Bending Tyme (8 page)
Esme moaned, feeling Logan slide his entire length into her from behind, his thrusts hard and fast, his hands controlling her hips, the weight of his balls against her ass another tease. He murmured her name, his voice husky, and the sound coupled with the feel of him in her made her come, his hot load exploding in her, the scent of bay rum mingling with the musk of their lovemaking.
Logan crawled up beside her on the bed, lying prostrate, spent.
Esme rolled up on her elbows, watching him.
Logan kissed her and closed his eyes, a sleepy grin on his face, pulling her down to rest her head on his broad chest. Esme felt his chest rise as he breathed in the familiar scent of her hair. “I cannot get my fill of you.”
“Likewise.” Esme drifted off to sleep in his arms, no thoughts of the past—or any future—troubling her slumber anymore.
A while later, Esme woke to a sliver of light finding its way through a thin slit between the brocade drapes covering the room’s arched window. She slipped from Logan’s arms, shivering as her feet met the floorboards, pulling the drapes aside to let the full moon shine across the bed where he slept.
Esme smiled. Logan looked so young, his face relaxed and without a care for the first time since her…unconventional arrival, the glow of the moonlight highlighting his chiselled features, his full lips parted just so. She let her gaze travel from his face down the length of his body, and any hint of boyishness went right out of the open window as she drank in his muscled arms and trim hips, the silk sheets doing nothing to conceal the heavy muscles in his thighs as he shifted against the light interrupting his slumber.
Esme shivered again—not with the cold this time.
Logan reached for Esme’s warmth, waking when he realised he slept alone, his arms empty.
Stepping behind her, Logan folded her into his arms. She leant back against him, welcoming the heat he enveloped her in. “You’ll catch your death of cold,” he murmured, interested not in the full moon but the fullness of her breasts. She reached back to run one finger along the length of his now-hard cock—he stood nude.
Logan pressed against her. “Your influence.”
“My influence regarding
what
? Your new choice in sleepwear—or lack thereof—or
this
?” She pressed back against his erect cock.
Logan lifted Esme in his arms, carrying her back to bed, one finger drawing small circles across her cheek with a feather-soft caress, the moonlight bathing them in silver. “A new moon. A new beginning.”
“Well, in the future, we…” Esme stopped. To what purpose should she tell him some American would walk on his mysterious moon?
Logan waited for her to finish, his gaze quizzical. Esme felt the familiar myriad emotions chase one after another across her face while she struggled, yet again, to reconcile the Daedalian collisions among her past, present, and future with her new world. Then Logan grinned when she bit her lower lip, and Esme laughed. She knew that, with her familiar subconscious gesture, he realised she had surrendered the thoughts clouding her mind to the comfort of the one reality making absolute sense to her right there, right then—his arms around her.
Enough chattering, she thought, her back arching in pleasure when Logan bent his head, his lips teasing one eager nipple, his teeth biting a light trail down her belly, his tongue exploring her inner thighs.
Yes, enough talk. Between her and this man, history needed making.
Coming Soon from Total-E-Bound Publishing:
After All These Years
Gwen Masters
Released 14
th
November 2011
Excerpt
Chapter One
“You are a gift,” the stranger murmured.
I didn’t feel like a gift. I was a forty-something mother of three children who hadn’t flown the nest so much as they had fallen from it. I had too much grey in my hair, an aching back and a minimum-wage job at a fast food restaurant that always left me with a rabid distaste for anything fried. It was the dead of winter in Chicago, the snow was piled up in high drifts everywhere and my train was more than fashionably late.
I looked up from my book and wiped the hair from my eyes. My knitted cap was too small—it was something left over from the kids and it must have been from the middle school years considering how old the thing was. I touched it and was suddenly aware of my well-bitten fingernails.
“What did you say?” I was certain I had heard him wrong.
The man was tall. His dark hair was long, curls and waves that fell to his shoulders, greying at the temples. The cold wind picked it up and blew it back from his face. He was dressed in a trench coat, one of those plaid ones that always reminded me of private dicks in old-fashioned movies. He looked like he needed a good shave and a long nap.
“You are a gift,” he said again, and this time I was certain I had heard him correctly. I was also certain he was a little bit nuts. They were everywhere, especially at this time of year.
“I don’t have any change to spare,” I said, and looked back down at my novel.
A laugh rumbled up out of him. It was low and soft and kept going, like a train coming down the tracks. I glanced back up at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. His head was thrown back and he was gazing up at the grey sky, at the clouds that hovered too close. The laughter broke loose. It was loud and full-bodied, the kind of laugh that came from a man who had no worries in the world.
The belt of his trench coat opened a bit and I caught a glimpse of what had to be silk underneath it. That’s when I noticed his shoes, polished to a high shine. On his wrist was a watch that looked expensive.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “I’m sorry. I thought—well, you know what I thought.”
He stopped laughing. It seemed to take a massive effort. “It has obviously been a long time since you thought of yourself as a gift.”
“A gift?” I looked at him closely. He could still be one of those nutcases. He might just have a lot of money to take with him while he went down to the funny farm.
“A gift, a present, a Christmas delight,” he said merrily, as if it was the easiest thing in the world to understand.
“You lost me.”
He looked around at the other people nearby. Most of them were sitting on benches and not paying the least bit of attention. This was the part of town where someone could be mugged and nobody would lift a finger to stop it.
“These people sit here among angels, and they haven’t a clue.”
Then I
knew
he was nuts. I looked back down at my book, hoping he would get the hint. “Thanks for the compliment.”
“You think I’m crazy.”
I nodded and kept reading.
“I don’t blame you for thinking that. It’s not every day that you run into someone like me, Marilyn.”
I slowly looked up. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, grinning at me.
“What did you say?”
“Marilyn,” he said softly, teasingly, like a little kid whispering a secret into a friend’s ear.
A cold chill ran through me, despite the thick hand-me-down coat and the heavy boots I wore. “How do you know my name?”
He ignored my question and looked up at the sky again. “We’re going to have more snow. The forecasters said another five inches, but I’m betting more like ten. The clouds feel generous, don’t they?”
I studied the clouds. They were heavy, pregnant with snow. A few flakes drifted down and melted on my face. I looked back at him, but he was still contentedly scanning the skies.
“How do you know my name? Who are you?”
“You’re full of questions, Marilyn.” That teasing note was back.
The rumble of the train drifted up from down the track, and those around me stood and gathered their belongings. I was already five minutes late for work, and, after the train made its rounds, I would be half an hour late, but I didn’t move. I sat there on the bench while the train stopped. People disembarked in a flurry of discussions and laughter. Others boarded, then it was gone, leaving the smell of oil lingering behind.
“I’m glad you chose not to go,” he said conversationally. “I mean, of course you should have, you have a job and I know that, but I’m just as selfish today as the clouds are generous. Would you walk with me?”
“Tell me how you know my name,” I demanded.
His smile faltered. “You won’t walk with me, will you?”
I glanced at my old Timex and gathered my belongings. I was so late for work it probably wouldn’t matter now if I got there at all. I might even get fired. I stood up and turned away from the man, who still hadn’t moved.
“I guess that means no,” he said.
I glared and flipped him the bird. He raised an eyebrow but didn’t say a word. I put my backpack on my shoulder and stuck my book down in the deep pocket of my carpenter pants.
His calm voice came from behind me. “He told me you were stubborn as hell. That’s one of the things he loved so much about you.”
“Who?”
“Why, Marilyn,” he said with what seemed like genuine puzzlement. “Bobby, that’s who.”
That
stopped me.
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About the Author
Maria-Claire Payne is the alter-ego of another Claire who holds multiple professional credentials related to the field of radiation oncology and a graduate degree in psychology. Both personalities share a love of taking classes in English literature and reading in many genres as well as getting inked and admiring biker dudes from afar. When no new reading material is readily at hand for whatever reason, her children have caught her reading cereal box-tops to fill the void. Maria-Claire lives in Southern Florida with her two rather conservative (how did that happen?) teenagers, the ghost of her soul-mate (her muse), and a crew of Himalayan and Persian cats affectionately referred to as the “Pussy Posse.” She loves to hear from her readers!
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