Kayla had seriously underestimated what Ray was capable of. Steve had seriously underestimated the threat he was to her. And the State of Illinois had seriously fallen down on the job of putting this molester away for life. As result of these three things, Kayla now found herself in very serious trouble, indeed.
Ray got to the window a split second before Kayla did and started to pull up on it with an unfortunate amount of lead time before Kayla began pushing down. It was clear to her now just how dangerous this old man was, and the resulting adrenalin rush fueled enough extra strength to give him a real fight. Still, she was astounded at how much effort it took to keep him from lifting the window open. It was broad daylight, , businessmen and women were crawling all over the Loop, including this very block. But this man standing outside Steve’s window made it very clear to her that he most definitely had her cornered.
“Get away from me before I push you off that fire escape!” Kayla yelled. They’d been at the stand-off far longer than Ray had given her credit for lasting through, and she was certainly giving him a run for his money. But he saw that she was tiring and turned up the heat.
Ray pressed his forehead up against the window with a bang and cast his steel eyes down at her chillingly from beneath his brow ridge. His red face and white hair set each other off in blinding contrast, and those intense, single-minded eyes held absolute malice. Kayla whimpered and grunted in a high pitched squeak as she put every bit of her weight downward to close the window while he pulled upward to open it. It was a good thing Kayla’s towel was secure, because she focused entirely on that window frame. Ray didn’t speak, but his disturbing facial expression rattled her and shook her grip. He inhaled and exhaled in heavy, even pants like a bull ready to jump out of the gate, the sound of it almost mad. For just a moment he looked like the devil himself. In the end, Ray was much stronger than he appeared and was able to sustain the upward force much longer than he appeared able to. If Kayla’s left wrist was at 100% she may have had a better chance, but Ray wanted what he wanted and was very determined to get it. Kayla’s grip was ebbing, the pane was inching upward, and moments later Ray won the battle over the window, flying it open with a high-pitched scrape of wood on wood.
Kayla screamed again and backed away with an instinctive death grip on her towel. Her injured wrist had a lot more damage than a simple sprain now, but she felt no pain, as all her attention was on this very dangerous old man who was climbing in the window, as spry as she was.
Kayla backed away to the door. She had to unlock it and run, but to do that she’d have to turn around; this was a very small room, and there was no way on earth she was going to be turning her back on him. Instead she reached behind her to unlock what she could, but Ray was already advancing on her.
“I’ll bet you were a pretty little sweet sixteen,” Ray said. Kayla spared herself one moment to take stock of the room and her situation, including him. And there was no question about it, he was a complete psychopath.
“Stay away from me!”
“You weren’t a teenager that long ago, were you? You’ll still do.”
Kayla’s heart was racing. She moved to the left, her rear skimming the long dresser, then kept moving all the way to the wall shared between this room and Ray’s. There was just nowhere to go. She looked around furiously for a weapon. Something – anything – that she could use to defend herself, because one thing was now very clear. This man was going to stop at nothing to violate her right here, right now, in this room. Every organ inside her body lurched in dread as her sense memory assailed her with another time she was violated. Her skin crawled, her vagina clenched, her eyes watered, her body tensed. All in memory of when Jack raped her and terrified anticipation of Ray doing so again.
“You’re not a teenager anymore, but you still look like one. Still smell like one, too.”
“You’re insane!”
“I can smell your virginity. All the way from out there, I could smell that cherry between your legs.” Kayla wanted to vomit.
“You’re a real sicko, you know that?” Kayla yelled to him.
“I heard you sucking his face off.” He moved swiftly to grab her, but she stepped onto the bed and flew across it to the window now kitty corner from him. “I heard how bad you want it.”
“Get the hell out of this room before I call the police!” She wasn’t shaking yet, but that wasn’t far behind her ludicrous act of pointing fiercely at the door, as if he didn’t know where it was. Ray ignored her and continued his sick, lecherous ramblings.
“He’s only good at banging whores. He doesn’t know how to do a cherry like yours.” Kayla had her towel in a serious death grip. Her good hand was at the top, her left hand was holding it closed in front of her. When he took a very slow step away from the corner back toward her she started to shake. She could see as he, again, attempted to advance on her that he was clearly anticipating all of her possible moves. After just one step he lowered the zipper of his pants with a metallic crunch. “I’m gonna pull my pecker out and show you.”
“Oh my god.”
He reached into his brown, tweedy trousers through the fly and brought out his very fleshy penis. “Mine knows how to do a girl like you.”
This isn’t happening! This isn’t happening! Not again, this cannot be happening again!
He reared his head back, stuck his tongue all the way out, and licked his hand from the heel to the finger tips while keeping his eyes locked onto Kayla’s. “Innocent.” Then he grabbed his very long, uncircumcised member and slowly began stroking his tightened fist back and forth over it while maintaining intense eye contact. He immediately made a sound so nauseating in its arousal that Kayla literally felt the contents of her stomach start to betray her. “In-tact,” he breathed through the ecstasy of his anticipation.
“I’m not so innocent as the other girls I’m sure you’ve raped during your long, repulsive life! And if you come near me, I’ll show you just how grown up I am when I kill you!”
“Oooh, no you won’t, little girl,” his voice undulated as he pumped, “that’s what he calls you, I can hear it.” Now his tone changed from demented perversion into what violent would be if it were a sound. “You’re not going to kill me.” Then he growled, “but you will bend over!”
For just one moment, everything stopped. Like Wily Coyote realizing he’s in midair before he falls into the canyon, Kayla took a single self-aware moment to freeze with fear as memories of Jack cornering and victimizing her closed in from the periphery. Somewhere inside herself, a voice tried to reason with her that it’s been 25 years and she couldn’t let this paralyze her. But some things never completely go away, and her rape was one of them. Ray had stopped his movements during these brief seconds and was simply pointing his now fully engorged prick at her. When he narrowed his eyes at her, the moment was over, and Kayla screamed.
“Close your pie hole!” Ray yelled back as he lunged for her. Kayla knew she should run, but she reached out the window behind her to feel for any utensil Steve may have used when he cooked their dinner. Unfortunately there wasn’t so much as a spoon. Run.
Just before the man reached her she dove for the bed to reach the other side of the room. He caught her foot, and that touch, alone, imbued enough terror in her to keep her moving. She crawled like a madwoman across to the shared wall, again and decided in a split second not to go in there, because if he broke the door down she would be, literally, trapped without any hope. Instead she strategized that she had to get back to the door and run down the stairs to the lobby, towel or no towel, as her only means of saving herself. That or go out the window. Whichever opportunity came first.
Ray didn’t follow her across the bed, instead he scraped his black, shiny shoes around the foot of it, his erect flesh hanging out like a bouncing weapon. This effectively relegated Kayla to just that back half of the room so she had to keep going back and forth over the bed to evade him. It was very effective, because the door was on the other side of the room, and he was not going to give her the path of egress she’d need to get there.
“Your seal will break.” Kayla hopped back onto the bed and inched back to the window while Ray began pumping again. “You’re small …” he breathed between brutal, excited pants, “…delicate … fragile …” His strokes had become faster. “I’m gonna watch as yours rips straight up the middle and the blood streams down over my prick. I want to feel your snatch bleed on my fingers.” He took a hearty sniff in. “They always smell so good after they rip. I can’t wait to cut off a long lock of that hair of yours when I’m done and take it with me!”
Kayla felt really and truly sick and prayed for a jump. Steve or no Steve, right now, in this moment, she only felt the human drive of self-preservation and begged God to jump her. No answer from him, however, would be forthcoming.
She realilzed now that she was cornered. Her only choice was to go out the window. In a split second she made the decision to launch herself backward out of it with the intent to land on her back and then run down the fire escape, but Ray was shockingly quick and was on her like lightning.
Kayla screamed at the top of her lungs when his clammy hands cloed around her wrist. “STEVE!”
“You want that window, you bend over it!” Her flesh was crawling, her heart was pounding, and her towel was hanging. “You bend over and show me that box!”
“No! NOOOO!!!” Kayla screamed out that open window for help, screamed for her husband, but Ray continued to maintain the upper hand. He yanked her out from the windowsill even as she used the leverage she could to kick him away.
Jack’s body was on top of hers. He was ripping her dress off of her. He was putting his hands on her. She smelled him and heard his labored breathing.
Ray tugged at her towel but didn’t try to touch the areas of her body that were becoming more and more exposed. He didn’t seem remotely interested in her breasts or in putting his mouth on her. But the old man did use his considerable strength to turn her around and bend her over that window sill.
“You’re a dirty little virgin!” the monster brayed like a wild animal while Kayla cried out in furious protest. “Oh, yes, you are, you’re a dirty f*cking virgin, and I’m gonna pop that cherry! I’m goinna watch it rip as I pop it wide open!” And in the middle of the abhorrent chaos, Kayla understood. His only interest was in taking the virginity he believed she had. Entering her and watching her bleed like the countless other poor victims she knew without question he’d already brutalized.
Well he had another thing coming.
Kayla was, certainly, at a disadvantage, but she wasn’t helpless. He had her left wrist secured in a pain that her body continued to keep her from, but her right hand remained in a vise-like clamp around her towel, and he was expending a lot of energy in a futile effort to tug it off of her. Had he lifted it up from the back he would have been successful, but he wanted an unencumbered view of her silky, untouched buttocks before he rammed into her. His misplaced focus allowed her to buck and kick far more than she otherwise would have.
“Dirty virgin!” Ray tugged hard at her towel.
Jack had lifted up Kayla’s blue dress and tugged at her underwear.
She continued to kick and sob as she felt his hand holding down her left wrist like a two-ton weight.
Jack pinned himself against Kayla and pried her thighs open. But this time Jack would not be violating her with the violent weapon between his legs. No man would be doing that to her again.
Somehow Kayla got herself almost turned back around and found a way for her knee to connect with Ray’s testicles. He howled in pain, his long, hard rod very quickly shrinking. Instead of doubling over like most men would at this point, he reared up and hit her with an open hand hard across the face.
“You’re going to pay for that!” Kayla continued to shake with equal parts adrenalin and fear while her eyes darted every which way looking for an escape under him, around him, even through him.
“You’re not going to rape me! I’ll fight you this time! I’ll fight you, and I’ll kill you!” Ray didn’t know that a subconscious part of her was screaming at the man who’d already raped her once. “even if this body was a virgin, I’m not, and I know how to defend myself!”
“Look what you’ve done!” He palmed his flaccidity far less gingerly than a sane man would have after having been kneed that hard. “I will take your virginity,” he grunted, the pain evident if his voice if not his physicality, “but you’re going to have to suck and make me hard first!”
Kayla went for broke and ran hard directly into him line a linebacker making a path for his runningback. She screamed and sobbed when he caught her and pushed her to her knees. That’s when the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard in her life came like a heroic battle cry from the hallway.
“Kayla!! Baby!!” Steve was here. He was here, and he was going to kill this man, she knew it as surely as she was standing here looking the shriveled skin of this old man in the face.
“Steve!” Kayla sobbed. “Ray is—!” Ray pulled hard on Kayla’s still damp hair, producing a yelp from her.
“Hold on, Sweetness, I’m coming!” She heard the scrape of a key in the lock and knew it was almost over.
“You wouldn’t give her to me, Patch, so I’m taking her!”
“You son of a bitch! Get your hands off of her!!!” Kayla heard the second lock open.
“Not until she sucks and pops for me!”
That was two locks, why wasn’t Ray running? Kayla contorted to avoid contact with his penis while doing whatever she could so that her hair didn’t get ripped out. “Suck! You dirty virgin, you suck!” Only she didn’t really need to, because the excitement of this power and his own depravity was doing the hardening for her. She was desperate, however, and would have ripped the man’s ballsac right off if only it were exposed. “STEVE!!!”
It was then she heard the sound that made her heart sink. The hard scrape of the door against the secure tension of the chain that Kayla, herself, had latched. This would be why Ray wasn’t running away. Kayla wanted to shoot herself; she’d sealed her own fate.
“Kayla! Baby, the chain!” Ray looked down at her smugly, his hand still in Kayla’s hair, her hand still closed around her towel. “I’m not gonna let him hurt you!” Kayla was terrified in the moment, but she couldn’t help but be struck by the desperate tone in Steve’s voice. It wasn’t just a man trying to save someone from harm, it was a man in desperation to protect, and protect fiercely. Kayla watched as Steve’s arm hopelessly reached through the narrow space allowed by the chain.
Just then Ray startled enough to lessen his grip on her hair when Steve rammed his shoulder into the door. On pure instinct Kayla fell to the floor and crawled madly between her attacker’s legs. Ray caught her by one foot, but she kicked with the other one and was able to wriggle free and get to her feet in front of the dresser.
Kayla tearfully called out to Steve, “Close the door and I’ll un—!” but Ray pushed her down from the back, and Steve saw her for the first time through the gap as she went down.”
“No!” he yelled! Steve reached through the gap for her, and Kayla reached up for him. Ray blocked his view and Steve yelled, “Kayla, hold him off, baby, I’m coming, I promise I’m coming!!”
Kayla dug under the bed to look for a weapon and came up with paydirt. She had no idea how long the plastic fork had been under the bed or even if that fork belonged to Steve or some previous occupant, but it was better than nothing. For the first time she let go of her towel and wrapped her left arm around her chest to hold it in place as she held the fork high in her right hand.
“You think I’m afraid of a plastic fork?”
“Steve!!”
“You shut it!”
“F*ck you!”
“Dirty! You’re a filthy virgin, just like my sister! Just like her kid! Now you shut it!”
Ray got her this time. He got her, and she screamed bloody murder at the top of her lungs until her voice was hoarse. He shook her while she screamed and threw her onto the bed. Kayla was able to slash at him with the fork and made contact with some part of his upper body, but it was all for nothing, because he was too berserk to feel anything but the blood rushing down to his prick. He held her down with serious pressure on her neck so that it would snap if she moved. Then he got his putrid mouth up against her ear.
Jack had his hand wrapped around her neck as he put his cold lips on hers.
“He only does whores. I do virgins!” This time Ray got the towel out of her grasp, the last of its protection obscuring only her bare backside .
Jack pulled her underwear down as she cried.
Never again. Because this time Kayla revolted.
She thrust her head backward and hit Ray in the mouth. She was going for the nose, but the force of her skull against his teeth opened up a gash on the inside of his mouth, and he instantly tasted the metallic bitterness of blood. She flailed with absolutely everything she had, every ounce of strength, every bit of her resolve. Jack would never rape her again. This man would not rape her now. No man was every going to take any part of her body against her will ever again.
“Even as she fought back, Ray’s focus was entirely on Kayla’s ass, trying to get a view of her innocent pinkness. “You’ve made me wait so long that I’ve decided to make it hurt when I run my fingers up and down the edges of your flesh after I rip it in two!!”
It was the last thing the molesting, raping, miscreant would be saying for a long, long time. Because right after that, without ever having gotten so much as a glimpse of her most personal intimacy, Steve’s booted heel came into angry, protective, and savage contact with the man’s head. Ray went careening backwards, his eyes crossed in an absurd, contradicting stare, and passed out.
Kayla hadn’t heard Steve climb in through the window. Apparently, Ray hadn’t, either. He was too focused on raping her, and she was too focused on preventing it. Now she looked up at Steve, her beautiful blue eyes red with the tears she’d cried, and etched with the terror she’d not only lived since exiting the shower, but re-lived with her compounding memories. Their souls connected, and Steve felt overwhelming, possessive rage course through him that he’d never felt before in his life. This man had hurt her. And now Steve was going to kill him.
Kayla was still leaned over the edge of the bed, Steve stood in the middle of it. Her relief at seeing him as she stared up into his loving, green eyes was so staggering that she couldn’t catch her breath. Steve’s heart was nearly overcome seeing her in this position. Neither of them could speak, but they didn’t need to. Their feelings were clear.
Steve knealt down beside Kayla, terrified that she was damaged. She had to be after what he’d witnessed. He saw she was naked and went for the towel to cover her, but for some reason he hesitated and they locked eyes. An instinct so strong it almost took him down came over him, and before he could get the towel around her they both threw themselves into each other’s arms. Steve squeezed his eye shut with feeling, and Kayla sobbed. He held her to him and tried not to cry with her. He couldn’t explain these feelings, they were more than sympathy for a victimized woman. What he was afraid was done to her was hurting him, and he held her fiercely. He felt the skin of her back beneath his bare hand, and she was cold. She was so cold. He had to warm her up, so he reached down to get the towel to cover her, but Kayla shook her head and begged him not to let go. “Ok, baby,” he said breathily, “ok, shhh.” He did what she asked and instead held her closer while she cried. Not a word was said for several minutes, during which Ray did not stir.
Steve began stroking Kayla’s head as he rocked her, and then without even thinking about it dropped a kiss to the top of it. Kayla wiped her nose on his tank top and breathed him in. Steve felt her do it, and simultaneously didn’t care that he’d become a Kleenex, and felt an intensely pleasant reaction at her act of inhaling him. It wasn’t sexual, it was … loving. He felt loved. He kissed the top of her head again and again, those kisses eventually raining down over her forehead and her eyes, then her cheeks and her lips. They were chaste and a concerned, meant to suffuse her with his desperate need that she be ok. He would not allow himself to allow her to have been raped. Still, he finally put voice to the stillness.
“Sweetness,” he said softly as he tipped her chin to look at him. “Did he hurt you?”
Kayla held his gaze and shook her head slowly. “Not like that.”
Steve let out a breath. “No?” He spared a glance to the man’s prostrate form. “You—you sure? His … he’s … hanging out.”
Kayla nodded. “Not like that,” she repeated. “He did other things, but I was able to fight him off from … raping me.”
Upon hearing her use that word, Steve exhaled with a whimper that was the most vulnerable thing he’d knowingly exhibited to her and pulled her back to his chest. Kayla began crying again.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, Steve, I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?!
“I shouldn’t be here.”
That was his doing. His insistence that she didn’t belong here and wouldn’t leave. Now she was blaming herself for Ray trying to defile her with his nasty flesh staring them in the face just two feet away like a shriveled, grey sausage.
“I’m an asshole,” he rasped over his own lump. Kayla laughed, and Steve didn’t understand what could be so funny. He didn’t know that she’d heard him say this many times when he realized he was in the wrong about something.
“You are my hero,” she assured him, quickly swinging back to poignant tears.
That deeply affected him. He was no one’s hero. He’d been mean to her, like she said. He’d pushed away the feelings she immediately evoked in him. He’d tried to hurt her so that she’d leave before he wouldn’t be able to help himself. Still she wanted him. She’d said he’d be her hero one day. Now she was saying today was that day. He wanted to love her. He wanted to let himself love her and protect her from things like this.
“You’re shivering. Come on, baby, you need to cover up.” She let him take the red blanket from the bed and wrap it around her. She registered Ray’s proximity and had to get away as far away as she could. She crawled onto the bed and sat up against the headboard with her knees up, legs crossed, arms hugged around herself. She was completely naked, though concealed by her own positioning beneath the red blanket. Steve retrieved the towel that was now on the floor and looked at her. “He tried, didn’t he?”
Kayla nodded. “He’s … despiciable.” She swiped her fingers across her cheeks. Steve looked up with delayed reaction.
“What other things?” Kayla cocked her head. “What other things did he do?” His voice was dangerous. She looked down.
“He—thinks I’m a—virgin. Didn’t care about anything else.”
“What things, baby?! You said he did other things. Did he put his hands on you?” Kayla flinched ever so slightly, and Steve sat beside her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have a temper.”
Kayla nodded. “I know,” she chuckled mirthlessly. She knew he had far less self control today than he would in four more years. And for a moment she didn’t care that that self-control was not going to mean good things for Ray. He reached out to caress her face with the back of his hand. “Tell me,” he whispered.
Kayla stayed curled up like a fuzzy, woolen ball and told him how it all happened. She left out some of the choice phrases, because even she could not bear to repeat them they were so depraved. But she told him what he wanted to know, and he listened while working the muscle in his jaw for as long as he could stand before his curiosity killed another one of his nine lives.
“No more,” he rasped.
“So, no, he didn’t do anything … permanent,” she euphemized. “He hit me,” she shrugged. “Chased me. Pulled me down, bent me over.” A terrible sound escaped from her husband’s throat. “That’s it. He touched himself and pinned me down. But that’s it.” Steve shifted his weight and adjusted his patch. “But …”
“But what?” he insisted.
Kayla stuck out her left arm from beneath the blanket. “Now it’s broken.”
Steve reached out so delicately for her wrist. She didn’t flinch when he ran his fingertips down the inside flesh or lifted it to his lips. He released her carefully, then without warning, he swept himself up from beside her and stomped with all his weight onto Ray’s genitals. The squish was quite disgusting even through the sole of his boot. The man didn’t react, because he was outcold with the massive head injury that Steve had dealt him. Far more severe than the one he, himself, had received from Werner the night before. And just like that, this man who was a quiet menace to society and every young female he’d ever come into contact with, was nullified forevermore. Steve was about to kick him in the head again, but Kayla shouted for him to stop.
“Why?! Why shouldn’t I kill him right here, baby? You tell me why?!”
“Because you’re not a killer! You’re a gentle, kind man no matter what you think of yourself, and you don’t kill people!”
“Maybe I do! Maybe I’ve killed lots of people!”
“No,” she snickered with her absolute knowledge on this, “We both know better. This man before me has never taken another human life, and if there ever comes a day that you do, it will be because that person left you no choice! But right now, you have a choice, and I won’t let you kill him. Besides, I don’t think he’ll ever be using that thing between his legs as a weapon or anything else ever again.”
Steve desperately wanted to end this man’s life, but he was Kayla’s hero now, so he let her calm him down with her words and the sound of her voice. “I’m ok. I’m right here, and I’m not damaged.”
“Your arm is broken, Sweetness! You’re damaged! We have to get you to the hospital.”
“No …,” she said softly in a strange reversal of their traditional roles on this topic, “… I think this time I need to do this one myself.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t want any attention for us. Will you wrap it for me?”
Steve swallowed at her use of the word “us” and nodded. “Yeah, baby.” He took her head in his hand and pulled it to him again, kissing her temple. “Yeah.”
Kayla took the fork that had fallen from her hand and asked Steve to wash it, which he stepped over that animal to do. Then she placed it so that the curved portion was against the heel of her hand and held the handle against her wrist and lower arm while Steve wrapped the ace bandage around it with a slightly different technique that Kayla walked him through.
“Thank you,” she said. Then she kissed the palm of his hand before placing it against her cheek.”
“You like that, don’t you.”
“Like that?”
“When I touch your cheek like that. You like me to do that.”
Kayla smiled. “Yeah, I do.”
“Ok, then I’ll keep doin’ that.”
She let him, then the throb got to her. She gingerly held her wrist in her good hand. “This is a good job,” she said. “It should protect the injury while we figure out what to do.”
Steve’s look shifted. “The first thing we’re gonna do is get him out of my sight.” That was fine with Kayla. Before Steve went about the business of ridding the man from his room, he stomped hard on his crotch one more time. That was … also fine with her.
Kayla stayed beneath the blanket in the exact same position as she came down the rest of the way from the frenetic rush of it all while Steve very carefully hauled the would-be rapist out through the window and brought him back into his room. He dumped him on the bed and nearly gagged on the unimaginable piles of stacked sh*t. Stacks and stacks of books, magazines, and boxes created narrow paths to and from the vital areas within the tiny space. Sandwich baggies of what looked like human hair sat atop every stack. Mostly blonde, but some red and brown. Steve looked malevolently to the man whose normally red face had now paled to ashen. He hated him as much as he hated his father. There wasn’t anyone on this earth than he hated more than those two men, of whom he now held in equal regard. Not one other man. Steve hoped this vile excuse for a human being never woke up and simply died here in this room alone to be found only when the stink started to attract interest. Ray would wake up, though. And when he did, his brain would be damaged beyond repair. He’d be found wandering the lakefront, his penis that had violated young teenaged girls his entire, sexually matured life, still hanging out. He’d be institutionalized as an indigent and never again be able to use his genitals for either of their intended purposes before he died seven years from now.
Steve was very careful not to knock anything over or touch anything with his bare hands, but he locked the door from the inside and secured the chain, too. Then he crawled back out, closed the window behind him with the edge of his shirt like he’d used to touch everything else, and returned to the woman restlessly waiting for him to come back to her.
Kayla was shaken up. Another man had tried to rape her, and this one came almost as close to doing it as the one who actually succeeded. She’d gravely underestimated his strength and assumed he was a harmless old man. He was old, but he was anything but harmless. This whole jump had been anything but harmless. Was this her own fault? She was not supposed to be here. This wasn’t just unshared time, this was like a hedge maze inside the Hotel California. Was this real? Was any of anything since March 2, 2009 real? Her mind was betraying her, and her judgment was shot. She disappeared out of her daughter’s life in 1989 after a year and a half of changing her diapers and brushing her hair, and feeding her from he own breast – but maybe that wasn’t real, either. This was going to reset like that did, and Ray would no longer be an unconscious heap somewhere inside the room next door. Duke would no longer have a hole in his chest in a fleabag apartment. Stefano wouldn’t have a bullet in his brain in Tuscany. A stuffed cow wouldn’t be sitting in her bedroom in 1979 that Steve gave her for her 19th birthday. They reset, they all reset, this would reset, too. And she’d go on to the next one, and that wouldn’t be real, either. Right? She was going insane. Kayla was insane with whatever these jumps and that attack and her loneliness was doing to her. She needed Steve. She needed her Steve. She felt like if her husband didn’t come to her right now and tell her he loved her that she was going to evaporate into the ether.
Steve climbed back in, shut the window, and this time latched it before closing the brown curtains. He then went back to the door, brought in her duffel bag where he’d dropped it when he’d given up trying to get in and instead ran up the fire escape to get to her, and then locked them both back in. When he next laid eyes on Kayla, her hair had dried in wild curls, and her big, blue eyes were no longer crying big, frightened tears. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen wrapped up in his blanket, and all he wanted to do was protect her. Be with her. Like an answer to his unspoken thoughts, Kayla got up on her knees in the middle of the bed, and Steve watched with awe as she opened the blanket, silently calling him to her. She was completely naked from shower. He’d never felt in his entire life the emotions coursing through him right now. Not for Marina. Not for Britta. Not for anyone.
Kayla watched the desire spread across his face. And then he was on her so fast that all she could do was kiss him back when his mouth closed over hers. If she hadn’t been there she never would have known that he was on the losing end of a fight less than a day ago. His lips were sweet and consoling, his tongue was wanton and demanding, and his hands were … possessive … protective. More like the hands of the husband she knew. She could feel how much he wanted her, and she wanted him back. She wanted all of him, including the part that was missing, but she was so needy and lonely for him right now that she couldn’t help reacting. And she wanted to react.
Steve let her wrap the blanket around him as he wrapped his arms around her, eating at her lips with as much frantic need as she felt within her. They moaned and gasped, and let their fingers roam. Steve broke the kiss long enough to lift his tank top over his head and let it fall somewhere outside their bundled forms. Facing her on his knees, Steve used his strong palms to lift her rear end up into his growing erection, and Kayla moaned with the intense need to join with him.
“I’ll never hurt you, Kayla,” Steve whispered into her neck as he suckled on it, enjoying the reaction his warm, wet mouth was evoking in her when he found that spot just at her shoulder that his primary awareness had known about for decades.
“I know,” she moaned. “I’ve always known,”
Steve’s bare chest against hers felt so good as she imagined her whole Steve here, the memory of their shared lives, good and bad, infusing him with the love and devotion that drove him to want her right now. To love her right now. To make love to her right now. She was quickly falling down a rabbit hole that she never wanted to emerge from. Love me … Love me …
“You’re so sweet,” Steve whispered, palming her breast. He needed to taste it, so he bent his head and licked her nipple gently. “You taste so sweet.”
Kayla was truly awed at how little the essence of her husband would change over the years. The person down deep that he was when he met her, married her, had children with her, was taken from her, was returned to her, and began jumping with her was the same person he was right now. Licking her nipple. Telling her how sweet she tasted. She was breathing hard, tears stinging at the backs of her eyes. She didn’t know why.
Steve came back to her lips. He couldn’t stay away from her plump lips. His tongue swept through her mouth, making Kayla dizzy with need. Still on their knees, Kayla kissed down to his tattoo and sucked at its hilt. Steve held her head there, because the sensation was divine and was only made more so when she lightly stroked her fingertips over Steve’s hardened shaft.
“Kaylaaaa,” he moaned, his eye closing with her touch, “Ooooh, baby.”
“You like that.” It wasn’t a question. It was a reminder. “You like when I touch you like that.”
“God, yeah.” Kayla was touching him. He reveled in it. It was the first time for him. But she wasn’t letting herself know that fact. She was with her husband; he was with the girl he’d only just fallen in love with. Kayla sucked on his tattoo harder and boldly took his whole erection in her hand and stroked it. Steve moaned and got weak, but he didn’t move while Kayla pleasured him. “So good, baby. That feels so damned good.”
Steve wanted to be bold, too. But Kayla was not like any of the other women who’d performed all manner of sexual favor on him in this bed. She was special. “I want to touch you.”
“Touch me,” she said as she continued stroking him.
“I—I want to touch … are you …” he was almost frantic with arousal, barely keeping himself from impaling her. “Are you wet?” he whispered lustfully.
“Put your hands on me … feel.” But something wasn’t right in her voice. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was almost like she was afraid he would leave.
Steve stopped what her hand was doing and turned her face to look at him. “Slow down,” he said, but he had a hard time slowing down, himself. “I’m not going anywhere.” He was breathing hard and was straight-up horny. The tears that tried to break through and make Kayla face the reality of who and when this was rode the edges of her awareness, refused admittance to the moment. She didn’t speak, only swallowed. “I know what I said before. Just—slow down.” Then he gave up and attacked her mouth again, this time the frenzy kicked up to an explosive level.
“I want you,” he grunted. “I wanted you from the first minute I saw you in that bar!” He ate at her lips and fell on top of her on the bed. Kayla thrust her hips up at him, and his cock wanted inside of her. “Nothing’s ever gonna hurt you!” He kissed her harder. “I wanna … I …”
“I want you, too!” Your Steve is not here.
Their kisses were carnal, insane with want. Steve finally gave in, reached his middle finger down between her legs, and slid it through her wetness. He rode her thigh, his lips still locked onto hers, licking her, tasting her, his throaty moans hot against her neck.
“Steeeeve,” she whimpered. “Make me come! Make me feel you!”
“God, Kayla, you’re unbelievable. “You wanna come, I’ll make you come!”
“Yes, please!” He stroked his fingers over her clitoris and sucked her breast hard into his mouth. She wanted his cock inside her. She wanted his love to fill her. Take the pain away. The pain of loss. The pain of loneliness. She wanted the man dedicated and committed to her, Stephanie, Joey, and Emily to tell her he loved her. “I love you, Steve!” she panted. “I love you!”
Steve’s entire demeanor changed. His motions didn’t stop, but her expression of love with the tone of a hopeful return attached to it changed something in his licks and sucks and strokes, and Kayla felt that change in him so acutely that it shocked her like a hard slap in the face.
What are you doing, Kayla? she asked herself.
Looking for Steve, she answered.
Well, he’s not here.
Yes, he is! she insisted. Right here! Loving me! Comforting me!
No. Reason was winning. She could feel it. No, he’s not. This man might have fallen in love with you, but he’s not giving you what you’ve needed since you kissed her goodbye. You’re using him until you can get what you’re really after. Your primary Steve. Until then you’re just using him. Just like all those other women.
The sensations of Steve’s fingers on her clitoris and his tongue flicking across her nipple had brought her into that point of no return where if she didn’t come she’d come crashing down with an aching blueness.
Don’t do this to the man you love.
A memory rushed into her. Steve looking into her eyes in a candle-lit room with more love than any other man on this earth had ever had for a woman. If you want to stop at any time, you just say stop. She believed him then just before he’d made love to her for the first time after Jack had raped her – when he promised her that he’d never hurt her. And she still believed it.
“S-s-s-s-stop!”
Steve released her breast from his lips, stopped the motions of his fingers, and froze. The tears that had tried to burst through finally did, and Kayla couldn’t stop them if she tried. Hovering his painfully erect cock right at her wet entrance ready to receive him, Steve did as she asked – no pleaded – and stopped as he watched Kayla’s right mind come back to her.
That was how he knew. That her abrupt change of heart wasn’t because he’d hurt her, that she wasn’t in pain. It was what she’d just said – more accurately, his reaction to it. He dared to look up into her eyes, and what he saw there he’d never seen in anyone before. Insecurity, guilt … love. Steve was caught in the drowning deluge of a love that was happening too fast and he was not ready to let himself have yet. Nor was he ready to show his own. And now she knew it. The resulting look that stole over her was soul-crushing.
“Oh my God, Steve, what am I doing?” she sobbed. “What am I doing to you?” She meant both primary and destination Steves, and she now started to absolutely sob.
“I … I’m …,” Kayla stammered. Steve was too stunned from her declaration, hurt by her reversal, and aching in his arousal to make any sudden moves. He just stayed where he was for another few seconds, helpless to the moment. “It was too soon,” she panted, “I’m so … I’m sorry.” Steve shook his head, unable to reply. “I know you don’t understand,” she squeaked as she cried. “I know you don’t know you love me yet.”
“Don’t tell me how I feel.” It was an angry statement. Kayla wished it wasn’t, but it was. What was worse was that the fear that she’d broken through with this heinous episode with Ray was now splayed across his face again.
“I got carried away. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m so sorry. This is so unfair to you … And to me!!” She was really crying; for so much she was crying. “Not when you’re not you yet, and I’m so confused. And really f*cked up.”
Steve didn’t understand a lick of this, and his confusion only increased when she suddenly stopped crying and got a wondrous look in her eye. “Steve! You … you stopped. You stopped!”
“You told me to, Kayla!”
“And you did! You don’t know what that means to me. And to you.” She caressed his face and curled her fingers into his sideburns. “You will never really know.” then she leaned up and kissed his lips. Considering what a tease she’d been to his poor, confused, horny penis, she was surprised he didn’t back off sooner than he did. But after a few moments savoring her lips on him, he pulled away.
“You’re right, I don’t understand. And I can’t say what you want me to say.” His cock was still rock hard, and she was still wet.
“I know.” She took a shuddering breath, her tears at bay. “I’m sorry I said it.” Strangely, Steve was … not sorry.
Kayla was about to gently push Steve to the side when his body went completely rigid and the life drained out of his beautiful green eye.
“Steve?” She was afraid to hope after so many false alarms, but he was devoid of consciousness, hovering on stiff arms. A sadness she wasn’t expecting settled upon her. As she realized the other day, this man now ceased to exist. Forever. “Goodbye,” she whispered. “Thank you for taking such good care of me.” She kissed him one last time and felt a crack of bittersweetness in her heart. “You are loved.”
When Steve sucked in air and his eye rolled into the back of his head Kayla knew once and for all that her husband had finally arrived.
Steve’s arms gave out, and he fell face first into Kayla’s soft neck. He moaned sickly and tried to form words, but the nausea was overpowering. So was the unmistakable feeling of going from zero to 60 with the out of thin air rock hard erection. He wanted to be sick, he wanted to ejaculate, and the combination was physically brutal. He tried to get his head on straight, because he could feel his wife naked beneath him and knew he must have arrived into a body making love to her, but he seriously had to vomit and fought it with everything he had. Her body felt so very different, and he hadn’t laid eyes on her yet, but he knew his wife, and this was her. The jump sickness wasn’t the worst it had ever been, but it was close. Kayla told him to try not to talk as she stroked his naked back. Her voice was strange.
Steve didn’t have the mental or physical strength to think about when this was yet, all he could do was ride out the jump sickness. So he ignored the erection, wrapped his arms around her bare back, buried his face in her neck and hair, and held on until while she held him back.
In a few moments the jump effect had passed almost completely and, once again, he could move without the threat of losing whatever was in his stomach. He moaned, unconsciously rubbed himself against her, and called for her. “Kayla? Do you remember Stockholm?”
Kayla blinked slowly to the relief and dread and sadness and happiness of it all. “What is this, twenty questions?” He was struck, because her voice wasn’t just strange, it was really strange. He finally pulled his head up to look at her for the first time. The face looking back at him was a shock. He didn’t know any Kayla like this. Her hair was curled like when they’d first met, but her face was so young. More like from 1979. That was too young to be naked in bed together.
“Baby?”
“Hi,” she said tentatively. She remembered their exchange from the alley and felt such guilt.
“Hi,” he replied neutrally. “Are we … ? What are we doing?”
She dragged a hand up over her forehead and through her hair as she sighed. “What it looks like,” she said. “We’re doing what you think we’re doing.”
Steve exhaled and looked up and away from her. There it is, she thought, he’s mad already. “What year is it?” he asked looking back at her.
Just get it overwith. “It’s 1982.” Steve did not reply, but his eye narrowed as it bored into hers with indictment. After a moment with that long, fixed stare, he rolled over onto his back. The moment he did, he sat right back up in shock.
“Jesus Christ!” he blurted. His eye raked over the room, side to side, top to bottom, window to door. “Which one is this?”
“Which apartment?” Kayla sat up and held the blanket against her chest.
“Which city?!”
“Chicago. You’re in Chicago.”
Steve looked slightly relieved, actually. “Not Miami?” Oh. Now she got it.
“Why, are you worried I caught you with the hooker?”
Steve reddened. “Yeah.” Kayla had no idea how to react to this. “How did you know?”
“Rap sheet.”
Steve nodded. “I’m so glad it’s come to that,” he sneered disdainfully. “Did you read the whole thing?”
Kayla looked away sheepishly. She felt so much like an intruder now. She’d once insisted that they were supposed to share everything, that his problems were always going to be her problems, and that they couldn’t have any secrets. But she understood first hand, now, why he wanted to shield so much of his past from her like he’d done the first run through their lives. She understood how embarrassed he was to have lived the way he’d lived. And she hated that she’d taken that private past away from him. They both knew the plan was to find each other, and he had warned her that it would be bad. But she knew now that Steve had gambled that it wouldn’t happen. Because she knew her husband, and he would not have wanted her to see him this way. The look on his face right now with the realization of where they were confirmed it.
Kayla ignored his last question and repeated where they were. “We’re in Chicago. I’m positive. You just got out of jail a few weeks ago for breaking and entering.”
“Great, so I’m a sh*t right now.”
“You’re not. You were helping Dixie.”
“Who?”
Kayla stared. “Dixie?” she repeated.
“I don’t know any Dixie.”
“Pixie Stick?! Steve, you went to jail for her, how could you forget her! Black, pretty, works at Marshall Fields now, has a little boy!”
“Oh … Yeah, right, right – Don’t look at me like that, Kayla, it’s been 30 f*cking years!”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right.”
Well that was too easy, he thought. She’s feeling guilty. And he knew why. “You sleepin’ with me?”
Kayla shook her head. “No.”
Steve tugged the blanket down to reveal her bare breasts then peeked under it to confirm what he’d already felt when the jump effect was passing through him. “You sure about that?” Again, it was accusation.
“We were about to. But we stopped. I stopped us.”
“I’m sure I was real happy about that given how thick my dick is right now.” He looked down into his crotch. “Not so thick anymore, actually.”
“You were wonderful. I said stop, and you stopped.” She reached her right hand into his lap and took his. “I said stop,” she repeated. “and you stopped.” Her voice was filled with poignant admiration and love. The look in Steve’s eye changed. He understood what she was saying.
“Really? I didn’t … I didn’t …”
“You didn’t.”
He nodded with an imperceptible smile. “Why did you stop?”
Kayla chuckled and rubbed her hand over his. “Because I told you I loved you, and you wouldn’t say it back.” She couldn’t help the affect in her voice.
Steve remembered telling 1979’s destination Kayla he loved her. He knew it was a mistake after he’d done it, but he couldn’t help it, that was his wife. He tried to let that understanding guide him as she told him she’d done the same thing, but it was hard. He was such a jealous man.
“Are you mad at me?” Steve pumped his jaw and looked away. “Don’t lie to me, Steve. Are you mad at me?”
“Yes,” he said with an impressive control.
Kayla’s need for her husband to love her had hit its threshold. He was finally here. Her real and whole husband was here. And she needed her anchor now.
“Do you still love me?”
“Always! I’ll always love you, no matter what, Kayla! Forever, do you hear me? I love you forever!”
Kayla broke down into Steve lap. He held her there for several long minutes while she cried. They had a lot to talk about. How she got there in this completely wrong year, how they were living in the previous jump, what they’d done to each other in the jumps before that, and all the things that were culminating now into serious problems that were threatening to tear them apart. Steve didn’t want to talk about them any more now than he did when he ran from the pier after Bo called a man Zach. But he saw now that his wife, whom he loved more than he loved his own life, was damaged. He knew he’d helped do some of it. And while he felt completely broken himself, he’d spent too long avoiding and now needed to be there for her, help her, anchor her. So for now, he sat naked beneath a blanket and held his wife closely to him, letting her cry these pent up tears while he kissed her head and told her over and over how much he loved her.