Chapter 6 #2
Her indecipherable gaze zipped all across his person before her shoulders softened, and he realised he was sitting as stiff as a boiler pipe with his heart in his throat, his hands digging so deeply into the mattress that his fingers were aching.
Shame burned at his pride, and he locked his jaw over his alarm, forcing himself to let go of the bedding.
The last thing he wanted was for Rayna to pity him or think him less of a man for his fear. Neves knew she’d probably already seen or heard about his outbursts before she’d experienced it firsthand, and he was trying not to dwell on it, but that was humiliating enough.
Whether she genuinely didn’t feel sorry for him or was simply good at hiding it, she walked over with an almost tired look in her eyes.
Stopping before him, she nodded her head to the side. “Move over, please.”
His gaze slipped to the space next to him, then back up to her. After a moment, he nudged the tray closer to the end of the bed and shuffled over. She plonked herself on his left with a sweet little wriggle of her derriere, her thighs filling the fabric of her trousers in a way that had him rapt.
“You’re an intelligent man, I presume,” she then said, throwing the full force of an audaciously quirked brow at him. “Or am I presuming too much?”
Dominic felt a riled grin tug at his mouth. He was beginning to question whether she was here to help him or simply insult him repeatedly. But it was oddly amusing.
He stared her down playfully. “What is your point, little witch?”
“My point is, assuming you’re a clever man, then while I understand the idea of time travel seems impossible, you’d realise I was telling the truth from all the clues around you.” She gestured to the room, and he took the chance to look around him.
She wasn’t wrong. There were a number of things that didn’t look at all like anything he’d ever seen before.
For one, the flooring was made of a material he had no name for, but it almost looked like stiffly waxed leather.
Except it was blue. And the toilet had a button to empty it, while the water that came out of the tap in the bath was bubbly as if it were fizzy.
Not to mention, the circles of light on the ceiling were neither candlelit nor gaslit.
One, they were basically white in colour, and two, they didn’t flicker like a flame should.
There were other things too, materials of things like his toothbrush, and the items the men in white clothing—“guards” as Rayna had called them—carried as they put him to sleep.
“What is that?” he asked, nodding to the box in her hands.
She lifted it up and showed him the face of the cuboid where rectangular numbers and words were printed. “This is a digital clock. It doesn’t work like a normal clock with cogs and a face but has little hairlike wires in it that change the digits as time passes.”
She pointed at the big white numbers. “That’s the time. One twenty-nine in the afternoon.” Then she tapped the smaller ones at the bottom. “And that’s today’s date. Here.”
Dominic took it in both hands as she offered it to him. He rapidly traced the numbers and words of the date with his gaze.
Twenty May 876, just as she’d said.
And well, considering he’d never seen anything like this “digital clock,” he was feeling more and more inclined to believe Rayna.
Curiously, he rapped one finger on the face of the box. It made a noise that wasn’t quite the clink of glass but something similar to the panel that covered the mirror above the sink.
Then he brought the clock to his ear to listen.
Hmm…it doesn’t tick.
What was the point of a clock that didn’t tick?
Puzzled by its oddity, he pulled it back, only for his brows to shoot to his hairline when he noticed the numbers of the time now said one-thirty.
“It changed,” he muttered dazedly.
A huff that could have passed for a laugh came from the woman next to him, drawing his focus to her. And his breath bolted out of his chest all over again.
Rayna was smiling. Grinning at him.
As a result of his surprise or at his surprise, but it didn’t matter.
His pride could take the hit in return for being granted the privilege of witnessing the amusement crinkling her face.
A flurry of stars glittered within her irises, showering his skin in sparks and cinders that pierced his lungs, both allowing him little drags of air and leaving him breathless.
Beautiful no longer felt like an adequate word to describe her, but there wasn’t a word in the dictionary to explain how lovely she was. She required a new one solely for her. He’d have to think of one quickly, because it was almost pathetic only referring to her as beautiful.
“If you liked that, you’re gonna love this,” she said, completely oblivious to the way she’d just robbed him of his heart. She lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “Room three, lights off.”
Suddenly, everything went black all around them, and he gaped at the ceiling in utter shock.
“Room three, lights on,” she said, and within a second, the entire room was illuminated again.
Dominic’s attention soared between each white light before dropping to her. “How did you do that?”
“Magic,” she said with a teasing shrug of her shoulders.
Her playfulness was contagious, and he narrowed his eyes at her dancing grin. “I knew you were a witch.”
She rolled her eyes with a mirth-filled scoff, and his mouth twitched.
His gaze then curiously, shamelessly skated down her body. “Tell me,” he said, his voice thick. “Do all witches walk around so outrageously underdressed in the future?”
“I’m not underdressed. I’m actually very modestly dressed.”
“Modestly?” he echoed incredulously. “You are not even wearing a chemise, sweetheart, and on top of that, you are wearing trousers, those of a man twice your size. How on Neves is that in any way modest?”
“These are my favourite jeans,” she said, laughter lacing her words as she ran her hands down her thighs.
“But yes, fashion has changed a lot, and there’s no need to wear so many layers of clothing anymore.
Especially for women. It’s actually very common for both men and women to walk around showing their arms, legs, back, and stomachs too. ”
Dominic’s jaw dropped lower and lower with every body part she named. He grunted and shook his head. “Why bother with clothing at all then?”
“Yeah, well, nudity will still get you arrested.”
He shook his head again, and she bestowed him with the melody of a lazy chuckle. It was as if he were experiencing the tingling joy of hearing music for the first time in his life.
Gosh, what he wouldn’t give to pull her onto his lap and taste the tune right from her mouth. And then he wanted to discover what other songs she could sing for him if he played with—
Finding himself precariously close to sporting a cockstand again, Dominic searched for something to distract himself with and pointed to the screen. “Why can I hear them but not see them?”
A distorted reflection and the little black semi-spheres in two corners of the ceiling that Rayna called “speakers” was the simple answer. She vaguely tried to detail how they worked but said she couldn’t properly without explaining other things he had no knowledge of.
She also told him the purpose of the room he was in being for quarantine and some of the medical tests they’d run to make sure he was healthy.
She didn’t mention why the guards had put him to sleep, so he wondered if it were because of the tests or because of his outbursts.
Instead, she skipped on to giving him a rough idea of the research they were hoping to conduct with his help.
“So, yeah, it’ll likely be a report and a project, though I don’t know the exact details of what they entail,” Rayna finished explaining. “But I do know you’re probably going to be here for four months. And that’s only if you actually decide to stay and help with the research.”
His brows dropped quizzically. “You mean to say I can choose to return?”
“Of course,” she said, not a single doubt in her tone. “It’s completely up to you whether you help us or want us to take you back.”
“And this choice could not have been presented to me a fortnight ago?”
Her mouth pressed into a thin line. “Actually, you were supposed to be told everything on the first day you arrived and then given the choice to stay or go before you started your quarantine and medical testing. But, uh...you didn’t exactly give them the chance to.”
She said it almost teasingly, but in reality, he knew nothing about his violent behaviour had been funny.
Especially not now, knowing that if he’d just stopped to listen when they’d been trying to talk to him, he might not have had to remain in the room for so long.
But fear and anger had taken control, and he’d been blinded to all reason.
He swallowed around that humiliating knowledge and asked, “Do many people decide to return?”
“Some. But not many. Most stay out of curiosity.”
Understandably. Dominic was also interested in finding out how the world he knew had changed in over two centuries.
“What happens if I choose to stay?”
“Then you’ll be assigned a Guardian—a historian who you will live with while you work on the research.
They’ll be responsible for your care and will teach you about our time.
We’ll provide you with everything from clothing to your own source of money too, and we’ll monitor your health with regular checkups with your assigned doctor, but they won’t be anything complicated, and you’ll be awake for them too.
Then, when the three or four months are up, you’ll be taken back to your time on the exact day that you originally left. ”
That didn’t sound like a bad deal at all. But…
“Who will be my Guardian?”
Rayna looked towards the screen. “River.”
River? As in River Harris? The bastard who’d kidnapped him in the first place?
Absolutely not!
Under no bloody circumstance was Dominic spending possibly four months living with that man. He was going to choke the life out of the scoundrel the moment he had the chance to.
Rayna, on the other hand…
Beautiful, confident, fiery, and intelligent. Gosh, she enthralled him in a way he could neither name nor explain, and he would much rather live and work with her with the hope of getting to know her more. He couldn’t fathom leaving without doing so.
Considering clothing was more of an option rather than a necessity, surely an unmarried man and woman living together couldn’t be considered much of an issue? Even then, he was more than willing to accept on the condition of a chaperone staying with them.
“So,” Rayna said, glancing at him with her chin cocked. “Would you like to stay, or would you like us to take you back as soon as possible?”
Dominic ran his tongue along the back of his teeth before settling on his answer. “I will stay.”
But I shall be staying with you, sweetheart. Not River.