Chapter 6

ChapterSix

Blaste

I wakeup the next morning with a knot in my throat.

It takes a few seconds to clear the lethargy from my head, but as soon as I do, as soon as I remember that I’ve gone seventy-four years into the future, I reach for my girl. My anchor. The only thing that’s keeping me from feeling totally untethered from reality. Shiloh. My Shiloh.

It turns out, I don’t have to reach at all, because she’s snuggled up into my arms, a gorgeous tangle of dark hair and rosy skin. Parted pink lips. She’s so fucking pretty, I can’t breathe properly. I was afraid to go to sleep last night, worried I might wake up back in nineteen forty-nine without her. If that happened, I don’t know what I would do. I think my heart would give out before I made it to the other side of thirty seconds.

I pull my fragile soul mate closer to my chest and catalogue our differences. She’s sweet and soft, I’m big and coarse. She’s only four years younger than me, but I’ve spent so much time working in the sun while she looks built for the indoors. If that’s so, then that’s where I’ll keep her. I’ll wrap her in a blanket and she can watch me toil from the window, safe and sound.

In this day and time, though?

Here? Are we staying here?

Am I never going home?

What does my family think became of me?

Or is there another version of me that still exists in the past?

The questions are so overwhelming that I’m beginning to feel dizzy, my pulse spinning out of control. I’m trying to pull myself together when Shiloh’s eyes open, sleepy at first, but immediately transforming with concern.

“Blaste?” she whispers, stroking a palm down my bare chest. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say, swallowing, shaking my head. “I’m fine, sugar.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

Get up. Men don’t show weakness. I can hear my father shouting those words down at me the first time I got thrown from a horse at age five. Bleeding with a sprained ankle on the ground, I dug my fingers hard into the earth to hold back the pained sound that battled with my vocal cords. I demanded the tears retreat into their ducts. Ignoring pain and fear is how I was raised. It’s what my girl is going to expect.

Shiloh shifts beside me, stacking her hand on my pecs and propping her chin there. “Talk to me about what’s bothering you.”

Laughter skids out of me. “What?”

“You have a worry line between your eyebrows,” she says quietly. “I can feel your heart racing under my palms.”

“If I ever wake up beside you without a racing pulse, Shiloh, call a coroner.”

She giggles and my cock shoots straight to attention beneath the sheets.

Oh yeah. I love that sound.

Shiloh giggling.

“Seriously, we should talk about how this whole time jump is affecting you. I know if I was propelled back to forty-nine, I wouldn’t be handling it very well.”

“I can handle anything.”

Understanding dawns on her features. “Okay, I see what’s going on here. You’re not used to talking about your feelings. You’re keeping a stiff upper lip.”

“You loved my stiff upper lip last night.”

A blush spreads all the way down to her shoulders. “Blaste.”

“Shiloh,” I tease, drawing back the sheet and taking a rough stroke of my dick while she watches. “Go on. Climb up there and give me a wet morning ride like a good girl.”

“Y-you’re trying to distract me,” she stammers adorably.

“Talking about my feelings for you is as far as it goes.” I roll her on top of me, yanking her knees down around my hips so she’s straddling me with her tits crushed against my pecs. God. Damn. I can’t believe I’ve woken up for twenty-two years without this. Without her. “I can handle the rest on my own. No need to worry yourself about it.”

“No need to worry about your feelings after you’ve been pulled through time? I can’t do that.” She considers me for a moment, chewing her lip. “Maybe there’s a way to do both…” she murmurs.

“Do both of what?”

When she focuses in on my mouth so intently, more blood leaves my head and flows south. My dick swells against her bare pussy, begging entry. She’s planning something, cooking up a scheme—I can see it in her eyes. The sudden set of her chin. “You want to teach me how to ride you, Blaste?” she murmurs against my lips, licking across the seam of my mouth.

Teach me.

Fucking hell. My balls.

They suddenly feel like shotputs.

“More than anything, sugar,” I groan, sliding my grip to her hips, kneading them. “Take a seat on that cock and I’ll do the rest.”

“But I want to do the work,” she complains in a purr, sliding her fingers up through my chest hair. “I woke up so wet,” she whispers, pouting. “I want to play.”

“Shiloh, if you could go back to stomping around, slapping me and assigning me homework, I’d appreciate it.” My hands travel from her hips to her tits, slapping them gently, massaging them to ease the sting. “Keep talking to me like that and I’m going to come like the devil before I even get it in.”

She has the nerve to look a little smug, leaning down to tangle her tongue with mine—and then she starts rubbing her slippery pussy against my erection. Up and back, her hips growing more skilled with every movement. My eyes roll straight into the back of my head and I moan, taking hold of her sweet bottom to help drag her up and back, up and back, her nipples trailing through the sweat that builds on my chest. And I should just flip the girl onto her back and give her the pounding she’s begging me for…but something else happens.

The kiss slows down and becomes…tender?

She looks me in the eye every time we come up for breath and her expression is full of patience and understanding. It’s encouraging. I’m so transfixed by it, I don’t know what’s happening until it’s too late.

“Are you worried about getting home, Blaste?” she asks, her fingertips tracing my sideburn.

“Yes,” I blurt, immediately horrified. But I can’t take it back, because she doesn’t let me. In fact, she gives me this incredibly deep kiss as a reward for admitting a weakness. Confusing, to say the least. But as soon as she stops, I already need another one of those kisses. “Shiloh…”

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she urges, reaching back and circling her hand around my hard cock, giving it a good, long stroke that has my heels digging into the mattress, groaning, shifting my hips to give her better access “Tell me everything you’re thinking.”

“Are you going to kiss me like you did before?” I pant.

A smile plays around her lips. I’m in love. I’m in fucking love. “Yes.”

I can’t believe I’m about to say any of this. Yet at the same time, I believe this girl could get me to do anything. “I’m…yeah. Thinking about the people I left behind. If they’re worried about me or mourning me. I’m worried about being in this time I know nothing about. I don’t know how to defend myself here. Don’t know how to protect you. I guess I’m just feeling…confused and unprepared.”

“Overwhelmed?” she whispers, nodding.

“Yeah,” I say thickly, my heart scaling the sides of my throat.

“We’re going to figure it out together,” she murmurs, guiding me through her wet flesh to that perfectly tight breach, fitting the head of my cock inside of her, working her hips in a circle, slowly taking me in, while I grit my teeth and twist the sheets in my hands. The intimacy of our bodies is more than enough to shake me, but she’s still speaking in that soothing way against my lips and it’s ruining me, transforming me into a new man. “Something tells me you could defend me anytime, anywhere, Blaste. Even if we were another thousand years in the future, I think you’d find a way.”

“You feel that confident in me after I admitted I’m overwhelmed?”

Slowly, so slowly, she starts to ride me, and dear sweet Jesus, she gives me another one of those extra-deep kisses and I’m a goner. I’m changed. I’ll never hold back my feelings again. “I’m even more confident in you now,” she murmurs.

Emotion rises so swiftly inside of me that I choke up and I have to take physical action to keep the moment from burning me alive. I roll my girl onto her back and grind deep, give her few rough bucks just to hear her whine about it. “Your cunt is extra soft in the morning,” I say, reaching down to rub her clit with my thumb, the way I learned to do on her phone last night. Basic ground rule: ABTTC. Always be touching that clit. And frankly, her reaction when I show it some attention is fucking addicting. Her pleasure is addicting. It’s actually more important…than mine? As if I need any more proof that I’m a changed man. “Do you want me to pull out and lick your pussy for a while, sugar?” I ask, pumping balls deep and licking the curve of her jaw, growling over the clench of her tiny muscles.

“No, no. No. Don’t stop.”

“You just want to be fucked?” I say, picking up the pace—

A car door slams outside.

I don’t stop thrusting, hell I don’t think I can, but Shiloh freezes up, her eyes going wide as saucers. “Oh my God, my mother is home. She’s back from her shift.”

“I can finish us quick,” I say, hoarsely, my balls smacking off her ass. “Don’t move.”

“Blaste.”

“Shiloh.”

“I won’t be able t-to relax enough to finish.”

Now that draws me up short. I don’t like that at all.

Which is odd. Didn’t I tell her last night that there would be times when I took her like a slut and only concerned myself with my own pleasure? Yeah, I definitely said that, but now that we’ve arrived at the actual moment, knowing I won’t satisfy her is like having my windpipe sawed in half. “Goddammit,” I growl, taking my cock out and rolling off her, wincing over the intense throb between my legs. “You’ve completely ruined me, you know that?”

She smiles at me. Smiles.

My heart turns upside down and backwards.

“Quit it,” I rasp. “Quit that smiling right now.”

It only broadens. “You have to hide in my closet.”

I do a double take. “What now?”

“I don’t know how to explain you to my mother. I’m sorry, I just need time to figure out what to tell her, okay? She’s dealing with a lot right now.” Naked, Shiloh dives out of bed and pulls on a tank top and panties, looking back at me over her shoulder, while I ogle her butt miserably, my cock still rock-hard and throbbing. “She’s going to come in and say good morning, then she’ll go straight to bed for the whole day. You’ll only have to hide in the closet for a minute and then we’ll sneak out of here.”

“Where are we going to go—and is there a bed?”

Giggling, she grabs me by the wrist and tugs me toward the closet, just in time to hear the front door of the house open and close. “Blaste, please.”

I glower at her on my way into the closet.

Right before she can close me in the small space, I pull the chain on the lightbulb in the center of the ceiling, mildly amused to find it’s the same exact chain from the past. Once the tiny room is illuminated, I turn in a circle to look around. There’s a shelf of folded sweaters, another one containing board games—and the rest of the shelves are books. The top one has a picture of a tiger on the front, along with the words, “Class of 2023.”

Shiloh’s yearbook?

I tug the tome into my hands, but it’s only when I start flipping to find her picture that I realize I don’t even know her last name. Bothered by the oversight, I continue searching until I find her beautiful face. Shiloh Watkins gives me a secret smile, dark hair tumbling around her shoulders, shyly sexual. God, she’s so fucking gorgeous. I actually get a little weak-kneed and have to lean back against a shelf.

Out in the bedroom, I hear the door open and stay very still.

“Morning, Shi.”

“Hi, Mom. How was your shift?”

“Exhausting. I’m going to bed.” There’s a pause, a sigh. “You know, today would be a great day to enroll in the community college for the fall. Grandma is gone. You can’t just sit around here and let life pass you by.”

“Yes. I know that.”

I frown at the door. There’s something in Shiloh’s voice that makes me think there’s a deeper current running beneath the conversation with her mother.

“Mom…I have a question.”

Her mother sighs. “Yes?”

“Remember the legend of the Wanting Tree that Grandma used to tell?”

“How could I forget?” A drawn-out pause. “She loved that old eyesore.”

Without seeing Shiloh’s face, I know she’s bothered by that comment, but she lets it pass. “I think I’m forgetting part of the legend, but I can’t remember what it is…something about the time traveled returning home. How it happens.”

“A time traveler’s time runs out if he comes across someone from his own time,” recites Shiloh’s mother with a yawn. “Just a bunch of nonsense, Shi.”

“Hmm. Right.”

They continue to speak for a few minutes, planning meals for the week, and I tune out, going back to turning the pages of the yearbook until I get to the autograph section.

And I don’t like what I find. At all.