by Mallory Kane
Hugging him as tightly as he was hugging her, she gave him back all she had to offer, hoping he understood how hard she was trying to believe in him.
He pulled away and grinned. "Soap?"
"What?" She blinked, still lost in the warm wetness of his skin. "Oh." She brushed water out of her eyes, then peeked out of the shower stall. She hadn't bothered with soap before, she'd just let the water wash the sweat and dirt off her skin.
"Naturally," she muttered, and stepped out onto the cold bathroom floor.
"Where're you going?"
He’d tried to make his voice light, but she heard the worried note. She sighed as she pressed on the soap dispenser on the wall. He still didn’t trust her completely. She couldn't blame him, because she couldn’t totally open herself to him either. It was sad, because they both needed that trust badly. If they were different people, it would be so easy. They were attracted to each other like magnet and steel. But they were five hundred years apart, and someone was trying to kill them.
Filling her palm with pink, gooey soap, she stepped back into the shower stall. "It's what always happens when hospitals are designed by bureaucrats instead of the people who work in them. They put the soap out of reach of the shower."
The viscous liquid was luxuriously thick and smooth in her hands. She spread it over him, her fingers delighting in the sleekness of his body, the hard, sculpted beauty of his form. She caressed him with the slick suds. He took some from her hands and began the same erotic ritual on her body.
They rubbed each other all over, caressing nipples that stood erect, sliding their hands down to each others' bellies, pressing, shaping them. Then, incredibly, they moved lower. Kristen moaned as Rider's hands slipped between her thighs to slide seductively over and into her. She touched him, too, hesitantly, unsure of what his response would be.
When her fingers closed shyly over him, he threw his head back and uttered a short, sharp cry. He'd already been hard, but he leapt in her hands. Coupled with the feelings he was drawing from her, his desire flashing through her almost made her knees buckle.
"Doc!" he cried, and pulled her to him. "Doc." The second one was a whisper. "Don't touch me. You don't know—"
She caught his face with her hands, alarmed, peering through the streaming water, trying to assess his appearance in the dim red lights. "What? What did I do? Are you sick?"
He slapped the handles that controlled the water to the off position. "Yes," he growled, pulling her from the shower stall. "Sick with desire. Sick with wanting you. Sick with—" He stopped, his face twisting, then took a deep breath and dragged his gaze from hers to look around. "Where are the towels?"
"No towels," she said. "We have to use the blankets."
He wrapped her in one and hugged her to him, using the soft cotton to blot away the water, then he pulled it down, his gaze riveted on her body.
Kristen's head was swimming. Nothing she had ever read, no anatomy class or medical text had prepared her for the reality of making love. She'd thought she had reached the pinnacle when his hands had moved on her, but she was wrong. He was drawing a response from her now that couldn't be described in words. It was pure sensation, pure desire. She thought she must have reached light speed. Every molecule of mass in her body transformed into pure erotic energy.
Rider pushed her onto the couch, lowering her gently onto the blankets. Then he knelt on the floor and lay his head on her breast. The tickle of his damp hair on her nipples brought a gasp of arousal. Her breasts tightened, her nipples hardened just from the brush of his hair. She stroked his head as he moved his hands over her body, driving her senseless.
He ran his hands over her skin until every nerve ending was on fire. She squirmed against the sweet torture, but he growled and held her still until she was forced to relax.
Then he sat up and began again. He explored each breast, touching the underside, the swell, tracing blue veins from the apex to the soft outer curve, touching her nipple, coaxing it into full erection.
“Rider?” Kristen’s body was wound so tight she was going to scream if he didn't give her some release soon. Her breasts were aching, her body was quivering with her need. “Please,” she gasped.
He paid no attention to her as he left her breasts and moved his exploration to her belly, spreading his hands over her, measuring her with his fingers. Then he moved lower, over the little thatch of hair, then even lower, until she arched, senseless with desire, against his hand.
Through it all, she watched his face. It was set, his mouth grim, his brow wrinkling a bit when a pain would tear through him, but his eyes were on her, triumphant, shining damply.
Then suddenly he was above her and in her, his face buried in the juncture of her neck and shoulder. He muttered under his breath "This time, Doc. This time I promise it won't hurt. This time it'll be good, I swear."
"It already is," she murmured, prepared to forget the five hundred years that separated them, prepared just to feel. She ran her hands down his body, over his corded muscles, his lean flanks, his hard long thighs. As he moved inside her, swelling and throbbing against her flesh, an answering desire built inside her. Her breasts ached with it, her belly quivered, her loins burned.
Rider lifted his head and gazed down at her, his brilliant blue eyes on her mouth, then he kissed her, and as he did, his movements quickened, and Kristen found his rhythm.
Just as before, when he kissed her, she could feel it all. She felt him swelling, ready to burst, at the same time as she opened to receive him. They reached the peak together, and Kristen thought they must have exploded, the searing ecstatic shock was so great. He collapsed beside her, his chest heaving, his breaths fast and uneven.
"You okay?" Kristen was tucked into the hollow of his shoulder, weak with expended passion.
He nodded. "Easier, this time," he croaked as he stroked her hair. He coughed, and his belly spasmed, but he didn't double over in pain, and he didn't jump up and run.
"Good," she said, snuggling tighter into his embrace. "It tends to make a girl insecure to have a guy puke after he makes love to her."
"Very funny."
"Thank you," she said, but he didn't hear her.
His breaths had evened out, grown softer, and his belly had quit its wrenching contractions. He was asleep. She nuzzled into the hollow of his shoulder and tried to be content with what he had given her. But the sweet beast inside her had other plans. It had awakened, and while she may have thought it could be satisfied with mere physical pleasure, she was wrong.
Kristen dozed, and drowsily vowed that, no matter what the cost, she would fight for this man who had coaxed from her the love she'd thought she’d never dare to share. A faint apprehension grew as she wondered how she could compete against a woman five hundred years away. If there was a way for Rider to save his wife, Kristen couldn’t even try. She turned her nose toward the sleepy redolence of his skin and slept.
When she woke, she felt like she'd been asleep for hours. She stretched and snuggled against Rider's hard warm body. "Hello," she said, turning her face up to gaze at the underside of his chin.
He peered down at her and smiled. "Hello to you," he said.
His smile took her breath. "Did you sleep? How do you feel?"
He closed his eyes for an instant. "Surprisingly good, for having slept in a morgue and made love to someone who usually makes me puke."
"Very funny."
"Thank you." He chuckled quietly. Kristen could feel the rumble deep in his belly. It stoked the fire inside her and she moved restlessly against him.
He turned her mouth up to his and kissed her. "Doc," he breathed against her mouth, then moved to lift himself over her, but Kristen had had enough of his exquisite torture.
She shook her head and pushed him away.
His eyes narrowed, but before he could speak, she twisted her body so that she was poised over him. "My turn," she said, grinning wickedly, and proceeded to seduce him.
She nuzzled h
is neck. "You tell me if you're getting sick," she whispered, running her tongue around the shell-like cartilage of his ear.
His eyes were closed, his jaw tense, but he only grunted in agreement. She lay kisses along each centimeter of strained tendon in his neck, and licked the scratches on his shoulders until his muscles trembled under her mouth.
He grabbed her arms, tugging her up so he could cover her mouth with his. "No fair!" she mumbled against his lips. "It's my turn. Let go!"
With a glare and a moan, he obeyed her. She turned her attention back to his body.
The little juncture where his muscular shoulders met his chest fascinated her, the hollow where she had snuggled comfortably several times in the past few days. She kissed it lovingly, then moved downward, over his pectorals, where his nipples were hard and taut, and apparently sensitive, because he sucked in a hissing breath when she lowered her mouth onto one.
She chuckled, delighted by the reaction her unschooled lovemaking was eliciting from Rider, who had come into her life so hurt, so rigid, so terribly, brutally sad. His fists were clenched at his sides, she hoped in an effort not to grab her and ravish her. The alternative would be a return of his wrenching pain and sickness. A glance at his face reassured her of what she already felt inside him. His face was twisted, but not in pain, in almost unbearable ecstasy.
Good. She wanted to torture him just like he had done to her. His steel-banded belly took a lot of her attention. After she had run her tongue and her fingers over every ridge, every taut muscle, she lay her head there and gazed at the display below her.
He was hard and ready for her, but she dragged her attention away from his aching flesh. Instead, she reached out and ran her thumb over the colorful, stylized dagger tattooed on his left thigh, near the juncture.
He hissed again, and through his skin, she felt the blistering pain, the burning nausea, and he withdrew.
Suddenly, she was cold and alone. All the warmth, all the passion had dissipated from his body. She might as well be resting her cheek on a stainless steel exam table. She raised her head and looked at him. "Tell me about it," she whispered, taking his face in her hands and turning it so he had to strain not to look at her. "Tell me."
He closed his eyes and withdrew physically, as he had withdrawn emotionally seconds before. He sat up, pulling the blanket over him. Kristen crawled under the cover with him, but she didn't think he even noticed.
"The mark of the TAINCC." The singsong quality was back in his voice, signaling to Kristen that he was reciting something he'd been told.
She grabbed him, her hands on either side of his face, and shook him. "No!" she grated. "I don't want to know what they told you. Tell me what you know."
His eyes widened for a second, then he turned his face away, shaking off her hands as easily as drops of water. His arms cradled his midsection, as if he expected the worst.
"I thought I was over it," he muttered between clenched teeth. "I thought the worst of the remembering was over. Goddamn them and their TAINCC!"
He hugged himself, his face contorted with pain. "They took me, Mari's burned flesh still in my nostrils, to a place, a room. I don't know where. And they started in on me."
Kristen put out her hand to stop him, afraid the memories might shatter him, but he wasn't with her. He didn't even know she was there.
"They wanted to know how much I knew. They wanted to know if I knew what Mari was doing, if I knew who else was involved." He shuddered. "They stripped me. They probed and tortured—they had methods you can't imagine—"
He stopped, sweat dripping down his face, his eyes haunted. "The mark. It's not just a mark. It’s part of the conditioning. A mark of shame. Nothing is supposed to distract a tank. It’s part of their torture. Sexual desire makes it burn like fire."
He stared at her. "I can't—I won't tell you what they did when they imbedded it, but you’re right. They thought their conditioning could never be broken."
Kristen couldn't stand listening any longer to the horrors he'd endured, the pain he'd gone through to make love to her. She didn't think he could stand it either. She put her fingers against his lips. "Please don't tell me any more. I don't have to know what they did, because I know what you did. You broke their conditioning. You are so brave and so strong you make me ashamed. Don't talk about it any more."
“I’m not a martyr, Doc. I did what I had to. I wasn't brave. Sometimes I think I've been scared shitless my whole life."
"It's the people who are scared who are brave, Rider. The ones who aren't scared are fools."
He began to relax. He unclenched his fists and stretched out on the couch. He was like a marble sculpture, muscles honed more finely than Michelangelo's finest work.
Rider shivered, the sweat cold on his skin, Kristen's body warm where it touched him. He'd been wrong days ago. Bad memories were not better than no memories. If he'd never remembered Mari's betrayal, never relived the tortures they had put him through, he would have been happy. Still, it gave him even more incentive to thwart their plans, to use their careful tooling of his body and mind to his advantage, to exact revenge on the bastards who had tried to dehumanize him.
Kristen shifted, her soft warm body pressing closer into his side. He felt the renewed stirring of desire that had fled when she'd touched the tattoo on his thigh. This time the burning and the pain were like an echo. He tightened his arm around her and she raised her head. Her eyes glistened with tears as she lay her palm against his cheek.
"They hurt you so badly. I'd like to kill them for what they did to you."
With a kind of horror, he experienced her empathy. It reached inside him and extracted the pain, transferring it from him to her. He closed his eyes, selfishly allowing her to ease his suffering with her touch.
Then she was gone. His eyes flew open in time to see her kneel between his legs.
"Doc, what—?"
"Sh-h-h." she whispered, glancing up at him with an impish gleam in her damp eyes.
"Come here," he pleaded, reaching for her, but she ignored him, growling when he touched her arms, so he gave up. He lay back against the couch cushions and watched her, as helpless as he'd ever been in the TAINCC, although she had him trussed with nothing but sensation.
As cautiously as she had handled the laser probe, she touched the mark imbedded in the skin of his thigh with her thumb. Rider drew a deep, sharp breath and steeled himself against the pain.
Her thumb caressed his tattooed skin, traced each brightly colored line, inspected each separate segment of the intricately drawn dagger. The sensation was powerful. Erotic impulses like electric charges ran from that super-sensitive point through each nerve in his body.
He moaned, unable to think, hardly aware of where pain ended and desire began. Just when he thought he couldn't bear another second of her gentle exploration, she moved. Her attention shifted from the mark on his thigh, to another, even more sensitive place.
When she touched him, he couldn't control himself. His body arched, his erection leapt against her hand, and he cried out. He couldn't stand one more second of her exquisite torture, as maddening in its way as the TAINCC's, but suffused with pleasure instead of pain. He reached for her, pulling her up over him, her legs spread, her eyes shining. He touched her and her gasp told him she was ready. So he positioned her above him, his hands about her waist, and let her have control.
She held on to his arms and lowered herself onto him, her head thrown back, her breath puffing through parted lips. The joining was electrifying, from the first touch to the moment when their bodies pressed together in complete fusion. Then, when she began to move, leading the dance, he could do nothing but follow, each movement sending shock waves of desire through him until he lost control and arched, his hands at her waist holding her fast against him as he spilled his seed and his soul into her.
As he did she cried out, her nails digging into his flesh, and he felt her contract around him, drawing from him the last of his strength.
<
br /> She crumpled on top of him, her head against his chest, her hair tickling his nose. Rider felt more vulnerable than he could ever remember feeling. Not only was he completely drained, he had a disgusting urge to cry. What had she done to him? He cradled her head and thrilled at her soft murmur of contentment. He was afraid she'd given him back his humanity. Afraid that the urge to protect her was something much more than just honor. He was afraid, deathly afraid that he loved her.
His heart contracted and he winced as acrid saliva announced the return of queasiness in the form of a tickle at the back of his throat. The conditioned aversion to emotions was almost gone. He'd rediscovered his humanity, his life, in the arms of his angel doctor.
And he was terrified. With the conditioning, he could be the killing machine the TAINCC had tried to make him. Without it, he wasn't sure he could beat them. He buried his face in her curly black hair and breathed deeply of her scent one last time. With a sense of profound regret, he knew it was time to go. "What time is it?" he asked.
She turned to look at the clock on the desk. "Eight o'clock."
"What day?"
"Sunday. Sunday night."
Rider frowned. "How long have we been here?"
Kristen shrugged. "Since sometime early this morning."
He sat up. "We've got to get out of here. We've been here too long. They'll find us."
"But how can they? We destroyed the camera. Even if they'd had sound, we said we were leaving the hospital."
He was up, pulling on the scrubs, looking around for his shoes. The blaster was stuck inside one of them and he tucked it into the waistband of the scrubs as he slid his feet into the shoes. "Come on, Doc. Think. They can come back from the future. We don't know what they may have developed beyond my time. They could be watching us right now. I mean, that one guy was pretty stupid, but that doesn't mean they all are."
Kristen looked at him thoughtfully. "He was pretty stupid. How'd he get sent back? You're not that stupid."
