by Various
“You are mine,” he said hoarsely, pounding away like a man possessed. “I’m never letting go.”
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Her tits jiggled between them with every thrust, increasing his hunger a hundredfold. Ten fingernails raked over his steel-hard ass, sinking into the flesh and muscle there, holding him closely to her.
“I love you, Jack,” she panted. “I will always love you.”
He growled as he fucked her, his mind racing, already wondering how he’d keep her as his own in a world where race-mixing was considered immoral. He took her hard, ruthlessly, sinking in and out of her cunt, branding her with every stroke.
He would not let her go. Ever. One way or another, she would always be his.
“Your pussy feels so good,” he rasped. “You belong to me, Wai.”
Jack’s entire body stiffened atop hers as he prepared to come. His muscles tightening and jugular bulging, he convulsed on a loud groan, his cock jerking and spurting hot cum deep inside her cunt.
“Wai,” he growled, still fucking her, sinking in and out of her until his cock went half-limp. “Oh God, Wai…”
He collapsed on top of her, his breathing heavy. He’d never wanted anything in his life half as bad as he wanted this woman. Even the threat of the Americans losing to the King’s men paled in comparison to the thought of being forced away from Puawai because of the laws of this world.
To most, these intense emotions would make no sense. To Jack, they made perfect sense.
He’d spent his entire life dreaming of this Indian woman. She’d been there through it all, comforted him during the darkest hours of combat, smiled with him during life’s victories. Always, she had been there. An assured presence in an unsure world.
For a year she had left him, but he had demanded her back. Apparently his demands had been even more intense than what Jack had thought, for here she was—
this time so much more than an apparition. And yet…
“We shouldn’t have lain together. You could be pregnant.” Jack’s nostrils flared as he wrenched himself up off of Wai. He steeled his heart against her hurt expression, reminding himself that it was one thing to want a woman…another thing entirely to actually be able to have her. That was going to take some work, and a hell of a lot of planning and plotting. “Come on,” he murmured, holding out a hand, “let me help you up.”
Wai was so shocked she could barely think, let alone move or speak. As Jack had made love to her, she had tried to convince herself that she was still unconscious, still dreaming. That belief had allowed her to revel in the moment, to make love to Jack as they’d never made love before.
The searing pain she’d felt upon Jack thrusting into her body had been Wai’s first sign that this time their lovemaking was no fantasy. The clincher had come in the form 182
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of utter heartbreak, when the only man she’d ever loved—the one person she cared about more than life itself—had basically told her to go away.
Fantasy Jack would never have said such a thing. She closed her eyes briefly, regaining her composure, as she finally came to terms with the fact that he was really here. And, worse yet, he wished she wasn’t.
“Go away,” she gasped, snatching her hand from his. Between the still-healing concussion and the sex they’d just shared, Wai was weak as a baby kitten, but refused to show it. “I can take care of myself.”
“Wai…” Jack sighed.
“I said just go away,” she whispered, the fight draining out of her.
Ignoring his brooding stare, Wai got up and waded out into a deeper part of the river. She needed to wash away the mud and dirt that clung to her skin and hair.
More importantly, she needed to wash away Jack.
Clean and clothed, Jack watched a naked Wai emerge from the river and head toward her scanty dress—the one with all the intricate colors woven into the fabric. She didn’t look at him, not once, and it pained him more than words could say.
He knew he should never have said those hurtful words to her. He didn’t regret making love to her, though by now she probably did regret making love to him. Nor did he want her to leave him…but he didn’t want to give her hope of a future together if he couldn’t figure out a way to protect her.
Jack blinked, noticing that something had fallen out of Wai’s garment as she’d angrily thrust it over her head. Being angry must give her extra strength, he decided, because nothing had fallen out of it when he’d reverently undressed her before bathing her in the river. Following her back to the tent, he stopped long enough to pick up whatever it was she’d dropped.
His blue gaze darted down to the papers in his hands. Some were green, others were green with a peach tint. The papers looked like…foreign currency of some sort, a type of money he’d never before seen. Did the Indians now make their own money? If so, it was of a finer quality than any pound note Jack had seen.
Frowning, Jack inspected the wad of rectangular papers. On one side of a paper note, he saw a palatial house, the words “Twenty Dollars”, and “In God We Trust”.
Above that was something so jarring it made him go still. Clear as day were the words
“United States of America”.
There was no United States. Not yet. And a country that didn’t exist in its own sovereignty didn’t issue its own debt notes.
His pulse picking up, Jack quickly turned over the paper note. There was a portrait of a man named Jackson, emblems all over the place, and an issue date that made perspiration break out on his forehead—2004.
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“This is unbelievable,” he murmured. Chills coursed up and down Jack’s spine.
This couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be real. The year was 1776, not 2004. “Holy Son of God.”
* * * * *
Jack and Wai didn’t speak during the entire horseback ride to Schoenbrunn. He had made several overtures, multiple attempts at conversation, but she didn’t have anything to say. She felt as though she was slowly losing her mind. Wai had been beckoned two hundred and some odd years into the past by Jack, only to be shunned by him.
The irony was not lost on her.
Now all Wai wanted to do was find a way to go back home. She resolutely told herself that at long last she would be able to lead a normal life. She wouldn’t be haunted by nocturnal fantasies of Jack because she now understood that he didn’t want her.
How could you treat me this way, you bloody bastard! Don’t you know you have always been the only constant in my entire godforsaken life?
Her teeth began to chatter. She felt cold, alone…
Unwanted.
She would find a way back home. She just had to.
“I love you, Wai,” Jack murmured, surprising her. “I’ve loved you my entire life.”
He didn’t look at her, so she studied his hard, determined profile. Shock, elation and hurt all swamped her senses simultaneously. “Don’t give up on us just yet.”
“Jack…”
He pulled the horse to a sudden standstill and forced her around to look at him. His hand found her chin and thrust it up. His nostrils flared. “I don’t understand this bond between us, but you’re a liar if you say you don’t feel it, too.”
She swallowed against the lump of emotion in her throat. Always there had been Jack. Always.
“Don’t give up on me yet.” He released her chin. “Not yet.”
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Chapter Six
After seeing to it that Wai was given proper shelter and clothing, Jack followed David Zeisberger toward his simple home. He inclined his head toward the preacher.
“We need to talk.” He glanced over to the first cottage in the row, a newly constructed home the villagers had thoughtfully donated for Wai’s use, and then back to the man he needed to speak with. “Now, if you please.”
There was just as much—if not more—tension between Zeisberger an
d Jack as there was between Wai and Jack, but he had to focus on one battle at a time. He followed him inside the log cabin, uncertain where to begin.
The preacher turned to face Jack. He stilled. His eyes raked over Jack’s soldier’s uniform and he sighed deeply. “I think we’ve said all there is to say, Major Elliot.”
So much between them, so many memories, both good and bad. Happy recollections of childhood, awful memories of the wedge that had been driven between them.
This war had done more than cause Jack to forsake his pacifist upbringing. It had also cost him his relationship with his father, perhaps irrevocably so. Unbelievable as it now seemed, it had taken a beautiful Indian girl, the woman he’d spent his every moment thinking on, to make him realize what was truly important.
Jack briefly closed his eyes and sighed. His teeth gritted at the not so subtle way his father had over-enunciated Elliot. “It was important to you that the Zeisberger name never be tainted with blood and war,” he rasped. “I respected you enough to drop my surname and use my middle when I joined the war.”
Silence.
Jack studied his father’s face. Age was beginning to take its toll. He didn’t know how many more years the old man had left in him, but he didn’t want this rift between them. He couldn’t live with himself if it came to that. And should Jack die in the name of the Revolution, he realized that his father wouldn’t be able to live with himself, either, knowing that he and his only son had barely spoken in years.
“You were right, sir,” Jack murmured, his blue eyes so much like his father’s opening to regard him. War wasn’t right. The end didn’t justify the means. He was tired of watching friends die slow, lonely deaths. “I was wrong. I’m ready to admit that. I don’t know how to make the wrongs I’ve done right, but I do know I was wrong.”
He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “I want to come back home,” he said hoarsely, “but I’ll be executed for treason by the Americans if I abandon the war. Before that happens, I need to know that you have forgiven me. And I need to know that you will always take care of Puawai.”
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Were those tears in the corner of his father’s eyes? He couldn’t stand to see a man so strong brought to weakness. If there was one thing David Zeisberger was not, it was weak. It was ironic that a pacifist was the strongest man Jack had ever known.
Arms, still strong regardless of age, wrapped around Jack. Jack closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath, damn near close to tears himself.
He had missed this man so much, missed him much more than words or tears could ever express.
“I’m sorry,” Jack murmured. He hugged the preacher, his father, back. “I’m so damn sorry.”
“My prodigal son,” David whispered in such a way that tears sprang to Jack’s eyes regardless. “I’m so glad you’ve come home.”
* * * * *
As alternately hurt and confused as Wai was toward Jack, she could stew in her juices but so long. He was right—she couldn’t deny the bond between them. It had been there since birth, was so strong that it had beckoned her back through time.
She loved him. More than anyone or anything.
For a week, Jack had been gone. She missed him so badly she ached with it. She had no idea where he’d gone or when he’d return, but when she questioned David Zeisberger, all he would tell her is that Jack would come back.
It’s all Wai wanted. For seven days she had asked herself if she wanted to stay here in 1776 or find her way back to the twenty-first century. There was no contest. She would miss the conveniences of internet shopping, the festive mood mall-shopping always put her in, but it all paled in comparison with the thought of losing Jack.
She felt this way even knowing she was fated to die here—soon. Wai recalled the gravestone she’d found before leaving the twenty-first century, the one that said she had died in this year, 1776. To her astonishment, it no longer mattered. Even a week of making love to her Jack, the only person who had cradled her throughout the storms that comprised her life, meant more than living year after endless year in the era she’d been born into.
During her self-imposed solitude, Wai spent most of her time painting pictures—
one of the colony’s few permissible nonreligious pastimes and the only one that had endured the passage of time long enough to where she understood how to do it without instruction. Preacher Zeisberger had asked her if she wished to give painting a try and she had agreed, mostly out of boredom, having never picked up a paintbrush in her life.
In seven days she’d hardly spoken to anyone but David and Hans. Hans had come to her cottage on several occasions just to talk and paint pictures with her—a hobby the 186
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young boy was much better at than she could ever hope to be. Today Hans seemed down. Worried, she prodded him as to what was wrong.
“I’m not here to burden you, miss,” he said quietly. A gentleman, and in this world almost a man, he was always sure to keep the door wide open when they painted together so nobody could accuse him of unsavory deeds. He forced a smile to his lips. “I just want to make certain you are happy in your new home. And I enjoy painting the pictures we make together.”
Wai looked the boy up and down. He seemed to have aged years in the matter of days. “You aren’t a burden,” she promised, motioning toward a crude pine chair at the table. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s my father,” Hans sighed, sitting down next to her near the small fireplace. He ran his hands over his breeches. “He grows more ill with each passing day. I fear he won’t live much longer.”
Wai closed her eyes against his words. No, Samuel wouldn’t live much longer. She remembered that gravestone with stark clarity, too.
She was quiet for a moment and then, “What is your father’s favorite Biblical passage?”
Hans thought that over for a moment. “The Star of Bethlehem.” He smiled. “Papa always liked that the angels sent word of the Christ’s birth to the shepherds, the lowest amongst us, rather than to the rich kings.”
A chill of awareness slowly crept down Wai’s spine as she recalled the painting that she’d seen in the Schoenbrunn schoolhouse before she’d hit her head and woken up two hundred years earlier. “I bet your father would be very touched if you painted a special picture just for him. Why not paint the scene as you see it in your head?”
Hans seemed pleased. “I should have thought of that myself.”
Wai’s eyes were gentle, kind. “You’ve had a lot on your mind.”
Hans set to painting and Wai set to thinking. The one thing she hated about all of this was knowing what would happen before it happened. Her little friend would lose his father—Samuel would die soon. She sighed, realizing it was her destiny to be Hans’s rock and help him weather the storm.
* * * * *
Samuel died three days later.
At his funeral, Wai stood between Hans and his mother Elizabeth, her hands threaded through both of theirs, comforting them in the only way she knew how.
Elizabeth was strong and proud, but sadness was etched into her sunken eyes. Dressed in a plain white dress and bonnet with a black shawl, her shoulders seemed to stoop 187
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just a bit. Wai prayed the widowed woman would be able to rest tonight—she’d spent weeks caring for her ailing husband.
“Thank you for being so kind to my son,” Elizabeth said quietly after the ceremony ended. “He needed the distraction. I hated for Hans to sit in the cottage and watch Samuel rot away.”
“He loved his father deeply.”
“Yes. And Samuel loved him.”
Wai smiled softly. “Did he like the picture Hans painted especially for him?”
“More than anything.” Elizabeth straightened her spine, apparently determined to get herself under control. “Samuel was so proud,” she said a bit shakily. “He even asked that I hang it in the schoolhouse so all the children c
an see it that they might remember God loves us all.”
Wai closed her eyes against Elizabeth’s words. Yet another destiny fulfilled.
Soon it would be Jack and Wai’s turn to enter the graveyard. She wondered how much longer they had left.
Come back to me soon, Jack. Our time is almost up. I want to spend every moment of it with you…
“If you need anything,” Wai whispered to Elizabeth, “anything at all…you know where to find me.” She squeezed her hand. “The same for Hans.”
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Chapter Seven
It was so bloody hot. Removing the tie-dyed dress she still secretly wore as a nightgown, she threw it over her head and against the dirt floor. She refused to sleep in the too-warm cotton gowns colonial women donned every night. This night she refused to sleep in any garments at all.
A slight creaking sound startled Wai into total wakefulness. She knew the door had opened, but she didn’t know who had entered. It was too dark to see anything.
“Wai,” a voice whispered.
Her heart began to dramatically pound in her chest. Jack! He’d come back!
Naked, she sat up in the tiny straw and animal hide bed as she watched Jack light a single beeswax candle. Her breasts heaved up and down in time with her labored breathing. She didn’t know how much time they had left, what day it was that they were fated to die, and she wanted to make every moment count.
“Jack…I’ve missed you so much.”
The candlelight shadowed his chiseled face, but not so much that she couldn’t make out those blue eyes. They were on fire. She watched his eyelids grow heavy as he stared at her.
“You sleep naked,” he rasped.
“Yes.”
“Very sexy.”
“Like you.”
He set the beeswax candle down in a holder on the table and began to undress.
“There were some things I had to take care of. I had to invent a believable cold trail. I’m sorry I was gone so long.”
She ignored the enigmatic statement. Wai didn’t care why he’d been gone—she was just glad he was back. She wanted him to make love to her for whatever time they had left together.
