Page 20 of Misadventures with a Time Traveler

“Do what again, ma belle? Use those delicious American words of yours. Tell me.”

“M-My nipples.” She rasps it between heavy breaths. “Put your mouth…on my breasts again. Suck my tits, Max. Bite them.”

“Mmmmm. As my lady bids.” Following a savoring growl, I fulfill her wicked dictate. I deepen the sound as her erect tips stand out like crimson stains against her pure white shift.

“Oh…wow.” She groans. “H-How are you so good at that too? Wait. Don’t answer that. I’m not sure I want to know.”

“But I want you to know.” I lift her shift higher. Higher still. I do not stop until her breasts are finally bared to my heated gaze—and worshiping mouth. “I want you to know everything. About all of me.”

“G-Great,” she blurts, though there is a new stiffness to her tone. Her body is taken over by the same tension. “Th-That’s great. But m-maybe we can just stick to something basic right now? Middle names or something? Mine’s Sophia.”

“George Jean Valence.”

“That’s your middle name?”

“I was given George from my maternal grandfather. Jean was my father’s name but has also been in the family since the Holy Crusades, when—”

“Okay, okay. Whoa, baby. I’m sure that’s fascinating, but are you cool with tabling the PowerPoint for later?”

I kiss the spot directly over her heart. As the organ within answers with throbbing thunder, I spread my mouth into a new smile. “I believe it is too late to place my power on the table, mon amoureux—or anywhere but right here.” I form a hand over that special place in her chest while raising my gaze back to her face. “My power belongs to you now, Alessandra. As does the rest of me.”

I wait for the words to sink into her. Hopefully, to ease her disquiet. The care of my chivalry must be worth something, even if I barely have a worthy name to call my own anymore. But she hardly seems to care about it. So why the continuing furrows along her brow and the persisting strain through her body?

“Well, shit. Now I maybe should take notes.”

And of course, the strange—but alluring—crudeness of her words. No; not the words themselves. I am fascinated by how she speaks, not what comes out. Her renouncement of guile. Her embrace of honesty. Even now, when she is obviously insecure, she cares not about tucking her meaning from me. So I do not hide mine from her either.

“I do not understand, ma belle.”

She averts her gaze. “It’s…nothing,” she returns. “Honestly…”

But her voice fades as I cup her cheek, tugging her sights back to me. I lean in, set on consuming them. “You are not nothing,” I husk out. “So your feelings are not nothing.”

She swallows once. Very hard. A new sheen appears in her mesmerizing greens. She lifts her slender fingers and braces my jaw in a mirror move to mine. “How are you even real?” she whispers.

Despite the spike of her scrutiny, I hitch up one side of my mouth. “Perhaps it does not matter.”

At this moment, I mean it. If I am not real—if this is all only a chimera to relieve my darkness and I wake up in that endless void again—so be it. I shall change nothing about these moments—especially this one, as I roll my hips to embed my body deeper inside hers.

“Oh.” She gasps. “Oh…Max. Damn…you’re a master at that.”

“I am the master of you.”

“As I am the master of you?”

“You mean my mistress?” I savor the sting as she captures my lower lip between her demanding teeth.

“Mmmmm. Okay.” She trills out a sweet laugh. “That works too.”

“Always,” I swear to her. “My sweet, saucy mistress.”

I seal the vow by ensuring our bodies are fully one. Deeper and deeper I sink, plumbing the illicit recesses of her lush heat. I roam my fingertips down the valley of her chest and across the satin of her belly. I do not halt there. At last, my questing touch arrives atop the triangle of curls pointing to where my swollen flesh surges into her.

“Ohhhh,” she exclaims. “That also works. Oh, fuck!”

She seizes my shoulders, scoring my flesh with her fingernails. We moan together. Surge together. Thrust together. Burn together.

“God’s…balls.”