Time Thief: A Time Thief Novel (22 page)

“I didn’t mean it as an insult.” I kissed his collarbone. His hands stopped squeezing my butt and switched to gentle little swirls, instead. “Honestly, I’m glad you’re fast, because evidently with you I’m fast, too, although I don’t remember being that way with other men. So, it’s kind of nice that we’re both a little excitable, and don’t waste time getting to the brass ring.”

“Any other woman in the world would complain that I didn’t spend enough time ensuring her pleasure,” he grumbled, closing his eyes again. “But not you.”

“Nope, not me. Am I staying the night?” I asked, not sure whether he wanted me to. “Or would you prefer I take off?”

“You’re staying here, where I know you’re safe,” he said, pulling the blankets over us and switching off the bedside light.

I relaxed into him, feeling warm and comfortable, and emotionally engaged on a level that I hadn’t been for many years.

He would be very easy to fall in love with,
my id said with a happy sigh.
We should do that.

Let’s just take this one step at a time,
the ego told us all.
There’s no sense in rushing into something.

Just because he smells nice, and is fabulous at sex, and has a wicked sense of humor that for some reason he doesn’t seem to want people to know about, doesn’t mean that he’s the man for us,
my superego agreed.

Perhaps not,
I told my inner voices.
But it’s sure starting to look like he is.

“I
t’s too bad that tub isn’t big enough for two. You’d think they’d have that for a honeymoon suite,” I commented the next morning as I gave myself up to the luxury of a second hot bath in as many days. “When will your little light friend be back?”

“Not until I let him know it’s safe to return. He’ll be very aware of the fact that you did not leave last night.”

“I feel bad about making him stay out all night by himself,” I said, uncomfortable at the pang of guilt that soured an otherwise wonderful memory of the hours we’d just spent.

“Don’t. Sunil loves surveillance. He enjoys seeing who goes where and with whom. He’ll be back bristling with information about what he saw all night.”

“Sounds like you know him well. Are you ready to tell me how you guys got connected?”

“No.” Peter was dressing in the main room, but he popped his head around the door to answer me, paused zipping up his pants when he saw me soaping up my breasts, and before you could say “Two people in a tub” there was a splash, and he was kneeling between my calves, buck naked.

“Let me help you with that,” he ordered, taking the
washcloth away from me and using his hands to spread the soapy bubbles around my breasts. “Move your legs aside.”

“If I move my legs any more—,” I said, pulling them up so he had more room. There really wasn’t anywhere comfortable to put them other than to let them dangle over the sides of the tub. “I’m going to be very exposed, and—hoobah! Peter! Holy jebus, you’re massive!”

“I thought the word was ‘beefy’? By the saints, woman, if you tighten those muscles any more, you’re going to squeeze it off.”

He lunged forward, a tiny tidal wave of water washing over my chest as our bodies met in the manner that guaranteed a happy, if untidy, bath for both of us. Almost immediately, the wet, soapy friction of his body moving against mine sent me to the stars and back again.

“I swear,” I panted a few minutes later, my legs wrapped around his hips, his body slumped on mine as we both tried to catch our breath from the fast and furious lovemaking, “you’re getting faster. But damn. It’s so good, I can’t complain.”

“I’ve asked you not to tell me I was fast. Men don’t like to hear that. We like to hear that we’ve pleasured our women to the tips of their delicate little toes and back again. We like to hear that we’re manly men who could break concrete with our penises if we so chose. We want to know that we drive you to the very borders of sanity with the intense amount of pleasure we bring you. And if we are swift doing so because our women have hair-trigger responses, then fine, but we would appreciate the emphasis to lie on our skill, and not our speed.”

I pinched his adorable, wet butt. He pulled his head
up from where he had been panting on my neck, and suddenly grinned at me, his hair mussed and damp from the inevitable splashing, his eyes smoky from our activities. It was a grin that melted my heart, and I didn’t need to hear my egos warning me that I was going to be a goner if I didn’t separate myself from this adorable, needy, wonderful man.

“You’re damned good, and you know it,” I said once I recovered from that grin.

He gave me a sloppy kiss, and climbed out of the tub, leaving me to sigh in sated pleasure as I watched him dry off. “I expect better than just ‘damned good,’ but that will have to wait for another time. I have things to do today, and I assume you are expected back at Lenore Faa’s caravan.”

“How come you call her by her full name, and not Grandma or Nana or any of the other normal grandmother names?” I asked as I got out of the tub, my legs a bit wobbly from all the unexpected muscle usage.

“Would you call a woman who refuses to acknowledge you ‘grandmother’ even if she was that person?”

I patted myself dry with the only other towel, and shook out the clothing I’d worn the night before. “I suppose that would sting a little. What is it you have to do today?”

“Meet with Dalton.”

I froze in the act of pulling on my jeans, hopping to the door on one leg to ask, “Who?”

“My boss. We had arranged to meet last night, but he wasn’t at our rendezvous point. I was supposed to give him the DNA evidence I collected at the crime scene, but that’s been stolen.” He gave me a long look.

“Don’t you even think it, Peter,” I warned, suddenly hurt that he could imagine I’d do something so heinous as to take his important evidence.

His eyes glittered for a moment before his shoulders slumped. “I don’t think you took it. Not now. I admit I was a bit suspicious at first, what with you being a Traveller, and in Lenore Faa’s camp, but that was before I knew you.”

“Before you knew I was honest and aboveboard, and would never do such a thing?”

“Before I knew you had no idea what you really were.”

I glared at him. He was in the middle of putting on his shoes and missed it, drat it all.

“Well, if you want to be pedantic, we don’t really know each other,” I said slowly as I finished dressing. “I mean, not deep down knowing, do we?”

“I know you’re not a thief,” he said, then corrected himself. “Not a thief of anything but time.”

I touched my lips briefly. “Yeah, well, lesson learned there, trust me. I’m not going to be stealing anything, especially not time. That karma thing is nasty.”

“It can be,” he agreed.

“How do you get around it?”

“I don’t steal time.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Did you used to in the past, but you gave it up for Lent or something?”

His expression turned to granite. “Those days are well past me. It’s the present that matters now.”

Judging by the closed expression on his face, he wasn’t
planning on expounding on the subject. I wondered what it was that made him stiffen up. It had to be something serious.

I weighed my innate curiosity and desire to know about him with the desire to not force confidences, and opted to go with the latter. He’d tell me in his own good time. And if that didn’t occur naturally in the next couple of days, I’d see that it had a helping hand.

“Give Dalton my best,” I said, gathering up my things preparatory to heading out. “I hope his allergies are better.”

Peter looked at me like I was a three-headed llama.

I smiled, and briefly explained how I knew him. “Small world, huh?” I concluded.

“Evidently.” Peter slid his gun into its holster, watching me for a few seconds before he added, “I don’t suppose if I asked you to give up the job taking care of Lenore Faa’s dogs, you’d do so.”

I paused in the act of combing my hair, turning from the mirror to look at him. “Not unless you had a really good reason why I should. She’s paying me the money I need to get Eloise running properly. I don’t have a job, and the weather isn’t bad for camping, so it’s a win-win situation.”

“And if I gave you the money you needed?”

I set down my comb. “I wouldn’t take it. Peter, are you trying to say something but don’t want to come right out and say it? Because if you’re having postcoitus regrets, and want me out of the area—”

“Christos, no,” he exclaimed, making an aborted gesture. “I don’t like you in that camp. My cousins are ruthless, and they’ve already stolen time from you.”

“Tiny bits. Just a few seconds here and there. Not that I like it at all, and I made a big stink when your…er…William is your father, isn’t he?”

Peter’s lips tightened until they were a thin, unhappy line.

“Yeah, I don’t like him, either. Apologies about saying that about your dad, but he really rubs me the wrong way. Anyway, when he tried pulling that crap on me yesterday afternoon, I made a big deal about it to your grandma, and she stopped it. So I’m not worried about him stealing more.”

“I, on the other hand, am quite worried about your well-being.” He stared at me.

I stared back at him.

“So, you’re not trying to get me out of the area?” I asked, my frail little id forcing me into clarification of that all-important point.

“No.”

“OK. Good.” I gave him a dazzling smile. All was right in my world again.

He ignored it, frowning at me. “I will be the one leaving this region once I have the proof of the murderers.”

It was as if the sun turned to lead. I didn’t want him leaving. I wanted him right there, where we could explore the possibility of a relationship, and have fabulous—if very quick—sex in the bed, and the bathtub, and possibly outside, assuming we found a private enough location. I wanted him where I could watch his eyes, and wait for another of those brain-melting grins, and where I could reach out and touch the lightning flower that trailed down his chest.

I just wanted him, period.

“How long do you expect that to take?” I heard a flat, lifeless voice ask, and was momentarily startled to find it came from my mouth.

His gaze met mine, then flickered away before I could pinpoint the emotion in it. “I need that vial. I can’t prove anything without it. I will have to find a way to search the camp without my cousins knowing I’m doing so.”

It would be wrong to wish that vial a million miles away. Someone had been murdered, and the person who committed that crime had to pay. Still, I couldn’t help making a wee little wish that it took Peter a bit of time to find the proof.

I felt so guilty by that desire that my mouth opened up and said, “Would you like me to help you?”

“Search the camp?” he asked, shaking his head. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I could help you get into the camp so you can search it,” I said slowly, not feeling in the least bit threatened by Mrs. Faa’s family, but knowing that helping Peter solve the case was the right thing to do, even if it did make me feel as if all the joy had gone out of life.

He looked thoughtful. “How would you do that?”

“We could smuggle you into my tent, and then wait until everyone was asleep. My tent opens to the woods, not the camp itself, so no one would see if you if it was dark, and you slipped in from the trees.”

“And how would I search the caravans if everyone was asleep inside them?” His voice was neutral, but I saw a hint of warmth in his eyes.

I gave a half shrug. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought much about it.”

“Kiya.” He took my hands in his, and turned them, pressing a kiss to each palm. The heat of his mouth made
me give a little shiver of pleasure. “What’s wrong? All of a sudden you sound as if you’ve lost your best friend.”

I looked at our hands, and said nothing. What could I say? That I didn’t want him to leave? That I thought we might be on the edge of having something wonderful together? Every explanation that my brain came up with sounded trite and unrealistic, like dialogue from a badly written TV show.

Real people didn’t tell the man they met a few days ago that they thought they were about to fall in love with him. Real people didn’t beg that very same man not to walk out of their lives, leaving them alone and lonely again.

Real people didn’t act needy, no matter how vulnerable they suddenly felt.

“I have to go,” I said after several seconds of awkward silence. Reluctantly, I pulled my hands from his. “I have an anal-gland squeezing appointment that I’ll get hell if I miss.”

“Please tell me that appointment is for one of Lenore Faa’s dogs,” he said as I collected my purse and started for the door. Humor was rich in his voice, making my knees wobble a little as I walked.

“Would you still love me if I said it was for me?” I heard my id asking, and, horrified, I slapped my hand over my mouth.

Peter looked surprised, and opened his mouth to answer.

“Oh my god, I didn’t just say that,” I said quickly, before he could speak. “You did not hear that, OK? It’s my id, I can’t take her anywhere!”

“Kiya,” he started to say, but I just could not take what I knew he was going to say next.

“Seriously, pretend that never happened. My mouth says stuff all the time that I don’t authorize. It’s really embarrassing, and I’m going to go sit in my car and try desperately to remove the last few seconds from my memory. Bye. Thanks for the baths. And…the other. In bed. It was fun. Bye.”

I dashed out of the room before I dropped dead of embarrassment, running smack-dab into the motel hussy named Alison. She squawked something at me, but my brain had had as much mortification as I could stand. I pushed past her and ran to my car. I heard Peter behind me, followed by Alison’s seductive tones, and knew that she had snagged him.

Not even that kept me from running away in shame. I chastised myself both verbally and mentally the whole time I drove back to the camp, and continued a short while later while taking the pugs for their morning walk.

“Is something amiss with you?” Mrs. Faa asked when I returned. She watched me measure out the dogs’ food, keeping an eye that I matched the correct tiny can of dog food to the small bowls containing varying amounts of dried food. “No, the lamb and rice belongs to Maureen. She cannot tolerate chicken. You look flushed. Are you ill?”