A Twist in Time (31 page)

He could hear her moving about in the little place for cooking food. He’d just shut the door.

There was no use releasing his seed himself. He’d already proved that did not help. He’d have to just wait out his violent erection.

He felt the moon rise.

Could you feel the moon rise? But he did. Moonlight bathed the cabin through the small, high windows. It twisted inside him, a cold fire. His loins throbbed almost painfully inside his tight breeches. He rose from the bed against his will and went to the small passageway. A feeling of incredible urgency washed over him. Something was required of him. Something immediate and real. Things were wrong, somehow, and he had to set them right. He saw Lucy, standing in the moonlight, frozen, staring at the hatch. His gaze moved to the hatch and was caught, too.

The lights in the boat fizzled and went out. They were bathed in darkness. Galen’s gut trembled.

Lucy must be trembling, too, because she dropped the pot she had been washing. It clattered to the floor. Galen knew that if he moved, he would race toward that hatch.

And his brain told him, whatever his heart and his loins were shouting, that he should not go out in the moonlight.

The lights in the cabin went out with a fizzle, leaving only the clear, pale moonlight streaming in through the ports. Lucy couldn’t get her breath. She was hurtling toward something that had been growing inside her, around her. It felt like destiny. She could refuse it. She had a choice.

But she was standing on a precipice and everything would soon be very wrong if she made the wrong choice right here, right now. Her certainty was stark, as though illuminated by lightning.

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But the sky had cleared. No storm, except the one inside her. So what had doused the lights?

She felt Galen behind her. His physical presence overwhelmed the small space. Her thighs were wet and she throbbed, her pelvis aching. She didn’t know what to
do.
But she had to do something. She just stood there trembling until finally she couldn’t hold the pot in her hand.

It crashed. She held herself still for one long moment more. And then her head moved of its own accord. She turned to look at Galen. He shook, alternately flushing and going dead pale in the moonlight. His gaze jerked to hers.

Conflagration.

And she knew what she must do. It wasn’t what she’d thought.

She held out a hand. “Let’s go on deck.”

He looked alarmed, confused.

“You know it’s right.”
She
did. All would be well if they could but see the moon.

A taut invisible line stretched between them. She saw him struggle. She smiled, hand still extended. He closed his eyes, took a breath. She moved to touch him. He flinched under her hand. She didn’t flinch. She expected the firestorm of feeling that shot through her. It was just a more intense version of what she’d felt each time she touched him since he’d fallen against her on a battlefield in 912. His eyelids fluttered and opened.

“I fight no more,” he whispered.

She opened the hatch. They climbed the ladder single file, the dog wriggling out ahead of them.

The moon was rising over the bay to the east. It had cleared the horizon, golden from the pollution in the air. It shone in eerie serenity. Clouds still laced the sky. The moon would be obscured soon, but just now it was sure of itself, eternal. It spread that sureness to her.

This moon had shone over Galen’s time, just as it shone now. He came up behind her.

“What month is it?” he whispered hoarsely.

She shivered, only half from cold. “We call it March. Third month.”

“What day? What day?” He sounded as if it was the most important thing in the world.

She had to think.
What had the woman at the hospital said?
The day before St. Patrick’s Day.

Yeah. That would make this the . . . “Twenty-first.” She held up fingers.

He rolled his head as though in pain. “Ostara’s day. Change of season.”

“The . . . the vernal equinox . . .”

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“
Ja. Ja.
Day same long as night.” His voice held half wonder, half fear.

The beginning of spring. The day that signaled a change in the world as it quickened toward the plenty of summer. “Who . . . who is Ostara?”

He seemed most agitated. “Norse goddess of . . . ,” he went to Latin, “fecundity. Like Saxon Eostre,” he added. “Very mighty day.”

So powerful that Christian priests had borrowed it, moved the date and made it the celebration of Christ’s resurrection to spread their faith among the pagans. Druids, who believed that the elements of the Earth, its plants and animals, all were incarnations of the gods or the force of the universe—they celebrated the first day of spring, too, didn’t they? But the moon couldn’t always be full exactly on the twentieth or twenty-first of March. That must be pretty rare. . . .

She turned to him under the full moon of the vernal equinox and knew in her bones and her belly that something special was supposed to happen here, something bigger than her or even bigger than her and Galen together. The full moon, the tides, the earth’s axis that rotated through space, all those could be explained. But in their confluence, they became something more. She ached for completion and she
knew
what would complete her.
Could something be
bad that feels so right? Yes, if the universe lied to you, as men lied.

God, she sounded like a loon, even to herself. The universe was
not
talking to her. Next she’d start believing in astrology or numerology, and she’d open up a shop that sold crystals and incense and tarot decks.

But Galen was here, big and real in the cold March air of the vernal equinox under a full moon.

She felt his physical presence, the essence of him clearly. This was real. This was right.

“Lucy,” he whispered, and it was a plea or a prayer, maybe for deliverance. Whether from what would happen here or from the pain of resistance she didn’t know.

He reached out with his good arm and drew her tight against his body. His chest was hard, his biceps were hard, and the ridge under the zipper of his jeans was very, very hard. It made her dizzy. The ache inside her made it difficult to think.

“Lucy.” His lips had found her hair. Her
f rfeaxen
hair. His hands ran over her back, down to cup her buttocks and lift her slightly against him, so her belly pressed against the ridge of his erection. She turned up her face and his mouth found hers, not gentle this time but hungry. She returned that kiss with all the need she’d been suppressing for the past days. His tongue searched her mouth, and she pressed her breasts into his chest as though they could get closer.

Which they could. . . .

His thoughts must have been tending the same way. He broke away and held her by the shoulders. The moon was bright enough so she could see how blue his eyes were.

“You are cold. We go below.”

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He pulled her toward the hatch and the warm cabin where they could get naked and closer still.

She wanted to melt into him. The dog was ahead of them. At the bottom of the ladder Galen reached up and simply lifted her down. Was he hurting his shoulder? You’d never know it by his expression. How selfish she was to be using his small strength this way. Did she have a choice?

No. She’d made her choice when she drew him out into the moonlight. She wasn’t sure she could be careful of his wounds. She’d try. She’d try.

He pushed her toward the aft cabin, leaving the dog staring after them. Galen turned and firmly shut the cabin door on him. Lucy heard him sigh and settle down in the passage. The only light in the room was the dim glow of the moon through the high ports on each side.

Lucy knew what she wanted. She grabbed the bottom of both layers of her tees and pulled them over her head. He pulled off his Henley, surprisingly deft with an injured shoulder. His stitches were black across it. His hair streamed over his shoulders. She unclasped her bra and tossed it to the floor. Galen groaned and reached for her breasts. She wanted that. More than she had ever wanted anything. She moved closer to slip her hands across the hard muscle of his belly and unbutton his jeans. His hands cupped her breasts and his palms rubbed the nipples lightly. Sensation ripped straight to her core. She lifted her face to give him access to her lips, and he took her mouth in a kiss as thorough as the one up on the deck. She worked his zipper as she moaned into his mouth. She wanted him naked. She wanted to touch all of him. She’d wanted that for days. By the time he broke away to kick off his boots and push down his jeans, her body was screaming for gratification. She fumbled at her own jeans as she watched his cock spring free. She sucked in a breath. It was big and straight and thick. She’d never had a man with equipment like this. Could she even do this? She pushed off her own Nikes and jeans. He kicked his clothes away and moved back toward her, a beast coiled to spring.

She reached for his erection, satisfied with his ragged breathing, and ran her hand along the shaft. It was rock hard under the silky skin and straining with need. He backed her the single step to the end of the bed. The edge pressed against the backs of her knees. He lowered her carefully onto it. He had that much control. But then he was on top of her, his body fitting over the length of hers as he braced above her on his elbows. His erection prodded at her entrance even as he kissed her thoroughly. The head of his cock must be drenched in her juices. But he didn’t thrust inside her. He raised himself on his good elbow and kneaded her breast gently with his other hand, leaning in to kiss her throat as softly as he could. But his breath was still ragged and his teeth nipped at her as though he could barely keep from devouring her. He made his way down to her breast. She thought she might burst. He was trying to make sure she was ready. But she didn’t want it gentle. She wanted it
now,
as fierce and demanding as she could get it.

So she spread her legs under him and thrust her hips up a little, undulating against the head of his cock, showing it the way in.

“Odin’s eye, Lucy,” he breathed, pulling his head up. He was throbbing at her entrance, still straining for control.

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“Kiss me,” she whispered, whether entreaty or command she couldn’t tell.

He did. His lips were soft. The day’s stubble rasped against her chin. She opened to him, and he thrust his tongue inside her mouth in an echo of the thrusting they both wanted even more. He groaned again into her mouth, and she couldn’t wait any longer. She reached down, took the thick length of him in her hand, and pressed him down slightly to achieve the right angle.

“Lucy,” he said, and this time her name was a capitulation and he pushed inside her with one powerful thrust.

Filled. Right. True. Necessary.

She reached to clutch his buttocks as the muscles in them bunched with each thrust. She wanted him as she had never wanted a man before, as she had never wanted
anything.

Thrusting to meet him, the friction rubbing at her clitoris, his big cock touched places inside her she’d never felt before. He slipped an arm under her shoulders as they rocked together and clutched her to his chest, his tongue still thrusting and questing inside her, his cock impaling her. They seemed to be melting together in the heat they generated into something entirely new, separate from what they had been, not to be separate from each other ever again.

She felt it coming from a long way off, like a wave at sea, building momentum from somewhere deep and unseen, inexorable. Their bodies were slick with a light sheen of sweat, both of their chests heaving now as if there were not enough air in the world, let alone this tiny cabin. He withdrew until only the tip of his cock was inside her. He was trying to prolong it for her. Sweet.

But wrong.

“Galen,” she moaned.

He pulled away from their kiss, his brows drawn together in concern. Could he possibly mistake that moan? How could she make him understand what she truly wanted?
Needed.

“Fuck me, Galen.”

She’d never said that word in her life. But it must be Saxon all right. Because his eyes darkened and he thrust inside her, his eyes never leaving hers. And now they watched each other’s faces as the wave was there again, more urgent, more powerful for the pause. She saw his eyes glaze over.

And then the wave crashed over her, drawing her under. Every muscle in her body contracted.

Her eyes squeezed shut and a shriek, coiling up from her loins, was squeezed from her by the weight and the power of the wave. Through it all she felt Galen’s own orgasm take him. He didn’t scream, but a series of grunts matched the spurting she felt inside her. They were under the wave, no breath, no air, just the immense sensation squeezing them, squeezing them . . .