by JoAnn Ross
"We've only known each other a few days." Jessica hated the way she sounded so petulant. So needy.
"No." Heedless of the fact that he had a split lip that was swollen and painful, Rory leaned forward and kissed her. A soft, lingering kiss that warmed her blood and clouded her mind. "We've known each other a lifetime," he said against her mouth. "At least two lifetimes, at last count."
She could no longer deny it. During that frantic time when she'd been pacing the floor, waiting for Trace to arrive, memories had flooded back in vivid detail. She remembered the first time they'd met, the amazingly erotic day in that sun-dazzled hayloft, the horror of finding her father dead, shot in the back by Black Jack Clayton because he'd accidentally included the outlaw in a photo, caught in the act of setting fire to a settler's barn.
She remembered, all too well, making love until dawn the night before Rory had gone after Clayton, and how she'd cried as she'd watched him ride away. She remembered pacing the floor of the cabin, desperately waiting for her husband to return.
Which he had. One hundred years later.
She backed away, her heart in her throat. "We'd better go home."
"Yes." He trailed the back of his fingers down her face, pleased as he watched the soft color bloom on her exquisite cheeks. And then, Rory vowed, they would begin making up for lost time.
The mail had come while she'd been at the sheriff's office. Jessica leafed through it, putting the bills in one pile, the catalogs she would look at later in another, and discarding the junk mail. Then she opened a personal card.
"It's from Mariah," she said, reading the brief lines that had been scribbled onto the cream stationery. "Reminding me about the Thanksgiving dinner she suspects Trace forgot to mention. That's a national holiday in a couple weeks," she explained. "You're invited, too." She wondered if Rory's inclusion was the reason that Trace had, indeed, failed to mention the upcoming dinner.
She sounded less than thrilled by the prospect. "If you're afraid I'll embarrass you by getting into a fight—"
"That's not it." She frowned and ran her fingers along the edge of the invitation.
"If I were not here, would you go?"
"Probably," she admitted. "Noel and Mac are invited, too. Along with some other friends—Tara Delaney and Gavin Thomas. It would be good company."
"Yet, I hear a 'but' in your tone."
She dragged her hand through her hair in a nervous gesture he was beginning to recognize. "If we go together, people will think we're a couple."
"I wouldn't have expected you to worry about what people think. Especially friends."
"I never have. But this is different."
"More complicated."
"You can say that again."
She sighed, trying to work up the nerve to ask the question that had been teasing at her mind since Mac and Noel had managed to convince her that Rory was telling the truth.
"What if you're not here for Thanksgiving? What if you end up going back to your own time? As Noel did, when she returned to the twentieth century?"
Leaving the man she loved behind. Jess didn't say the words, but Rory knew she was thinking them. He also understood that she was afraid of giving her heart to him, afraid she'd end up having it broken. As he observed her trembling lips and the moisture sparkling in her eyes, he wished, with all his might, that he could promise that wouldn't happen. But he couldn't.
"Why don't we take things one day at a time?" he suggested gently.
She allowed him to draw her into his arms, and rested her head on his shoulder. "I've suddenly realized I'm a very selfish woman," she murmured into his shirt.
"You couldn't be selfish if you tried." On the contrary, she was the most generous person he'd ever met. In that respect, Rory thought, she was exactly like his Emilie.
"Yes, I am." She looked up at him and touched a hand to his cheek. "Just a few days ago, I had no idea you existed. Now, I can't bear the thought of a life without you."
"Who would have believed we could find each other after so many years?" Rory brushed a snowflake-soft kiss against her tightly set lips. "Whatever happens, we belong together. For all time. We'll find each other again."
Her lips parted beneath his. "If only I could believe that."
"You have to trust me."
She tilted her head back. "I do."
"Good." He gave her a long kiss that stole her breath, then put her a little away from him. "I smell like a brewery from that broken beer bottle. I think I'd better take a shower."
She thought about asking if he wanted company, but worried he'd think her too forward. Although she wanted him and knew he knew it, he was, after all, from a different time. A time when women—nice women— were expected to behave with some decorum.
"You know," he suggested with a cocked brow and a delicious leer, "I could always use some help washing my back. I was, after all, recently wounded."
"Poor dear." Her own eyes gleamed with humor and anticipation. "We'll have to treat you very carefully. With kid gloves, so to speak."
"I think I'd prefer your bare hands." He lifted one of the hands in question and kissed her palm, creating a tingle that went all the way to her toes.
Then, hand in hand, they went upstairs to the bedroom.
"I was so afraid this would be awkward," she murmured as she unbuttoned his shirt. "Because we were strangers."
"But it's not." His own hands made fast work of pulling her sweater over her head. "Because we're not."
"No." She pressed her smiling lips against his bared chest. "We didn't have a shower last time."
"True." At the touch of her lips desire shot to his groin like lightning. She always could make him hot. "But we managed to do all right in the tub."
"The first time you made love to me in that old copper bathtub I was certain we'd drown." Although she was a sophisticated woman of the 1990s, Jessica blushed at the memory of how daring she'd found his behavior.
Rory grinned as he recalled, with vivid accuracy, how they'd managed to not only flood the bathroom floor, but soak the kitchen ceiling below as well.
"I told you," he said, running his finger along the delicate top of the wondrously skimpy piece of lace that had replaced the boned corset that had been the fashion in his time, "the trick is to hold your breath."
"And I told you," she said, as his stroking touch made her knees weak, "that it's hard to breathe, period, whenever I'm around you."
"I know the feeling." He bent his head and his tongue made a wet swath along the flesh his finger had warmed. "Very well… So, how does this come off?"
"There's a hook. In front."
Jessica was not at all surprised when he found the front clasp and unfastened it without difficulty. Rory Mannion had always been a man who knew his way around women's clothing.
"Ah. That's better." His lips found the peak of her breast and teased it into rigid arousal.
"Much," she agreed, arching her back, inviting him to take her more fully into his mouth. Which he did, with pleasure. Fighting the need to rush, Rory moved his mouth to the other breast, teasing, tasting, savoring.
"I love this," he murmured as he unzipped her skirt and sent it skimming down over her hips.
"What?" She tried to remember that she'd wanted to undress him, but as so often happened when Rory made love to her, she couldn't think. Or breathe. Or move.
"Everything." He knelt down as he peeled the tights down her legs. "I love touching you."
He ran a finger up the inner flesh of her bare thigh, and was rewarded by Jessica's sharp intake of breath and her increased trembling. "I love tasting you." Rory kissed her quivering stomach, so enticingly bared by those skimpy panties. "I love the soft little sounds you make when I touch you, like this."
He cupped her throbbing feminine flesh with his palm and made her moan. The silk beneath his hand was hot and moist. Rory knew that she would be hotter. And wetter.
When he slipped a finger beneath the lace-trimmed edge, then de
lved into her heat, she tilted her head back, grabbed hold of his shoulders and tilted her hips toward him in a desperate, unspoken need for more.
"Rory." His name was torn from her throat on a desperate cry of need. "Please." His intimate touch was causing a painful, yet pleasurable tension inside her.
"There's no need to rush." He slipped another finger in and felt her body clutching desperately at him.
"That's what you think," she muttered, needing more. Needing him.
When she would have pulled away, he pressed his free hand against the base of her spine and held her tightly against his probing touch. When he felt her resistance ebb, he took his hand from her back and ripped away the panties with a single brisk stroke.
"You feel so good," he murmured as his fingers moved deep inside her, heating her from the inside out. And when he touched his mouth to that burning flesh, a violent tremor surged through her, and she cried out his name.
Rory thought the ragged voice reverberating off the walls was the sexiest thing he'd ever heard.
Her body was still rippling with convulsions as he half carried, half dragged her into the bathroom. He reached into the shower, turned on the water, then shed his own clothes with a speed that told her he was reaching the end of his amazing patience.
And then the warm water was sluicing over them, and he took the bar of French milled soap in his hands and worked it into a frothy white lather that he spread over her like a silken veil, making her swollen breasts glisten like precious jewels. He nibbled at the ultrasensitive nub between her legs with his teeth and brought her to yet another climax that left her shaking.
Needing to drive him as mad as he was driving her, she took the soap from his hands and spread it across his wide shoulders and down his chest, her fingernails scraping at the male nipples that turned as hard as dark brown stones beneath her sensuous touch.
Her palms moved over a stomach that she knew was rock hard from physical work rather than time spent with weights at some trendy 1990s gym. It was her turn to drop to her knees as she bathed each leg down to his feet, then moved back up again. His thighs were taut and muscled, and between them, a magnificent erection jutted boldly out from a nest of curly dark hair.
She stared, enthralled by the smooth length, the weight. How could she have forgotten this?
"I need you to touch me," he groaned.
Needing the same thing, she wrapped her fingers around him, loving the way she could feel his life force pulsing wildly beneath her touch. When she began to slowly stroke him, from base to deep purple tip, he leaned his head back against the tile, closed his eyes and thrust his hips toward her, exactly as she had done to him.
Emboldened, and remembering that sun-spangled day when she'd practically raped him after watching the circus performer swallow the gleaming sword all the way to its jeweled hilt, she took this man she knew to be her husband in her mouth, loving him with her lips, her tongue, her teeth.
"No." Gasping, he pulled away. "Not this time."
Loving the way he'd just assured her that there would be other times, that he wasn't going to disappear just when they'd finally found one another again, she granted his request, and kissed her way back up his wet torso, his throat, along his rigid jaw, until her avid mouth found his again.
The kiss was deep and hot. Tongues tangled as hearts entwined. And although Rory wanted to lift her up and lower her onto his aching shaft, he wasn't certain that his legs would hold them. So instead, he dragged her out of the shower, down onto the fluffy pink carpet.
Hunger burning through him, he spread her legs apart, not gently, then thrust into her, glistening wet marble into moist pink flesh. And although she was more than ready for him, she cried out in surprise and wonder at the way he filled her so completely.
He rose then surged back with a force that made her feel he could reach all the way to her throat. She wrapped her legs around his hips, raked her nails down his back as he rode her hard and fast until they were both shaken by a series of shattering orgasms that seemed to go on and on forever.
Jessica had no idea how long they lay there, surrounded by clouds of fragrant steam, arms and legs tangled, the water that had streamed off their bodies dampening the plush carpeting. She only knew that her heart was pounding with a force that couldn't possibly be normal for any human, its rhythm matching his, beat for every driving beat.
"I'm sorry." He lifted his head, brushed her wet hair away from her face and frowned down at her.
"I'm not." Although her arm felt strangely boneless and heavy at the same time, she managed to lift it enough that she could trace his tightly set lips with her finger. "I wanted you to make love to me, Rory."
"I wanted that, too, sweetheart." He pulled her closer, loving the little convulsions he could feel still rippling through her and around him. "But I wanted to do it right. I never intended to take you on the rug like some oversexed animal."
"You always were oversexed," she reminded him with a slow, satisfied smile. "That was one of the things I loved most about you."
"One of the things? What were the others?"
"I'm not certain I should tell you. Your ego is already immense. What if I cause it to grow even larger?"
"Talking about growing larger." He moved his hips as he swelled inside her again. "I want you again. But in a real bed. Where we can spend all night driving each other mad."
Jessica experienced a fleeting sense of loss as he pulled out of her and stood up, bringing her with him. He paused only long enough to turn off the water, which had turned ice-cold, then scooped her up, carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the four-poster bed. Then he made up for lost time by loving her all night long.
As the pink fingers of dawn rose over the treetops outside the house, Jessica fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, leaving Rory awake to look down into her face, her lovely, lovely face, and wonder what would happen to them after he killed Black Jack Clayton.
10
The next week was like the honeymoon they'd never had. Although Jessica was disappointed when Monday came and she had to return to work, each night she'd return home to a home-cooked dinner and a husband who managed to remind her that sex wrapped in love was the most exquisite gift any two people could give to one another.
While she was at work, Rory spent much of his day reading and watching television, trying to catch up on the hundred years he'd missed. He was shocked by, yet attracted to, the steamy afternoon soaps. And he became a "Jeopardy" fan, although he couldn't understand why it was necessary to phrase answers in the form of questions.
But his favorite cable show was, hands down, "Court TV." Since he'd professed to have a degree from Harvard, she was not surprised to discover that he had a quick and brilliant mind. What did come as a revelation was how much she enjoyed discussing cases with him in the evening, and how his uncanny insight often aided her in planning her prosecution strategy. She remembered how, in their past life together, every so often he'd suggest a different view for one of her photographs, one she wouldn't have thought of.
At such times she'd told him that they made a great team. And after two weeks together, Jessica realized they still did.
"I don't know how I could have ever forgotten this," she said, as she sat amidst the love-rumpled sheets on the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving, sipping the ruby cabernet sauvignon she'd brought home to accompany Rory's dinner.
He'd prepared beef stew because, he'd told her as he began unbuttoning her gold silk blouse before she'd even had an opportunity to put down her briefcase, it would hold until they'd satisfied other, more basic hungers.
"I think it's probably like Mac said," Rory mused. "All this is more difficult for the two of you, because of your spirits—or souls, or whatever—having come back in bodies that have experienced entirely different lives."
"I suppose." She sighed, thinking it was all too complex to try to unravel. "You and Mac seem to be becoming friends." She knew Rory had been spending a lot of tim
e at the Rim Rock Record offices lately.
"He's been letting me go back through the newspaper morgue to learn about the changes in Whiskey River—and Arizona—over the past century. And, of course, we were close friends before, so it makes sense that we'd feel that connection."
"The same way you felt the instant antipathy toward Chapmann?" Neither of them had spoken of Chapmann since the first night they'd made love. But the thought of him had been hovering over them nevertheless, like a black storm cloud hovering on the horizon.
Rory heard the question in her voice and knew that she wanted reassurance that he wouldn't do anything to harm the man he believed had killed them both a century ago. But as much as he would have loved to be able to tell her what she needed to hear, he loved her too much ever to lie to her.
"Let's not talk about Clayton." He reached over and topped off her wineglass. "We'll have a little more wine, make love again, then I'll dish up the best stew you've ever eaten."
She laughed at that. "Pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?"
"About what?" He cocked a devilish brow. "Are you referring to my ability to rise to the occasion again, so to speak? Or my culinary prowess?"
Even the way he looked at her, with that combination of tenderness and lust, was enough to arouse her. Without taking her eyes from his, she drained her wineglass, then put it on the bedside table.
"I'd never doubt anything about you," she said honestly as she twined her arms around his neck and touched her lips to his. "But this time I want to make love to you."
His pleased laugh was a warm breeze against her smiling mouth. And as he allowed her to pull him back down onto the mattress, Rory could not think of a single solitary objection.
The Prescott Ranch proved that time definitely moved slower in this part of the country. The land, with its rolling meadows and forested acres, was much as Rory remembered it. Although the house boasted a wing that hadn't been there a hundred years ago, not much more had changed. The antique furniture would have been new in his time, and Rory remembered the heavy trestle dining table well from times he'd been invited to dinner in what he'd come to think of as his former life.
