I looked up and stared meditatively into the fire. Theflames were spreading, warming the wood and biting into it with an orange tongue.
As a single person I have found that I cannot produce enough power to make the leap at more mundane times of the year. I wonder, if there were more than one person, whether the combined effort would be enough to force through.
That was definitely a new piece of information. The idea that the efforts of more than one person could force the portal open was something I’d never considered before.
I looked over at the sleeping William.
He was here, now. Lord William De Vere Trevarron had time travelled along with me.
What if, with our combined focus, we could force open the time portal and I could return to the twenty-first century? Or, return William to his own time?
The thought of William returning to 1755 and me to my time made my heart twist and my throat choke. I’d just found him again; I didn’t want to lose him. Selfishly, I wondered if I would be able to persuade him to come to the modern time with me. I’d tried to pull him through with me, thinking I was going back to the twenty-first century, before. I had thought that I was saving his life by asking him to come with me. But we had both ended up here.
I watched him as he slept; watched his muscular chest rise and fall rhythmically, his long dark eyelashes soft against his cheek.
Could I bear to lose William again? I didn’t know.
I yearned to go home. Being in Aunt Bill’s cottage with Nancy, in completely the wrong time, was a unique kind of torture. It was the home of my heart, but my aunt hadn’t been born yet.
Every moment I was at the cottage, I expected Aunt Bill to walk through a door, whistling under her breath, or look up from the sofa as I walked in. I missed her comfortable, reassuring hugs. I missed her sharp, no-nonsense way of seeing the world.
My heart longed for home. But it also longed to envelop William in love and never let him go.
William stirred and opened his eyes sleepily.
‘What time is it?’ he murmured.
‘Late. I don’t know,’ I went over to him and sat on the side of the bed. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘I can’t sleep without you.’ He pulled me in next to him.
‘You were doing a very good job just then,’ I observed, archly. ‘What about all the nights we were apart? Your whole life, you’ve never slept without me?’
‘I never did.’ He opened one eye blearily. ‘Sleepless, all these years. Why I look so old. The lack of you made me haggard.’
‘You poor thing.’ I snuggled in next to him. ‘You’re very far from haggard, and you know it.’
‘Pah. I am held together by ale and bandages.’ He sighed sleepily against me. ‘Goodness knows why a beauty like you entertains a scarred, battle-worn oaf like me.’
‘You’re right, I should be going,’ I replied, but he growled and pulled me back into bed.
‘Shhh. Do not break my heart, my terrible queen. It is the truth. I have never slept as well as I do with you beside me.’ He pulled me to him so that I lay along the length of his hard, muscled body. He was so much bigger than me that it was like being held by a grizzly bear.
‘I have hardly slept with you. Just a handful of nights,’ I protested.
‘Yes. Which is all the more torture for me,’ he murmured into my shoulder, nuzzling me with his dark beard. ‘Knowing that you are laying in another bed than mine, your body naked, sprawling provocatively. I am jealous of the sheets that cover you. I am jealous of the air that caresses your skin when I cannot.’
I felt him harden against me, and felt his large, strong hand cup my breast. Instinctively, I nestled my bottom back against him. He growled again, and kissed the nape of my neck.
‘Why do I desire you so?’ he whispered, as he kissed me.
I could feel myself growing wet for him again. It seemed that the slightest touch or whisper from William rendered me totally helpless. I felt myself falling, willingly, into the fugue of desire that his presence inspired.
‘I don’t know. I want you in just the same way,’ I whispered in reply. I touched his bandages gently. ‘Did I hurt you? When we… before?’
‘No. You could never hurt me.’ His voice rumbled in his chest. ‘Well… physically, you cannot hurt me. You can maim my heart and possess my mind and my soul, however, it would seem.’ He half chuckled. ‘Truly, I am serious.’
