Remembered (Erotic Romance) (Bound By Time) (6 page)

Mac told me that
after he returned home from his second stint in the service that his parents had
been killed by drunk drivers on the way to pick him up at the train station.

"Can ye stand
on yer own?"

I could, but I
realized I'd rather be in his arms. I nodded and he gently placed me on my feet
and led me to a chair.

"You're
American."

It was a statement
rather than a question. I nodded.

My brain tried to
make sense of why a man would say I was American when I was
in
America.

"Well, Penny,
how about something to eat and maybe a hot bath to chase away the chill.  Then
you can tell me how ye wound up here." He followed his words with a
crooked, heart-stopping smile.

I watched him walk
to the kitchen and go in the fridge. It was a fridge unlike anything I'd ever
seen. Old and strange. So strange that I wasn't even sure it was a fridge until
he pulled opened a door and grabbed out a glass container filled with milk.

He poured some in a
glass and removed a loaf of bread covered with a cloth out of a breadbox and
cut two slices. He pulled up his sleeves and put the slices in a toaster.

While he stood with
his back to me, I took a moment to take in every inch of him. Lean yet strong.
Sinewy forearms. His hair was a bit longish, and hung just over his collar. In
the light of the kitchen, I saw that his hair did have an auburn tint that I
found very appealing.

"Eat what ye
can," he said, placing the toast, milk, and a cloth napkin on an end table
near my chair. He sat across from me on a sofa.

I began eating and
was surprised at how hungry I was. The milk tasted creamy and the toasted bread
was obviously homemade. I'm guessing the butter was hand-churned, too.

"This is
really good. Thanks." For some reason I didn't feel embarrassed eating and
drinking with gusto in front of a stranger.

A pleased smile
transformed his whole face from sexy to roguishly handsome. I turned away so I
wouldn't drool, and took in the room more closely as I chewed. I stopped
chewing mid-bite at the sight of a calendar on the arm of a nearby chair. It
had a pen on it, as if someone was jotting down appointments.

My curiosity
getting the better of me, I made my way over to it. It was July 27th. That much
didn't make me panic. It was July 27th when I woke up that morning.

What made my heart
lurch was the year: 1983. The year I was born. It couldn't be! I flipped
through the remaining pages, but the year was still the same and everything
else looked in order, too. And the calendar looked new, not old.

"Is somethin'
wrong, Penny?" he asked. I liked the sound of my name, and probably would
have swooned a bit had I not been so taken aback by the printed year on the
calendar.

"This calendar
says 1983," I said, a wave of hysteria rising up in me.

He looked at me for
a long time. His face truly was expressionless. I'm sure it looked in sharp
contrast to mine. It was all I could do to keep from screaming.

"Because it is
1983."

"What's your
name?"  

"You said it
earlier. Mac. Macsen Yates."

My knees felt like
jelly. I reached out blindly for something to sit on.

He quickly helped
me find a seat. "Take it easy. Ye don't look well."

Macsen Yates.
My
Mac.
And if the year was 1983, he looked exactly as he should. Exactly like
the man in the postcard Mac sent me.

"My
backpack," I whispered, my voice breaking.

Mac handed it to
me.  I reached inside and nearly threw everything out. The flyer and the bill
were there, but the envelope that held the piece of fabric wasn't.

Had I lost my mind?
I wondered, my heart pounding in my ears. Was I imagining what was happening
now and what had happened on the trail?

It seemed so
real...

"What's wrong?"

"I had an
envelope from you in my backpack."

"From me?"

"Yes." I
looked away from his face. "But you sent it when you were older."

Great, I thought.
Now he's going to think I'm a nut job. Maybe I was.

I waited for him to
send me on my way, or offer me a drink to calm me, but he merely watched me.

I remembered the
piece of cloth and dug in my pocket. The plastic bag was there, but the piece
of cloth was gone. When I looked at my blouse, the piece that had been torn
away was now miraculously a part of it. There was no tear. No missing piece.

I felt borderline hysterical
now. If I told him -- Mac -- that he had sent me a piece of my blouse by mail
30 years in the future, but it was gone now because it had somehow reattached
itself,  he'd probably call the loony squad to come take me away. And who could
blame him?

Frantically I dug
through the bag again. This time I felt paper, crumpled, alongside a granola
bar.

"Here!" I
said almost triumphantly when I saw that it was the envelope he sent me.
"You sent this to me. I got it in the mail this morning!"

I handed it to him
without even looking to make sure the postmark and stamp and everything else
was the same as it had been when I looked at it on the bluff. I knew in my
heart it was.

I felt triumphant
and vindicated, but at the same time, I felt unsure what, if anything, it
meant.

Mac slowly looked
from my shining eyes to the envelope. When he ran his fingertips over the front
of it -- over his spidery rendition of my name and address, he flinched as if
he'd been burned.  

His gaze went to
the stamp and lingered on it.

"You sent it
to me a few days ago. I mean ... it was a few days ago when ... I'm just so
confused," I said when he didn't say anything.

"So, Penny
Money. You live in South Dakota."

So proper. It made
me grin. "Yes."

"If this is
true," he said glancing down at the envelope, "it would indicate that
ye're  from the future."

"I think
so," I said. "At least that's what it seems like."  I looked
around. "And feels like."

"Do ye know
why ye're here?"

"I'm not sure,"
I said. "I was hoping you could tell me." I paused. "You told me
several times how interested you were in time travel."

Everything suddenly
began to take on clarity. Maybe this entire event had somehow been orchestrated
by Mac. Even this very moment. But why would he want to send me in person to
Wales to visit him if I could just move through time to meet him at will? It
didn't make sense.

Still, Mac's eyes
did widen a bit when I mentioned that
he
had mentioned time travel.

"Were we
lovers?"

Mac's blunt
question rendered me speechless for a few moments. 

"It was more
of a flirtation," I said, though on my end, I imagined more. Much more.
"I was getting ready to meet him -- you -- in person when I received two
envelopes from you."

"What did I
send ye?" he asked.

"A postcard
photo was in the first envelope.  I thought it was strange. You and I were on
the face of it. You look to be the age you are now and I'm the age I am now --
or close. The other strange thing: I was wearing this very blouse. You wrote
the word
Remember
on the opposite side of it."

I gave him a long
look from head to toe. He might have thought it was to give his clothing a good
look, but in reality it was to take in all of him, from his dark eyes to his
broad shoulders and wide, strong chest, to his lean hips and...

I forced my glance
back to his and swallowed hard to give myself a chance to put my very erotic
thoughts to the back of my mind.

"You were
wearing different clothes, but I'm wearing what I am now," I said, then
nodded at the envelope in his hand.  "The second envelope came with a
strip of cloth that belonged to this blouse," I said motioning to what I
was wearing.

His beautiful blue
eyes narrowed as his glance roved over my blouse as if trying to find the strip
of cloth.

"I know it
sounds unbelievable, but the blouse was perfect when I bought it.  A few days
later, when I washed it, a piece had been torn from it. Then," I said,
"I got the envelope from you and the missing piece was inside." I
motioned to where the missing piece had been.

His brow furrowed
as he seemed to consider my words.

"A storm blew
in. I touched the strip of cloth you sent me and the next thing I knew..."

Mac's gaze softened,
but he remained silent.

For some reason I felt
embarrassed then. "We're both writers."

He flinched then.

"I guess you
expected me to read between the lines."

His eyes brightened
but he still didn't say or do anything. Until I said, "I swear everything
I told you is the truth."

Mac tossed the
envelope aside and covered the distance between us.

"Penny,"
he said, taking me reverently in his arms. He tilted my head back and kissed me
so deeply and lovingly that my knees buckled.

Mac quickly swooped
into his arms again. "Something amiss?"

"I-I've never been
better," I said, feeling tears form at the corner of my eyes.

He smiled softly
and carried me out of the room and into a smaller room. It was a bedroom,
masculine with a neatly made bed near the middle of it. Maybe this was a spare
room. I couldn't imagine a man being so neat.

One part of me
wanted to say, "Wait! Shouldn't we talk a little more first?" but the
rest of me said, "Take me, I'm yours!"

Mac gently placed
me on the bed, knelt at my feet and began undressing me.

It was shocking in
a way, because usually the sex I knew was more of a strategic game to me. Get
to know each other a bit. See if we liked each other enough to take the next
step...

This was no game.
Mac wanted me and I wanted him. And he must not have had any doubt whatsoever
because he didn't dillydally.

Mac deftly slid his
fingers beneath the buttons of my blouse. He eased it off my shoulders until it
pooled on the bed behind me. Once my hands were free, he tossed it to a chair
in the corner.

"So
lovely," he said, possessively placing a hand over my heart, the fingers
of his hand splaying over my chest and very ordinary bra. The whole thing
should have felt odd, but it strangely didn't.

Mac leaned in and
kissed me, his strong full lips taking in my whole mouth. Then he trailed tiny kisses
over the tip of my nose and along my throat as his hand rested lightly behind
my head. He lifted his head to take in my face.

"Mmmmm. Don't
stop," I said out loud, uncaring if I sounded brazen. This was better than
any fantasy I could think up. It was as good as Mac's erotica novels.  I
wondered fleetingly if this was how he knew so much about the art of
lovemaking.

"I won't. Not
'til ye tell me, love," he breathed the words into my throat as he began
kissing me again.

His other hand
found the hook of my bra. As we kissed and touched the tips of our tongues
together I realized my upper body was bare.

"Mac," I said,
kissing the hard planes of his face, his chin and neck, as my fingers sought
the hem of his sweater. I moved away for just a moment, smiled softly, and
lifted it over his head. 

The moment his head
was free, he swooped down and began kissing my neck again. I tangled my hands
in the lush waves of his hair while he brought his mouth to my nipple and began
sucking and licking it in earnest.

The sound of his
lips on my skin made the area between my legs tingle. When his lips moved to my
belly, I felt every nerve in my body come alive. My nipples had become aching
points and I arched toward him, needing to feel as much of his mouth and
hair-roughened chest against me as I possibly could.

"You're
perfect," I said when he glanced up at me in between teasing kisses near
the waistband of my jeans.

I moved my hands
from his hair to his hair-covered chest. I never really thought about whether I
liked a hairy chest or not, but his made him even more maddeningly manly.

I brought my face
from his lips, to his earlobe, to his neck, and finally to his nipple. He
groaned as I flicked my tongue from one side to the other.

"Not a good
idea, lass," he said.

I looked down and
saw the huge bulge at the front of his slacks. It was so enormous, it didn't
look real, so I slid my hand down to find out.

I wasn't shy as I
cupped it. It felt white-hot through the material of his briefs. And huge. I
squeezed it gently. If anything, it instantly got bigger.

"Penny!"
he said through clenched teeth. "I wasn't teasin'. I don't know how much I
can take. I'm only human."

I wiggled forward
on the bed until I was sitting directly in front of him.