Maddison, Karly - Time Slip [The Xephon Alliance 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (7 page)

“Sorry,” she said quickly, dropping the lock of hair she was playing with. Why did he look like that, as if he was about to be sick?

Chapter Seven

Kash disappeared so quickly he was stunned. He experienced a rush of nausea. Hands shaking, he turned off the experimental device he’d stupidly brought into the room. Sweet Mother Universe, he’d just sent her two days into the future, and he didn’t know how to bring her back. She remained there ahead of everyone else until she fell back in time like the rat and the apple had. Tinny shook slightly from the shock and horror as he stumbled to the couch. He might be having a panic attack for he suddenly found it hard to breath. He put his head down into his hands and tried to suck air into his lungs. Breathe, breathe, breathe, he told himself.

* * * *

 
Why was Tinny ignoring her? Had she offended him by calling his contraption rubbish? Why did he act like someone having a heart attack? She went up to him on the couch and leaned down over him.

“Why aren’t you listening to me? Are you okay?” She stuck her hand out to shake his shoulder, but his heaviness made her action ineffectual. Why did he ignore her? Was he dying?

“Can you hear me, Tinny? Can you hear me?” She touched his face, watching with growing fear as he scratched his cheek where her hand lay, brushing her fingers aside as if he felt an itch.

“Tinny?” Why wouldn’t he speak to her? “Tinny!” she shouted.

He got up, sending her sprawling with surprise, took several quick long strides to the door, and left the room. Kash stared after him then back at the contraption he had switched off. Had he…? Had she…? She shuddered and raced after him.

Other people came down the hall toward her. She touched them, and they shrugged her off like a mosquito. But no one, not a single one, heard what she said to them. Horrified, she realized she had no effect on anyone around her. She was semi-stuck amongst them all in some bizarre way, not quite real in their time zone as they went about their lives.

Tinny’s deplorable machine had sent her somewhere strange. Fear clawed at her belly as she ran through groups of people shouting for attention. They were all deaf to her. Some seemed to feel her, but it was as if she were a rush of air or an itching sensation on their skin. Kash stood still and screamed and screamed.

She followed Tinny down to the captain in the present she had left behind, yet still seemed linked to. She scooted up to him and listened to the conversation about what he had done.

Unfair to take the blame, she thought. He’d told her not to touch. He’d warned her to keep back, and she had completely ignored him. Now she was paying the stupid price for her rash action. She sighed heavily and listened to the drone of their voices. After a while, they switched to their own language without much thought, and she lost track of the rest of their conversation. The words blurred to an unfamiliar sound. It seemed like a language she would never be able to learn. Once again she had to admire them for picking up her own language so effectively.

She noted by their body language that the conversation seemed to be coming to an end, and she prepared to leave along with Tinny. Captain Zeba sent him away to work on bringing her back. It seemed when she approached Tinny she could see what happened in the time line she had just left, but when she moved away she leaked forward into a future time line. Was this because she had been holding his hair when she zapped through time? Did the fact that she had held some of his cells in her hand when the white light flashed keep her bizarrely tethered to him?

She realized she could do mischief while she was invisible and soundless. Kash went down to the kitchens and admired some desserts while kitchen staff worked oblivious around her cleaning dishes from the evening meal and preparing food for breakfast. But she couldn’t really touch anything let alone eat it, which meant if she didn’t get out of this dimension that was pulling her between her lost present and the future, she’d eventually starve or die of thirst. As she walked past some shiny metal cabinets, she noticed she cast no reflection.
I’m like a vampire
. Some people might think it fun to be invisible, but really, it felt dreadful.

She walked down to the bridge, a place she was normally forbidden to go to. She looked around at the people working at consoles. Nobody knew she was there, so she sidled up to the window and gazed at the stars. They looked familiar but distorted.

My God!
Was that not Hashian’s Belt with its binary stars at the buckle? And below it Riek’s Archer? Did they not have access to Earth-made star maps? She wanted to scream at them, to jump up and down and point with excitement. What if they drifted away to the other side of Blueworld One, away from these familiar constellations while she was unable to warn them? Kash ran to the sextant and lined up the cross with her eye, memorizing the coordinates, for she could not write them down. This was the most exciting revelation in months, and she couldn’t share it! Frustrated, she left the bridge in search of Tinny.

When she finally caught up with him, she followed him down to his rooms, wondering what he was going to do next. She watched as he threw his dusty, old notebook on the bed. Was he going to sleep now?
Cad!
He had work to do, important work. She screamed at him, but he didn’t hear her. Disgusted, she simmered with resentment as he shed his outer layer of clothing.

Bored, she looked away until she heard the shower running. He had water here now? How curious. Used to be a pathetic, little mist come steam wash. Running water? Get serious! He must have rigged it himself with his engineering skills, she decided. Curious now she traipsed back to the shower cubicle to check it out.

Ho! Tinny, you’re naked!

She reeled back at the sight of him standing under the gushing water, his face turned up.
Oh man!
She had definitely underestimated this guy. He had a body to die for. Not so bulky like Lunox’s or Tipha’s would’ve been if she’d seen them naked. He had a lean, sculpted body like a world-class gymnast or a very fit ballet dancer. His limbs were long, and the muscles lay along them tightly like strong, corded dock ropes. Wide shoulders smoothed down to a flat plane of a chest, hairless and smooth with abdominal muscles arrowing to narrow hips…
Oh wow!
And he washed himself with a chocolate bar that he thought was a cake of soap.
Hilarious
. Could he possibly get any more delicious?
Heavens!
She couldn’t help looking at his…very nice cock! She wondered what it would look like erect. He wasn’t turned on by himself in the shower, so it lay dormant against his muscular thighs.
What kind of workout does this guy do to look like this?
She reached her hand out to touch his gorgeous cock. He didn’t have much hair down there, or anywhere else on his body, except his head, where it grew rich and thick and tangled.

As she touched him, he leapt backward and let out a little cry of alarm.
Holy cows! Had he felt that?
She leaned up against him for a moment and watched as he went very still. His eyes explored every corner of the shower room. She’d tried touching people before with no luck, so why was Tinny any different? Might it be because she spanned present and future when he was close to her? Or had something changed?

Excited, she turned to the glass door and tried to write in the condensation. Nothing. It was like she didn’t exist. But she was real! And she wanted out of this nightmare. She had an idea. As Tinny stood there dripping in all his glory, his eyes still roving suspiciously around, she reached out and touched him with one hand as she had been doing when she had touched his strange machine. She then tried to write in the glass at eye level with her other hand. For some reason, touching Tinny seemed to give her a little more substance as if he were a staple hinged between the two time membranes she spanned. Her finger trembled as she wrote the word HELP on the glass. He didn’t notice, damn him. She reached her hand up and clasped his jaw, turning his head to look at her writing.

She’d moved him. Did he feel her? Did he see? He raised his hand to his cheek and batted at it...and then he saw the message on the glass. His mouth dropped slightly, and he shivered despite the steam of the shower.

“Is that you, Kash?”

Oh hell, yes, yes, yes!
She went quickly to the glass and wrote YES under HELP. Tinny let out a long breath as the letters appeared. Then he seemed to remember he was naked. He snatched at the towel hanging over the top rail and thrust it round his hips while the water still poured over him.

“Kasheena?”

She wanted to ask him to keep talking forever, she was so lonely in this in-between place. The steam stole HELP and YES away, giving her a new plane to write on.

HELP ME STANNUM. Overwhelmed with the gravity of her situation she wrote his full name then paused and regarded his face.
Oh gods!
PLEASE, she wrote under the fading words.

“Did you touch me, Kash?”

YES! IT’S HOW I CAN DO THIS!

“So if you’re not touching me, you can’t draw on the glass? Kash, you touched my cock!”

SORRY! Well, she wasn’t really. She grinned for the first time in hours.

IT’S REALLY NICE :), she wrote cheekily on the glass door, tipping forward and trying to lick some of the melted chocolate off his chest. He almost fell over. She watched as he inclined against the far wall and shuddered. Were those iridescent pearls on the head of his cock just shower water? She wanted to find out. She stretched her arm out and stroked the long, full thickness of his shaft, wishing that she had more substance to her hand. He trembled as she did so, and his erection grew. She truly wished she could return to normal to play with his cock properly and give it the attention it fully deserved. She sighed longingly, her throat dry as dust, as desire curled through her. She splayed her fingers with intense focus as she stroked the thrusting hardness in her hands. Oh, the things she could do right now if only she weren’t as gossamer as a ghost! She curled her toes tightly and bit his collarbone as she slid her fingernails up his very long back, but her teeth might as well have been air.

“Kash!” he warned throatily.
Mmmm, so much power!
She grinned and licked his chest again slowly, circling his flattened, coffee-colored nipple with her tongue. Hells, what would it be like if he did this to her instead? Her own nipples pebbled to tiny peaks. She sighed, giving his cock another firm stroke, running her thumb over its velvet tip. If only her tongue and her hands were not so faded from reality! The things she could do right now! Why did he have to be such a hottie when she couldn’t even materialize to appreciate him?

She watched as a faint crimson flush settled on his cheeks, and he shuddered against the wall with his cock throbbing in her phantom-like hands. This was fun, except she felt really weak all of a sudden, as though
 
if she didn’t lie down, she’d fall. One last time she went to the glass.

HELP ME TINNY. GET ME OUT OF HERE

She let go of him then and went back to the bedroom and lay on the blankets. She could hear him still asking her questions in the shower room. Her whole body tightened and seized up without warning, scaring her senseless. She wanted to vomit. Black swirls danced around her. God, what was happening? She screamed Tinny’s name, but he couldn’t hear her. Then she blacked out.

Chapter Eight

When she woke up, he was asleep on the far side of the bed. She had no idea how long she’d been out. Wearily she crawled over to Tinny and snuggled up to him. He whispered in his sleep and rolled to his side, his arm flung over her. She couldn’t help feeling oddly happy to be anchored to reality by him. Though she could barely feel him, some of his body warmth seemed to seep through to her. She lay awake half the night listening to his deep and steady breathing.

* * * *

He woke up several hours after having fallen asleep. He
seemed warmer than usual as if someone was tucked against him. Curious he raised his hands and searched for her, amazed that he could actually feel her vaguely. She was sliding back through time the way the rat and the apple had. He let out a sigh of relief as the gossamer body against him stirred. Her hand explored his face and touched his lips.
Wow
. She was awake, too, and trying to communicate with him. He felt the curl of her fingers around his throat. He reached up and folded her small hand in his and gave it a squeeze, hoping to reassure her.