They dozed lightly for a little while, but eventually, the day was upon them, and they allowed themselves to talk about what was happening.
“You’re still here, Sweetness.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel anything yet. How long do you think it’s been?”
“Maybe half a day or so. Did you sleep good?”
“Yes I did,” she said as she snuggled against him. “I woke up even better.”
Steve smiled and kissed the back of her head.
She suddenly remembered something he had said in the loft. “Steve, what was I doing when I leapt away from the Emergency Center?”
“What do you mean?”
“I left first, and you said I kind of ‘checked out’ when I jumped. What did you mean by that? What’s my body doing?”
Steve realized this was important and that they hadn’t actually discussed it yet. “Well, first your face just went – blank. The emotion was gone. Like your body was just … I dunno, baby, like it was a destination or somethin’. Once you left it, that was that.”
“You mean I didn’t say anything after that?”
“No, Sweetness. Not to me, anyway,” but you might have said something to your broth – to John and Abe.”
She craned her neck back to look at him in confusion. “Huh?”
“Baby, that last time they were there when we jumped, remember? I jumped just like ten seconds later. Your body didn’t have a lot of time to say anything before I left.”
“My destination body.” She turned on her side and felt the slickness of their lovemaking on her thighs as she propped her head up on her elbow. “That’s a good way to think about it, actually. We’re us, but the bodies we’re in are the destinations we’re jumping to.” She chewed on her bottom lip as she thought about this. “So, did my destination body just go limp? Was it like a puppet?”
“A puppet?” Steve snickered. “Baby, there’s no way you could go limp with my fingers inside you.”
“Come on, will you be serious please,” she laughed at his joke as she playfully pushed on his shoulder.
“Hey. Puppetry is serious business. I take the way my fingers make you scream my name very seriously.”
Kayla cocked her head and gave him an appreciative look. “Really, though, what did my body do when I jumped?”
Steve thought about this carefully. “Well, you didn’t go limp, it was almost the opposite, actually. You just froze, and your face went blank. You didn’t say anything or move before I had a chance to jump away …” Then he realized it was slightly different the first time than the second time. Kayla looked at him quizzically. Steve sat up, and she followed him. “When you jumped from Cleveland we were in a panic. The last thing I heard was you screaming, and I remember your face being terrified and then going to just nothing. You became just empty. I shook you, you didn’t say anything. I was crazy with fear, I didn’t know what to do, so I just held you to me, and then I jumped. Really fast. It was different at the Emergency Center ‘cause Roman dragged me off of you as you were leaving. Did you hear me say I love you?”
“No,” she shook her head with love in her eyes, “I must have already jumped away when you said it.”
“Well, I did,” he smiled. “You froze up, went blank again, and then I had some words with Roman – John – whatever,” he gave up, “and I was gone. So, I’m not sure what guy they ended up dragging off of you.”
“Words? Did you guys get into it?”
“Does it matter? Not like we’ll ever have to pick that up again. But yeah, he didn’t want me kissing his sister and practically pulled me off you by my hair.”
“Oooh, baby, I’m sorry.” Steve shot her a prideful look that said, Please, I got this, baby.”
“So, really, I don’t know what you were doing once you jumped from the Emergency Center. But, you went blank both times, and I jumped right after, and your body never said anything while I was still there.” Kayla absently traced the lines of Steve’s tattoo as she thought about this. “What about me?”
“You?”
“You jumped to me, Sweetness— destination me.“
“And it was you, but it wasn’t …”
“This is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had.”
“’… Cause it’s not like these people aren’t us, they are us. Just, we haven’t lived all the way to who we are yet.” Kayla darted her tongue out to lick, her bottom lip, and Steve tried not to grin so that she wouldn’t be distracted. He wanted to know what it was like for her to arrive somewhere without him. “When I jumped to the Emergency Center, it was the you that belonged in that time. We weren’t an us yet, and it was like I said before you were afraid to touch me. I said some things like you were my Steve, but that destination Steve didn’t know what I was talking about. I was …,” she trailed off.
“You were what, baby?”
“I was so embarrassed.”
Steve sat up straighter and turned a confused eye on her. “Why would you be embarrassed?”
“I just,” she tried to let her hands do the talking, but it was hard to put into words, “I just didn’t know how to be with you. It’s been a really long time since then, I didn’t know what you would think of me. I was acting like the woman you’d just made love to, not who I was to you then.”
“Oh baby, no.” He reached for her hand and kissed it. “I could never have thought anything bad about you, don’t ever think you need to be embarrassed around any version of me.”
Kayla smiled. “And I love you for that.” She kissed him sweetly. “But I did. I felt completely exposed and strange. Because , think about it, you love me. He didn’t know what to make of me once I started speaking in tongues back there. Once I realized you hadn’t jumped with me I clammed up. I was afraid to say the wrong thing. And I didn’t know you would be arriving that qui—“ Kayla stopped short.
Steve raised his eyebrow.
“Ten seconds? You were only ten seconds behind me?”
“Yeah, maybe less.”
“That’s not possible. I was with your destination Steve body for more than a minute.”
“What?! No way, baby.”
“Yes, Steve, I was!”
“Kayla,” he said with a mixture of warning and unease, “I’m telling you, I left right after you. It was only ten or 15 seconds at the most.”
They stared at each other with this new wrinkle.
“How long in the loft, Kayla?” she was silent with puzzlement. “How long till I arrived at the loft last night?” he repeated more forcefully.
“A … a minute? I think a minute.”
“You sure?” She nodded, and his eye darkened as he wondered if this discrepancy meant anything. “So, what was I doing when I jumped in?” He saw that Kayla was becoming upset and tried to temper himself and not fly off the handle. He reached out to her and cupped her face. “Tell me what you remember, Sweetness.”
“I think it was a lot like what you said I was like when I jumped away. You tensed up and froze in the position you were in, like at the Emergency Center, you had your hands on my shirt. You just went stiff. And … and now that I think about it, your face was kind of blank, too. Then you suddenly took a really deep breath, and your whole face came back to life. You acted like you, again. The one I went to sleep with in 2009. And I knew it was you.”
“I took a really deep breath?”
“Yeah, both times. Like – like as if you’d been holding it or something.” They remained quietly lost in their own thoughts for a moment, and then Kayla asked, “Do you see anything on your way from one place to another?”
Steve didn’t have to think about it, he already knew this, because it struck him so odd that he thought about it often. “Not at thing, Sweetness. One minute I’m there, and then something pulls me in the gut, I get dizzy and I can’t see straight, and then it’s like I’m falling into the next body, and I get nauseous when I get there.”
“There’s no, like, tunnel or lights or anything?”
“Nothin’, baby.” Steve smiled. “You trying to pull a Steve, here? Lookin’ for a show to compare it to?”
“Not really,” she grinned slightly back, “I just wanted to make sure it’s the same for both of us. It sounds like it is.” She reflected a few seconds and added, “seems like there should be a tunnel, doesn’t it?” Steve chuckled at his wife’s interpretation of time travel.
They both took a deep breath and Steve pulled her toward him to lay upon his chest. “It’s been a tough couple of days, baby, or however long since we left Cleveland. “But we’re together, Sweetness.”
Steve didn’t want to leave the warmth and security of the bed, but eventually he had to admit that his bladder was screaming at him. “Nature calls, baby.” Kayla moved over and chuckled as she patted his hip in acknowledgment. “Don’t worry, I’m right there,” he said as he nudged his nose to the door that always seemed out of place with the round window in it.
“It’s ok. I should really go, too.”
Grudgingly, he got up and walked into his bathroom, leaving her naked in a bed that he last slept in 20 years ago. “What a dump this place was,” he said to himself as he dragged his eye across the small space while he peed. “I did keep it pretty clean, though.” Clean … Steve was dying for a shower. He poked his head out the door and saw that Kayla was staring after him.
“Need some help in there?” she asked teasingly.
“Naw, I think I’ve got it, Sweetness,” he winked with a classic shake. “But I was thinking of taking a shower. Then after a beat. “I think you should join me.”
Kayla smiled and followed him into the bathroom where the full size tub filled half of the already tiny space. Since they were already naked, there were no clothes to strip off. He started the water, grabbed a washcloth, sat down on the edge of the tub facing his wife, and proceeded to clean up the considerable amount of love spilling out of her.
“The last time you did this was in our bedroom at home,” she said sadly. “The night before our first jump.” He’d cared for her so tenderly after their lovemaking that night, just as he did now. “You said I’d thank you in the morning. But then we woke up in the loft.” Steve didn’t say anything, just looked up into Kayla’s eyes. “Thank you for taking care of me.” She wasn’t just talking about the shower.
“I’ll always take care of you, Sweetness.” And neither was he.
She ran her hand through his hair. “We’ll take care of each other,” she smiled down to him.
Kayla spread herself for her husband, feeling neither vulnerable nor self-conscious; she felt loved. As he ran the washcloth across her lips, Kayla reached up and untied Steve’s patch. He paused only briefly when he felt her slipping it off the spot he protected most. They had loved each other in these bodies, and they couldn’t have trusted each other more. As he cleaned his seed from her body, she ran her fingers gently across the familiar grooves where his eye once was; a scar that was no longer there.
“Been a while since you’ve seen it, hasn’t it, baby? Not as ugly a scar since Homey fixed me.”
“Never was ugly to begin with,” she said seriously as she tipped his chin up to her with her finger. “You’re beautiful to me.”
Steve tossed the washcloth into the sink with a wet plop. “That’s another swish, baby.”
“Oh, come on, the net is four inches away,” Kayla teased, “that hardly counts.”
“Oh it counts,” he smiled as he stood her up and pulled her into a gentle kiss. Then they stepped into the shower and reveled in the hot water cascading down their bodies. They lathered the soap onto each other and silently allowed themselves to be bathed by the other. Steve stood behind his wife to wash her hair as he massaged his fingers into her scalp. Little sighs of deep pleasure escaped her lips as his fingers hit the most pleasurable pressure points of her scalp. He knew her so well. He took a large handful of the soapy bubbles and ran them over her shoulders and collarbone, then reached around to work her pert breasts in slippery circles. Kayla turned to face him and did the same for Steve’s hair, working the lather down his muscled chest. They took their time, in silent enjoyment of each others’ bodies. Kayla slid her hands around his chest, abdomen, and hips. She didn’t have to look down to see that though he’d made love to her not one hour ago, he was already hard for her again. She reached down and ran her fingers from his balls straight up the underside of his penis, making him moan softly. She gazed at him through half-lidded eyes and began to firmly stroke the length of his raging erection. It hadn’t been her intention to encourage his arousal, but something innate within her set her hands in motion.
“Again?” she asked with teasing invitation.
Steve wanted it, but he thought better of it. “You know I want you,” he said with a kiss, “but I think your sweetness needs a rest, baby.”
“No it doesn’t,” she cooed as she continued to pump her fist over his hard flesh.
“Baby,” her firm fingers wrapped around his manhood felt so good, “aren’t you sore?”
Kayla loved him so much. He always put her first. “Nope.”
“Kayla.”
“Ok, a little sore, but I’m aching more to have you in me than to have a rest.”
Steve sighed, “I can’t get enough of you, Sweetness. We spent too long apart. Now that we’ve opened Pandora’s box, I want to be in that box all day. But, mmm baby,” he moaned, “I—I think we give it a rest, and if we’re still here tomorrow, you won’t be able to stop me.”
He kissed her in a wet and tongue-filled kiss that made his dick want to impale her. Which was fortuitous, because Kayla pulled herself away, turned to place her hands on the wall and pushed her rear into his stiff cock. “Take me, again,” she pleaded. “Take me!”
The sensations she caused in him were impossible to deny. He bent his knees, guided himself into her hot center with a forceful thrust, and immediately began pumping into her.
“Baby …,” Steve groaned as he placed his hands on her hips for leverage, “Oh f*ck, yeah, baby, you’re so tight. How are you still so tight?”
“Mmm … Steve you feel so good in me. It’s these bodies, they’re amazing.”
Steve stopped pumping, making Kayla turn her head. “Kayla I love this young body of yours. But there’s nothing I wouldn’t give to be inside the body sleeping at home in 2009. That body turns me on as much as this one. You know that, don’t you?” Kayla didn’t say anything, so Steve placed a hand on the crook of her neck and squeezed as he shoved himself into her. “Don’t you?”
“Yes, I – I believe you.”
He reached down with the other hand and squeezed her nipple. “You don’t sound convincing Mrs. Johnson,” he admonished like he was just about to put her in time-out. She yelped out as another hard thrust of her husband’s cock rubbed against her swollen clitoris. “There’s no version of you,” he thrust, “that any version of me,” he thrust harder, “does not—want—to f*ck—Kayla!”
She got his point, and she smiled as the brief moment of insecurity passed.
“You like this, baby?”
“Yes!”
“You like it when I make love to you like this?”
“Ooh, Steve, you kno I do!”
“You want me to stop?”
“No! Don’t!”
“Good.” Then he pulled out of her, sat on the edge of the tub with his legs to the inside, and pulled her down to straddle him. The water continued to pour hotly over them as her velvet glove sucked his cock inside of her. Kayla rode him in immense pleasure as she moaned loudly over and over. Steve sucked her breast into his mouth, and another orgasm began to build within her. Even with Steve’s expert manipulation of her body, she was surprised that she might be able to come again.
It was the fourth time in a very short time. The fact that it was the fourth time in places that they hadn’t the first time occurred to her, but she pushed it away as he did exquisite things to her. Just then her vaginal muscles had started pulsing. She was moments from her release. “Steve … St—uuuh! … mmmm!” Kayla screamed as the water cascaded down them. The sound of Kayla’s ass slapping against Steve combined with the sounds of climax coming out of her that only he would ever hear drove him to madness as his own orgasm ripped through him and into her. “Kayla! Baby, oh you’re so … damn … good.”
Kayla crumpled into him, and he held her tighly as she let her head loll onto his shoulder. She was finally spent and couldn’t figure out how she was going to stand up.
“You got me dirty again,” she told him again in mock rebuke. “I thought we came in here to clean up.”
Steve laughed. “Baby, baby,” Steve replied wounded, “You started touchin’ me with those bubbly hands, what’s a man supposed to do but make love to his wife?”
Kayla smiled, but then a nervous flutter disrupted her afterglow. She lifted her head and looked at him. “That’s four times.” Steve nodded. Kayla’s eyes became shiny with unshed tears. “I’m not sorry.”
“I know, baby, I know.”
“I’m not.” She remained stoic and refused to be upset after the unbelievable pleasure he’d made sure to give her.
“I know you’re not.” The lines of worry reached her eyes, and he couldn’t take it. “I think I’ve shown you that I can’t stop, Sweetness. He laced his fingers with hers on both hands and kissed her. “I’m not sorry, either. I promise you I’m not.”
He kissed her tenderly, letting his tongue dart into her mouth to search for hers. The truth was that part of him was sorry, because with every passing moment, he knew in his heart that Cleveland did this to them. And he could have fought his need for her if he hadn’t entered her at Gabrielle’s house after the jump had started. That selfish drive into her was the act he was sorry for.
But he was done seeing the constant worry in Kayla’s eyes. So, right here in this shower, he’d decided that this was the last time he was going to feel this way. It was the last time he was going to blame himself and make her think that he regretted being with her. With this kiss, he’d put his guilt behind him and simply love her, let her love him, and try to deal with each jump without each other one jump at a time.
“Now, Mrs. Johnson, my dick is real happy inside you, here, but I think it’s time to get back to our regularly scheduled program, don’t you?” Kayla giggled. “I don’t know why you’re laughin’, Sweetness, ‘cause some perfectly good hot water is goin’ to waste, here. You know what’s gonna happen if we run out, right? We’ll end up with a cold shower, then we’re gonna have to get back in that bed to get warm, and then my dick will just end up right back inside you.”
“And that would be a bad thing,” Kayla teased.
“Terrible. Now where’s that washcloth?”
Half an hour later, Kayla was finishing up in the bathroom with the limited amount of clothing and toiletries that would work for her here. Steve didn’t have a hair dryer, a single stitch of her clothing, nothing. She opted to put on a pair of Steve’s sweats and one of his t-shirts and tried to figure out what to do with her hair.
Steve had dressed and was now just a few feet away from her looking at himself in the mirror beside the bathroom door as he went to put his patch back on. He stared at his reflection with curiosity. It had been quite some time since his eye looked like that. When the thugs beat him up in Italy, his eye had already been repaired, and the scar of his present was very different from the scar of his past. It’s not like this was the first time, he’d had his old face while Kayla was recovering from the poisoning, but overall it had still been years, and he still felt a strange mixture of comfort, disdain, and nostalgia every time he saw it peek down under his patch. As Kayla had done in the shower, he ran his fingers over the grooves and ridges that had long replaced a once very nice-looking eye. Then he smiled. “Ya know why she didn’t flinch, man?” he whispered to his reflection, “’cause she loved your ugly mug even way back then.” Kayla heard him talk to himself in the mirror, and felt a warm happiness in her belly for how their love made him feel about himself. She didn’t say anything, allowing him this moment to himself.
Steve secured the patch onto his eye and turned to see Kayla shove a finger of toothpaste into her mouth. He leaned against the doorjamb and appreciated how adorable she looked in his clothes.
Kayla caught him staring at her. “What are you looking at, Mr. Johnson?”
“Who me? Nothin’, baby, I’m just checkin’ out the facilities here at Chez Steven Earl Johnson circa 198’wahtever.”
“Oh, and what’s the verdict?”
“The verdict,” he replied “is that I think I need to fire my interior decorator.” Kayla laughed, a sight Steve was very happy to see.
Kayla emerged from the bathroom opting to let her hair air dry, mainly because she didn’t have any other choice. Steve grinned; she looked like a drier version of the woman that showed up at his door in the rain on more than one occasion. The wet ringlets of her hair and mascara creating a blue shadow beneath her eyes caused memories of their early relationship to flood into him like a ton of bricks.
“Baby, do you know how cute you are when you look like a wet raccoon?”
“Well, I don’t suppose you have any makeup remover hiding anywhere, do you?” she asked with a smile in her eyes.
Steve palmed the hair off her face and kissed her. “Not on me, baby, no. That’s ok, you look great. Sorry I don’t have a robe for you or anything, this had to be before I bought all that new stuff.”
“New stuff?” she asked as Steve kissed her damp hair.
“Remember all those times we almost got to be alone together, but we kept getting interrupted? There was one of those days we were gonna spend the time here. I wanted to spruce up the place. Make it nice for you, baby.”
“Oh, that’s right, I remember, you kind of redecorated,” she chuckled. “Didn’t you change comforters?”
Steve nodded. “I did. In case we … did anything in the bed.” Steve looked over at the ratty old comforter they’d just slept in, and a weird kind of irony struck him. “I wanted fresh and new for you—us. “
“Ya know what?” Kayla asked hugging him. “We’ve still got that white fuzzy thing in storage back in LA.”
“White fuzzy thing.” He was stumped.
“Yeah, you bought this thing, I don’t know if it was meant to be a blanket or a rug, but it sure was somethin’ else. It’s one of those things I never threw away after you died. When I moved back here, I left some of our old stuff in storage, so it’s still there.”
Steve kissed the top of her damp head and smiled. “I think we should get all our stuff back when we get home.”
Kayla stiffened. There was nothing more she wanted than to go home. If she lingered on this she was going to cry again, and right now she felt good in his arms and in this place, and she didn’t want to dampen any of it with the sadness of missing her home and her children. Still, the word he used …
“When?”
“Yeah, baby,” he sighed, “when.”
Kayla took a deep breath of her own. “Ok. When. When we get home, we’ll get all our stuff out of storage.”
“And I wanna see this fuzzy thing, too.”
“Oh, that goes without saying.”
Steve smiled and brushed his lips against hers.
Now they were faced with something that they’d never had to think of before. They hadn’t jumped yet, they didn’t have anyone to hide from, she wasn’t married to anyone else, it wasn’t unusual for them to be seen together in this time, and they didn’t have any explaining to do to anyone.
What that all boiled down to was that they had no idea what they should do next.