, just before his mouth came down on hers.

  Oh, great. A consolation kiss!

  Keeping her lips tightly pursed, and being careful not to smack his clavicle or lose her grip on her blanket, she tried t
o push him away. But he effortlessly held her cradled against him and kept right on kissing her until she started getting dizzy from lack of air.

  Totally and utterly humiliated now, and fighting to keep from bursting out in loud sobs, Isobel gave a shudder of defeat and went limp. And when he finally lifted his head, she hid her face in his neck.

  “You will not cry,” he whispered. “I don’t like it.”

  Oh, then by all means she should stop, shouldn’t she? “Put me down,” she said against his neck. “Because I swear if you bust open your side, I’m not sewing you back up again.”

  “I will put you down when you stop crying.”

  She gave a quick swipe of her eyes, then lifted her head to glare at him. But the moment she looked into his beautiful blue eyes, her chin started quivering again and she turned away. “Will you please put me down?”

  He laid her on the bed, but then he lay down beside her, somehow managing to keep her locked in the crook of his arm. “I want you to look at me, Isobel.”

  “Yeah, well, I want to go home, but that’s not happening,” she muttered, yanking the blanket up around her shoulders.

  He cupped her jaw to force her head up, and then threaded his fingers through her hair to keep her looking at him. “Six months before we left the moon to come here, the entire colony gathered together for a grand and solemn ceremony,” he said calmly, “to hear myself and my brothers give our warriors’ vows. And a part of those vows was our promise to become celibate, and remain so until we chose a wife.”

  Isobel dropped her gaze to the metal collar around his neck. “A-and that’s why you don’t want to . . . why we . . . ?” She looked into his eyes. “We can’t make love because you’ve vowed to have sex with only your future wife?”

  “If I make love to you tonight, Isobel, we won’t leave this bed for the next four days, and when I return to my time, I will never touch another woman.”

  “Then why did you tell me down on the beach that you wanted me?”

  “Because I do.”

  She dropped her gaze to his collar again and released a shuddering sigh. “Oh. Okay. I understand. You want to, but you can’t,” she said, trying to pull away.

  His arm around her tightened, and he forced her to look at him again. “I have a duty to my people, Isobel, not only to help make Earth safe for them to come here, but to help repopulate it. Our warrior genes are mankind’s best hope for survival, and my destiny lies in the year 2243.”

  “I understand,” she repeated, this time trying to sound like she meant it.

  She also tried to roll away again, but he continued to hold her facing him even as she continued to struggle. “If I could, I would take you with me.”

  She went perfectly still. “You . . . that’s quite . . . you’re assuming . . . you want to take me with you?” she squeaked.

  He nodded.

  “But you can’t!”

  “I know,” he said, closing his eyes on a sigh. “But I am tempted to anyway.”

  She untangled a hand from her blanket and poked him in the chest—well away from his injury—to make him look at her. “That’s a pretty arrogant thing to say, considering you haven’t even asked me if I want to go with you.”

  One side of his mouth lifted, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “I don’t have to ask; warriors have been granted the power to take.”

  “Take what?”

  “You,” he said, smiling openly when she gasped. “If I want.”

  She blinked at him, trying to decide if he was serious or just making up another tall tale to distract her from his flat-out rejection, afraid she might start crying again. Yeah, well, she was certainly past that; she wouldn’t make love to him now if he was the last man on Earth!

  “That might be a rule or law or something in 2243, but it sure as hell doesn’t apply to women in this time.” She poked him again. “I mean, really, where are you getting all these harebrained notions, anyway? To begin with, soldiers haven’t been called warriors for centuries.” She arched a brow. “Are you telling me that instead of becoming enlightened, mankind regresses over the next two hundred years? Vows of celibacy are positively ancient even now.”

  He captured her hand so she couldn’t poke him again. “I told you my mother was a historian, and that she’s also the keeper of our book collection. By the middle of the twenty-second century, printed books had become relics, as all knowledge was stored digitally. But when Earth died, everything was lost. So when it came time for us to train, the only military information we had access to was in the few printed books some of the scientists had brought with them to the moon.”

  He grinned. “And my mother’s grandmother had a thing for ancient warriors, apparently, so she brought her small personal collection of novels. They were penned in your century—which is one reason we decided to come to this time—but were set anywhere from the tenth century to the fifteenth.”

  “Novels?” Isobel whispered in disbelief. “Your mother taught the ten of you how to conduct yourselves from historical fiction?”

  “They were set in a very noble time.”

  “It was a barbaric time.”

  He sighed. “Which isn’t far from where Earth is now, in 2243. There’s nothing left, Isobel. In the eighty years since the Cataclysm, nearly all signs of humanity have disappeared. The land and the oceans are as if man never existed.” His arm around her tightened. “Which is why I am reluctant to take you with me.”

  “Are we back to that?”

  “I believe that is exactly what this conversation has been about,” he growled. But then he sighed again. “What I’ve been trying to explain, Isobel, is that just like your boyfriends are looking for the prestige marrying you would bring them, I must also guard against women who want only to be a warrior’s wife.” He snorted. “In the six months before we came here, I and my brothers would come home to find women in our beds, hoping we would choose them as our wives. Oh, and while we were at it, could we please impregnate them before we left?”

  Isobel felt prickles of heat rising into her cheeks again, and she hid her face in his shirt. No wonder he’d gotten angry to find her waiting for him; she had acted just like all those conniving, blood-sucking, no-good, rotten Moonlander tramps.

  Oh God, that made her the loser!

  He canted her head back to look at him again. “You’re the only woman to ever tempt me, Isobel. And if it wasn’t for the uncertainty of having you travel forward in time, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all, because we would right now be setting this bed on fire.”

  Okay, she had to get at least some of her dignity back here, before she totally humiliated herself. She shot him a rather sad smile and patted his chest. “Yeah, well, sorry to burst your bubble, big guy, but I’m really not into alpha males carrying me off into the ether.” She tried to roll away, but when he still refused to let her go, she added, “But it’s very sweet of you to want to take me with you, and I am honored. Truly.”

  She felt him stiffen, and his eyes sharpened with suspicion.

  Isobel kicked her smile up a notch. “It’s just that . . . you see . . . I have a pretty good life here. I enjoy being a veterinarian, and my four-legged clients need me. And I like running water and electricity and indoor plumbing. And though I’m not a vegetarian, I don’t think I could actually kill my own food, and I can’t grow a tomato to save my life. So you see, I’d really make a lousy twenty-third century wife, anyway.”

  When his only response was for his complexion to darken, she patted his chest again. “And really, when you think about it, we’ve only known each other one day,” she said with a soft laugh—that she hoped sounded lighthearted rather than hysterical.

  Because, honest to God, the idea of starting out fresh in a pristine new world with Daniel was actually starting to appeal to her. And really, that was just too crazy even for her. Wasn’t it?

  “And for all you know,” she continued, keeping her smile shining brightly and her tone ligh
t, “within a month of bringing me home to meet your parents, you would be bugging your scientist buddies to find a way to send me back when you discovered that under all this wonderful plumpness, I’m really not the woman you thought I was.”

  He still said nothing, and it took Isobel several heartbeats to realize he’d opened his arm and freed her. She immediately rolled away and scooted down to the foot of the bed to leave.

  Only the blanket didn’t appear to be leaving with her. She looked over her shoulder to find Daniel holding on to it, his expression . . . unreadable.

  She gave a sharp tug on the blanket.

  Daniel tugged back. And despite scrambling to catch it, the blanket flew off her and onto the pillow beside him, leaving her utterly naked.

  “What did you do that for!” she cried, hunching her shoulders to hug herself protectively, glaring back at him.

  “Because I wanted to. And because I could.”

  Like he could take her with him if he wanted to?

  Isobel stood up and calmly walked across the cabin to the corner. She gathered up several pieces of her clothes, then walked to the door, stepped outside into the cold night air, and closed it softly behind her.

  Apparently when a twenty-third-century warrior found himself on the receiving end of a flat-out rejection, he didn’t get disappointed, or humiliated, or want to burst into tears.

  He simply got even.

  Nine

  Isobel woke up to sunlight hitting her face and immediately closed her eyes with a stifled groan. How in hell was she going to survive being trapped on this stupid island with Daniel for three more excruciating days? She had made such a fool of herself last night, she was probably going to develop a permanent sunburn from blushing every time she looked at him.

  Opening one eye and finding the cabin empty, she groaned out loud. Never mind looking at Daniel; she was going to have to touch him, too. Because if she didn’t change the bandage on his side, his sutures could get infected. She’d shot him full of dog antibiotics right after the surgery, and mixed some with the olive oil she’d put on his salad, but considering what the horse tranquilizer had done to him, there was a good chance his body didn’t have a clue what to do with twenty-first-century antibiotics.