Time to Control (3 page)

Since we were in the front of the
theater, we went ahead and waited for the majority of the patrons to
leave.
 
“Can I show you around town
tomorrow?
 
See the sights?”

If he was seriously flirting with
me, I was going to flirt right on back.
 
I never had to see him after this series of meetings.
 
Once the buyout was through, I'd never
hear from him again.
 
Why not just
relax, and be me?
 
Have fun, and for
once, see what the hoopla was about with a guy?
 
“Spend some time together?”

“That too.”
 
He cocked a grin.

I smiled back.
 
“That'd be
fun,” I said, and meant it.

* * *

Eddie picked me up in front of my
hotel the next morning, a look of disapproval on his face.
 
“This is where they put you up?”

“It's fine,” I assured him.
 
“I'm perfectly comfortable here.”

“Hmmph.”

I guessed he stayed at one of the
fancy hotels, where the room was the size of my entire apartment.
 
“Where should we go first?”

After we checked out the lions at
the NY Public Library, we headed down Fifth Avenue towards Central Park.
 
A window display at a vintage jeweler's
caught my eye, with gaudy flapper costume jewelry right in line with my
mother's tastes, and I couldn't resist. “Would you mind?
 
I'd like to get something for my mom.”

He laughed.
 
“Just stay away from the engagement
rings.
 
Especially if there's any
photographers around.”
 
I shuddered
along with him, not wanting to think about that kind of publicity.
 
Also, Alan would kill me if I let myself
get caught in a compromising situation with the man investigation our buyout.

I found a necklace that was within
my price range (the tackiness probably helped), and browsed through the rest of
the store while the salesclerk wrapped it in a much prettier box with
ribbon.
 
I found a case of jewelry
from the Renaissance, and was oohing and ahhing over them when Eddie came over.

“Careful, there's rings in here,” I
teased.

“I'll take my chances.
 
What are you looking at?”

“See that ring?
 
The gold one, with the hands and the
ruby?
 
Look at the detail on
that.
 
Isn't it simply gorgeous?”

“We just received that in a
shipment a few days ago.
 
Would you
like to see it, ma'am?”
 
The sales
clerk came over, and pulled it out at Eddie's nod.

“Um, okay,” I said, not really
expecting to be able to see the ring up close.
 
This was the kind of store that if you
needed to ask about the price, you didn't want to know, and there was no
visible price tag on the ancient ring.

“The ring is one hundred percent
gold, made by craftsmen in a small English town, circa 1540.
 
We have the full provenance that come
with the sale.”
 
The clerk rubbed the
ring with a polishing cloth, then handed it to me.

“Wow, it's big for an older ring,
isn't it?”
 
I said, examining it.

“Go ahead and put it on,” he
recommended.
 
“This is not a ring to
get sized.
 
And yes, the ring was
supposedly designed for a larger woman of royalty at the time.
 
That makes it able to fit many women
nowadays,” he said very diplomatically.
 
In other words, I thought, it'd fit my large fingers.

I slid it on the middle finger on
my right hand, but it wouldn't pass the second knuckle.
 
The ring finger on that hand was a bit too
loose.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Eddie
said, grabbing my left hand, and slid the ring onto
 
my ring finger.

The room spun, and I closed my eyes
to regain my balance.
 
When I opened
them, we weren't in the jewelry store.

“Well this is weird,” I told myself,
grabbing Eddie's hand tightly.
 
At
least he was with me.

We were in the middle of a village,
dirt streets with two story stone and wooden houses and stores alongside
us.
 
Eddie and I were one of many
couples standing in front of a old church, but that wasn't all that was out of
the ordinary.
 
All of the other
couples were dressed in period costumes to match the medieval town, and when I
glanced down at myself, I was wearing the same maxi dress and cardigan I had
been wearing around New York.
 
If I
was back in Texas, I'd think I was at the Scarborough Renaissance Festival.

“I'm dreaming,” I thought in
relief.
 
“I passed out, hit my head,
and am dreaming.”
 
I smiled brightly
at Eddie, who didn't match the rough home-spun trousers and linen shirts of the
other men, but still looked darn good in his slacks and button-up shirt.
 
He smelled better than our neighbors,
and I stepped closer to him to breathe in his clean scent.
 
Ah, heck with it.
 
I put my arms around him and buried my
nose into his shoulder.
 
He
obligingly put his arm around me – not that he had much other places to
put it.
 
Dream Eddie had no traces
of the gruff Eddie.
 
This Eddie, I
liked.
 
A lot.

“What's going on?” I ignored his
question as a priest left the church and started to address the crowd.

“As God's representative on Earth,
I will now bless any new unions.”

Eddie squeezed me closer, and I
stood on my tiptoes to whisper in his ear.
 
“Relax, it's just a wedding.”
 
Did I just say that?

“Will all couples requesting the
blessing please step to the front and face each other, men on the right.”

Do I want to marry him? Ah, heck,
I'm in dreamland.
 
He's gorgeous,
smart, successful, and did I mention good looking?
 
With my inhibitions down due to
dreaming, I saw no reason not to marry him.
 
Besides, the wedding night with someone
as well-built as him would be spectacular.
 
I took a step forward, and after giving me a sharp look, Eddie stepped
forward as well.

“Men, wilt thou have this woman to
be thy wedded wife, wilt thy love her, and honor her, keep her and guard her,
in health and in sickness, as a husband should a wife, and forsaking all others
on account of her, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall
live?”
 
The priest sounded bored,
but the chorus of men answering 'aye' was anything but.
 
Eddie looked deeply into my eyes as he
responded in the affirmative.
 
A
little creepy with the intensity, but again, dreamland.

“Women, wilt thou have this man to
be thy wedded husband, wilt thy love him, and honor him, keep him and guard
him, in health and in sickness, as a wife should a husband, and forsaking all
others on account of him, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall
live?”

“Aye.”
 
I felt my eyes sparkling with excitement
and emotions.
 
I looked down at my
left hand, at the ring gleaming in the sun.

We proceeded into the church with
the others, and finished the simple ceremony, received the priest's blessing,
and provided our names for the official records.
 
This was the most realistic dream I had
ever had – the Latin even sounded accurate, and not just mental
gibberish.
 
When we all left the
small church at the end of the ritual, the courtyard was filled with cheers of
the other participant's family and friends, and I looked around to see all of
the other newly married couples partaking in their first kiss as
newlyweds.
 
“We should join the
crowd, and all,” I told Eddie, reaching a hand up to run my fingers along his
jawline.

“You think?” He said, and leaned
down and kissed me thoroughly.
 
When
we came up for air, my toes were tingling.

“We're married,” I informed him,
drawing my arms around his neck.

“That we are indeed.”
 
He tightened his arms around me in
return, holding me securely.
 
He ran
his fingertips in small circles on the back of my neck.

I arched my body into him, and felt
him react to my closeness.
 
“What
say we find a place a little more private?”

Eddie didn't say anything verbally
in response, but swept an arm under my legs, sweeping me up into his arms.
 
I wrapped my arms more closely around
his neck, and angled
 
my mouth onto
his. I didn't know how long it would be before his arms would give out, and I
wanted to get as much kissing in before I fell to the ground and woke up.

The next thing I knew we were in a
barn of some sort, and Eddie was putting me down on a pile of hay gently.
 
He kept kissing me, and I kissed back in
between gasps of air.

“Eddie,” I moaned, and he started
sliding his hands up my long skirt, squeezing my calves, then knees, then
thighs, then inner thighs as I parted my legs for him.
 
I tried to pull him on top of me, but he
resisted, and instead poked his head beneath the swath of fabric.

“What are you wearing?” Eddie was
running his hands everywhere around my bike shorts, touching my private spots,
fumbling around the waist.

I wasn't about to tell him I didn't
want my thighs chaffing walking around town.
 
“Shorts, now remove them, will you?” I
groaned as his fingers went back between my legs, rubbing me through the soft
fabric.
 
He grabbed a handful of
material at my butt and yanked the shorts off, tossing them to the side.
 
He sighed as he encountered the panties
I had on underneath, and almost ripped them off in his hurry.
 
I did a sharp intake of breath as cool
air hit me, followed immediately by his hands exploring every inch of the
exposed skin.

I returned the favor his fingers
were giving me by unfastening the belt holding his trousers up, lowering his
pants to get access to him.
 
I took
him in my hand, and he shuddered beneath my touch.

Eddie started to lower himself
down, moving my hand away and using his to position himself.
 

“Wait.”
 
He paused, a flash of physical
frustration showing on his face, as I collected enough air to talk.
 
“I was waiting until marriage,” I told
him, trying to get the point across without actually saying “I'm the last
remaining virgin in New York!”

“Then it's a good thing we're
married,” Eddie told me in reply, and eased in gently.

“Oh!” I gasped as he made the first
access.
 
Eddie moved slow, kissing
and caressing the rest of me.
 
I
felt muscles I didn't know I had start relaxing, and wiggled my hips and spread
my legs more.
 
He increased his pace
in kind.
 
I tried kissing him, but
was having a hard time not getting blown away by the sensations going on below.

Eddie stopped kissing back, and
instead concentrated on his movements. I rested my head back against the hay,
and began moving my hips up in rhythm with his thrusts, sparing a thought about
how my body knew what it wanted, even if this was new to me.
 
He grabbed either side of my hips,
forcing himself deeper and deeper, harder and harder, until finally he
came.
 
My hips bucked with his as he
rode through his pleasure, and he collapsed on top of me.
 
When he recovered a minute later he
shifted out of me with a gasp from both of us, and rolled partially on his side,
relieving me of his weight.

It took several minutes before
Eddie zipped his pants back up, and I pulled my undies back on and my dress
back down.
 
I brought my left hand
up to stroke his face, and giggled at the hay stuck in the wedding ring.
 
“Hay isn't as comfortable as it looks,”
I told him, trying to get the piece out of the ring.
 

Not having any luck, I removed the
ring, intent on getting rid of the hay. The last thing I heard as I was taking
the jewelry off was a rough voice yelling, “Give me that ring!”

My knees almost collapsed
underneath me, and I would have fallen if Eddie hadn't caught me between his
arms and the display case.
 
I looked
from the ring into his eyes, which were full of lust.

“We'll take it,” we said huskily in
unison.

I placed the ring on the glass, not
wanting an instant repeat of whatever just happened.
 
“Can you box it, please?”
 
The clerk walked away with the ring.

Eddie wrapped his arms around me
securely, and I buried my face in his neck, trying not to shake.
 

“I need to go back to the hotel,” I
said softly.

“My place is closer,” he told me,
and I nodded in agreement.

Eddie whipped out his charge card
when the clerk returned, and I was glad – I didn't know how much the ring
was, but there was no way I was leaving without it.
 
Eddie was more than welcome to use his
extensive bank account to buy the jewelry.