Page 58 of Misadventures with a Time Traveler

“No,” he finally says. “Not reincarnated.”

“So…what, then?” I charge. “Channeled? Resurrected?”

He steps closer. “Try…transported.”

I get down a dry gulp. Then another. “Excuse me?”

When he answers with nothing but his intense wildcat stare, I charge, “Are you seriously telling me…the wardrobe in my bedroom…is a…time machine?”

He shoves out a hard breath. “I only know that when Kavia hid me inside it, the year was seventeen eighty-nine and a mob was storming my home. When I reemerged—”

“Stop.” I whirl away.

My thoughts are reeling. My logic is battered. “Pasca was right,” I laugh out. “This…this is insanity. It has to be.”

“I have told myself the same thing at least a hundred times in the last twenty-four hours.”

“You don’t say.”

I wheel back around, trying to distance myself from the man who’s still too damn close, dominating the air in the room and the sense in my head. But holy hell, he looks sincere. And now, seems so…sensical. So calm.

Too. Damn. Calm.

“Oh, God.” I drop my head into my hands. “Why am I taking any of this seriously?”

The air shifts again. He edges closer again. I steeple my fingertips across my nose, fighting to breathe normally. Too late. The air is inundated with his pine-and-sea-salt scent, and my whole system reacts. Whether the man’s a first-rate shyster or a first-rate nutcase, my body doesn’t care. My chemistry craves him. My senses stretch out to him.

God help me.

“You already know why.” His voice runs warm vibrations down the side of my neck.

I spin away from him, reach for the bedpost, and clutch it.

Because this is only chemistry.

You’re only a science experiment to me, Max De Leon. Or whatever the hell your name is.

Atoms and electrons. Cells and reactions. Mixtures and explosions.

Only. Chemistry.

I repeat it, over and over again, as he pushes in at me from behind. The chiseled striations of his torso mold against my back. He slides his big hands down my arms. He keeps going, meshing his fingers with mine. My mind battles back. Orders me not to dwell on how wonderful his hands feel against mine or the decadence of his ripped body as he pulses and rolls against me.

“Th-This…can’t be happening,” I manage in a gasp.

“Why?” His murmur surges me with waves of silver and gold arousal. “Because it is easier to believe you bedded a scoundrel instead of a man who crossed two hundred years for you?”

“No.” But it pours out of me as a moan instead of a protest as he reaches around and cups my breasts. “I…I can’t do this.” I hardly recognize my own voice now. It’s low and lusty and needy—and dips even more into that sin as he captures my nipples between each thumb and forefinger. Primitive heat becomes arrows of arousal to the trembling tissues between my legs. “I can’t do this. I won’t. Not until…”

“Until what?”

His demand makes me whip around in his arms. “Until I know who you really are,” I charge. “Please…” I latch a hand into his hair. “If you adore me as you say you do, stop insulting me with this fairy tale about the magic wardrobe. Just tell me what your real name is—and why you’re really here.”

I tighten my grip on his thick waves. They’re warm and mesmerizing between my fingers. The same effect takes hold of his gorgeous features. He no longer evokes a nobleman lost in time. He looks like a god born to command it.

He makes sure I know it too…

By hauling me back to him in a scathing sweep of motion.