“Oh. Did I miss anything special?”
“Probably. I guess I’d better start all over again, huh?”
And he did.
“I don’t suppose you swabbed the decks yet?”
“No, but I did raise the flag.” He ground himself against her to demonstrate.
“Some flag!” she remarked dryly.
“Some prow!” he countered, rubbing his crisp chest hairs across her breasts.
“Man the gunwales, matie.”
“Anchors aweigh.”
“Is that a whale on the starboard?”
“No, it’s a tongue hard-on.”
“You fool!”
“Just call me Captain Hook.”
“Who said you get to be captain?”
“Well, I’m steering this boat right now.”
“Can I steer later?” she asked sweetly, cupping his “hook” in both hands.
“Aye-aye, Tinkerbell,” he choked out.
They stopped clowning around then, and this time their lovemaking took on a slow, poignant character. Helen understood without Rafe saying the words that he fully intended that this third time would be the last until they were back in modern civilization with birth control protection.
So, he cherished her body with gentle caresses and lingering kisses. And kept murmuring, “Last time, last time, last time…”
She basked in his expert ministrations, stifling her contrary thoughts, “In your dreams, in your dreams, in your dreams…”
A few hours later, Rafe was outside saddling the horses.
They’d already eaten breakfast — a hearty meal of fatty bacon, undercooked beans, stale bread, and God-awful coffee. A Sunday brunch at the Beverly Wilshire couldn’t have tasted better.
Helen was still inside the cave, gargling and meditating, no doubt, but Rafe didn’t care today. Nope, he was feeling mellow, and he couldn’t stop smiling. Hell, he even caught himself whistling one time until F. Lee gave him one of those “don’t-you-dare” looks. Translated, “If you whistle, I get gas.” Rafe stopped whistling.
When Helen came out finally, carrying a saddlebag with their provisions, she was smiling, too. And he stopped smiling.
She’d combed her unruly red hair back into a ponytail, tied with a strip of cloth. She wore the ugly green gown over her camouflage pants because they’d both agreed that they couldn’t continue to avoid the mining camps on the way north. Her fresh scrubbed face gazed up at him adoringly as she walked closer, marred only by the whisker burns on her cheeks and the puffiness of her lips. He saw a dark bruise on her neck and another on the soft inner skin of her upper arm. There were lots more under the concealing dress — he knew because he’d examined every delicious one of them earlier — and just as many on his own body.
His heart skipped a beat, then seemed to swell inside his chest with love for this woman. She was so beautiful.
He loved her. And she loved him. A miracle.
But one thing became alarmingly clear in that instant when she smiled at him. There was no way Helen had accepted his decision not to make love again.
She dropped the saddlebag at his feet and raised her lips to give him a fleeting kiss. “Good morning,” she whispered throatily, and walked over to her horse, hips swaying. She started whistling right off.
Helen was a woman on a mission. And he was the target.
He cringed. “Helen, we have to set some new ground rules.”
“Oh,” she said, already in the saddle. “I thought you didn’t like rules.”
“I don’t, but sometimes they’re necessary. Like now.”
“You have a hickey on your neck.”
He counted to five, silently, for patience. “Helen, I have five hickeys, and one of them in a place that would shock you.”
“Really? Did I do it, or did you?”
“Do what? Give myself a love bite there?”
She grinned.
“Stop changing the subject. This is serious. Last night was wonderful. Incredible. But it can’t happen again until we get back to the future. It just can’t.”
“And?”
“And I need your cooperation.”
“I think I’ve been cooperative,” she said suggestively.
“Helen, please. Help me here. This is going to be hard enough as it is, without you tempting me.”
“Do I tempt you?”
“All the time. That’s why we have to set some rules.”
“Like?”
“No sex.”
“Define sex.”
He gave out a loud whoosh of exasperation. “No intercourse. No naked bodies. No sleeping together.” He was getting aroused already, just thinking about what they wouldn’t be doing.