Find Me – Chapter 101

Stefano was not in the room when Rolf sucked in a lungful of air but the little man who had just taken his third trip into time knew without a doubt that he was in Stefano’s compound in Tuscany.  There were no guests currently residing there, but the man that belonged to this time had a lab full of equipment and computers very similar to the one he’d just jumped from surrounding him.  He let the nausea pass, then went to the small bathroom set into the corner to look at himself.  He’d looked perpetually 50 since he was 30, so today wasn’t a whole lot different from the visage that rightfully belonged to him, really, just less gray in the hair he had left, which was about as much as he’d have years from now.  What day was this?  He ran back to what he remembered was his primary computer and cringed at how old it was.  This will never do, he thought to himself. This equipment would never afford him the opportunity to pull them out of the slipstream.  Not that it mattered, that wasn’t what he was here for.  He had precious little time before he was pulled back, and he had to get word to the Johnsons to stop making whatever monumental changes they were making.  Whatever changes they’d made resulted in either an unplanned birth or death, and that was going to create a whole lot of havoc down the stream.  He didn’t have any ability to do anything other than warn them, so he didn’t waste another moment and got to the business of locating them.

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Steve rolled over in the very early morning of September 5^th to find Kayla making very interesting noises while her hips moved in her sleep.  Steve smiled.  He could tell right away that his wife was having some kind of erotic dream, because she was mumbling with some very sexually explicit intent behind those mumbles.  It was hot and adorable at the same time.  She was curled up against him with her head on his chest.  Her breath tickled his nipple as it sailed across it, and her hips ground into his thigh.  The words she moaned were mainly gibberish, but he did manage to make out when she said his name and a few choice phrases that got his penis, which had been soft and sleeping, to a very stiff state.

“I’ll bet you’re frustrated in there,” Steve whispered to his dreaming wife.  “Maybe I can help you find what you’re looking for.”  Then he adjusted slightly so that his muscular thigh parted her legs, giving her crotch direct contact with it.  Now she moaned louder while her naked clitoris rubbed against him, then said something completely out of the realm of the English language.  Steve couldn’t help but chuckle, it was too damned funny.  Her cheek was still laying on his chest, and he was completely intrigued to see if she could get herself off in her sleep.  He pushed his thigh into her, encouraging her movements and reached for her breast.  Kayla cooed his name, and that was it for his resolve.  Steve bent his head down and whispered, “I don’t know what language you were speaking, but you’re making me wanna do all kinds of things to you, baby.”  Then he slipped out from her embrace and climbed on top of her.  He turned her head to expose the tender flesh of her neck and began suckling it with his hot, wet mouth as he gently rubbed her breast with the palm of his hand.   “Sweetness,” he whispered sexily.  “Sweeeeeetnesssssss …”

“Mmm …”

“That’s it, baby.” 

Kayla opened her eyes and smiled at the feel of her real husband taking over where the one in her head had just left off. 

“I wanna make love to you,” he whispered in her ear before taking her earlobe in his mouth.

“Mmm … I think you already were,” she said with very husky sleep in her voice.

Steve lifted his gaze to meet her eyes.  “Oh, I know I was,” he said in low, raspy tones of his own.  “You were grinding against me in your sleep just now.”

Kayla’s eyes flew open.  “You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” he continued his warm, wet kisses upon her neck.  “You wre talkin’ in your sleep, and I knew it was a sexy one.”

“How?”

“I’m your husband.  I knew.  I’ve got the wet thigh to prove it.”  Steve reached down to stroke his fingers against his wife’s crotch, and she inhaled sharply, then sighed when his finger slipped inside of her.  “Sexy girl.”

“Wait a minute, you were nibbling on me when I woke up, I think you’re the horny one,” she accused playfully, though the feeling of his finger inside of her was pure sex.

“Oh, I’m horny, alright.  Did you hear me tell you how bad I wanted you just now?”

“Ah, no.  Not live, anyway.”

“Well, Sweetness,” and he sucked the tender flesh of her neck into his mouth while he continued to fondle her breast, “here’s how this went.  I was very rudely awakened by someone going to town on my leg—”

“Someone?”

“You.”

“Rudely?!”

“Hornily.”

“That’s not a word, Steve Johnson.”

“It is now.”  He’d begun rubbing his thumb very slightly over her nipple, knowing it made her crazy to have that part of her body stimulated right now.  She gasped, and he continued.  “Ok, actually, you didn’t go to town on my leg until it somehow got between yours.”

“By mistake, I assume,” she said with far less sleep in her voice, which had been replaced with arousal. 

“Happy accident.  And it got a little wet while you were speaking in Swahili or something.”I wanted to do all kinds of things to you, and that’s about when you woke up.”

“No, that’s when you started kissing my neck.  Then I woke up.”

“Allegedly.”

Kayla glanced at the clock.  Their daughter had just started sleeping through the night.  It was just after 4am, and she knew that they had maybe another hour to get any more sleep, but now the damage was done.  Her arousal was high, and before she knew what she was doing she’d climbed on top of her husband.

Steve squeezed Kayla’s ass with both of his hands and moaned in pleasure when she lowered herself onto his hardened penis.  She leaned forward and supported herself on Steve’s strong chest while rolling her hips back and forth over Steve’s erection.  She wanted that gratification she woke up craving, because her orgasm had already been building in the dream that sent very real pleasure signals to her.  Steve knew his wife so well; knew how much she needed it.  So he didn’t hold back or tease or stall.  He wanted to give the pleasure she was asking for, and he wanted it for himself, too.  He captured her breast in his mouth and let his tongue flick at her nipple.  She started moving much faster, and he knew she’d be shuddering any moment.  So he turned them over, got on his knees, and pulled her roughly into him by her thighs.  “You feel that?”

“I want it back inside me …”

Her whimpers almost did him in.  “I know what you like.”  He lifted her right leg over his shoulder and entered her fast while still holding on to her thighs. “My baby had herself a horny little dream, didn’t she?”  Kayla didn’t answer as she coiled her left leg around Steve’s waist.  But she did whimper with the continued absence of stimulation he’d just been giving to her clitoris before they’d changed positions.  But this was her favorite position, and Steve knew her so well.  “Does my baby need to come?”  She nodded her head and met his thrusts with her rolling hips.  “You love doing it like this, don’t you?”

“Mmm!  Feels so good … “

“Better when I touch you, though,” he rasped.

“The best when you touch me.”  Steve gently rubbed his thumb around her sex while he continued to thrust into her.  “God, Steve!” she whispered loudly.  If she didn’t have to worry about a sleeping baby she would have screamed this instead of whispering it.  “So good!” 

Kayla’s breasts were bouncing with the force of Steve’s thrusts, and the visual combined with her wetness surrounding his cock brought him to the brink.  He wanted to capture those bouncing nipples in his mouth again, but it was the sound of her panting in desperate whimpers that put him over the edge.  Steve turned his face into her calf he held in his hand and kissed the firm muscle already beneath his lips, and Kayla gasped at the eroticism of it.  Steve exploded inside his wife with a loud grunt, and Kayla smiled at the coital pleasure splayed across her husband’s face.  When he opened his eye Steve saw his wife’s flushed face and knew she wasn’t sated yet.  He felt powerful with his cum inside her wet walls and her sex beneath his thumb.  Without pulling out of her, he locked his eye with hers, ground his thumb firmly against her, and then reached for her breast and just as firmly dragged his thumb back and forth over her nipple.  Kayla arched her back and then spasmed hard around his cock still buried deep inside of her.

“There ya go, baby.  I love watching you shake.”

Now Steve collapsed onto his side and brought Kayla in toward him as close as he could get her where she immediately burrowed her head heavily into his chest.  “God, I love when you do that, Sweetness.  Like you can’t get close enough to me.”  Kayla smiled and did it again.  “I love you so much.”  Then he sank down a bit so he could kiss her lips gently.  “Happy Anniversary, baby.”

“Mm,” she cooed.  “Happy Anniversary.”

They were both feeling the intensity of the pleasure deep within them as they laid in each other’s embrace. 

“I don’t believe I was humping you in my sleep.”

“Well … you were gettin’ some in your sleep, that’s for sure, but you didn’t hump me till I shoved my knee between your legs.”

“Truth comes out,” she said sleepily.

“You hump me in your sleep any time you want, baby, I’ll be here to wake you up and give you the real thing.”

“Kayla leaned up on her right elbow and rubbed her fingers lazily over his chest.  “Have I ever done that before?”

Steve thought about it as he felt his nipples harden with her touch.  “Not that I remember, no.  I must be fallin’ down on the job.”

Kayla cocked her head with a you-know-better look before shoving her head back into his neck.  “Now that’s just silly, I’m the most sexually satisfied woman on the planet.”

“Really.  Well, I dunno, baby, I think there’s always room for improvement.”

“Sex with my husband cannot be improved upon. You’re perfect.”

“Uh oh.  Perfect, huh?  Now you’ve really set the bar high.” 

Kayla grinned through the sleepiness starting to overtake her.  “You’re perfect for me.  I love you so much.”

Steve glanced at the clock and vaguely wondered if this counted as the very end of the night or the very first thing in the morning.  He started to ask her, but he was fading fast.  “Sweetness?” he mumbled.

But Kahyla didn’t hear him, she’d already fallen back to sleep with her husband’s essence inside of her and his body beside her.  Steve kissed the top of her head and quickly followed her back into slumber.

When he next awoke Kayla’s side of the bed was empty.  He’d long since gotten over any apprehension when Kayla wasn’t in his vicinity.  They’d hit one year at this destination a month ago, long outstaying what they’d felt at the time was the impossibly long stay of five months in 1979, and as each day went by without a jump and without even thinking about a jump (because they couldn’t face even the thought of it), they’d slipped farther and farther into … normalcy.  The business of living.  Work, diapers, meals, laundry, home maintenance, and filling their cars with gas.  Like any other ordinary family.  So, waking up to an empty bed did not scare him.  He knew she was in the house, he just dind’t know where.

When he quietly padded into Emily’s room, Kayla was deeply connected to her daughter’s gaze and hummed a tune to her as she nursed in the rocking chair.  They didn’t hear him enter, and he didn’t want to disturb this intimate moment between them, but he didn’t want to leave, either.  It was so beautiful he couldn’t tear his gaze away.  He watched them for several moments and painted their picture in his mind, etching it there as permanently as he could.

Kayla felt his presence and calmly looked up.  She smiled, and he smiled back.  Without a word Steve leaned back against the wall and sank down to sit with his arms resting over his knees.  He continued watching for several more minutes while Kayla continued nursing Emily and humming softly to her with the gentle rocking.  When she next looked up Steve’s stare had intensified.  His love for their family was so strong in his gaze it was mesmerizing.  She felt her daughter’s mouth gently suckling her milk as her little baby’s father took them in with his loving eye.  The strength of their bond, this little family, was so tangible Kayla felt almost dizzy.  

“Every time I think I couldn’t possibly love you any more if I tried, I fall even harder.  I feel so connected to you.”  Steve’s voice was so quiet that if she weren’t looking right at him she might not have heard him.  Her lips parted, and her eyes stung.  The love flooded out of her and into her aura that Steve could feel with the energy in the room.  Steve brought his hand to cover his heart, and Kayla tilted her head in silent acknowledgment.  He nodded, then tore his gaze away from them.  “I’m gonna make us some breakfast.”  He went down to the kitchen without another word. 

When Kayla and Emily arrived soon after the aroma hit them hard enough to get Kayla’s mouth to water.  “Wow.  What did you make us?”

“Em, here’s got a jar of strained peaches and rice cereal with her name on it,” he smiled as he took his daughter and kissed her belly.  Emily squealed, and Kayla went to check out what was warming on the stove.

“That doesn’t look like rice cereal,” she said.

“Well that’s ‘cause you’ve just strayed from the kids menu, baby.  What you’re lookin’ at there is on the anniversary menu.”

“I see.  And here I thought you’d already gotten enough of a head start on that anniversary menu that you would be hungry for something else.” 

Steve grinned evily.  “Oh, I’m always hungry.”

Kayla let out a pfft and eyed him sexily. “I’m counting on it.” 

“So, that’s the other anniversary menu,” he cleared his throat, “this is the one with food.”

“Maybe we can combine them.” 

“You tryin’ to start somethin’ here, Sweetness?” he accused.  Steve leaned in and kissed his wife seductively.  Kayla felt his tongue tease along hers, then she pulled away quickly.  “Emily’s right there!”

“She ain’t seein’ nothin’.  You started it.”

Kayla narrowed her eyes, then took Emily and put her in her high chair.  “Hold on a minute, sweet girl, Mama’s gotta thank your daddy for breakfast.”

Then she turned around and wrapped her arms around her husband.  She didn’t kiss him, though, instead she ran her finger lovingly down his patch and held his gaze.  “I love you,” she said seriously. 

“I love you, too, Sweetness,” he said just as solemnly.  They let the heat cool, kissed sweetly, and held each other for a moment before Emily’s happy babble brought them out of their cocoon.

Steve had made eggs, pancakes, and breakfast sausage he’d gotten from the butcher section instead of a box in the freezer section, and it was delicious.  

“I was thinking we should take a little trip somewhere,” Kayla said as she made playful zig zags in the air with the spoon before it reached Emily’s mouth.

Steve took a rather large bite of toast and looked up at her quizzically.  “What kind of trip?”

Kayla held her own fork with her left hand and awkwardly stabbed a sausage with it.  “Somewhere drivable.  Maybe like Chicago or DC or something,” she suggested as she stuck the sausage into her mouth.  “They’re so pretty in the fall.”  Eating your own meal while feeding an infant was like a race to see how much you could shove in your own mouth before baby called time, and this meal was no different.  She swallowed her sausage down quickly before cramming a forkful of eggs into her mouth and gobbling it down. 

“Baaaaaaaaabababaaaaaa!”  Not quickly enough, apparently.

Kayla gave Emily a big smile when her little mouth captured her next spoon full of the orange tinged mush with gusto.  “That’s my sweet Emmy girl there,” Kayla cooed, “that’s my good girl.”

Steve got slightly anxious at this suggestion.  “I dunno, baby, plenty to do here in Salem.”

Kayla got a dubious look on her face at the concept of “plenty” describing the array of things to do in Salem. “I was just thinking about a little change in scenery.”

Steve didn’t want any kind of change in any kind of scenery.  “Zoo’s not cuttin’ it anymore, huh?”

“No, it’s not that.  I just thought it would be nice to go away.”

A thin thread somewhere deep within Steve that he didn’t know was there snapped with that statement.   “I don’t want to go away,” he said very specifically and with a tone that caught her attention immediately.  She froze momentarily as Emily flailed her arms in search of the delicious stuff her mother had suddenly stopped feeding her and looked up at him.  “I mean it.”  Kayla absently finished the spoon’s journey to Emily’s mouth and then put it back down into the bowl.

“What’s wrong?”

“You know what.  Just because we don’t talk about it doesn’t mean it isn’t out there.”

“And just because it’s out there doesn’t mean we should stop living.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Muh!  Muh!  Muh!”  Emily saw the bowl, she saw the spoon, she saw her mother, but she wasn’t seeing any of it come toward her mouth.

“I think you are.”

“No, Kayla, there’s lots of living goin’ on, I just don’t see a reason to leave Salem to do it.”

“Didn’t we go to Hawaii? You went to Greece.”

“That was before.”

Kayla saw that her husband was struggling to keep his voice calm for his daughter during this rare reference to their situation.  “That shouldn’t tie us to Salem, as long as she’s with us.  Taking care of a baby all day is tiring, probably more tiring than what I do at the Emergency Center.  I just … I have three weeks of vacation built up, and I thougth we should take advantage of it, go somewhere, with her, just get away.”

“We are away!” Steve said far too loudly.  He knew he was being harsh, but when he let the oppression of what lay ahead get to him, he lost control.  He wasn’t expecting it to hit at this happy, loving moment, but it did, and now he was struggling to rein it in.  Kayla started out the turn in this conversation looking sympathetic, but now she turned defiant with his last statement.  Emily, however, had a serenity about her in reaction to Steve’s outburst that actually calmed him a little.  She didn’t cry, and she didn’t look scared that her father had just yelled.  Instead she looked calm and almost curious.  Kayla didn’t see it, but Steve did, and he felt immediately pissed off at himself for having yelled like that in front of her.

Kayla, however, was not looking serene.  She was not feeling the least bit curious.  She had now turned a corner to hopping mad.  “Don’t you ever say anything like that to me again like I don’t know who or where we really are.”  Then she threw her fork down onto her plate, pushed her chair back loudly, and stormed out of the kitchen. 

“Sh*t.”

“And watch your damned language in front of the baby!” she hollered back into him.

Steve threw a look over his shoulder from whence Kayla angrily exited, then turned back at his daughter and mocked, “watch my damned language in front of the baby” in a high pitched whisper. 

Emily let out another “muh!” 

Steve took a deep, cleansing breath then took Kayla’s seat across from the high chair, and smiled as Emily kicked out her legs in anticipation of her daddy about to feed her more of the sweet, peachy cereal. 

“I think your Daddy’s in the doghouse, Em.”

They spent the next hour avoiding each other.  Steve cleaned up the kitchen and changed the oil in the car while Kayla did laundry and entertained her four-month-old.  She was upset at Seve’s reaction, but she was also upset at how rattled she’d made him with this suggestion.  Was it too much?  Maybe it was.  Planning anything was at best risky and at worst an exercise in futility.  Yet they had a child.  She was a real live person that needed to be shown the world beyond her four walls, as it were.  They couldn’t lock her away in this tower and protect her from a future they knew would never come, because for all they knew this timeline would continue on just fine without them.  It’s not like there wasn’t a world out there, there was.  And Kayla wanted Emily to experience it.  She wanted to show Emily all the things Joe and Stephanie were seeing and now would again see one day.  Can’t become hermits, Steve, she chided.  Yet she’d hurt him somehow, and that gave her more anxiety than anything else. 

At nearly 9am Kayla put Emily down for her morning nap, then got in the shower.  She let the hot water run over her body and sighed.  With every passing moment she hated the harsh words they’d thrown at each other even more than the moment before. 

Kayla felt his presence before the shower curtain even moved aside.  When it did, she barely registered the relief that ran thorugh her before Steve got in and gathered her naked body to his.  He kissed her temple then held her head to him, embracing her tightly.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he whispered.

Kayla wasted no time melting her entire body into his letting her arms hold him.  “I’m sorry, too,” she whispered back.

“No, I was wrong,”  He kissed her cheek down her neck to her shoulder, then up again.  “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

Kayla slid her soapy hands up and down her husband’s muscular chest, then over his shoulders and down over his naked backside.  “I’m sorry I upset you, I just thought …”

“Shh.”  Steve put his finger to her lips.  “I don’t know what made me snap, Sweetness.”  Then he took a breath and started again.  “Yes, I do.”  Kayla didn’t interrupt, she waited for him to continue while her hands culled loving paths across the rivulets of water running over his back.  “I never think about it anymore, baby.”  He meant jumping away from here and from Emily, but he didn’t need to say so, he knew Kayla would know what he meant, and she did.  “It’s been so long, I never let myself think about it.  It hurts too bad.  And if I let it get to me, I’ll miss that time I coulda been with her being miserable.”  Kayla burrowed into his chest.  “When you talked about leaving Salem it made me think aobut it, and I … I reacted.  I shouldn’t have said any of that.”

“It’s ok.”

Steve kissed her temple again and just felt her body safely against his.  “I’ve always been real good at lashin’ out at you,” he said apologetically.

Kayla looked up at him and kissed him softly.  Then she dropped her head and rested the top of it against Steve’s wet chest.  “You were right, though.  I’ve gotten complacent.  It’s not that I forget where we are, but I sure act like … like it’s not out there.”  Steve lifted her head with a finger beneath her chin.  “I can’t bear it either,” she whispered.

“I know,” Steve said very solemnly.  Then without another word, he lifted Kayla’s leg, bent his knees, and gently thrust himself up into his wife.  “Do you feel how much I love you?”

“Of course, I do,” she sighed, “I feel it all the time.”

“I need you to feel it right now.”  He used the tiled shower he’d backed her up against as leverage and slid in and out of her gently.  Her body felt so immediately good around him.  His emotions were already ramped up; he was going to come quickly.  “I love you, Sweetness.  I’d give anything if it lasted forever, baby, I’d give anything.”

“I would, too, Steve!”  They weren’t talking about their lovemaking, they were talking about this timeline.  They could make Stephanie and Joey at the right times and still get to keep Emily … if only they could stay here …

Steve’s thrusts were so gentle, and Kayla’s loving kisses upon his neck felt like sunlight.  Being connected like this had the needed effect, and by the time they’d found their orgasms they felt the small crack of this spat mend.  But the underlying cause did not and would not just go away.  It was with them every day.

They stood under the hot water and just held each other while their recoveries sent more than one kind of contentment through their bodies.  Eventually Kayla stroked her soapy hands over Steve’s skin, and he smiled.  “Feels good.”

“Good,” she kissed his patch as the water fell over them.

They dried off, dressed, and finished the conversation that started at breakfast.  Steve laid on his back atop their made bed while Kayla sat upright against the headboard beside him folding clean laundry from the basket in front of her.

“I’m sorry I reacted that way, Sweetness.  It’s been so long that sometimes I forget that this isn’t …”  Kayla was afraid he was going to say real, but he didn’t.  “ … permanent.  Then I remember, and I can’t handle it.”

“I know.”  Kayla folded a burp cloth and set it atop the one she’d just folded before it.  “But you know what?” she asked with some enthusiasm.

Steve pulled his right arm to pillow beneath his head and turned to look at her.  “What?”

“It’s our anniversary.  We haven’t gotten to spend that many of these, and I want to enjoy it.  Right here,” she emphasized.  “With you, me, our baby … and the laundry.”  She smiled genuinely, and then she chuckled, though there was something a little off about the chuckle.

“The laundry’s funny?”

“No,” she grabbed a handful of Emily’s onesies, “I was just – ya know, for the amount of times we’ve gotten married, we should have a lot more anniversaries to show for it.”

Steve rubbed Kayla’s knee.  “I think we hold the wedding record now, baby, even if no one else knows it.”

Kayla scrunched her nose in thought and then shook her head.  “Marlena.  She wins.”

“Are you sure?”

“Don, Roman,

“Who’s Don?”

“I didn’t really know him, but I remember when she was first dating Roman, Don was still kind of in the picture.  I don’t know, it was so long ago, now, I was barely older than when we were in 1979, and the memory’s the first to go.”

“I know you’re not implyin’ that you’re old, baby.”

“Not implying it, I’m just saying it.”

“My baby’s ageless.”

Kayla smirked; her good humor was back.  “Anyway, then there were a bunch of weddings to John when he was Roman and John again, remember?”

“Uh …” 

“And way back before I met her there was a guy, I think.”

“Yeah, I’m already lost, baby, but what I meant was how many people do you know that married each other five times.”

Kayla rolled her eyes and shot him a look that said oh here we go again.  “Three.”

“Oh come on, you’re breakin’ my heart, Sweetness.”

“We’ve talked about this, Steve, it was three.  Four if you count kneeling in the snow.”

“Yeah, I count that,” he said indignantly.

“Ok, you’re right,” she cocked her head apologetically.  “Four.”

“Five.”

Kayla threw a onesie at him and it landed square across his face.  “I told you, that one doesn’t count.”

“Oh, yes it does,” he said from under the onesie.  Kayla let out a guffaw at the visual of her husband continuing to speak with a tiny piece of clothing moving with his lips.  “I don’t know what’s so funny, baby, I take all five of our weddings very seriously.”

“Steve,” Kayla chuckled, grabbing the onesie off of Steve’s slyly smiling face.

Kayla smiled back at her husband and got kind of wistful.  “We may have married each other more than once, but we never had to divorce to do it.  In our hearts we got married just one time.  July 25^th is the date I kind of think of  as our real wedding,” she said. 

Steve nodded.  “Yeah, that’s the one I always think of when I think of our anniversary.”  He was silent for a moment, and Kayla could see him mentally rolling the others around in his head.  “But it is five, Sweetness.”  She rolled her eyes, and Steve sat up cross-legged on the bed to face her.  When he next spoke, he was less playful.  “It bothers me when you write that day off.”  Kayla looked up at this honest statement.  “It was a bad day, I know.  But I wanted us to be married so bad it hurt.  I couldn’t stand one minute of not legally being your husband.  And you had our baby inside of you, and I wanted us to be married when she got here.  We didn’t make it through the ceremony; nice of Abe and your brother,” he said, this time with bitterness to the honesty, clearly directed at them.  “But don’t just dismiss it; it’s real for me whether we got pronounced man and wife or not.”

Kayla felt bad and realized Steve was right.  That day counted.  Her head was not her own that day, and it was a terrible time in their lives … but that day was genuine.  Its intent was real.  It was real.  And it counted. 

“I’m sorry,” she said softly as she took his hand.  Steve played with her fingers before smiling sadly.  “You’re right.  Five times, not three.  That day counts, the time just the two of us counts, and … September 5^th will always count, too.”

“Thank you, Sweetness,” he palmed her face.  After a small silence, Kayla folded tiny pairs of socks into balls. 

“So,” she said with a light in her eyes, “which is your favorite?”

“Aw, come on, baby, how am I gonna choose that?”

“You made me pick my favorite time we made love, I think this is fair.”

“I’m not pickin’.”

“Out with it.”

Steve adjusted his patch and sighed.  “I don’t want you to be mad.”

She dropped little pair of socks into the basket.  “Why would I be mad?”

“’Cause it’s selfish.  But this one’s my favorite.  If I have to choose one, then it’s this one.”

Kayla readjusted her position so that she was now facing him cross-legged.  They sat this way so often these days, it was close and intimate and comfortable.  Unexpectedly, the choice of this wedding and not July 25^th ceremony on the yacht, had the very smallest little sting to it.  She wasn’t mad, though.  And she definitely didn’t agree that it was selfish.  She asked him why he felt that way, though she had a feeling she knew.

“Because it’s all about me.  Fixing my own f*ck up.”

“I’m the one that married him.  Pretty big f*ck up of my own.”  It wasn’t the first time she’d reminded him of that.

“Kayla,” he sighed frustratedly, mostly at himself, “it was my last chance.  You gave me one more chance that I didn’t deserve any more then than I did the first six or seven times you gave me one more chance –”

“Well, obviously, it was not your very last chance, because here we are, together and happy.”

“I am happy, Sweetness. You make me so happy.  Being Emily’s papa makes me so happy.  But that’s what I’m sayin’.  You gave me one more chance to keep you, and instead I broke your heart again.  September 5^th was the worst day of my life for a long time.  The day I really let you go.”  Suddenly Steve straightened and his face brightened as the smile spread across it.  “Now it’s the day you came to me on that pier and told me I gave you dreams that you didn’t even know you had.  It’s the day exactly one year ago that I married you like I should have.  Like I was supposed to.  Got everything—everyone … I’d thrown away.”

Kayla wanted to snuggle up into him, but if she did she wouldn’t be able to see his face, and she couldn’t look away from it.  From the sincerity in it.  It was one of the many times she saw her 2009 husband’s essence looking at her from his 1988 body, and it never failed to awe her.  “I always believed it was our fate waiting for us.  That we finally found.”

“It was, Sweetness.  And look at that baby in there, this house, our lives.  This is what I could have had, Kayla.  I didn’t know how much I wanted it then.  But when it was gone, I was lost.”  Kayla stroked her fingers over his face and through his hair.  “That’s why it’s selfish.”

Kayla took Steve’s hand and placed his palm on her cheek.  “I’m not mad,” she whispered.  “I think the minister was, though,” she smirked.

Steve guffawed.  “I thought he was gonna walk out on us with all those audibles we were callin’.”  Kayla smiled so brightly at her husband’s demeanor before moving in for a not so chaste kiss.

“Mmm,” Steve licked his lips, “what was that for?”

“I love seeing you happy,” Kayla said as she wiped his bottom lip with her thumb.  “I love seeing you be a father.  I can’t tell you what it does to me to watch you with her, it makes me feel like my heart is going to burst out of my chest.” 

Steve’s own heart beat hard at just the sound of that statement.  “I know I was never the type, Sweetness, but I love staying home and being with her.  I love being her papa.”

“You were always the type,” Kayla corrected him before she got a slightly haughty look on her face.  “I think it must be some kind of survival of the fittest thing, ‘cause watching you be such a good father is incredibly sexy.”

Now Steve’s expression turned.  “Papa really loves when mama comes home at night.  Loves it a whole lot.”  He moved the basket filled with Emily’s clean and folded laundry to the floor, then leaned onto his hands and knees and crawled into his wife’s personal space.  She smiled and used her arms to move herself back a bit, but then smiled wickedly and gave up, letting him push her down onto her back so he could crawl squarely on top of her.  “How long ‘til you think our little NFL kicker is done with nap?”

Kayla rubbed up against him and smiled lasciviously.  “So soon?”

“Oh yeah.”

“We just did it.  Twice.  How are you hard again?”

Steve kissed her hotly.  “First of all, we just did it once, the other time was like six hours ago.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”  Then he kissed her again.  “Second of all, do you not remember our honeymoon?  Either of them?  How can you not know by now that I can get hard for you without even trying.  I think I’m offended.”

“You’re right, I did offend you.”  Those careful-what-you-wish-for eyes were mesmerizing him.  “Better punish me.”

“I like punishing you.”

Steve lifted up Kayla’s shirt and unhooked the flap of her nursing bra, then flicked her nipple with his tongue.  She arched her back and sucked in air.  It felt good, and her eyes widened with the sensations upon her sensitive tip. “I doubt we have more than ten more minutes, it’s been almost an hour.”

Then right on cue Emily started babbling. 

“Oh, thank god, my boobs are killing me.”  Kayla slipped out from under her husband and headed in to get Emily. 

“I could have helped you with that!” he called after her in disappointment that he clearly didn’t mean.

Kayla poked her head back in.  “Oh right, thanks for giving me a head start!” she snarked pointing at the unfastened fabric of the nursing bra before darting back out.

“Laugh it up, Sweetness, I’ve still got some punishing to do!”

“Kayla slowly moved her head back in from the other side of the bedroom door, the look on her face very serious.  Too serious; it was the anti-serious.  “I’m counting on it.”  It was a clear challenge. 

It was Labor Day, so they headed out to the beach as soon as Emily was fed.  It was the last day the beach would be open for the season on this perfect 82-degree day, so the entirety of Salem seemed to have the same idea.  They staked out a little spot in the sand, brought Emily into the water with them, and reveled in how she giggled.  Nothing fazed this baby.  Everything was interesting, every stimulus caught her attention, and there was nothing she didn’t want to touch.  They picked up a few pieces of smooth beach glass and let her hold on to them in her firm little grip.  Kayla held her daughter against her and reached her hand up to delicately finger the precious shell that hung around Steve’s neck. 

“I love that you wear this,” Kayla said sweetly.

“I love that you wear this,” he repeated doing the same with the anchor that similarly hung around her own slender neck.  “I’m your anchor, and you’re mine.”

“Forever,” 

Kayla had only removed her beautiful gold anchor when she was in labor, but once Kayla had put Steve’s around his neck, he hadn’t once taken it off.  It represented so much to him.  Both necklaces did, and of course, their wedding rings did, as well.  But this shell hanging on the soft leather strap wasn’t just Kayla’s heart, it was the result of something so raw and so intense that it was the absolute embodiment of their souls.  The casting out of their blights with all the other shells in Kayla’s hand left only this one around his neck for the purity of her love for him and his for her.  It was almost like a life force to him, and he would not take this necklace off.  Steve smiled at her, and they kissed sweetly with their baby between them. 

They were such a beautiful family picture to everyone around them. Because their love alit all three of them from within.  The noon-day sun reflecting off the water and onto Emily’s hair, bringing out the bright blonde highlights in the unique strawberry shade only helped.

Steve watched Kayla continue to play with their daughter after he’d gone back to dry off, and he thanked God for such a special girl and the mother who brought her into the world.  Kayla locked eyes with Emily and not for the first time felt sure that the little girl had wisdom so far beyond her four months of age.  Her actions were nothing but baby, but an incredibly old and sage soul lived behind those eyes.  Kayla looked up at Steve, and it was clear that he was drinking them in. It made her feel such warmth and rightness to have her daughter and husband look at her in the ways they were. 

“I love you, Emily.  Do you know that?”  The baby kicked her legs at the water.  “You know you’re special, don’t you?”  More kicking, and Kayla chuckled.  “Yep, your daddy might be right about that football thing.  But you really do know it, I can tell.  On the inside, deep down in that cosmic subconscious of yours that came to me in my dreams, you know that there’s never been another baby like you born in the history of time.  Now I know what you’re thinking, that Mommy’s being a little over-dramatic.  But you’ll see.  You’ll read all about it when you’re old enough.”  Kayla didn’t shed any tears. She just looked into her daughter’s eyes, and delighted in her smile.  When Kayla looked back up again, Steve’s expression had changed to a whole different kind of appreciation.  “Uh oh, Em.  I know that look Daddy has on his face.”

It was a look of blatant desire.  They’d started the day early.  She could still feel the sex they’d had twice that day mildly radiating pleasantly inside of her.  But there was just something aobut this day and the way her husband was undeniably undressing her like he’d never find satisfaction that made her own desire hard to abate.  She knew it had to do with this being their anniversary and all the things they’d done that night after he’d so reverently taken her wedding dress off of her.  She loved how Steve was looking at her.  Like he was captivated by the sunlight on her tanned skin and sun-kissed hair.  Like he’d looked at her every single day in the Orient and in Hawaii and on any random day throughout their marriage.  Like he hadn’t just been sated by her that day.  Like he’d become a complete and utter horndog.

I’m gonna do so many naughty things to you.

Steve’s lips dind’t move, but she heard him say it in her mind plain as day.  There were quite a lot of people around, so he couldn’t succumb to the steel rod his penis wanted to become while in his swim trunks, so he fought his libido into flaccidity.  But thoughts of Hawaii made it that much harder to control himself. 

“Got something on your mind Mr. Johnson?” Kayla asked innocently as she plopped herself down and started drying off the baby. 

“Just enjoying the view.  Thinking of Hawaii.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.  Thinking of things like … long, hard things … like long plane rides that were hard to behave on.”  Then he very suggestively stuck the tip of his forefinger in his mouth as if he were licking something off of it.  Kayla turned half-lidded eyes on him.  “And bikinis.”

“That bikini was a one-trip use only, I’m afraid.  I’d spill right out of that with these boobs.  Still have a little pooch, too.”

Steve leaned in over the baby for a kiss, then whispered in her ear, “Your body is perfect.  I can just look at you and get horny.”  Then he dropped a kiss full of promise behind her ear and pulled back.  The look in her eye told him everything he needed to know before she very quickly replaced her aroused expression with an ordinary one.

But Kayla felt liquid heat between her legs.  “Good thing my bathing suit is already wet,” she said in a very non-chalant voice as if she were commenting on lunch.  Then she licked her lips and broke into a self-satisfied smile when she heard Steve grunt in discomfort.  The ride home was a struggle for them both as they groped each other much less than their libidos wanted of them while their daughter was awake in the backseat.  Steve set in on trying to devour his wife immediately upon putting Emily down for a nap, but Kayla put him off until she washed the River off of herself.  He tried to protest as she got into the shower for the second time in just a few hours.

“Steve, come on, you’ve got to be kidding, I’ve got the river all over me, here.”

“You smell ok to me,” he complained.

“You only waded up to you your knees, but I still have sand all over rme, so you’re gonna have to wait.”

It was more than worth that wait.  She came to him wet inside and out and wasted no time mounting him.  She took his rigid flesh inside of her and rode him hard and fast.  Sex for the third time that day burned hot and quick.  They laid in a tangle of arms, legs, kisses, and stroking fingers while their recoveries flowed warmth through their bodies. 

“Feel good, baby?”

“You always make me feel good.”

They slept for the rest of their daughter’s nap, and only awoke when her happy babble came through the monitor to fill the room. 

The fourth time Steve entered his wife that day was when they were in the kitchen.  Kayla was getting a jar of carrots ready for Emily while Steve played her the harmonica in her swing.  Suddenly the reedy melody stopped, and all she heard ws the crank of the swing.  She knew he was there behind her without even turning around.  Steve hadn’t intended on having more sex at that moment, but he just couldn’t seem to get enough of it today, especially when he saw her sexy hips swaying to the tune she continued to sing in her head when he’d stopped playing it on his harp.  It’s not that he got hard every time he saw Kayla, but today it seemed to be his normal resting state to need to bury himself inside of her.  She turned her head slightly and saw him out of her peripheral vision and smiled.  Steve slowly leaned the length of his body against the back of his wife, slid his hands up under her t-shirt, and fondled both of her breasts. They were so warm, he had to lick them or he’d go mad.  He lifted the shirt up over her head, unhooked her bra and dropped it where they stood, then replaced his hands where they’d been.  “I can’t keep my hands off you today, Sweetness,” he said in low, velvety tones as he trailed wet kisses across her upper back.

“You are one horny man.” 

“I see you and I want you so bad.”  He took pleasure in grinding his erection against her bottom and took more pleasure in it when she pushed back against him in encouragement.  “Maybe it’s our anniversary, remembering all that sex we had on our wedding night and in Hawaii, ‘cause something’s come over me.  I keep staying hard for you.”  Kayla reacted to that, and Steve got a confident, almost superior look on his face when she did.  “Like that, baby?” he said with so much sexual haughtiness.  “When I tell you I’m hard for you?” Kayla nodded, her big blue eyes filling with the arousal that he was now feeling in her center as his hand reached down into her shorts so his fingers could plunder her.  “You like it when I tell you you make me hard?” 

“You know I do.”

“And when I touch you?”  Kayla nodded.  Steve unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them down over his ass.  Kayla unbuttoned her shorts, and Steve pushed them down, too.  Then he replaced his fingers.  “You like it when I touch you, don’t you, baby?” he teased.

“Yes,” she hissed.  “God, yes.”

“Remember our wedding night?” Steve asked as he entered her from behind.  She gasped and nodded as she gripped the counter, the fullness feeling so good.  “Remember how we made each other scream?”

“We can’t scream now,” she replied breathily.

“Oh, you’re gonna scream.”  He thrust a little faster now, knowing this one had to be quick.  “Tonight you’ll see how I make you scream.”  Then he reached around and flilcked her clitoris as he continued to thrust into her from behind.

Kayla’s sensitive bundle of nerves was very responsive now with this fourth time her husband brought his loving stimulation to it.  Her orgasm built very rapidly, and she was breathing hard.

“No way … I’m gonna come again!” she whimpered.

“Way, baby.  Because I love you, and that’s just how good I wanna make you feel, Sweetness.  I’m gonna make it happen tonight, too, you’ll see.”  He continued rubbing slick circles around her clit as he pumped fast strokes in and out of her. 

Kayla started to whimper.  “Are you tr—trying to br-break our re-record?” she huffed.  Kayla arched back and reached her hand to wrap in Steve’s hair, which let him see more of her face.  But it wasn’t enough.  He wanted to watch her pleasure.  Here in the broad daylight of the kitchen, he wanted to see her face when the pleasure took her.  So Steve quickly pulled out of her and turned her around. 

“I need to come!” she whispered loudly.

He leaned her onto the tabletop finally tasting her breasts, moaning into them softly, and entered her again.  “Go on,” he encouraged with panting huffs.  “I want to watch you.”

“Oh, Steve!  Ah … ah …”  She grabbed his hand that had been working her sex so that he would continue.  As soon as his finger flicked it she started to come.  Her first spasm felt so good she wanted a thousand more.  “There!  There!  Mmm!”

“Not too loud, Sweetness,” he warned in deceptive composure, as his orgasm was ready to take him..

“St—Steve … Oh … yes, yes!”

Finally Steve kissed her with wild passion and felt her full orgasm overtake her.  Her entire body contracted with her climax, making her moan hotly as his tongue stroked hers.  She clutched on to him very tightly as she shook, and Steve’s heart about burst out of his chest wth the intensity of her need for him.  And it was definitely need he felt flow through her as she held on to him with so much love-fueled pleasure coursing through her.  “Don’t let go, Kayla,” he barely whispered.  “I love this.”

“Mmm,” Kayla cooed as her hips continued to buck.  When her vagina stopped pulsing she pulled back to look at Steve.  His eye was so bright. He pulled her into a standing position so they could embrace.

Kayla was still holding on to her husband, her breasts brushing up against him.  The feel of his t-shirt against her very stimulated nipples was too much, and she arched her back with the over-stimulation.  Then she felt the telltale tingle in both her nipples hit, and before she could stop it, she’d leaked milk from both of them, getting Steve a whole different kind of wet. “Sorry,” she groaned with a bit of a knowing giggle; this had happened before with Joey several times, and now with Emily, too, who had begun a stream of some kind of chatter out there in the livingroom as her swing began slowing down.  But Steve’s loving attention was fully riveted on his wife’s filling breasts.  He palmed her left breast leaking the sustenance that fed his daughter, would one day feed his son, and was cheated out of feeding his first born as more milk leaked onto his fingers.  It wasn’t a sexual act, it was one that put him in awe of this beautiful woman and everything she’d given him.  What her body was able to give him.  Love, children, unconditional devotion.  Kayla looked on curiously as Steve rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, feeling the milk in them.  When he looked back up at her, Kayla knew he was feeling deeply emotional.

“Thank you for my beautiful son and daughters, Sweetness.”  Steve held her wet breast in his hand, feeling the weight of it, the depth of his love intense.  It felt like it had come out of nowhere, but his reverence was profound in this moment. 

“Thank you for giving them to me,” she said with a gentle voice that tugged at Steve’s heart just to hear it. 

They locked eyes for several more moments, then they kissed sweetly.  Steve pulled out of the kiss and then said, “I’ll never get tired of you.”

Kayla lifted up on her tip toes and very tenderly kissed Steve’s scar.  Unshed tears watered in his eye when he felt her lips touch him there, and he didn’t really know why.  She lingered, and their energy flowed as one for that moment. 

Kayla rubbed her hands up and down Steve’s saturated t-shirt, then lifted it up off of him.  She wiped off his fingers with it and said, “More laundry.”

Steve chuckled, then quickly dried off his chest so he could get back to Emily with the carrots.  On his way out he winked at her and said, “Next time I’ll be making you scream.”

Kayla glared.  “Steven Earl Johnson—”

“Uh-oh.”

“—You are trying to break our record, aren’t you.”

“Maybe.”

“How are we supposed to do this three more times today?”

“Steve leered at her, grabbed the jar of carrots, and headed out to his daughter.  “Glad to see you’re payin’ attention, Sweetness.”  Then he backed out of the kitchen.

“I think it’s your turn for a second shower,” she called out to him.

“Yeah, you keep getting’ me wet!”

The rest of the day went by fast.  Kayla sat at the dining room table and paid bills, Steve did more laundry and they both took turns with Emily for tummy time, which was one of the few things she didn’t really like very much.  Hope, Adrienne, Jo, Marcus, and Caroline all called to wish them a happy first anniversary.  They all asked who was watching the baby while they went out to enjoy their night, and all of them but Hope reacted with the same tight-lipped disappointment when they said no one and that they’d be spending the night together. 

“Hard to separate at this stage, I know,” Hope had said with understanding. 

“Yes!  Thank you for saying that, Hope, because the family doesn’t seem to understand.  She’s only four months old, and I’m breast-feeding, I can’t just leave her so I can have dinner somewhere.”  And we’re never every leaving her without one of us there, because we’re from the future.   This was, of coruse, the main reason, which she did not say out loud.

“Are you getting time with each other?  Alone time?”  I don’t just mean sex,” she said boldly.  “I mean are you able to be with each other and be Kayla and Steve the married couple and not solely Emily’s parents.  For just a while each day?”

If she only knew how much sex they’d already had this day, not to mention how much time they’d had to be so very much together since they’d last gone to sleep in 2009, Hope would have answered her own question.  “Yes, we really do.”

“Then you’re fine, Kay,” she smiled into the long distance phone call they were making from a port in the Mediterranean.”

“Tell that to everyone else, they think we’re nuts.”

“That falls under the category of none of their business,” Hope said.  There were special circumstances, here, that was true.  But Emily really did feel too young to separate from for the evening, especially with Kayla breast-feeding her and needing to do that on a regular schedule that her breasts were in charge of.  “Oh, Kayla, I can’t wait to meet her.”  In that moment, however, Kayla wished she could tell Hope the other reason she and Steve wouldn’t be parting with Emily this or any other night.  But she kept it to herself and felt better for talking through it anyway.

They had originally intended on going out for dinner, but the more sex they had, the more sex they wanted and, therefore, saw going out for dinner as wasted time in the car.  So, they had a light dinner in the house instead.  Even so, they didn’t have a whole lot of opportunity to make good on a fifth, sixth, or seventh sexcapade since their tryst in the kitchen.  Kayla did the dishes and when she came out, Steve was watching Monday Night Football with Emily in one strong arm.  As always, she was very alert and seemed to be paying real attention to Steve’s explanation of the game.

“Now you see that man right there, Em?  That man’s called the kicker.  He’s on the Washington Redskins, so they’re the bad guys.  They’re all the bad guys unless they’re wearing blue and orange, ok?  Now this guy’s a poseur compared to Kevin Butler, but we can learn all about him when the Bears play on Sunday.  First, you have to remember that all games hinge on what this guy does.  If he misses a kick it could mean the whole game.”  Kayla smiled and plopped down beside them.  “Looks like your Mama’s gonna join us for the game, my Littlest Girl.”

“Yes, Mama wants to see a homerun!”

Steve shot her a look.  “You’re messin’ with me, right?”

“Yes,” Kayla assured him as she opened a board book.  “Babies,” she read the book title in a voice Emily reacted to with a smile, “by Gyo Fujikawa.”  Kayla read through the book as Emily gripped the stiff pages and tried them each out as something to gnaw on, and Kayla let her.  “No well-loved book hasn’t been covered in baby drool,” she cooed.  That got a chuckle out of Steve, but then he followed it up with a suddenly sour look on his face.

“Aw man,” he said.

“What?”

“That’s Maury Buford.”

“Who?”  There was a New York Giant player running onto the field as a throng of Redskins ran off. 

“Bears punter.  I forgot he got traded.  Used to be on the Super Bowl team.  Damn.”

Kayla rolled her eyes, but it wasn’t genuine.  In reality, she loved the way Steve enjoyed the simple act of watching a football game.  A game that had already been played but that was like new to him anyway as he enjoyed it again.  Or not with poor Maury Buford receiving the scowl now plastered across her husband’s face.

Kayla took Emily onto her lap and sat with her back against the armrest as she fed her.  They watched the game together, and eventually she swung her feet up into Steve’s lap for him to rub them – a familiar position they often found themselves in; it did not escape them that this was not something they did in 2009, but it was something they did quite often in 1979.  The only things missing were the textbooks, which had now been replaced with a baby and her board books.

“So, he was traded the first time, too?”

Steve smirked.  “Yeah, apparently we didn’t use our powers to keep him from being traded.”

“Real funny,” she said as she disengaged her daughter, whose belly was now full.  “You know, so much has changed already, I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire NFL was turned on its ear.”

“Think so, do ya?” he said as he rubbed his thumb against the bottom of Kayla’s foot.

“Well, we seem to have stopped a serial killer, so the NFL seems like an easy one.”

Steve raised an eyebrow and looked at her sideways.  This was a 180 kind of statement coming from his wife, and he was surprised.  “I thought you were waiting for that shoe to drop.”

Kayla shrugged.  “I am,” she sighed.  “Wishful thinking, I guess.”

The absence of the Riverfront Knifer from having shown up as originally scheduled earlier this year was something they thought long and hard about on not just one occasion but several, and they still hadn’t come to a real decision on what to do about it.  Neither of them were convinced that Harper wouldn’t manifest his insanity, so every week that went by without a murder was a puzzlement to them.  It should have been good news – a relief; but it wasn’t, because there was no actual resolution, and the reality of it was hard for them to sort through.  They’d long ago stopped trying to figure out where everyone was supposed to be, and they’d really stopped trying to manipulate what had happened the first time into happening this time.  Like trying to hook up Jack with Jennifer a little early.  She was still with Frankie, and he wasn’t saying boo yet about being this von Leuschner guy that Kayla had told Steve all about.  Jack really wanted little to do with Steve, because he was still hung up on Kayla.  So they were both swimming a wide path around him and let all that lie.  They stayed out of a lot of people’s lives around them, because even though those people were so important to them, they had just one priority during this jump.  A singular focus in their lives.  Their daughter.  Everyone else was still noise right now and would have to remain that way.  Unless they were impacting Steve and Kayla directly they were being passed over on this never-ending buffet like extraneous side dishes. 

But stopping a serial killer?  That was serious.  In their rightful timeline it completely impacted them, he tried to kill Kayla, and then he tried to kill her a second and third time.  Here Harper didn’t have the same reason to want her dead … but who was to say he wouldn’t think of another one?  So, it was in their best interest to stop him, only the first death was months and months late.  So the decision on what to do about him was tough.  They talked about warning someone.  It sounded so obvious to just write an anonymous letter to the Salem PD to tip them off.  It was easy to do almost anything undetected in this age just before the technology revolution made being anonymous almost impossible.  Warning people was easy; not being taken for completely and utterly mad was what was hard.  An anonymous letter of any kind accusing a respected US senator of being a serial killer of people who hadn’t even died yet was nothing short of lunacy.  It was the stuff of science fiction and Tom Cruise movies that hadn’t been made yet.  It was impossible to prove – the man hadn’t actually killed anyone yet.  They’d poured over newspapers in Salem, Chicago, and Washington, DC, places he was known to be, looking for news of murders of young women.  Nothing appeared to fit his MO, meaning there was nothing they could even point the cops to look into. It would merely be a random accusatory raving of unknown origin.  This was before 9/11.  Before ricin attacks, even before the heinous domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City.  And a letter like this was going nowhere but the round file fast.

Steve looked to Kayla and saw where her mind was going before she even opened her mouth.  “Baby, come on, not again.”

“It’s not so crazy,” she insisted.

“Speaking up?  Out loud?  As ourselves?  Yes, Kayla, it is, it’s crazy.”

“Why?”

“Sweetness, come on, there’s no pause button on this remote,” he whined.

“You just told me not an hour ago that you were about to go watch the Giants lose, so you know how it turns out.”

“Ok, so you want to go over it again, fine, we’ll go over it again.  Way I see it we got three options.  We can tell Shane, Abe, or the man currently calling himself Roman.  None of those are gonna work out very well.”

“We don’t know that,” she said without much conviction.  Steve was even less convinced and looked at her like she’d lost her mind.

“You can’t be serious.” 

“Well, I think you’re right about an anonymous tip being ignored, so what else are we supposed to do?”  Kayla was gently rubbing her palm over her daughter’s tiny back and giving her light but firm taps to get a burp out of her. 

“I dunnno, maybe we just wait it out,” Steve said with the same conviction that Kayla had spoken with.  Which was to say, not too much.

Kayla’s mood turned “Wait it out?  Wait for what, someone to die?”

Slight pause.  “Maybe?”  Kayla shot a look at her husband that he rarely saw these days; disappointment.  “Don’t look at me like that, baby, I’m graspin’ at straws same as you.”

Her face softened.  “Sorry.”  Kayla rubbed at the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath, then went back to rubbing circles lower on Emily’s back. 

“It’s not like I want anyone to die.”

“Or course, you don’t.” 

“I’m just sayin’ no one has yet, so maybe they won’t.”

That burp was taking its sweet time, and Kayla toyed with the idea of patting a little harder but then thought better of it.  Instead she nudged Steve’s hand with her toes hoping to get more more rubbing.  She splayed a thoughtful look across her face trying to remember these details again.

“Janice Barnes was the first, and I don’t remember a thing about that.  I should, but I was wrapped up in Jack’s trial.  Eve was next, though she lived.”

“Never liked her.”

“Yes, well, you won’t like her now, either, she’s trying to break up Jen and Frankie.  Saw her at the fish market the other day when Frankie was working behind the counter.  She’s somethin’ else, that one.”

“She was trying to make Frankie like her the first time, too.”  Then Steve stopped very abruptly and shook his head of this line of discussion.  “Nope!  Nuh-uh, baby, this is exactly the kind of thing we can’t get all wrapped up in.” 

He was right, and Kayla wanted to slap her forehead.  How did they get there?  They may not be solid on what to do about Harper Deveraux, but on the subject of where-are-they-now with the people in their lives they were 100% agreed; it was a game they were not going to be playing.

“Now, we’ve been over this a million times, about that psycho, baby, and neither one of us wanna go over it a million and one.”  He was starting to get a bit short, and Kayla was reacting by getting a bit frustrated.  “Kayla.  You know he’s nuts, I know he’s nuts, but dude hasn’t killed anyone yet.  It’s all changed now, baby.  Maybe we should worry about this, but we still don’t know the right thing to do about it, so it’s best to just wait it out.”  He threw up his hand and watched the Redskins score after a drive that marched them right up the field with one stellar running play after the next.

Kayla continued alternately rubbing Emily’s back and patting it gently trying to get the bubble up out of her tummy.  “When Steve next looked at her, she relented.  “Ok, I give.  You’re right, we have no good options.  It’s just that I experienced him first hand, and I don’t believe he’s not going to start killing people and wish there was something we could do to stop it.”

“So … we stick with the original plan?”

Kayla exhailed heavily.  “Yeah.”  Clearly she was not convinced, but no alternative out there was acceptable when you got right down to it, and that was because this was something that had no right answer.  Anonymous notes that would go nowhere or coming out and saying it outright that would lose them credibility or waiting for someone to die were all equally bad options.  The truth was that they really had been over this a million times, and they were just so tired of this conversation.  All it did was distract them from the business of being happy with the time they had. 

Just then Emily let out a burp that was nothing short of a belch, and her dinner and all the breastmilk came up with it.  Kayla had the burp cloth ready for it and salvaged her own outfit, the baby’s outfit, and the couch in one fell swoop.  Emily squealed her delight at the contented feeling of relief in her belly and kicked out her legs again with a big, gummy smile.

“Oh-oh!” Kayla said with a grin.  “Oh-oh!”  Steve grinned and felt a sudden ironly settle over him.   Kayla watched her husband’s features change as she wiped the spit up from Emily’s face.  “You ok?”

Steve took the spit-up infused burp cloth and kissed both their heads.  “Fatherhood scared the crap out of me 21 years ago right now.”  Kayla smiled.  “Now it’s all I want.”  Steve always managed to say things that turned his wife into goo, and now was no different.  He gave her a knowing glance.  He knew he affected her, and he liked it.  He didn’t set out to do that, he was being honest with that statement.  But knowing how he affected her filled him with manly pride.

Steve very domestically stuck another load of laundry into the washing machine before joining Kayla upstairs where she had started Emily’s bath.  They got her ready for bed, and placed her in her crib.  The fussy time period was wrapping up, but sleeping through the night was pretty new for her, so she still protested when she saw her day was done.  Kayla kissed her daughter goodnight and stared into her green eyes that were the exact replica of her father’s.  “You’re all that really matters,” she whispered.  “You know that, Emmy girl?” 

“She is, ya know,” Steve said as he palmed his hand, huge in comparison, over her warm, little head and kissed it.  Then he kissed her little baby hand that was attached to her little baby arm that was gripping his finger tightly even as her eyes were closing.  “Her and that special teams position the Bears are gonna give her one day.”  Kayla chuckled, they turned on the monitor, and retreated across the hall to their room.

The first thing they did was cut through the snippy conversation they’d previously paused.  Steve sat on the bed and Kayla walked right up to the edge of it so that his knees straddled her as she stood.  She ran her fingers through Steve’s hair before letting him take both of her hands in his.  “Baby,” he said mildly, “I just don’t wanna waste our energy.”

“Ok,” she said as she squeezed his hands, “you know what, you’re right.  We agreed not to try to force things and just let them do whatever they were going do or we’d go nuts.  I know you are, you’re right.  I’m just – I know what he’s capable of, and I can’t believe he’s not biding his time.  So … humor me, ok?  This is the very last time I’ll say it, I promise.”

“Ok, Sweetness, go ahead,” he sighed.

“Bottom line, what’s the worst thing that could happen if we go to Shane.  ROMAN I mean.  Even if he thinks we’re crazy, Roman’s my brother, he would—”

“Come here.”  Steve was still back on her rapid replacement of Shane with Roman.  He took Kayla by the elbow and pulled her down to sit next to him on the bed.  She sat down gingerly and looked at him carefully, relaxing, however, when he gently rubbed her arm.  They were now about to have a different conversation.  “Sweetness.  You didn’t really mean Roman, you meant Shane.  You can say his name.”  Kayla looked down into her lap.  Steve lifted her chin back up with his finger.  “I can’t take that every time we have to cross his path you get tense and worry how I’m going to react.”

“I-I-I’m not doing that, I’m just—”

“Kayla, stop.  You know damn well that you do that.  I am past Shane, remember?” he held the shell at his neck meaningfully in his fingers.  “No, we’re never going to be the friends we used to.  But have you noticed that he’s married to your sister and we end up seeing them a lot?  They were just here the other day, and I had a whole, civil conversation with him.”  Kayla smiled shyly.  “They’re hard to avoid.  Now, next time you gotta say his name, I need you to just say it and not feel this thing going on inside you when you do.”

Kayla’s heart felt warm with love.  “Why are you so good to me?”

“Must be the great sex.”

Kayla laughed.  “Must be.”  She licked her lips and tousled her husband’s hair lightly.  “Ok, so … what if we did just go to Shane – or even Roman and Abe – and we say, look, we have information that you don’t have, we can’t tell you where it came from, but Harper Deveraux is a killer, then let them figure out how to get the right warrants?”  She was dead serious.  It sounded ludicrous on paper, but nothing was amusing about this conversation.

“Because, baby, we’re not the thought police.”

“But what if we told them why?  We just tell them everything.   That Jack is your brother and Harper is obsessed with keeping his adoption a secret and he’s got a pattern, we could tell them about the poisoning.”

“Baby, you weren’t poisoned here, that all changed when you changed things the minute you jumped in here.” 

“Damn.”

“No, not damn, I never wanna go through that again.  But we don’t have that to point to for a pattern anymore.  And even coming from you, Roman has always been a by the book guy.  Both Romans. You know that as well as I do.  Shane bends rules, but Roman?  He’ll be a tougher sell.”

“Ok, Shane then.”  She said it with more confidence, and Steve grinned slightly.

“They’re all connected, baby, it doesn’t really matter who we tell, I just don’t see us doin’ anything but spinnin’ our wheels. 

Steve softly rubbed his wife’s thigh.  Nothing was more important in this timeline than his girls.  He wanted to get Harper Deveraux behind bars before he killed anyone here, but the image of Kayla and Emily in the water today played in his mind.  They were his priority; and to him, that meant not exerting energy that was risky at best to get them anywhere. 

“Sweetness, I don’t know the right answer.”

“Neither do I.  I wish we had a rule book to help us instead of being the ones to write the thing from scratch.  It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not.  And that’s why I think we have to let this one go.  I think we just stay away from anyone named Deveraux.  We avoid all of them, we don’t get involved.

“Do you miss Jack?”  She didn’t know what made her blurt that out, but she was relieved when Steve shook his head.  And that surprised her, too.

“No.  Not here.”  She could see how much he meant it and was a bit surprised.  “Our first night here when we went to tell him, he told me he could … make you love him.”  Kayla’s heart skipped a beat with the implication that came with that statement.  Steve saw the thought go through her head and squeezed her shoulder in acknowledgment.  “He’s not …” Steve swallowed.  “He’s still that punk from back then.  He’s still pining for you.  I hated working with him this time through, all he did was brood, hating me for being the one you loved.  It’s gonna be a long time before he’s my brother again.  Things might be different if we were back home, but I don’t miss him here, Sweetness.  Not even a little.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.”

Kayla took her husband’s hand and squeezed.  “Original plan,” she smiled mildly.  Steve replied with a soft kiss to her lips.  Then another, then those kisses turned a lot less soft and a lot more demanding.  “Still want to make me scream?” she teased into his kiss.

“Been months since I heard it.  Now it’s our anniversary, and I’m gonna take you somewhere you can scream my name.”

Kayla pulled back, and Steve laughed at the quizzical look on his wife’s face.  “I love keepin’ you guessin’, baby!”

“Where are you taking me?” she asked him seriously.  “We’re not leaving the house, are we?”

“Only a little.”

“What?  Em—”

“Will be with us on the monitor.”

“Huh?”

“You trust me?”

“Now that’s just silly, I’m not even answering that.”

“Then grab that thing and let’s go.”

Kayla’s wicked smile returned as she reached over to Steve’s jeans, unbuttoned them, and slipped her hands down to fondle him.  He leered at her with a bit of surprise, and she replied very cooly, “You said grab that thing, and so I did what I was told.”

Kayla hadn’t intended to do more than tease him very briefly, but it went on a bit longer, and soon Steve found himself lifting up so he could push his jeans down over his ass.  He combed his fingers through her hair, enjoying the feel of her hand working his erection.  She loved seeing that appreciative look in her husband’s eye.  Then she very quickly got completely naked and stood in that same position she’d originally entered the room with, straddling his legs.  She didn’t lower herself down onto him, though.  Instead she said, “I’m hungry,” and very purposefully licked her lips.  “You haven’t fed me in a while.  Then she got down on her knees and looked at him with an expectant grin that made him want to explode. 

“Oh, baby.  Can’t have you goin’ hungry, now, can we?”  Steve took his hardened penis in one hand and led it to Kayla’s mouth.  She took all of him inside her and felt her clitoris tingle when he moaned softly.  Her ministrations were immediate, and they were relentless, working her tongue around his shaft and sucking his tip firmly as her fingers stroked his thighs.

“Baby,” he huffed.  It felt so good.  It felt so damned good.

His thoughts were completely carnal.  He wanted to pound into her right now.  But before he knew it, her mouth had sucked him hot and hard enough that he couldn’t move, all he could do was let her keep pleasuring him.  He let the dirty words fly out of his mouth and and felt his spine tingle when she hummed the arousal those words caused in her in response.  He only wished he could shout them.  The car … he had to get them to where he was originally taking them, the car, so they could let go.  He so badly wanted to cry out how much he needed her to f*ck him, but her tongue … oh, what her tongue was doing to him!  He wanted that hot tongue of hers to make him come, but he also wanted to last, impale her, and make her come with the cock she was now devouring.  Even as the thoughts battled within him, though, he knew he was not going to last.  She could stop right now and mount him, and he wouldn’t be able to stop the climax that was literally moments away from ripping through him. “Can’t … Don’t … stop.”

She answered his plea by gently dragging her teeth down the side of his shaft and firmly massaging her thumb up the underside from the base of his penis all the way to the tip.  He gasped, then she used the pad of her tongue to lick the very same path.  He moaned, and when she did it again, he wrapped his fingers in her hair so he could feel her head bob back and forth.  He felt like a sex machine.  When she went down on him like this, with the intensity that she was pleasuring him with right now, he felt like pure, drunken sex. 

Kayla loved when she made Steve feel so much need that he directed her this way.  Taking what he wanted.  From her.  Yet the hands that gripped her were reverent of her.  They were insistent but not selfish.  Firm but gentle.  When she went down on him and he grabbed her head this way she felt worshipped.  And she felt powerful, too.  Knowing she was the only person who could make him feel like this, that could give him what he was asking for as he held on to her like this.  She sucked him deep inside of her mouth again so that her lips stroked him hard up and down and felt her wetness drench her curls as he whimpered in absolute need. 

Steve looked down at his beautiful, naked wife’s breasts jiggling as his cock disappeared into her mouth over and over.  She hummed around him provocatively, her message clear.

“You want me to come,” he panted.  “You want me to come hard.”  Kayla sucked hard and squeezed his ass harder.  “Mmf, baby, you suck me so good!  You … make me …”

Steve erupted in intense orgasm, emptying himself in thick spurts into her hot mouth.  He grunted and moaned in such pleasure as his wife swallowed everything he gave her.  He wanted to scream her name and grunt as loudly as the power of his orgasm demanded. It was a struggle to control it, and it was even harder when Kayla continued sucking and gliding her tongue over his hardness even after all the semen had left his body.  Steve remembered what Kayla had done in the bathtub on their wedding night one year ago, and now she was doing it again.  He’d let go of her head and was now clutching the bedpost in one hand and the comforter in the other.  Kayla felt his desperation that she stop right now and never ever stop again, and she gently released him and looked up.  Steve’s eye was closed, and his mouth hung open as he panted.  He whimpered, and she knew that he was torn between overstimulation and the need to feel more.  She decided to make him see more stars and without warning sucked him very hard one more time as she ground her thumb firmly into that sensitive spot beneath his balls.  He couldn’t help it when he cried out, and that’s when Kayla stopped, crawled up onto the bed with him, and pulled his head into her breasts to dampen the sound of his orgasmic bliss.  Steve nuzzled her, rubbing his face against her breasts while Kayla wiped her mouth with the heel of her hand.  He wasn’t capable of speech yet. 

“I love you,” Kayla murmured softly.  “I love you, baby.  I love making you feel so good.”

Steve was now the one doing the burrowing into her warm body as she stroked her fingertips over his naked back.  He spent the next several minutes in silence as he wrapped his leg around her possessively, inhaled her, and finally came down to earth. The oxytocin addled him with such relaxation and pleasure that he felt like he was on another plane.  Finally he spoke, his voice raspy and filled with sexual gratification.  “You grabbed the wrong thing, Sweetness.  I was talking about the monitor.”

“Well that wouldn’t have been nearly as fun for you.”  She reached across him, took it from his nightstand, and stroked it hard.  “See?  Nothing.”

“Lucky monitor.  I should know.”  Kayla chuckled.  “Baby, you wiped me out.  But we’ve … we’ve gotta …”  He sighed.  “I had more plans for you.”

Kayla yawned.  “I think our plans went pretty well.”

“I wanna hear you scream.”

“You wanna sleep, baby, I can hear it.  It’s ok, drift off,” she encouraged.

“Uh-uh,” he insisted softly then lightly kissed her soft, warm breast.

“Hmmp.  I’m trying to give you an out, but you and this insatiable thing is making it hard.”

“That’s what I want.  You to be makin’ it hard.”

Kayla wanted him inside of her.  “Ok, then maybe we can have a nap and wake up in a couple hours and make love again right here.  You just made a bit of noise there, and so far no one’s woken up.”

“No, Sweetness.  I want you to let go.  I want us both to really let go like we haven’t done in months.”

That did sound good to her.  “I still don’t get where.”

“Bluesmobile, baby.”

Kayla was definitely tired, but she was still horny, too.  “Some of the best sex we ever had was in that Dodge Dart,” she said.  She suddenly heard herself demanding that her drunken husband suck her clit in that Dodge Dart, and her arousal just continued to pool.  It made her whimper.  “I’m so wet, Steve.”

He reached down between her legs, and if his dick could have hardened it would have.  “Dammit, my head wants you, but my other head won’t comply.”

She wanted to sleep.  She wanted him to sleep.  But after all that teasing she also really wanted her husband to slide in and out of her one more time tonight. She scooched down farther into the bed and placed kisses all along his neck, using her tongue to moisten her lips before each one.  “I love feeling your body inside of mine,” she whispered into his ear.  “I’m sorry, baby … I should let you sleep.” 

Steve rubbed his warm palms up and down the length of her body before letting his fingers dip into her again.  “Don’t be sorry for taking what you want from me.”  His voice was so seductive.  “’Cause I’m gonna give it to you.”  She was losing herself.

“I got what I want more times today than I can count.  Now I’m, the selfish one.”

“None of that.”  He stroked inside of her and wanted to give her what she wanted.  “You’re so wet, Sweetness.  I want to be inside you as much as you want me to be.  You can get me there.”

Kayla took his warm lips in her plump ones and could practically feel herself slip farther down that rabbit hole of lust.  She placed more hot and wet kisses along his chest until she got to that tattoo she couldn’t keep her lips off of and nipped at it before licking his nipple.  “I love how wet you make me.”

Steve felt himself rallying.  “I wanna taste it.”

“You wanna go down on me, Steve?”

“I wanna eat you till you scream,” he said, and she couldn’t help but notice that his penis was just a little stiffer than it was moments ago. 

“’Cause if you’re too tired,” she cooed provocatively, “I could masturbate for you.” 

Steve moaned.  “You’re makin’ me hard, Kayla.”

“So I shouldn’t touch myself, then?”

“I’m gonna be the one touchin’ you,” he growled.

“I thought you wanted to eat me.”

“I want to f*ck you.”

Kayla got up very quickly and stood at the edge of the bed while Steve got up on his elbows.  “Do you want to see how wet I got while I gave you that blow job?”

“Kayla …”  She lifted her leg and placed her foot on the bed so that she was spread for him.  His pulse raced at the sight of her.  “That’s mine, baby. I want it.”

“Better come get it, then.  Meet you in the car.”

With the baby monitor on the dashboard Steve had his wife’s legs spread wide, one up over the back seat, the other draped over the front.  He filled his palms with her ass and squeezed.  Kayla loved the feel of him pulling her crotch to his lips.  She gasped softly, and Steve squeezed just a little harder.  “If you like what I’m doing to you, I want to hear it.”  Kayla felt the need for him spread through her womb.  This time when he clutched her perfect, round cheeks, she gave him a satisfying moan.  “That’s it, baby.  I wanna hear more of that.”  Steve’s tongue parted her lips and slid up her slit and over her clitoris.  The feeling of the rough flat of his tongue against her swollen nub was enough to send intense pleasure through her.  He did it again and again until he finally let go of her buttocks and instead used his thumbs to part her labia so he could flick his tongue hard back and forth over that small button.  It was completely dark inside their car in the back of their driveway, but Steve didn’t need to see to know what Kayla looked like as she was gyrating her hips into his face.  Steve almost couldn’t handle the image he saw in his mind’s eye, his cock now at full attention again and causing his desire to skyrocket.  With every flick of his tongue she wanted to come more desperately.  The erotic sounds of Steve drinking in his wife, and Kayla enjoying it filled the car.  If Steve hadn’t have just come, he wouldn’t have been able to take much of his wife’s pleasure before losing control of his own.  Now he smiled as he licked and sucked her essence into his mouth, because he knew he would be able to last and give her all the pleasure he wanted her to have.

Her moans came with too much control, Steve wanted to hear her come apart.  So, he licked her harder.  Sucked her clit harder.  Flicked her nipple with his fingernail.  Now she cried out.  “I wanna hear you scream my name, Kayla!  I wanna hear how good it feels!

“So good!”  She moaned her pleasure, but it wasn’t enough for Steve.  He could feel the pressure start in his balls and wondered if there was any more semen left in him, and then shoved his tongue in and out of Kayla’s wet core.  Steve felt her spread before him and wanted to see her. Wanted to see that full access he had to her clitoris he was alternately swirling his tongue around before plunging it in and out of her.  Kayla wanted release and bucked into his lips.  “Hard!  Lick me hard!  Make me come!” 

“That’s it, baby, that’s what I wanna hear!”

“Oh … Oh!” she panted.  “More!  More!” 

He wanted her to scream his name, and she did not disappoint. 

“Ste—uh … Steve!”  Her sexual pleasure rang out through the car as the orgasm thrummed through her.  Her vagina pulsed, and his tongue felt it as he drank her in.  It was so erotic and so very sexual that Steve’s erection was now hard as a rock.

Kayla relaxed into the seat and let her head loll to the right with the pleasure.  Steve brought his wife up and into his arms, then shifted positions so that he was sitting in the backseat, holding her across his lap.  She felt his erection and wondered somewhere in the back of her head how it was possible he had this much stamina.  They kissed gently for a short time, and then he deepened that kiss so that she continued to feel it inside of her. 

“I’m not done.  You need another.”  He rubbed her breasts with his warm hand and nipped at her neck.

“I don’t have another in me,” she sighed, wanting another one, anyway.

“Yeah you do.”

“I … I don’t think so.  I’ve already had … five?”

Steve stopped very abruptly and lifted his head.  “Do you want me to stop, Sweetness?”  He meant it, and she loved him so much for it.  He always took her so very seriously when her words did not include a very strong “yes.”  She shook her head slowly.

“No. I want to make love to you all night.”

“We can stop right now if you’re too tired.  Or too stimulated.  Or too anything.”

Whereas she wanted to collapse just moments ago, she now wanted nothing more than to shake again.  She shifted on his lap, straddled him, and then lowered herself onto his rock hard penis.  “I’m not too anything, baby.  I love you.  I want you. I want another orgasm.  And I want to tell you how good you f*ck me.”

Steve’s penis felt like ecstasy inside of his wife’s core, and he let her ride him that way for a short while before he had to be the one doing the thrusting.  “I love that we’re naked in our car, baby. I love feeling your skin on mine.”

Kayla instinctively knew her husband wanted to be on top, so she pulled up, and they moved so fluidly into opposite positions.  Steve guided himself back into her, and he started pumping hard and fast.  “Tell me!  I wanna hear you tell me, please, baby!”

“Will it make you come again if I tell you.  Will you come hard for me if I tell you how much I love it when you f*ck me?”

“Oh God, Kayla!”  His thrusts increased so that he was pounding into her hard as he clutched onto her thighs.  “I love you, baby.  I need you!” 

“I love you!” she whimpered.  Steve rubbed her clitoris, and out of nowhere another orgasm ripped through her.  She came hard, her sex pulsing with euphoria.  “Steve!”  Her voice shook along with her body, and the feel of her vagina convulsing so hard around his penis made his sac tighten.  But it wasn’t until she latched onto his tattoo with her teeth to ride out the pure sexual gratification and dug her nails into his ass that he released his thick white streams into her.  They both let go in loud strings of pleasure emanating from their lips while they came in perfectly timed orgasms.  Her teeth on him was too much, and he attached his own mouth onto her neck and bit.  The aftershocks it caused made her buck hard against him with the over-stimulation, but he didn’t disengage.  Instead he continued to suck very hard with her head in one hand and her breast in the other as the last of his cum settled into her body.

Kayla was spent.  She was completely spent.  Steve was barely conscious, himself, but he could feel how she wanted to just collapse.  He pulled out of her, and their combined fluids were all over them, their legs, their bellies, they were going to have to clean up before they went to sleep.  But right now they couldn’t move.

“Sweetness?  Oh, Sweetness.”  He panted out her name in whimpers he couldn’t help.  “Kayla, please, baby.  I need to feel your arms around me.”

“You never have to ask.”  She opened up her eyes and wrapped her arms around him neck, her breasts resting against his naked chest.  “I love you so much.”

“I love you more.”

She didn’t get a chance to answer him because he’d started raining kisses all over her face and lips.  He got to the spot on her neck and kissed it tenderly.  “I think that one’s gonna be a hell of a hickey,” he said.

She ran her fingertips over it, then moved them to feel the hilt of his tattoo.  “This, too,” she said. 

Kayla held the monitor, and Steve held her as he brought them back into the house through the back door completely naked and completely unseen by any other eyes.  She was completely boneless in his arms, and he coveted the feel of her there like this.  “So sweet, Kayla.  You’re so sweet.”  He was halfway up the stairs when she made a small, mirthful sound.  “I was not sweet just now, I was … salacious.”

Steve didn’t reply to that until he’d set her down on her feet inside their room.  “You are always sweet, Kayla.  No matter how we have sex, no matter what you’re saying or what we’re doing when we make love you are always my Sweetness.  Always.”

Kayla ran her thumb gently over the red bruise that was darkening on his dagger.  “And you’re always the finest man that ever lived.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, and it wouldn’t be the last.

They had no real choice, they had to clean up, and the easiest way was just to get in the shower again.  They checked on their sleeping daughter, who remained peacefully in slumber with her little baby dreams, then took a very short shower together.  They grinned knowingly at each other, remembering the last time they were in this shower together. Steve loved taking her when she was wet, it was something about how alluring she was to him as the water dripped off of her breasts and her hair.  But Steve’s penis had finally given out, and Kayla was absolutely sore, her clitoris couldn’t take any more.  So, they were in and out quickly, fell asleep immediately upon crawling under the covers, and slept like the dead. 

Five hours later, Emily sneezed, and the sound of it coming through the monitor woke up her mother.  Kayla sat bolt upright at the very sharply resonant noise, unsure what it was and ran in to check her.  The little girl slept right through it, and finding her completely unaffected and fine in every way, she kissed her finger and then dropped that finger’s kiss onto Emily’s cheek before shuffling back to bed. 

Steve had slept through the whole thing just like his daughter had but instinctively took his wife into his arm when she rolled into it.  She’d gotten five hours of sleep, which was about average for her now that Emily had successfully begun sleep training.  She knew the baby would wake in no more than another hour and a half, maybe two if they were really lucky and tried to go back to sleep, but she remained very much awake.  She cursed silently at herself, and absently began stroking Steve’s chest with her thumb.  He continued to sleep, and she continued not being quite aware of her movements.  Eventually, however, that thumb became her fingertips, and it was no longer performing absent movements, it was now enjoying the feel of his nipple as she stroked it.  The thought came to her very slowly, but as she felt the ridges of his nipple harden in her fingers, it did come to her.  She counted silently to herself, then did it again.  Six times.  They’d had sex six times if she’d counted his blowjob earlier this evening, and she quickly decided that she did.   They’d started at 4am, and 24 hours hadn’t passed yet.  They needed just one more time before 4am.  They had nine more minutes.  The soreness of her clitoris had not diminished, but her vagina was fine.

Kayla kissed her husband’s chest and very gently did the same to his neck and then his earlobe.  Steve moaned sleepily, she licked his nipples one after the next, then the first one again, and his moans quickly became laced with arousal.  “Mmm … baby?”  Kayla wasted no time and smoothly rubbed her hand above the sheet over his penis.  “You’re killin’ me.”

“One more time,” Kayla whispered.

Steve was shocked at the need in her voice.  “Oh, baby, don’t tease me like that.”

“It’s 3:52,” Kayla whispered.  “We have eight minutes to do this one more time and set our record.”  Steve became a lot more awake and turned a wide eye on her.

“We did it six times?”

Kayla nodded.  “Unless you don’t count the blow job.”

Steve somehow found the energy to leer at her, and Kayla could feel that she’d turned herself on enough as she endeavored to turn him on that she was ready for him.  Making his brain work, Steve mentally counted on his own, and she was right, they’d had sex six times.  Only going down on him was one way, so he wasn’t so sure that was fair.

“I got two orgasms in the car,” Kayla said, “More than fair.”  Steve decided that was good enough for him.

He turned toward her and immediately saw the bruise on her neck, not to mention the other marks on her breasts and collarbone from his uncontrollable passion the night before. 

“You’ve gotta be sore, Sweetness, look at you.  I was … Jesus, I took you hard.”

“It was wonderful, Steve,” she assured him.

“I don’t like seein’ all those blotches on you.”

“I love it.  I love seeing the evidence of how badly you want me.  I love all the marks you make on me.  Besides, your, uh, tattoo has some color to it now, too,” she whispered.  Steve looked down and saw it.

“Wow.”

“Does it hurt?”  Steve shook his head.  “Neither do mine.”  Steve smiled and kissed her forehead.  “Make love to me one more time,” she whispered.

“I know you can’t take me again, Sweetness.  I know it.”

Kayla fondled his stiffening penis and watched his visage change ever so slightly with the pleasant feeling of her stroking fingers.  She loved the feel of it hardening so quickly in her hand.  “Only my clitoris is sore.  The rest of me is ready for us to hit lucky number seven. We have six minutes.”

 Steve slipped into his wife for the seventh time since they’d done the same thing 24 hours ago.  Their lovemaking was so very gentle.  None of the desperation and raw sexuality of the time just before, but their connection was just as intimate.  Steve could tell right away that he wasn’t going to be able to make his wife come this time, so he kissed her with all the love he had inside of him as he quietly released.  He stayed inside of her for a long time telling her how much he loved her.  She told him how much she cherished him even as he felt her slip back into sleep.  He turned her to spoon against him, and her loving words sustained him into slumber until nearly 6am. 

Emily’s cries were not completely unusual, but they shot both Steve and Kayla awake quickly, as her normal wake up sounds were more nonsensical burble than crying.  But they didn’t have time to process that, because right at the moment Emily came awake and started those morning cries, the phone rang on Steve’s nightstand, waking them with a start that made both of their heart’s jump.  The sun was not quite on the horizon, so the sound of the phone in their still darkened bedroom had thrown them completely.  Finally reality started to clear the fog, and Steve picked it up.

“Hello?” he answered in the universal tone of annoyance mixed with worry that someone died.

“Mr. Johnson,” the heavily German accented voice said in a strange sort of secretive tone.  “This is Dr. Rolf.”  Steve’s heart literally stopped for enough seconds to make him lightheaded.  “We don’t have much time, but you need to listen to me right now.  Do you understand?”

Kayla saw the look on his face, and it caused her blood pressure to spike instantly.  “What?  What is it?!”

“Mr. Johnson, you answer me!”

“I’m … it’s you?”

“Yes, of course, it’s me, I just told you it was me.”  Steve swallowed hard. 

“My God, Steve, who is it?!” Kayla tried again.  The look in her husband’s eye scared her like no other.

“You’re working for Stefano?”  All the color drained right out of Kayla’s face.  

“This is 1988, yes?  So yes.  In 2009, however—”

“You goddamn son of a bitch!” Steve screamed into the phone.  “You motherf*cking son of a bitch!”  Kayla started to shake and took his hand from the sheer need to hold the hell on. 

“Now, Mr. Johnson, that language is hardly necessary, and we do not have the time!”

“Time?!  Time seems to be all we’ve got now!”

“If only you knew how true and false that statement was, Mr. Johnson!  But your tone is unnecessary, I am not your enemy.”

“Really?!”

“Anymore.  But I have to warn you or there will be nothing good to come of it.”

Steve couldn’t think.  He couldn’t process any of this.  He heard Kayla crying next to him, he heard his daughter crying in the next room, and memories of Joe missing somewhere in University Hospital descended.  That’s when a  sudden, dark chill assailed him.

“Stefano,” Steve’s voice shook with promise.  “I killed him once, I’ll do it again.”  Kayla could barely move as the tears ran hot down her cheeks.

“Mr. Johnson close your mouth!  I don’t know what you are talking about, so you must have killed Stefano while on this journey I’m watching you take, and that would explain quite a lot of what I already feared was true.  He’s very much alive right at this moment,” now Rolf was thinking out loud mostly to himself, “must have been another one.  Perhaps he was the butterfly.”

Steve’s stomach dropped.  “So it’s you?  You’re the one that sent my wife and I—”

“Through time, yes.”  Hearing it like this from another living human being speaking to him was so surreal it stole the breath from his throat, and all he could do was swallow hard again, his eye wide with shock.  “Now listen, you must—”  Rolf stopped speaking very abruptly when he heard a noise coming from the other end of the phone.  “What is that noise in the background?  Is that a television?”

“It’s six f*cking AM, so no, we’re not watching the goddamned TV.”

Rolf’s own heart quickened with what he was now putting together.  “Is that a baby crying, Mr. Johnson?”

Emily was now wailing for someone to see that she was awake, and that’s when Steve finally looked his wife fully in the eyes and saw that she was terrified.  “It’s Dr. Rolf.  Dimera’s witchdoctor.” 

Kayla put her hand to her mouth in shock.  “Oh my God!”

“Y-yes … that’s my daughter.”

Rolf’s mouth was open with mainly wonder, but a bit of foreboding, too.  Steve caught both of those in the tone of the man’s next question.  “Stephanie Johnson?” he asked knowing the answer already.

“No,” Steve’s voice wavered. “Not Stephanie.”

They made a baby.  It was everything he’d feared it was, he just couldn’t believe it was real.

Kayla was shaking so hard that she couldn’t manipulate anything in her hands, including Steve’s own hand.  But she managed to turn the phone so that she could hear it, too.  “Why are you doing this to us?!” Kayla eked out.

Rolf came out of his stupor.  “Not now, Mrs. Johnson.  Listen to me, or you will never get home.”  And something very strange clicked in Kayla that she would not identify for months and months to come, but when she did, she would remember this conversation.  “I’m not your enemy.  You must st—”  He fell silent as the pull in his diaphragm stole the rest of the words from that sentence. 

“We must what?” Steve insisted with such angry bite to his tone.

But Rolf’s room had started to spin.  “We will … try again …,” Rolf said weakly.

“What?!”

Rolf barely managed to get the phone hung up, which was imperative so that his current employer didn’t find him in the midst of a phone call and then go looking for just whom he was on the phone with.  Then Rolf was pulled back into his 2009 body.  He got back, sucked in air, and the first thing he did was curse to himself. 

“Sheisse.”

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