Chapter 27 New York City, 1928—Bastien #2
Kaitlyn answered the phone. “Hello… Hi, Papa… I just got home… He’s taking it easy…
Yes, it stopped working… He’s having balance issues…
No, sir. He’ll adjust and figure it out…
Peanut butter?” She chuckled. “That’s all…
I’d better fix him an early dinner… We’ll be there by nine… Love you, too, Papa.”
He heard her use the bathroom and open and close drawers. A few minutes later, she knocked on his door. “Bastien, can I come in?”
“Yeah.” He sat quietly in bed, practicing his saxophone with only his fingers, making the soft percussive sound of the keys opening and closing.
“Are you going to play so I can hear the music?” She sat on the bed, looking sexy as hell in red and black Asian-inspired pajamas.
“Not right now.”
“Are you hungry?”
He shook his head.
She lay down and leaned on her elbow. “Do you want to talk about it?”
His gaze connected with hers. “To which are you referring? My leg, dick, or brain? Right now, they’re all malfunctioning.”
“Are you angry with me?” she asked with a questioning look.
“I’m angry about the situation. I thought my days of adapting to life were over. Here I am again, not knowing how I’ll physically get through the day or if I’ll ever go home, resume my life, or be the man I used to be.”
“Are you feeling sorry for yourself?” Her brow furrowed, but her voice stayed soft, a gentle current against a rough tide. She leaned in, her gaze fixed on him, as if the right question might somehow piece him back together.
“It might sound like that, but it’s coming from a place of fear.” He had never admitted that to anyone at any time. “It took months of rehab and physical therapy to adjust to the prosthesis. And now, not having a working ankle will be more limiting than I’m used to. I don’t know how I’ll do that.”
“Yes, you do.” She got up on her knees and straddled his thighs.
“You’ll do it one step at a time, and I’ll be with you.
” She took the sax and set it aside. Then she placed his hands on her hips.
“For what I have in mind, you don’t need to walk.
” She leaned forward, a hairbreadth away, her breasts touching his chest, and grinned down at him, eyes crinkling at the corners.
He treated her to one of his sexy little lopsided smiles. “Do you intend to seduce me?”
“You initially seduced me.”
“How?”
“The warm sensuality of your voice and musical talent, and the rest inevitably followed. You want this as much as I do.”
“Are you sure?”
She glanced down at the bulge beneath the towel. “Pretty sure.”
He caught her wrist, his grip an anchor against her gentle reach. A dark, encroaching mood had claimed him, a storm he hoped to weather with the lifeline of honest communication.
She offered a path out, but the first step had to be his.
He needed to be truthful about the raw, primal longing that had consumed his thoughts all morning—fantasies of her naked, an obsession with the texture of her skin, the taste of her mouth, the broken sound of her pleasure.
An unrelenting intensity built within him.
A raging need he couldn’t have imagined before yesterday.
To have even a chance at that future, he had to become the man who deserved it.
“I’m all in for seduction, but here’s the deal,” he said.
“Are you in any position to make one?”
“Not right now. So, no deal. Just facts.” As much as he didn’t want to admit this, he knew it would be true with her as a partner. “I won’t last long the first time, but you won’t leave this bed until you can’t walk any better than me.”
“Is that a promise or a threat?” Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.
“It’s whatever you want it to be.” He stretched to reach his wallet on the bedside table.
“What do you need? I’ll get it.”
“I have two condoms. After that, I’m not sure what we’ll use.”
“You don’t need them. I’m using a diaphragm. I haven’t used it since… since Declan. But I didn’t want you to worry about me.”
What was she saying? That she didn’t think he would care for her if she got pregnant. The words stopped him cold. A current of disbelief ripped through his chest, stealing his breath. He stared at her, his confusion a physical weight.
“If you get pregnant, it’s my fault and responsibility. I appreciate that you’re taking charge of your health, but you’re not in this alone.”
“You might return to your time and not even know the situation.”
A sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach.
“I’m not leaving you. If you don’t go home with me, I’ll stay here with you.
That’s a promise.” His hands trembled. He focused on slowing his pulse, the frantic drumming in his ears a counter-rhythm to the cold prickle tracing a path down his spine.
This confrontation ended now, one way or another, or they were lost.
“Believe in me. In us.”
She licked her lower lip. “Are you upset because I don’t want you to take care of me?”
“You have every right to feel that way. You’re a strong, independent woman, taking charge of your life. How could I possibly be upset about that?”
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
He dragged a hand through his hair, tugging at the roots, the only outward sign of the frustration churning in his gut.
Was Kaitlyn so conditioned to only depending on herself that the thought of giving up an ounce of control felt like a freefall?
He wanted to reach for her, but a sudden stillness in her posture, a subtle stiffening of her shoulders, warned him off.
“I want you right now. I’ll want you in thirty minutes, and I’ll want you in an hour, and then every thirty minutes thereafter until we can’t walk and barely talk,” Bastien said, smoothing his voice into perfect calm despite his rioting pulse.
“If this isn’t what you want, let’s get dressed and go to the saloon. ”
She chewed on her inner cheek, a nervous habit that usually preceded a decision.
But this afternoon was different. For a woman whose life was a carefully scripted performance, known more for studied deliberation than spur-of-the-moment decisions, she suddenly surprised the hell out of him.
With a fluidity born of sudden resolve, she reached for the hem of her silk pajama top and, without a second’s hesitation, pulled it over her head and tossed it aside.
Her nipples pebbled under his heated gaze.
The room seemed to fade, the noise and the light blurring into an indistinct hum.
Bastien gasped out a shaky breath. “You’re…
perfection.” Sweet lines from forgotten ballads drifted into his consciousness.
“You’re a forgotten melody found again. A dream to chase away the harsh edges of the real world.
I’m almost afraid to touch you for fear that you’re an illusion. ”
“I’m not.”
His fingertips traced the flawless curve of her breast and then the other. “God must have sent you, knowing how much I needed you. But why didn’t He send you during those nights when the pain was unbearable and the desire to live faded with the agony?”
“You might not have listened.”
“Maybe I did. I kept going, knowing you were out there waiting with a warm heart. Little did I know that I’d have to travel back in time more than a century to find you. And you loved me before you ever met me.”
“I’ve always loved you, not knowing who you were, but trusting my heart to find you.
The moment I saw you with Papa, I knew. I’ve never had visions or premonitions, but I had one then.
We were sitting on a blanket underneath an enormous tree by a river.
Children were kicking balls, riding bicycles, and laughing.
A dozen men and women sat at a long table loaded with food.
I’ve never seen so many cheerful people. ”
He barely found his voice. “You’ve just described a picnic at Mallory Plantation.” Then he sensed there was more to her vision. “You saw something else. What was it?”
She put her arms around her belly protectively. “You had a little girl on your lap with hair the color of mine, and I was very pregnant.”
Her confession was a hammer blow to his guarded heart, shattering the stillness and exposing a deep, aching yearning. His pulse became a wild thrum against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat for a man who suddenly knew he had to take a chance.
“How do you feel about that? Do you want children?”
“I’d have a dozen if I could, but I don’t think I can.”
“Why?”
“I’m twenty-eight years old.”
“That might seem old here, but not where I come from. Women your age have babies every day.” It was time to change the subject.
“Now that we’ve addressed our insecurities, how about we get back to business?
” He flipped her onto her back, anchoring his weight through his arms and hips, trusting strength and balance where his leg failed him. “We’ve talked enough. Don’t you think?”
The moment his lips met hers, a visceral jolt—sharp and immediate—shot through him. Kaitlyn didn’t hesitate, tilting her head and slotting her body seamlessly against him, a perfect, urgent fit.
The taste of tea and mint on her tongue was intoxicating. But the heat radiating from her skin, a fever dream beneath his fingertips, was a scorching fire. He half expected her pajama bottoms to smolder and burn away. When they didn’t, he tore them off, a necessary impatience driving his hands.
Every forgotten fantasy, every secret wish, converged in a blinding flash, a live wire of anticipation.
Blood hammered in his ears, a primal drumbeat, deafening the world outside their embrace.
A heavy, unmistakable throb began low in his gut, drawing every ounce of his focus downward as his hands gripped her hips with white-knuckle strength.
His arousal was a sudden, roaring tide, an overwhelming force that seized control, leaving him anchored in place, every muscle straining against the fraying leash of his own restraint.