Steve was very quiet with Kayla curled up in front of him and nestled into the crook of his lap. It was nearly 1pm. They’d moved to the couch where Kayla had pulled a soft, red blanket out of the nearby basket and covered them with it. They felt very close to each other and were in no rush to end this connection they so badly needed just yet. Steve let his fingers feel the blanket’s broken-in fibers. Originally belonging to him years before he’d met Kayla, this thing was now really old. He couldn’t count how many times this blanket had been made love upon. Felt their bliss. Witnessed their expressions of love. Heard their fights. And shared their healing. He couldn’t count in how many timelines this blanket had warmed them in a bed, on a couch, or on a floor. In how many more would he find himself laying beneath it, wrapping Kayla in it, or rubbing his palm across her smooth skin under it? Like he was doing right now as he caressed his palm lovingly over the warm skin of her belly and her soft breasts.
Kayla felt his introspection. “What are you thinking about?” she asked softly.
A month ago Steve would have lied his way out of his feelings, too adrift in anguish to acknowledge that he had any. In this moment, however, he wanted nothing more than to talk about those feelings, share them with her, and feel the intimacy that sharing his emotions would bring them.
“Baby, you just gave me perfect bliss, you know that?” Kayla squeezed the arm draped across her as her body thrilled to his words. “You gave me your body and loved me. I’m still feelin’ it inside of me. I feel like … I feel like you just cleared the clouds away and let me feel the sun.”
Kayla stroked his arm lightly. “You didn’t feel the sun last night?”
Steve felt guilt try to creep down his spine, but he placed a kiss behind Kayla’s ear and tried to explain the difference. “Last night felt like when I fixed things in Italy before you’d jumped in. It was a relief to be with you in a way that should’ve happened in the first place. You were never meant to be a single mother, alone without someone to love you. Without me there to love you. That’s how it happened, but it wasn’t how things were supposed to be.” Kayla didn’t reply as he spoke so solemnly. “Remember the fight we had at my apartment? You said being together would be bad for the timelines later, but being apart would be bad for us now.” Kayla nodded. “The slipstream is gonna just destabilize more, now, I know that. But denying you – not being with you – that was bad for us. It felt more and more wrong every day. So making love to you last night felt like the world had been set back right.”
“And just now?” Kayla asked, her voice like a beautiful harmony in Steve’s head.
“Just now was coming home.” He wrapped his arms around her more tightly and nuzzled his face into the back of her neck. “Just now was you bringing me all the way back home.” Kayla felt her husband’s embrace and turned her head to kiss him before settling back against him again. “I was lost in my own private hedge maze from hell, baby. That’s what it felt like. I could hear you calling for me, but I couldn’t find my way out. When I finally did, you were there, waiting for me to come home to you.” Steve continued to rub his hand over her warm skin, and Kayla continued to stroke his arm with her fingers. “I’d gotten so used to it. Being lost in that place. But you never gave up on me. Even when I was lashin’ out at you and made you feel abandoned you were still takin’ care of me.” Kayla wished she’d never said that. “Then you jump in and find out I didn’t wait for you. And after all that … after everything I put you through … you don’t just forgive me, you make love to me.”
Kayla exhaled deeply. “You’re still feeling guilty.” She felt him nod behind her. And she realized that no matter what, a very small part of him would always feel like he wasn’t good enough for her.
“Sweetness, I’m sorry.”
“Shh. I know. We already talked about this.”
“Not enough.”
“Well, that’s a first,” Kayla chuckled.
“Don’t joke.” Kayla really felt how much he meant this and turned to look at him with silent but apologetic eyes. “You asked what I was thinking, and I wanna tell you. I wanna talk about all of it. And that’s what I’m thinking.” Kayla shifted to fully face him, then kissed him lightly on the chin.
“We’ve been through nothing but hell since we left 1989. I have never handled the hard stuff like you can. When the going gets rough, I turn into that guy in Chicago, and he’s a dick.”
“Steve, that guy in Chicago took good care of me. You. You are that guy in Chicago, and he was as infuriating as you are.” She smiled, and he responded with a light smile of his own; but then he became solemn again as he adjusted the blanket to cover her in the cool air of the lightly insulated attic.
“There wasn’t a thing to like about that guy on the pier with Shane.” Kayla blinked. “I don’t take jealousy so good. But what you did for me just now. The way you made love to me. Erased Ava after knowing how I arrived here.” She stiffened when he said her name, and Steve sighed. “I can see how much she still upsets you, but instead of the sh*t that went down with me inside my head over Shane, you …” Steve got weepy. He was so emotional all the time, and it only got worse the longer they stayed in the slipstream, his emotions were getting harder and harder to control.
“Baby, please …” Kayla brought his fingers to her lips, but the profound feeling it fostered in him only made it worse.
“You don’t lash out at me like that, instead you come home and make love to me.” Kayla didn’t know what to say. He was right, when the going got tough, Steve reacted badly. Always had. She had a feeling he always would. “Kayla, I know you don’t doubt how much I love you. But sometimes love does hurt. I don’t know why you don’t just give up on me sometimes when I can’t handle things.”
Now Kayla knew exactly what to say. “You know what? Because that’s what for better or for worse means.” Something about that statement struck a serious chord with Steve. He’d meant every word of every vow he’d ever made to Kayla, but now for the first time, he felt the meaning of that particular vow with something very deep. “I don’t know if here, right now, we’re at the end of for worse or the beginning of for better, but that’s what it means, and our vows mean loving each other through both of them.” Facing each other like this was so emotional. Kayla wiped the tear that had fallen over his cheek. “And you know what else?” He only shook his head, because he was too overcome to speak. “You did the same for me. When Dr. Rolf was at the house. I tried to disappear. You wouldn’t let me. Because you love me. Someone had to keep it together, and I was too lost that night to help you do it. You’d promised me you would be there for better or worse. Well, I made that same promise, Steve. So, I was there when you were the one who got lost.”
“Sweetness,” he rasped, “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened between then and now. The whole thing with the pool game and flyin’ off the handle at you in Chicago. Everything I did and didn’t do.” Kayla knew this was a reference to not being able to stop his brother from raping her, but she just let him get it all out. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, losing her. Those two years, baby, they were the happiest home I’ve ever known in my whole life. The only reason I didn’t lose every bit of my mind … was because you were my anchor, making sure I made it through.”
Now Kayla was crying, too. “You were braver than you think. You were the one strong enough to think about the effect of what we did next. I didn’t care about how stable we were, I couldn’t see past the moment we were in. But you could. You were the one making the harder choice to save us from ourselves.”
An almost forlorn sound escaped from Steve’s throat before they gathered each other up in their arms and kissed tenderly. It had been so long since they began truly healing themselves in the loft after her rape and then in the lighthouse. But the jumps forced them to put any progress they made on hold until the next opportunity. Now that it was here, their reunion was so emotional, strengthening the connections that had become so brittle over these desperately miserable weeks of loss.
“So I have one more vow to make to you, Sweetness. One more that I didn’t realize I was gonna need when we got married on that pier. I’m vowin’ it to you now. I will be your rock for the rest of our lives, Kayla. I might be sad, and I might feel depressed when I’m missin’ her. But I promise you, there will never be another time that you can’t depend on me to give you the comfort and strength you need every minute of every day until there aren’t any more days.”
Kayla felt these words like something physical was happening inside her heart. “And you wonder why I married you.”
Steve let out a cathartic laugh that felt very free. “I love you, Sweetness.”
“I love you more.”
Steve brought Kayla’s left hand to his lips and kissed her ring finger, which for a change, already had a ring on it. “You never told me when you put this back on.”
Kayla gazed at the simple band on her finger. “When I left Salem and moved out here. I shouldn’t have taken it off in the first place.”
“Ya know what, baby, I don’t think that’s true.” Kayla tilted her head in question. “You did the right thing trying to move on. You might have tried too fast for what you were ready for. But you can’t move on if you’re holding on to the past.”
“Only you never were my past. I just didn’t know it.”
Steve caressed Kayla’s face and smirked slightly. “I hate to give that witch doctor any credit, but we’ve gotten three years back of those sixteen. Got kinda mixed feelings about that.”
“Me, too,” Kayla huffed.
The physical and emotional release had made them very thirsty, but Steve wasn’t willing to let them go down into the kitchen just yet, so they shared a glass of water Steve had filled from the bathroom sink.
Now they sat in what had become a comfortable and familiar position, facing each other on the couch like they’d first begun doing regularly in 1979. The blanket covered both of them to the waist, exposing Kayla’s breasts. She felt very different in this body, it was in a shape she was not used to. She wanted to explore herself more fully and looked forward to being able to do that when she finally got a look at herself in the mirror. Steve noticed the expression that feeling put on her face, but he had his own feelings continuing to run through his head at the moment.
“Ok,” she said mildly, “you’ve still got something on your mind, so … out with it.”
Steve handed her the glass of water he’d just refilled and smiled as he watched her sip it. “I didn’t know this was how it was gonna be when I woke up this morning.” She took her foot out of the blanket to rest it on his lap for him to rub it. Which he did. She let a little moan of pleasure escape as his thumb applied gentle pressure to the ball of her foot. “I thought eleven days was a long time, but 13 was real bad. I was panicking this morning. After you went to work, I just couldn’t handle not knowin’ if you were ever getting here.” Kayla’s half-lidded eyes, usually a sign of arousal, made him very pleased. She was knee-deep in pleasure, and he wanted to give her more of it. So he continued to rub as he spoke. “Remember when you did this for me on our wedding night?”
“Mm-hmm,” she cooed.
“Thank you … for not leaving me when you got here … for understanding,” he whispered. Kayla opened her eyes more fully. He’d completely changed direction. She was not fazed by his guilt over not waiting for her, but the sound of culpability in his voice had to end. She needed to finalize this conversation forevermore.
“My first reaction was not so understanding,” she said. Steve continued rubbing. “But I don’t want you to be sorry. I remember what it was like in these days in this house. I remember how much I missed you. So, I really do know how I must have felt when I found you up here. I read every word you wrote, and I felt how tortured it made you – Ooooh, that’s good,” she blurted when he’d hit a really sweet spot near her ankle.
“Good, I want you to keep feeling good.”
“And I want you to stop feeling bad. I don’t feel cheated on.” Steve stopped what he was doing. That word was like poison to both of them, and whenever it was uttered in this context it gave both of them pause. “That me that you made love to last night is a Kayla I remember like it was yesterday, and I know how much I loved you then. As much as I love you now. That me was begging you to love her back, and even though it hurt when I read the emails, I remember how bad it felt when I was begging you to love me. I remember what that sting felt like.”
“Do you still feel it? The sting from when I didn’t remember you?”
Kayla exhaled a breath as she laced her fingers into his. It wasn’t the first time their constant state of touching would help the through a tough conversation. “I remember the sting,” she admitted.
Steve closed his eye and let his head loll back. “Dammit.”,
“No, Steve, it’s different than feeling it. It’s a good thing I remember what that hurt was like all those months you were home but didn’t remember me. Because that’s what I know you weren’t letting me go through before I jumped into myself here.”
Steve scooted closer to her so he could stroke his thumb affectionately over her bottom lip. “It’s not so simple as willpower not to have sex. It’s not that.” Steve’s eyes were so sad with his next statement. “I was breaking your heart.”
“I know,” she nodded, “I really do know.” The memory of Steve dancing her around his bedroom the night she’d arrived into her 18-year-old body drifted into her, and she smiled warmly. She wasn’t there for the real thing at the Cheatin’ Heart, but his retelling was beautiful, and it felt real. Steve looked at her with a warm grin of his own when he saw the smile spread across her face. “What’s goin’ through that head of yours, Sweetness?”
“Well …” Kayla ran her fingertips through his short hair and then down into the stubble growing into a light beard. She’d never seen his hair so short. “Right now I can ony imagine what making love with you for the first time must have been like. So tell me about it. Like you did when you sang me The Rose. Tell me how it was so I can share it with you.”
Steve smiled. He loved this idea. So, he wasted no time. He chose, however, to start at the beginning. Like every other jump where they spent any great deal of time without their primary partner, Steve caught Kayla up on the details while they rubbed each other’s feet. From Sam to Kimberly to Stephanie, Steve debrifed her so they could be on the same page right away. When he told her about what he’d done to his hair and that he’d ditched the patch in order to disguise himself Kayla froze, her thumbs halted it their spot in his arch.
“You did?” She was positively solemn in her shock, but Steve found it amusing that this reaction was, literally, identical to her first.
“You’re consistent, Sweetness, I’ll give you that,” he chuckled.
Kayla held his foot in her hands with veneration, no more playful now than when he told her about this last week. Their eyes locked, and Steve could see how meaningful this action was to her. Amusement was no longer the emotion he was feeling as her deference positively radiated out from her soul. They were silent for several moments as what Steve went through to get to them really settled over her. Going to Tuscany and Chicago were feats, it was true, but Steve appearing in public without his eye covered was, too. He’d never done such a thing. Ever. And she’d never expect him to. It was as close to a phobia as Kayla had ever known him to have. It was a psychological hurdle she understood of her husband and would never dream of asking him to get over. That he did – even for just that one time – that was … she had no words.
Kayla gently sidled up next to her husband and slowly placed a kiss upon his patch. She didn’t need any of those words that weren’t coming to her for Steve to understand how affected she was by this.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t have done to protect you,” he said in a tone as reverent as the look upon her face. “Hiding this ugly thing behind a pair of shades was an easy price.”
Kayla was taken aback. Nothing was more precious to Steve than protecting his eye from view. Nothing other than her and his family. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Baby. I’m gonna tell you exactly what I told you when you were fixin’ my hair. Don’t be sorry. It was my best shot at getting back to you without puttin’ your life in danger. These guys were ready to kill Ava to get her out of the way, I heard them say it with my own ears while I was hidin’ in that alley behind the hotel. They’d do the same to you and Stephanie. I saw what Plan B was gonna look like, and there was no way I could let it happen. All that mattered was not leading them back to you. If that meant stupid hair and dark glasses, then that’s what it meant. And now look. I found you. You came on home to me. Took you 13 days, but you’re here.”
Kayla folded her arms around Steve’s neck and held him tightly. “You’re such a beautiful man.”
“Oh, baby,” he breathed. “Baby, baby.” She felt so good against him.
“I love you. So much.” Kayla inhaled and smiled as she felt the effect that action had on him. She knew he loved when she did that. She exhaled deeply and felt such peace in his arms. Then she smirked a little. “So, the first time you told me this, that’s the night you almost had your way with me on the kitchen floor?”
Steve pulled away and smirked back. “You were the one havin’ ways, baby. Do you know how horny you were?”
“Um, no,” she duh’d at him, “that’s the point of this whole conversation, now, isn’t it? So, tell me about how horny I was.”
Steve leveled a sideways glance on her. “You’re trying to get me to talk dirty to you right now, aren’t you.”
“I think I’m offended,” she sat up very straight so her breasts practically pointed at him, “I’m just trying to get an accurate description of the events that took place so I can invent the memory as vividly as I can, thank you very much.”
He laughed. “Ok, baby, well, here’s how it went.” By the time Steve was done with that story Kayla was just as horny as her destination self had been that night. He noticed when her legs rubbed together and decided to use what she was giving him. “The first night I touched you was incredible. I hadn’t touched you like that in ten years, and the look on your face when I slid my fingers inside you was unbelievable. Beautiful. Your face was so beautiful.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?” Only he leered it at her.
Kayla cocked her head to the side. “Come on. You. You gave me something. Did I give you anything?”
Steve nodded slowly. “You gave me the sexiest face any man has ever seen on a woman that loves him.”
Steve’s deep timber made her core throb. “Are you saying you didn’t take any pleasure for yourself?” Kayla pulled the blanket down over Steve’s knees until it pooled to the floor in front of the couch. Completely naked now, Steve’s erection stood up away from his groin. Kayla teased her fingers lightly over his penis and smiled when he gave her a heavy blink. “I’m pretty sure I wanted to help you out with this.” Now she stroked her whole palm over the hardness he was ready to impale her with again.
“You did. But that’s not how it went.”
“Because you were waiting for me.” He nodded. Kayla had started pumping her fist more firmly up and down, and Steve was going to lose his mind if she kept it up.
“Mm, that’s good, baby.”
“Was I good that night, too?” Steve nodded then started panting. “But you didn’t come? That’s not how it went?”
The sultry sound of her voice was clear. She wanted his orgasm. But he turned the tables on her with a quick move that made her squeal. Now sitting against the back of the couch, he lifted Kayla onto his lap, cradling her against him. With his right arm supporting her, he used his free hand to push her right leg onto the floor, spreading her enough for him to immediately slide his two middle fingers into her. Kayla threw her head back into his shoulder with a grunt when she felt his thumb grind into her clitoris.
“This is how it went.” His thumb slid in rhythm with his fingers. “I looked for that spot inside you that makes you scream, and I watched how good you felt. I watched as you felt me touch you again for the first time in all those years, and the only thing I could think about was feeling you come. Watching you feel—bliss. I wanted to give you bliss.” Steve gave a teasing suck to her breast.
“So good …” she whimpered. “Oh … God … so good!”
“I watched your body. Looked at you in the broad daylight like I’m lookin’ at you now.” The self-consciousness would emerge eventually, but in this moment, she was splayed open for him to see, and that’s how she wanted it. Steve dipped his head to her breasts again and licked them while he fingered her. The combination made her squirm with pleasure.
“I love you!”
“I love you, too. I loved you that day with my fingers inside you, showing you how much. And you told me—” Steve swallowed hard, because this hurt him. “—that you didn’t want a pity f*ck.” Kayla’s eyes shot open, anger spreading across her face. “You wanted to know how it went, you have to know all of how it went. This is a beautiful memory, but you need to have all of it.” He never stopped stroking her, so the pleasure never left her belly. “And when you said that it destroyed me. That you felt like I wasn’t doing this for us but only to pacify you. You were crying, and I just had to fix you. I couldn’t take how bad I was hurtin’ you.
“I was throwing myself at you,” she realized.
Steve nodded and removed his fingers for the moment, leaving her core throbbing for release, but all her attention was on his words at the moment. “You said you felt cheap. I lost my sh*t. Knowing I’d made you feel like that. I made you feel like that, Kayla. I couldn’t take it.”
Something cosmic suddenly connected with Kayla. The memory of the experience she’d had when he’d come back and rejected her because he didn’t know her, collided with the other her’s experience in this house just yesterday that Steve was recreating for her. The effect took her breath away. It was like understanding had downloaded into her. She’d forgiven him and understood his actions after reading his confessional emails; but now laying here in this loft, she understood on a visceral level that she felt envelop her entire body. She couldn’t explain it she just felt it.
Kayla took his face in her hands and brought it to her lips. They kissed, and now Steve felt it, too. They were so deeply connected that it was like they were the only two people here on this earth.
“Oh, baby,” Steve murmured. “Thank you.” He kissed her again gently as his eye watered. “Thank you.”
“No,” she shook her head. “Thank you.”
Without another word, Steve inserted his fingers again. Kayla wanted this memory, so she let him give it to her. Holding her tightly, Steve curled his fingers inside of her and rubbed his thumb slickly against her clitoris. He knew what she liked, and she knew he was going to give it to her.
“You’re just as wet now as you were yesterday.”
“I’m gonna come!” she panted loudly. “I’m–!”
“Look at me!” She did what he said. “That’s how it went, you looked at, told me you never stopped loving me while I was gone, and I watched you come.”
“Al—always! Always!”
“Come!” Kayla finally blinked as the rush coursed through her. Her orgasm squeezed Steve’s fingers and made him want nothing more than to make this pleasure last forever. “So beautiful, Sweetness.” She whimpered in his arms as her climax peaked, then ebbed, and only then did he slowly remove himself from her body.
“If that’s how it went,” she began with a satisfaction that made Steve so happy.
“It is.”
“Then I must have been the happiest woman on the planet.”
“I think you were. You did that thing you do, digging your head into me.”
“Hmmp,” she smiled. She was still laying in his arms.
“Feeling good, baby?” he stroked the hair away from her face.
“Mm-hmm,” she cooed. “Really good.”
“That’s my girl. I got everything I needed just watching you find that kind of bliss again. I mean it, Sweetness, it wasn’t just that I was trying to wait you out. I didn’t need the sex, I needed that connection to you. And I got it. It was intense.”
Kayla stroked his face. “So I was ok with that?”
“Well, I think if you hadn’t have fallen asleep things might have been different. But I’m glad it happened later. You’d been working 18 hours, you needed to sleep.”
“Oh my God, I forgot about those shifts,” she cringed. She kissed him sweetly, then grudgingly went to the bathroom to clean up.
“Besides,” Steve called in to her as he took a careful look out into the back yard. “I think I scared you a little when I asked if you were on the pill. I could almost see you counting days in your head.”
“Oooh,” Kayla chuckled, “that makes sense.”
“What does?”
“Well, I think I got the hint, because I found a brand new prescription of pills in my purse this morning.”
“Say what?”
The mirror in that bathroom was very small, only really showing her face, which was barely more than she saw in her rear view mirror on the way home. She really wanted to see her whole body. “Believe me,” she said as she came out stark naked, “I never took the pill when I lived in LA, so after reading your emails I put two and two together when I found three month’s worth of them in my purse.”
She looked good standing there naked like that, but Steve was still bowled over by the fact that she’d gotten on the pill. “I didn’t know you were going to do that.”
“Well, I’m not surprised. It’s exactly what I would have done.”
“Did you take one yet?”
“No, but that’s not surprising.”
“Why?”
“Usually you wait until the Sunday after you get your period. I have no idea when that was, though.”
“Does it matter?”
Kayla shrugged. “Kind of. But either way, they’re not effective until two weeks after you start.”
Steve stood up and nervously ran a hand through his hair. “You said the timing was wrong. That we wouldn’t get pregnant.”
Kayla’s heart raced just a little, but she refused to be paralyzed by the fear of conception. Conception meant heartbreak, and she refused to let it smother her. She needed her husband, and there were plenty of ways to prevent the heartbreak. She went to him to allay the same fears she knew were bubbling up in him.
“Listen, I’m scared, too. But we need each other. We’re not going to get pregnant. If I said the timing was wrong, then I was sure. I wouldn’t lie about that.”
“I would never think that you were lying,” he bristled slightly. “But you got pregnant while taking the pill, Kayla.”
“It’s rare. I promise you. But if I told you the timing is wrong, then we’re ok. I know we’re ok. I’m worried about it, too, but I know in my head as a doctor that it’s rare to get pregnant when you’re properly taking the pill.”
“Baby, I … don’t take this bad, but neither one of us were controlling ourselves or thinking a thing through last night.”
“You’re wrong.” She knew what he was trying to say. “We talked about the pill hours before we actually made love, right?” Steve nodded. “I would have been sure about the timing by then. I’d’ve gone to the store and bought something if I wasn’t. If I was sure, then I was sure.” Steve wanted to believe her. She took a breath and then took his hand in hers. “We can live in fear or we can live. I want to live.” Steve made a supplicating noise and nodded with a mild grin. “We’re fine till I get my period, then we use something else for two weeks, and we’re fine. Unless …”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you you want to just wait. I’ll understand.”
“I,” Steve rubbed at Kayla’s breast with his left hand, “do not want that.”
Kayla smiled. She was so glad to feel his sexuality again. “I’m pretty positive there aren’t any condoms in the house. Not that you like using them.”
“I know for a fact that there aren’t, and I know for another fact that I’ll get over it. Besides, baby,” he leered, “have you ever known us to have a problem figuring out how to do it?”
Kayla laughed. “No, that’s never been our problem.” She kissed Steve’s dagger sweetly and then smoothed her fingers over it. She loved the feel of the slightly raised ink pattern. “So, I take it we already had a condom discussion?”
“Yep. Afterwards. Which is backwards,” he huffed still slightly annoyed with himself.
Kayla shrugged good-naturedly. “When did I tell you the timing was wrong to get pregnant?”
Steve could see the goosebumps on her skin and was rubbing his hands up and down her upper arms. “Right before I gave up all the control I’d ever hope to have.” Kayla licked her lips, and Steve’s penis tried to stir. He was older now, though, than any other jump they’d ever spent any time in, and his ability to harden so quickly after a release wasn’t as strong as when he was in his 20’s and 30’s. The arousal inside of him, however, was as strong as a locomotive and drove more lustful words. “Right before I slid my cock into that wet pussy of yours.”
Kayla gasped. “Are you trying to start something with me for the third time in an hour?”
“I’m trying to show you how badly I never stopped wanting you. It’s been pent up for so long that it’s turning me into a horny monster. Sorry, baby.”
Kayla shook her head. “Don’t ever be sorry for making me feel how much you want me.”
Steve softened as he caressed her face with the palm of his hand. “I hate that there was ever a time you couldn’t feel it.” Kayla shushed her finger against his lips with a look that clearly said would not hear any more of that. He held her close and lowered his lips to the spot on her neck that would never stop beckoning to him and knew his actions would make her wet. “Gonna make it up to you every day,” he said. “I’m gonna make you feel me and see fireworks every day, Sweetness.”
She mewed at him at exactly the same time that Kitty had found them and began rubbing up against their legs. Kayla was genuinely happy to see her cat. She’d just been a kitten in the lighthouse, but this was different. The ball of fur felt good against Kayla’s bare skin as they nuzzled. It was as if the cat knew things had changed with her mommy – even as if she knew this was the Kayla she’d last seen back at that lighthouse. Steve watched them commune for a bit and enjoyed the contentment he felt from them both. He explained where they were on the cat, and Kayla was kind of impressed with herself that, apparently, she hadn’t questioned him about the name change.
They grabbed all their clothes and worked their way downstairs slowly, making sure no one was watching. Kayla couldn’t do anything about the kitchen windows, but once she confirmed no one was there they both headed to the bedroom where she drew the curtains. Looking at the clock she knew Stephanie would have to be picked up in a couple hours, and that, actually, made her slightly nervous. Before she could put it to voice, however, Steve spoke up again.
“I got another memory to fill you with, baby,” he grinned.
Kayla giggled. “Really? You’re going to fill me up, are you?”
Steve opened the closet to take stock of his clean clothes. “You take that any way you want, but I’m just sayin’ we got more memory-makin’ to do.” Then he got more serious. “I thought maybe we could do that tonight, do it right.”
“Right?”
“Yesterday I fingered you in the daytime right after your shift. Just like what we did up there. We made love later, after Stephanie went to bed.” Steve tucked a lock of her straight hair behind her ear lovingly. “I want it to be exactly like before. So you can have it—right.”
“It meant a lot to you, didn’t it?” Kayla asked softly.
Steve nodded. “Yeah, it did. If she’s you, baby – and she is – then, I don’t want any of it to be missing.”
“Ok,” she smiled. It was so pretty. The happiness on that face that had been without it for too long while they grieved. “Then, my very wet pussy will see your big, hard cock later tonight.” Then she took his penis in her deft fingers and teased him mercilessly. It wasn’t quite stiff yet, but that was about to change.
Steve moaned at the seriously provocative comments. “It was hard enough not doin’ you in the shower this morning, baby. You’re killin’ me, now.”
“Why didn’t you? Do me in the shower?”
“A little person in our lives that lives in this house with us named Stephanie,” he said in a reminding tone.
Kayla dropped her forehead against Steve’s shoulder. “That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever said.” It’s not like she didn’t know Stephanie was there, she just wasn’t making all the connections this year presented yet. It wasn’t the last time she’d feel the fish-out-of-water state of life press in on her in this timeline, either.
“Nah, I get it, baby. Unshared time is tricky to figure out when it’s just the two of us. Now you get to do it with not just Stephanie as a ten-year-old but me, too.” It was going to take some getting used to. Assuming they were there long enough to get used to it. Which she doubted. “It’ll come back to you,” he assured her, knowing exactly where her head was at the moment.
Kayla’s eyes turned dewy with another glance at the clock.
“So … we only have the one more memory to make, then? Making love last night?”
“Of those kind of memories? Yeah,” he winked. “Unless you want me to recreate the haircut. And some groping against the wall over there,” he added.
“Mm. You know, I think now we should take that shower we didn’t get.”
“Oh we showered. Just not together.”
“Mm-hmm.” Then she turned her back on him and entered her bathroom for the first time in nine real years plus three re-lived ones. She flushed the toilet and and heard those pipes really scream. It was just a moment, but it reminded her that she needed to hear the whole story on how the landlady kicked off his discovery.
It all started coming back to her as she let the hot water pour over her. The feel it was fantastic. The pipes might have been old and noisy, but they, like the rest of this old house, were very solid and produced very strong water pressure. She remembered more than one occasion when she’d spent quite extended periods of time in here to let those jets pound upon her achy shoulders. She was hoping Steve would show up, but she couldn’t help but close her eyes and relax with how great this shower felt. In fact she was so taken by what the water felt like as her soapy hands rubbed at her arms that the sudden sound of the metal rings dragging quickly across the shower rod startled her.
“Don’t be scared, baby, just little old me.”
Kayla pointed at his erection. “Little is never something you’ve been.”
Steve went right for her breasts and slid his hands over them. “Is this what you wanted, baby?” His smile told her that it sure was what he wanted. He gently squeezed her nipples before gliding his slick thumbs over them. Kayla whimpered. The feel of the shower jets combined with what Steve was giving her had now pushed her into a place of delirious stimulation.
“If you’re asking me if I’m still horny,” she paused to slowly lick her lips and swallow, “the answer is yes.” Steve grunted softly when her hands began mimicking his.
“You came twice, and it’s still not enough.” Before she could lay a come-back on him Steve kissed her hard and fast, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. She moaned hotly when he slid his fingers through her wet folds with one hand and held her ass in his firm grip with the other. She loved this aggression. “That’s not a question, baby, that’s me tellin’ you.” Steve lifted her leg and thrust against her. Kayla responded by thrusting back.
They fondled each other with equal parts emotional need and carnal lust, their pleasure centers bursting in tiny eruptions every time they were stroked, kissed, bitten, caressed, and suckled. Kayla lashed her tongue at the tip of Steve’s dagger, and he did the same to the hickey he’d already given her at her neck that she still had yet to notice. Both of them poured out their sexuality in loud moans and desperate pants.
“I wanna be inside you so bad, baby!”
The wheelchair-bound woman that had been the previous owner of this house had installed this tub with a ledge just wide enough to sit on that jutted out from the wall. It resulted in a slightly more narrow space, but Kayla had enjoyed setting candles on it when she’d relax with a bath. Now she enjoyed setting herself on it so she could suck his penis into her mouth and begin pleasuring him. It happened so fast that Steve could not control the deeply sexual sound that emanated from his throat. The rush came on very fast as his wife’s wet lips slid expertly back and forth, her tongue stroking with each movement.
Kayla remembered their conversation in Hawaii about how intense the pleasure was from a blow job and knew that she wanted it for him as quickly and intensely as possible. She grabbed his hips roughly and pulled him into her mouth in rhythm with her bobbing head. Steve followed her silent insistence and enjoyed the feel of his resulting thrusts.
“Yeah … mmf …,” he panted, twisting his fingers into her hair. “Oh … God, yeah … Keep doin’ that, baby, don’t stop.”
“Tell me how much you love it,” she demanded provocatively before taking a breath.
He looked down at her salaciously. “I love what you’re givin’ me with that hot little mouth of yours.” She was glad he chose to rise to the occasion and felt herself release a torrent of arousal when he did. Before she knew what she was doing she wrapped both of her legs around one of his and used it as leverage to drag her herself up against him. Steve’s eye went wide. It was wanton and purely sexual, and he loved it. “You gonna get yourself off while you suck me?” In response Kayla gyrated her hips into him so her very wet lips could lick at his thigh and provide the stimulation to her clitoris that he watched her enjoy right before his eyes.
Her own pleasure did not stop her from giving him his. Kayla licked a sultry path up the base of Steve’s cock, dragged her tongue roughly over the sensitive head, then back up to where she started. It was when she sucked his balls one at a time into her mouth while stroking her thumb firmly against the gland beneath them that Steve emitted one of the most lustful sounds she’d ever heard from him. He had to brace himself against the wall as his knees went weak. She loved this effect she was having on him, so she spent a little more time here, savoring the sounds he was making and the knowledge that she’d taken him to the heights she wanted to take him to. There were no more words while she did this, only ecstasy.
Steve felt high as his wife’s mouth did the things to him that she knew he loved, and he felt her own pleasure as she rubbed herself against him. It made him think of all the things they did to each other in the Orient. He was reminded of what she did to him in the bathtub on their 1987 wedding night. And he remembered how she went down on him in the plane on the way to Hawaii. Somewhere in his head that the sex fog shared space with, he knew she was trying to give him more of that same rapture. And he loved her for it more than he could find words for. His loving hand told her for him as he rested it gently on her head and stroked his thumb so lovingly back and forth over her hair. The gesture was filled with a control that surprised her, because she knew control was what he was about to lose. But the intent of it was clear to her – he cherished her.
Kayla released him just for a moment and told him she loved him.
“I love you more!” he breathed. Then that breath caught in his throat as he felt Kayla suck his cock into her mouth for what he knew would be the final time before he gave her what she wanted from him. He shoved his thigh into her clit and smiled when she rubbed herself harder against him. Her left palm squeezed his buttocks while her right hand cupped his balls. It was her tightly sucking mouth stroking him hot and hard, however, that had brought him to the very edge. “F*ck … mmh … just like that … just like that …” He could feel Kayla’s tongue glide over his opening with every withdrawal of his hard shaft and knew he was now existing in those final seconds – the sweet spot of euphoria – that preceded the cum exploding from him. It felt so good. Steve loved her with everything he had and knew why men waged wars over the women they loved; he would have waged one for her, because she was his goddess.
Kayla jerked against him with an orgasm that came hard and fast. The knowledge that she’d just gotten herself off mixed with the sensation of Kayla humming over her ministrations to his cock finally pushed him over the edge. Steve squeezed the fingers wrapped in her hair, because he had no more words to warn her that he was coming, so she was ready when his orgasm found him. His coital moans were everything she wanted for him as he filled her mouth with his cum. She took all of it, adding her thumb to stroke the underside of his quivering shaft even as she continued to suck him dry. Steve felt powerful as the streams shot out of him. He grunted carnally with each one and couldn’t help it when the movements of her swallowing his essence milked even more from him.
Finally, Steve’s cock couldn’t take any more. Kayla gave his tip a final kiss, and then he dropped to his knees in the tub and collapsed his head into her lap. Panting heavily, they held on to each other as their recoveries ached in their groins. They were silent while the water poured over them.
Steve finally raised his head to look at his wife. She was positively beautiful as the water droplets hung onto her eyelashes. He got up and sat next to her on the ledge, then he pulled her head into his shoulder and caressed her hair. “Thank you, baby.”
She smiled. “I got some, too.”
Steve nodded. “Yeah, you did. I think mine was probably better.” Kayla chuckled. They sat under the spray of the shower for a few minutes longer, enjoying each other’s presence in silent affection.
“Ya know what?” Kayla finally said as the contents of the hot water heater began giving them far less heated water.
“What, baby?”
“Making love upstairs … that was the best make-up sex we’ve ever had.” Steve let an uncontrollable laugh burst forth. Kayla smiled back, but she was more solemn in this statement than Steve had realized. “I never want to have it again.” Steve sighed with what she was trying to say.
“Shh, baby.”
“I mean it. I don’t know if I can take it. No more make-up sex. Ever again.”
Steve stroked the back of his hand down her wet cheek. She wasn’t talking about the sex. She was talking about whatever would precede it. “I’ve been … so scared for us.”
“Sweetness. Did you hear that vow I made to you up there?” She nodded. “I meant it. I don’t think I can promise we’ll never have another argument, baby, but I can promise you, we’ll never need that kind of make-up sex ever again. Not like that. Ok?”
“Ok,” she relaxed.
“And you’ve got nothing to be scared of. You own my soul, Kayla. Don’t you know that?”
The water was cool now, but those words Steve had just said made her radiate warmly from within. “And you own mine.”
Once dried and dressed, they were both mildly surprised they were still there. There was so much more that Kayla needed to talk about and get straight in her head about who was where and what they were doing – what she was supposed to be doing. But that was going to have to come later, because the facts of this timeline were coming at them with the ticking of the clock. Stephanie was here, she was a real, live person with her own schedule and needs that they had to address, and she needed to be picked up from school. Kayla also had to follow through on the motions she’d set in place and face the fact that Shane was on his way.
Kayla paced the livingroom. She hadn’t even gotten more than a quick look at her body in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. She didn’t know where anything was in the house, she felt like she wanted to gravitate up to the loft, and seeing Stephanie again at this age was both beyond thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Would she know something was different? Steve had an advantage because he started fresh with her. But there was a baseline for Kayla’s behavior as Stephanie’s mother, and the fact was that parenting a full-formed human child was very, very different from parenting a toddler, which was the oldest age she’d gotten Stephanie (or her other children) on these jumps. The necessity of outing Steve to Shane without the benefit of any real preparation didn’t do anything to alleviate the apprehension she was wearing a hole in the proverbial carpet with, either.
Steve watched Kayla move nervously about the room before finally going to her. “Come here, baby,” he pulled her into his arms. Kayla laid her head on his chest and took a worried breath. She was so glad they’d spent so much time being intimate. The closeness they were feeling for each other made her feel far more secure than she would have otherwise, and she needed that security to temper her anxiety. Because there was a whole lot to be anxious about.
“This one’s going to be messy, isn’t it.”
Steve exhaled heavily, because there was no avoiding the truth. “Yeahp.”