Chapter 4

ChapterFour

Blaste

Everythingin the bathroom looks fucking weird.

There are outlets with little black and red buttons on them. The shape of the medicine cabinet is sharper, less rounded. The walls are painted white, the tile is gray. The faucet handles are new, shiny, metal. Sharp, sharp, sharp. The bottle of shampoo claims to contain Argan oil. What the hell is that and is it really necessary?

When I realize my pulse is racing, I take a long, hard breath to calm down and twist the shower handle, starting the alarmingly pressurized spray of water. I don’t want Shiloh to know that I’m nervous. That I feel like I’m locked in a bizarre dream where everything is familiar and totally unfamiliar at the same time. She’s my only anchor, although that’s only one of the million reasons I can’t stop touching her. She’s also soft and gorgeous and spirited and smart. And mine. There’s no forgetting that. Every jagged pump of my heart tells me so.

And if I’m going to succeed with her, she needs to have confidence in me as a man, right? She can’t know my stomach is in a knot, wondering if I’ll ever see my family again. Are they all…dead? My father was born in this house. If he’s not here anymore, he must be gone. Same with my mother. I…just saw them this morning. Young, tending to the horses. It’s too overwhelming to imagine them all gone. To come to grips with the fact that I’ve blinked and seventy-four years have passed. It shouldn’t be possible, but here I am.

This cannonball-sized need and affection and connection inside of me for Shiloh brought me here and it’s where I want to lose myself, so that’s what I’m going to do. I’m a man. She needs to know I’m strong. Dependable. Unshakeable. Men don’t show fear or weakness.

“Are you okay in there?” Her sweet voice carries over the shower spray. “I’m leaving a towel on the sink.”

“Stay.” I cringe at the note of desperation in my voice, grateful she can’t see me through the shower curtain. “I mean, we might as well talk this whole thing out while I clean up, right?”

A short pause. “Right.”

Relieved to not be alone, I grab the soap and start lathering, scrubbing my chest, underarms and stomach, wincing while I clean my cock and balls, since I’m still considerably stiff. I might be stiff for the rest of my life now that I know what her tush looks like wiggling around on my lap. Jesus Christ. She didn’t even know she was doing it. Can’t even imagine what she’ll be like once she’s trying to make me come. I swallow a groan. “What is this story your grandmother told you, sugar?”

“The story of the Wanting Tree. The tree where I heard you calling to me.”

I love the sound of her voice layered over the pelting water so much, I have to lean my forehead against the wall of the shower and close my eyes. “I heard you calling, too.”

A beat passes in silence. “My grandmother told me that when she was in her early twenties, one of the farm hands went to the Wanting Tree and begged for his soul mate. She watched him disappear. They never saw him again.”

My eyes fly open.

Haphazardly, I flip off the shower spray, my pulse going ninety miles an hour. “Shiloh.”

“What?”

I peel back the shower curtain, momentarily forgetting that I’m butt-ass naked. And I remember pretty fast when bright pink spots stain her cheeks and she hurriedly glues her eyes to the ceiling. “Dude.”

A grin spreads my lips. “Sorry, throw me that towel?”

She feels for the ratty blue terrycloth and lobs it at me.

But I catch her peeking. Just for a split second.

Suppressing my sly smile, I towel off, my thoughts pivoting quickly back to the story she told me. “Shiloh, you won’t believe this, but I have an uncle by marriage named Marlin. My parents are always joking that he fell out of the clear blue sky one afternoon when my aunt Lucille begged the Wanting Tree for her soul mate. He married her when I was a kid. There was something…different about him. He always looked sort of bewildered. You don’t think…”

She seems to be holding her breath. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s the ranch hand. My grandmother never told me his name. So…each soul mate has to be wishing at the very same time, I guess.” A line slowly forms between her brows. “There was another piece of the legend I can’t remember, but I’m sure it’ll come to me.”

“Was it the part about returning home?” I ask, securing the towel around my hips.

A heavy silence falls. “Do you…want…well, obviously you want to go home.”

In the wake of her statement, I look up, noticing her stricken expression, though she hides it quickly. “Just to be clear, I’m not going anywhere without you. Not back in time, not forward to the future, nowhere.”

“That’s…” She blinks in rapid succession, making me think she likes the vow very much, but maybe she doesn’t want to like it. “That’s quite a promise.”

I look her in the eye and nod. “I intend to keep it.”

She blinks at me. “You’re nothing like other men I’ve known.”

“So you’ve mentioned,” I say dryly, climbing out of the tub and sauntering toward her, enjoying the way her breath hitches, her eyelids appearing heavier.

“Only, this time I mean it in a good way. You say what you’re thinking. Sometimes what you’re thinking is piggish and old-fashioned, but other times it’s incredibly nice. The forthrightness of you. The honesty. You’re one of those men who shakes hands to seal a deal and doesn’t go back on his word, no matter what happens. Aren’t you?”

I stop in front of her and reach around to grab that spectacular ass, yanking her hips up against mine, chuckling quietly over the way she ogles my chest. “Damn right, I am, Shiloh.”

“What are we going to do tomorrow?” she says, sounding dazed.

“You can show me your world. How it’s changed from mine. We can get to know each other inside and out.” I dip my head and lick open her mouth, feeling my cock rise another degree, thickening. Aching. Lord, my hunger for this girl is almost blinding. I can feel my balls pulsating, my heart gift wrapped in my throat, every molecule in my body roaring for more of her closeness. “But right now, Shiloh?” I press my mouth to her ear and bring my voice to a whisper. “I’d like to bring you to bed, shove that slut dress up to your hips and leave a load inside of my woman. And then you’re going to go make me another fucking sandwich while it drips down your thighs.” I snag her lobe, tugging gently. “Your pride isn’t going to let you say yes, so just nod and I’ll take care of the rest.”

When I pull back to judge her reaction to my plan for the night, I don’t see what I expect. Instead of eagerness or gratitude, the girl looks like she’s ready to take a hacksaw to my family jewels. Before I can ask Shiloh which part she finds objectionable, she pulls a little glass toy out of her back pocket. She taps the front of it and a rectangular screen lights up, her thumb zipping like a roadrunner over the reflective surface.

“What the hell is that?” I ask.

“Hey Siri,” she says, ignoring me. “What is the female orgasm?”

Would you believe that goddamn toy starts talking back to her? I nearly come out of my fucking skin when a nasally, electronic lady voice responds with, “Here’s what I found,” and a whole host of words starts popping up on the screen. I lurch backwards, my shoulders hitting the hallway wall, the towel around my waist nearly slipping straight off.

“Is that a two-way radio?” I reach out and poke the glass. “Who are you talking to?”

“It’s not a radio. It’s artificial intelligence.” Shiloh has the nerve to smile while she’s saying words I’ve only heard in comic books or dime store novels. “She’s a computer.”

Cold sweat breaks out on the back of my neck. “Can she see us right now?” I whisper.

Shiloh chews over my question. “That’s a hotly debated topic. I think we’ve all decided the phones can see and hear us, but we’re all too reliant on them to care at this point.”

“Go pack a suitcase, sugar. We’re going back to the forties.”

Lips twitching, she slaps the device into my palm and turns on a heel, entering our bedroom. Once inside, she faces me again and pauses with her hand on the knob. “Press the button on the side to ask Siri anything you want to know. I think my prompt was a good place to start, don’t you?”

“Female orgasms.” I give her a smirk. “You think I don’t know what that is?”

She cocks one sexy little hip, lips pursed in challenge. “What is it?”

As badly as I want to storm into that room, throw her down on the bed and rut that tight body until this clawing hunger leaves me, I must admit I’m drawing a blank. “It’s uh…when a woman feels pleasure.” I clear my throat hard. “Same as a man.”

“Yes, but how is it achieved?”

Holy shit.

I don’t have a fucking clue.

“Most of my experience has been, uh…well.” My neck is turning from cold and clammy to piping hot. “In my town, in my time, you sleep with a local girl, you best be marrying her. Understand? I don’t like any of them enough to tie myself down. My only option has been to, uh…well, I should say my brother and I, we’d rather not commit to women. We’d rather just do what needs doing with them in town and go home. Nothing…romantic.”

Shiloh, as always, seems to be way ahead of me. “You pay for sex.”

“Doesn’t every man?”

“No.”

My eyebrows must be touching the ceiling at this point. “Is it free now?”

“Yes.” Her gaze ticks to the little computer in my hand. “If a woman says yes and you can make it worth her time. Even I know this stuff and I’m a virgin.”

That confirmation that she’s never been touched sends a thunderbolt of adrenaline to my loins. “Not for long, sugar.”

Don’t think I don’t notice the renewed pout of nipples. She might be stonewalling me, but she wants me to fuck her. There’s proof in her blush, the huskiness of her voice, the way she keeps staring at the outline of my erection through the towel. “B-but you just found out that sex is free, and technically, I’m a local girl.” She lifts her chin. “I thought you don’t want to be tied down.”

I take a step in her direction, then another, so she has to tilt her head back to look at me, and the awareness in her pretty brown eyes is gratifying as hell. “I’ve made it abundantly clear that we’re tied together now, Shiloh. Period. The end. Forever. Putting my come inside of you is just sealing the deal.”

“Not until I know I’m going to get something out of it besides a mess to clean up and a trip to the kitchen.”

“I knew I should have left the part out about the sandwich.”

“Happy studying.”

She shuts the door in my face—and locks it.