Timeless

by Teresa Reasor

  “Neither am I.” She tore open the condom wrapper.

  He plucked the condom free and sheathed himself. He leaned over her, and she drew him down. His body molded to hers. Every brush of his bare skin against hers acted as a caress. The touch and taste of his lips, a deeper kiss than any she’d ever shared. He thrust into her and her body rose to embrace him.

  She followed the hollow of his spine, the rounded, muscular curve of his buttocks with her fingers and captured his rhythm as though she’d done so a thousand times before.

  The intent expression on his face, the aching tenderness of his touch, seemed familiar, yet new. The act of making love with him was like reliving a memory and experiencing something fresh, sweet and so profound she wanted to weep at the rightness of it.

  The slow thrust and drag of his movements triggered a permiating pleasure that built and built. She nipped his shoulder, then ran her tongue over the spot, tasting the salty texture of his skin. Quinn shuddered and murmured her name, his movements growing harder more intense. She climaxed, the sensation sweeping up and over her with such strength she cried out.

  She opened her eyes to look into Quinn’s face above her. A mixture of tenderness and satisfaction laced the smile that played about his lips. With the echo of his release nestled deep inside her, nothing had ever seemed more right.

  CHAPTER 26

  Quinn tilted his head back and the water ran down his back rinsing the soap from his hair. Regan’s hands soaped his chest and stroked his stomach. “I’ll give you about ten minutes to stop that,” he said.

  Regan laughed, the sound so new to him, he studied her face for a moment. They had shared so little humor. So little everything. With every step they took, he sensed they were moving toward something painful and momentous. And it was out of their control.

  He turned to rinse his chest. She pressed close against his back. The water-slick skin of her breasts slid against him, and he closed his eyes, relishing the sensation.

  To prevent the stream of water from hitting her in the face, he raised a hand as he turned and managed to splatter himself. She laughed again, but the sound died as he bent his head to brush her shoulder with his lips. Her fingers messaged the back of his neck while her other hand moved lower. His breath caught as the blood rushed through his body. His voice hoarse, he said, “You know the scene in the movie where they make love in the shower?”

  Her lashes, clumped together with water, looked dark and lush around eyes as rich a blue as an evening sky. “Yes.”

  “What really happens is they slip and fall and break a bone at the most inopportune moment.”

  She chuckled. “How do you know? Have you tried it?”

  “Aye. Shattered my elbow and gave myself concussion.”

  Her blank look of shock triggered his laughter. He ran his hands down her back to cup her buttocks. His bruised hand protested and he sighed. Damn. It was inconvenient as hell being incapacitated.

  “You were teasing me.”

  “Aye. I’d make love to you in the middle of Edinburgh traffic, if that was what you wanted, Regan.” As proof, his erection pressed against her wet stomach.

  Her cheeks grew pink, and her gaze moved over his face.

  He wanted more than just to be inside her again. “We can’t hold things back from one another. It may be important that we pay attention to every detail.” Every detail even in this.

  Her smile died.

  Damn, he’d done it again. Killed the humor. But the sense of urgency, of impending doom, had been riding him since his accident. What could they do to stop it? He twisted the knobs, turned off the water, and stepped out of the shower. He offered Regan a hand.

  Her fingers gripped his tightly. “How much time do you think we have, Quinn?”

  A knot rose in his throat making his voice husky. “I don’t know. I want to say a lifetime at least.” He wrapped a towel around her and drew her close. Standing in the small bathroom with water dripping down his face and back was not how he wanted to have this conversation.

  “I want to think the same thing, but the visions are getting more and more intense, and the warnings they convey more insistent,” she said, her voice dwindling to a whisper.

  The emotion he read in her expression hit him like a punch. He grabbed another towel and dried her hair, then his own, then flipped it over his shoulder. His hands ran up and down her back as he held her close. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Regan.” But could he control that?

  She burrowed against him. When she drew back to look up at him, he wanted, needed to wipe that look off her face. He bent his head and kissed her. For a moment he lost himself in her response, but the edge of desperation in them both spoiled the moment, and he raised his head.

  Her gaze avoided his as she took the towel from his shoulder and dried his chest. “I’m afraid for you,” she said. “I’ve had some really creepy experiences while you were in the SAT system.”

  “Aye, me too, lass.” He rested his chin atop her head as he held her again.

  “If we’re going to talk about this, we need to get dressed.” He attempted to lighten the mood. “I don’t relish being caught in the buff by your roommates. When I picked you up for our date, they eyed me a bit like a big salmon you’d landed, and they were plotting to fillet me.”

  Regan’s laughter was weak. “They wouldn’t have.” She studied his face for a moment and cupped the side of his face with her hand. “We’d been butting heads ever since we’d met, so when you came to pick me up—they were surprised, that’s all.”

  “I guess that opposites attract thing is true.”

  “I suppose so.” She led the way back into her bedroom.

  “There has to be something we’re still missing,” she said as they dressed and set the bedroom to rights.

  “Aye. These bits and pieces Coira keeps feeding us aren’t enough to figure out the rest.” Quinn gathered the wet towels from the carpet and set them atop a laundry basket.

  Regan picked up her discarded dry suit and tugged the sleeves and legs right side out.

  “What kind of stone was it you discovered?” he asked.

  Regan manipulated the sleeve free and unzipped it. Her fingers withdrew a reddish stone.

  The air in the room grew cold and moist. The light dimmed as if the sun were setting, though it was midday. Quinn’s muscles tensed and he took a step in Regan’s direction.

  *****

  Vertigo struck Regan. The world tilted, and she staggered.

  Day became night. A hand fisted around the stone rose above her. She cried out as the rock descended. A sharp pain shot through her head, and she saw flashing lights. She fell to one knee. As the hand arched downward again, she raised an arm to block it and only partially succeeded. A warm gush of liquid ran down her temple to her chin. Darkness swallowed her. In the distance, she heard Quinn’s voice yell her name.

  She traveled through a dark tunnel toward his voice. Her lashes parted and she opened her eyes. Light pierced her brain with pain, and she groaned.

  “Someone hit me.”

  “You fell, Regan. You touched that bloody stone, and you fell to your knees.” Quinn’s tone, laced with panicked anger, cut through her confusion.

  “I remember. My head is pounding.”

  “You may have concussion. Don’t move yet. Goddamn it, why didn’t I pick up my fucking cell phone?”

  She flinched. “Don’t yell. Please. It makes my head pound harder.” She touched his hand as it held a damp towel to her head. “Why do men do that when they’re upset?”

  “Because we feel bloody helpless when shite like this happens. Women cry, men yell. It’s a rule we all have to follow.”

  She laughed, then winced as the pain increased.

  Quinn’s hand shook as it moved into her line of vision. He brushed her hair back and looked at the injury. “The bleeding has slowed to an ooze, and the gash has partially closed on its own, but a knot is forming.”

&nbs
p; His concern had her touching his hand again. “That’s a good thing. If a knot forms that means a concussion isn’t likely. Help me up,” Regan said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I think I’m all right.”

  He shook his head, his features set in a scowl. “I think you should see the doctor.”

  “I’m all right. If I start to feel sick, I’ll go to the lab. Just give me a few minutes.” She started to sit up, and he placed a hand against her back to help her. The pain actually subsided a little once she was vertical. She raised a hand to her forehead and touched the wound. “Where’s the stone?”

  Quinn jerked it from the rug and clasped it in his fist. “Leave the bloody thing be, or I’ll throw it back in the loch the first chance I get.”

  “I don’t intend to touch it again.” Her gaze rose to his. “Someone tried to kill me with it.”

  His chest jerked as he caught his breath. “Not me, Regan. Never me, lass. Not in this lifetime or any other.”

  How could either of them be sure? Her eyes grew glassy with tears, and she pressed her face against his shirt. He held her tight with one arm while he gripped the stone at his side well away from her.

  *****

  Regan settled on the couch and ran her fingers through her hair still damp from the shower. The knot just above her temple throbbed as she brushed it with a tentative fingertip. Her headache had dulled to a bearable level now that the medication she’d taken had kicked in.

  Quinn appeared from the kitchen with two cups and saucers on a tray he carried one-handed. He set it down on the coffee table. “My mum was a typical Scottish mother. She thought what tea couldn’t cure, whisky would, and vice versa. Since you had no whisky, I thought tea would do.”

  Regan smiled amused at seeing him this domestic side of him. His eyes homed in on her. Heat blossomed in her cheeks and her heart quickened. How could he do that by just looking at her?

  He returned to the kitchen and came back with a makeshift ice pack designed from a plastic bag and a towel. “This might take the swelling down a wee bit and keep it from bruising. How’s the head?”

  “Hard as a rock.”

  Quinn grimaced at her attempt at humor. “There was nothing humorous seeing you lying on the floor with your head bleeding. I don’t mind admitting it scared the shite out of me.”

  Regan held the pack to her temple with one hand while she placed the other on his arm. “I know. It did me, too.” Her gaze shifted to the stone he had placed on the coffee table.

  In the bright sunlight, it looked less crystalline and more an elongated kidney-shape with one side sheared off or carved out. Engraved designs, similar to those on the monoliths, decorated the dark, blood-colored rock. Shiny veins of black, metallic-looking material imbedded in the stone looped through the carvings, as though a scaly serpent were fighting its way free.

  “It looks like hematite,” Quinn said.

  “Embedded in iron oxide. It’s more brittle than iron. Since the back side of the stone is flat and slightly concave, it looks as though it’s been broken. I hope we can recover the rest once the debris from the wall is removed.”

  Quinn shook his head. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “I’m not touching it again.”

  After a moment’s pause, he covered her hand with his own. “Then what do you propose we do about it?”

  “I think you need to turn it in to Dr. Shumaker at the analysis lab.”

  “And then?” he asked.

  “I think we need to go to Edinburgh to the National Archives and see if we can find any reference to Braden and Coira. And there have to be references to the stones that Nicodemus’s researchers overlooked or didn’t release to us. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so driven to get them uncovered and the broken ones set in place.”

  “Aye, I agree.” Quinn remained silent for a moment then leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. His intent expression laced with concern plucked at her heart. “I want to know why you want to pursue this. Anyone else who’s experienced the things you have would be running as fast and far away as they could. What’s keeping you here? Why aren’t you at the airport catching the first flight out?”

  Regan rested back against the couch cushions. How could she explain her feelings to him? Could she share the hard facts about Evelyn?

  As difficult as it was to convince him what they were experiencing was real, he’d never be able to accept anything else she said as true. He’d doubt her and doubt himself.

  He’d thought she was crazy before. It would just give him a reason to believe it.

  But after all he had experienced, too, would he?

  She studied his face for a moment. If he turned away from her now, she’d be alone with all this again.

  Alone.

  Just when, for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel isolated any more.

  She couldn’t tell him. Not yet.

  “My mom and dad are great. I’ve never lacked for love or attention since they adopted me. But from the beginning I felt— unworthy.”

  “The foster families social services placed me with before them were good to me, but my biological mother wouldn’t release me for adoption, so they kept an emotional distance.”

  “When I was ten, Evelyn, my biological mother died. She had a history of drug abuse and she died of an overdose.”

  “God, I’m sorry, Regan.” Quinn breathed and grasped her hand.

  Regan gave it a squeeze. “My parents adopted me. They’re a little older than a traditional adoptive couple. But then I was older, too. And you’d think the fact that they wanted me at all would have been enough, but it wasn’t.”

  “I was afraid I’d do something that would make them not want me anymore. I had to be the smartest, the most well behaved, just the most everything, so they’d keep me.” And so they wouldn’t think she was defective like Evelyn. She shook her head to clear the thought. “They actually worried about me being too well behaved.”

  She swallowed. “It’s hard to change a pattern of behavior once it’s established. I can’t quit, and I can’t fail.”

  She touched the bump on her forehead. It seemed that the swelling was going down already. She braced her elbow on her hip to keep the pack in place. “After everything I’ve been through here, I’ve realized something about myself. I’ve been running away my whole life.” Running from the possibility she might go crazy like Evelyn. “ My parents offered me love and I returned it, but I’ve held back from them, too. ” She shouldn’t have, she should have grasped what they offered with both hands and returned it just as fiercely. She’d wasted that opportunity. But no more.

  She moistened her lips. “I want to run from this, but I can’t. I’ve been waiting for that one thing that would make me unworthy of their love to show itself. ”

  She swallowed and closed her eyes, riding the wave of doubt and pain that rose up in her. “And now that it has, I have to face it.”

  “So, you’re looking for a cure to the visions.”

  “Yes. A resolution. I’m also looking for a family I’ve never known. My mother never spoke of her family to me or anyone else, as far as I know. There has to be some connection between Coira and me. I look so much like her. As you look like Braden. We have to be family. And there has to be some purpose behind all of this.”

  They fell silent for a moment each lost in their own thoughts. “Why are you still around? Why didn’t you turn your back on all this?” she asked.

  “I wanted to,” Quinn admitted. “I wanted to deny that it was even happening.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “The more I tried to deny it, the more insistent the dreams and visions became. I couldn’t ignore the warnings and have something happen to you Regan.”

  So he had followed his conscience and not his heart. She couldn’t fault him for that. The way he had made love to her—conscience hadn’t had a damn thing to do with that. “I’m sorry you were looped into all this against your will.” She rose to tos
s the ice pack in the sink, but Quinn got to his feet.

  “I’ll get that. I’d just as soon you continue sittin’ for a while yet, just to be sure about your head.”

  Rather than argue with him she handed him the soggy pack. She sipped the strong sweet tea he had prepared until he returned from the kitchen. “What kind of dreams are you having?”

  He returned to his seat beside her. His eyes looked moss green as they moved over her features. “More than one, but I want you to tell me somethin’ first.”

  She studied his expression, both serious and searching. “What?”

  “I want you to tell me what happened during your first dive here.”

  Regan shifted back against the couch. She’d been expecting this. But was she ready to tell him everything? And if she did, what would she do if he didn’t believe her? She bit her lip. “I didn’t experience narcosis.”

  “Aye.”

  She ran her hand through her hair and flinched as she brushed the bump. “I should have surfaced as soon as Henry and I became separated. I wish I had—more than you know.”

  His steady gaze did nothing to reassure her.

  “You’re not going to believe me. I experienced it, and I don’t believe it myself.”

  “Rip the plaster off and just tell me, lass. I have some pretty amazing things to tell you.”

  Regan smiled. “Good, you go first.”

  His black brows clashed in a frown. “I’ve never known you to be a coward, Regan.”

  Shit! Leave it to him to call her on it. She closed her eyes and braced herself, physically, emotionally, and told him.

  When he opened up to her and told her about his own experiences while in the SAT system, it was worth it.

  “That trip to Edinburgh is looking more and more like a priority, lass,” he said.

  Would he go along with the other idea she had? The best she could do was ask. As strange as it was, it couldn’t hope to compete with what had already happened to them. And it might work.

  But it could be dangerous?

  But what choice did they have if they were going to get answers fast?