Unwrapped (13 page)

“Open your legs,” he whispered. I widened my stance slightly and he slipped his masterful fingers inside my thong, stroking me gently. Valentina slowly unzipped my dress, and although my lungs were now less restricted, I found it even harder to breathe. While Nicolas tortured me with his hand, she moved my hair aside and trailed one finger from my hairline all the way down my spine to my tailbone. As Nicolas moved his hot kisses down my throat and Valentina put her mouth to my bare back, I closed my eyes and let every sensation wash over me.

The feel of four hands and two mouths on my skin. The taste of two lovers on my tongue. Their scents mixing together in a heady cocktail of desire—one masculine, one feminine.

And as my mind spun with the wonder of it all, I heard the tango music, appreciating the way the slow, sweet strains of the strings and accordion were interspersed with the dramatic pulsing rhythm of the piano.

“I really love this song,” I breathed. “I mean, I really, really love it.”

Nicolas laughed, the vibrations tickling my neck, and Valentina smiled as she moved to one side and brushed the hair back from my face.

“It’s called Por Una Cabeza,” she said. “It’s a very famous tango.”

Nicolas pushed my dress off my shoulder, baring my breasts. Since they were both still clothed, I felt overly exposed and nearly panicked. But before I could bolt for the door, Valentina turned me toward her and took my face in her hands. When her open mouth met mine, I was stunned motionless for several seconds before I began kissing her back. It was so different—her mouth felt smaller and rounder than a man’s, her tongue softer and sweeter. As we kissed, Nicolas stood behind me, one hand reaching around to stroke me with his fingers and the other sliding up my ribs to squeeze my breast.

Everything felt so good, but I still had
no idea
what to do with my hands, and I must have started fidgeting or gone stiff or something, because I heard Nicolas’s low voice in my ear, reassuring me. “Relax, beautiful Caroline.”

Hearing my name on his lips was like a trigger or something, because it sent a jolt of lust through my body and I reached for Valentina’s tiny waist. One of her hands drifted down to flutter lightly over my other breast, fingertips barely grazing the nipple, which peaked under her touch. I gasped, and she continued to tease me in a way that told me she knew exactly what she was doing, and I wondered if it was strange for her to touch breasts other than her own.

I wanted to know what it felt like.

In a moment I got brave enough, or maybe turned on enough, to slide one hand up her chest and palm one of her perfect, round tits. I totally felt like some pervy preteen boy copping his first feel, but I tried not to think about
myself
so much as what it would feel like for her. I brushed my thumb over her nipple and felt it pebble beneath her dress. When I repeated the movement on her other breast, she moaned lightly and swayed toward me.

“Take off your dress.” Nicolas’s voice was low and gravelly.

Pulling away from me slightly, Valentina peeled her dress from her body and lifted it over her head before tossing it on the couch.

“Now kiss her again.”

As Valentina and I melded together, my insides tightened at the way Nicolas was controlling the two of us—almost as if we were still dancing. I loved it. The feel of Valentina’s chest against mine was strange, so different than a man’s hard chest, and I wasn’t sure at first if I liked it. But Nicolas’s low growl behind me let me know he was enjoying the view, and his fingers began circling my clit in a way that had me moaning into her mouth.

“Nicolas,” she murmured against my lips. “Let’s move into the bedroom.”

He swept me off my feet again and carried me to the bed in the next room.

Laying me down on my back, he slipped my shoes from my heels before tugging my dress and damp underwear down my legs. While he unbuttoned his shirt, she crawled up the bed, one knee on either side of my left leg. My heart was galloping out of control.

She lowered her lips to the top of my thigh and kissed her way up my stomach, which quivered at her touch. Then she looked up at me through long lashes with a devilish glint in her dark eyes before taking my nipple in her mouth.

Nicolas stretched out naked beside me, taking the other nipple in his mouth, and my eyes rolled back. Four hands on my body, seemingly everywhere at once. “Oh my God,” I breathed, throwing my arms up behind my head. “That feels amazing.”

“You like two mouths on you?” he asked.

“Yes…yes,” I whimpered in a haze of pure hedonism, and when I felt his fingers between my legs again, my lower body hummed and tightened immediately, so close to orgasm I couldn’t stop myself from yelling the word. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

I bucked my hips up against his hand and Valentina’s hips, which still hovered over mine. The second Nicolas plunged his fingers deep inside me and rubbed his thumb over my clit, I exploded in white hot bursts of rapture and gasped for air.

I heard Valentina giggle. “That looked like it felt good.”

“Oh my God, it did,” I murmured. “It did. This is crazy.”

“It’s not crazy,” said Nicolas. “It’s only fun.”

I opened my eyes and looked at them—these two absurdly gorgeous creatures on either side of me, both smiling impishly. “Do you two do this often?”

“No.” Nicolas shook his head. “Very rarely, in fact.”

“We are very, very picky,” said Valentina. “And we have not done this in a long time. But when Nicolas saw you today and pointed you out to me, we both agreed that you would be perfect.”

I blinked. “Why me?”

“You’re beautiful, but you also had a sweetness about you we both liked. I felt it instantly, and so did he.”

Nicolas nodded. “Plus I wanted to fuck you. She’s not saying that, but I will.”

“And since my room is right next door,” said Valentina, “I heard everything—and it was so hot, I had to touch myself as I listened to you scream.”

My mouth dropped open. This was all so unbelievable.

Valentina giggled again. “I love her lower lip. I want to bite it.”

“Me too,” said Nicolas, but it was she who leaned in and took it between her teeth before pressing her lips to mine.

“So was this what you meant when you said you wanted to be bad?” Nicolas asked.

“Even I couldn’t have imagined this,” I admitted. And I wasn’t exactly sure how much farther I wanted it to go, but I didn’t want to entirely stop it either.

“You want to be bad some more, Caroline? Because I have an idea.” Valentina’s musical voice held a teasing lilt.

I looked at her. “Tell me.”

She leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Let’s suck Nicolas off together.”

So we did.

On our knees on the floor in front of him, we took turn sucking and licking, taking little pauses to kiss and touch each other while Nicolas groaned and cursed in Spanish and swore he’d never seen anything hotter.

After that, Valentina admitted that she wanted to watch Nicolas fuck me.

So she did.

I didn’t think I’d be able to relax enough to orgasm during sex with another woman on the bed looking at me with her sort-of boyfriend, but I did.

Twice.

Later, I washed up quickly in the bathroom and stared in disbelief at my wanton self in the mirror. My hair was mussed, my cheeks were flushed, and my lips were swollen.

I looked totally sexy. And I felt it.

I was sad to think I wouldn’t see them again, but I knew that it was probably better. Today had been fun, but it was the kind of fantasy fun that I wouldn’t want to indulge in all the time. The best thing was, I knew I was capable of being a smut queen in real life. I hadn’t even pretended to be a character from a book tonight—I’d just been me.

Caroline Peach, sex goddess.

Grinning one last time at my reflection, I left the bathroom and got dressed. Valentina insisted we all exchange cell phone numbers, and they both hugged and kissed me goodbye, first her, and then Nicolas. He held me close and breathed in the scent of my neck.

“Today was incredible,” he said. “I hope you enjoyed your birthday.”

“I did. It was the most fun birthday ever.”

“Good.” He released me and stepped back. “Next time I see you, I hope you are dancing again.”

“I’m going to dance again,” I assured him. “I promise. I forgot how good it makes me feel to move my body to music.”

“And you move it very well.” He grinned at me. “Look me up if you come to New York, Miss Peach.”

“I will. You do the same if you come back here.”

He nodded. “Goodbye, Caroline.”

My belly fluttered. Damn I loved the way he said my name.

***

I didn’t hear from either of them for months. Then one Saturday night the following spring, I was getting ready for a date—I was much more confident with men than I had been before, although I hadn’t met #4 yet and I kept Smutty Caroline on a tight leash—when I got a text from him with a link to a YouTube video.

Lovely Caroline, I am thinking of you tonight, as I always do when I hear this song. When can we dance again?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHunor1B3xU

I clicked on the link, and my face warmed. The title of the video was
Por Una Cabeza
. The opening strains of the tango sent chills down my arms. I’d forgotten about the song, but hearing it again took me right back to the moment I was in his arms. Their arms. Smiling, I texted him back.

I am thinking of you too. You will be glad to know I have been taking tango classes, and my instructor says I am a natural. I told her I had an amazing lesson last year. :) Let’s dance again soon.

Stranded at the Savoy

by Sierra Simone

“Beginning countdown. You ready, Jankowski?”

I nodded. The costume supervisor made a small noise as he fussed with my bustle.

“What?” I asked.

Lee shook his head. “Nothing.”

“What?”

He glanced over at the control booth, which was glowing and blinking in its usual inscrutable way. The Program Director, a tall woman with a harsh voice, was currently haranguing one of the tachyonists as they ran through the standard pre-travel calculations. Lee turned back to me. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“I am patently offended,” I said in my best patently offended voice. “I’ve done dozens of runs before, and I dare you to find a grad student more knowledgeable about the 1880s than me.”

Lee rolled his eyes. “I’m not talking about going by yourself. I’m talking about the field trip.”

The clock above the control booth displayed a very large number thirty, which slowly began counting down.

Honestly, I was a little nervous about the field trip. I’d visited the Victorian Era on escorted and solo studies, but this was my first time shepherding my own group of students. They weren’t freshman at least, and we’d spent the entire semester preparing for our Christmas visit to Victorian London, endlessly practicing our table manners and speech patterns and travel protocols. And I’d even secured an extra dry run by myself, to make absolutely sure all the arrangements were in place, despite the cramped schedule that always happened around Christmastime. The birth of Christ was one of the most popular study trips the university offered. Everyone in the religion department had the option to go in December although, as Lee had once noted, it probably had more to do with visiting a Mediterranean country in springtime than piety.

But still. Even with all the preparations and my extra run, if anything went wrong, it was on my head. And if I was going to stay on for the doctoral program, I didn’t need any historical scandals or incurably maimed students cluttering up my record.

“You’re the youngest GTA ever to do her own trip,” Lee mused, checking my hairpins one last time. “Twenty-two years old…”

His lack of faith in me was only mildly irritating. I liked Lee and his overly elegant, overly put-together self; normally, we got along swimmingly. I had the best figure for Victorian dress that he’d seen in his twenty years in the Time Studies Department—or so he liked to tell me—and he was one of the few people in Travel Studies who appreciated the complex array of skills that it took to navigate a full-immersion run.

Lee squeezed my shoulder. “Well, the trip isn’t until tomorrow at any rate. Have a good run. We’ll see you in about—” he checked his watch “—forty minutes.”

“I’ll be a day older. No checking me for crow’s feet when I get back.”

Lee stepped off the platform. “Good luck!” He waved a long-fingered hand behind him, and walked over to the cluster of religion students for last-minute robe fittings.

The clock was at ten. I watched the digital numbers change.
Nine.
A flash of red pixels.

Eight.
You’d think the Time Studies department, responsible for Time Travel, Time Integration and routine Time Maintenance, would have a nicer clock.

Seven.
Ugh, it was going to sting. It always stung.

Six.
Not badly, but just enough to make you itchy and splotchy and generally grumpy once you got to your destination.

Five.
The platform began to hum, vibrations traveling through my black leather boots.

Four.
Lee had wanted to do velvet boots, but I insisted on leather for the inevitable English winter mud.

Three.
A warm golden glow suffused the room, making it difficult to see the control panel or the clock.

Two
, I counted to myself. I imagined I could see the individual tachyons flying around me, whizzing around like the manic little particles they were, but I’d been told by the tachyonists repeatedly—and a bit shirtily, I might add—that visible tachyons were just not possible and it was wishful thinking to imagine otherwise. They lacked imagination.

One
, I mouthed and the golden light burst into forceful radiance. I closed my eyes as my feet lifted slowly off the floor and the stinging itching burning of the travel began.

***

The wonderful thing about established travel is how easy it is to land in the right spot at the right time. Established travel locations have their own hidden platforms that can receive and transmit large groups, and are generally in out-of-the-way spots where there is little danger of a random bystander witnessing the impossible.

But the terrible thing about all time travel, including established travel, is that it’s subject to bad weather. Lightning and wind from the past and present, It’s also at the mercy of the time-storms that riddle what the travelers call the between-space (the tachyonists call it the
nothing-space
, just to be contradictory.) Flurries of tachyons move faster than the speed of light, faster than the theorized speed of near-entanglement, and these flurries have been known to buffet the unwary traveler far off course. Rumor was that the Program Director herself had once ended up smack in the center of Kublai Khan’s yurt when she’d been aiming for a Nirvana concert in 1992.

The scientists had predicted good time-weather, but I knew just as well as they did that a prediction was not a guarantee; time-storms traveled through time itself. You never knew when you’d be in the middle of a perfectly tranquil transport and a tornado of tachyons would manifest exactly where your theoretical body or energy or information (the tachyonists argued frequently with each other about what exactly they were transporting) might be.

And the moment my feet left the platform and I sank into the burning light, I knew a storm was nearby. Something tugged me sharply downwards and I resisted the urge to flail, since excessive movement could disrupt the transport. It didn’t matter. A swirl of heat and itching enveloped me and I tumbled head over heels, yelling in surprise, making a startled gasp as I realized I couldn’t hear myself yell. Not in the between-space. A blast of cold air told me that wintertime England was getting closer, and then another gust from the storm sent me wheeling off to the side. I caught the scent of heavy greenery and heard the loud trumpet of an elephant, and I angled my body back towards the cold, back towards England. The golden light faded into something grayer and paler and a world of brick buildings and carriages began to come into view, fuzzy and almost pixelated at first, then clearer and clearer. I balked as I realized this was not my quiet grove of trees a mile outside Hampstead. Instead, I was heading straight for the middle of London, about to emerge from thin air with a strong smell of smoke and a blinding yellow light—something that was bound to catch the attention of even the most intemperate and distracted Londoner.

“Shit.” I tried to pull back, bending all of my will to my tiny Hampstead grove with its hidden travel platform. “Shit shit shit—”

The world became all at once clear, noisy and cold, and then there was a shout and a clatter and I looked up to see horse’s hooves poised to trample me. Something grabbed at my waist and yanked me back. I fell to the frozen earth, pain shooting through my shoulder as my ass landed in the iciest puddle imaginable. The hooves came down on the street and the cabbie yelled something at me, but I was alive. Alive and freezing wet and bruised.

“Fuck me, that hurts,” I said.
“Fuck.”

At this point, I realized that the ground underneath me was shaking. Bewildered, I turned my head to see that while my left side had landed on the ground, my right side was on top of a person. A man person.

A laughing man person.

“By Jove, I’ve never heard such a mouth on a woman.”

I was about to tell him exactly what I thought about his fucking misogyny and the place in his ass he could put it when two things happened. First, I remembered where I was and who I was supposed to be: I was in London in 1888, and I was Emily Jenkins—not Emilia Jankowksi—a well-off young lady from a good family,
not
the kind of girl who swore in public. And second, I saw the face of the man person underneath me.

And what a face.

Very long, very dark eyelashes framed eyes the color of coffee. He had high, almost delicate, cheekbones, set off by a fine jaw, and the whole look might have been
too
beautiful, save for the telltale bump in his slightly crooked nose, where it had been broken at some point. And he had the wickedest mouth I had ever seen—soft lips that curved knowingly as I stared at them.

Remembering myself, I struggled to get up—no small feat, considering the yards of sopping wet silk and the impossibly stiff corset. Somehow I managed, thanks to the circle of onlookers who had gathered. Two gentleman helped me to my feet and inquired about my well-being, and I donned my accent and my manners, and apologized profusely for my clumsiness and thanked them extensively for their decency and attentiveness, and all the while Coffee Eyes stood up and brushed off his top hat and straightened his very fashionable striped pants. I tried to ignore how closely they clung to his thighs and other areas of interest.

The top hat was back on, only to be swept off in a grand gesture. “Henry Devitt, at your service.” His hair was distractingly marvelous, shiny and a bit too long, the edges curling around his ears and collar.

“Emily Jenkins, charmed.” I curtsied and bobbed and began a litany of excuses, all the while trying to calculate how much trouble I was in. Granted, London was a busy town and it was two days before Christmas, but still. A girl appearing out of nowhere in a flash of light and then almost getting run over by a hansom cab—it was bound to attract some notice.

“Shh.” Coffee Eyes took my hand, and I realized I’d still been talking. “It’s not your fault. I’m just so glad I was here to help.” He brought my hand to his lips, peering up at me through his long eyelashes. It was the kind of thing that might make a girl swoon—a Victorian girl, at least. But me, I’d been around the block once or twice (or three times, if you counted that German exchange student,) and so it was easy to tell how calculated the move was, how practiced. I smiled politely and extracted my hand.

“Thank you again, Mr. Devitt. I believe I owe you my life, and I have no idea how to repay that debt.” Was that too much? Was I laying it on too thickly? The Victorians tended toward melodrama, but my experience in the field of thanking people for saving my life was extremely limited. Even the tachyonists hadn’t earned that privilege yet. I continued on regardless. “But as much as I would like to give you a thousand thank yous, I really must be getting to my lodgings.”

“Where are you staying?” he immediately seized on the opportunity. “Let me escort you.”

“The Chapel Hotel, on Halkin Street,” I replied. That was all the way by Belgrave Square, surely too much of an inconvenience for this dandy, and I really needed to get going—

“Why, we’re on Grosvenor Crescent, just a short walk away.” The hat was back on, my hand tucked into his elbow and we were walking before I had the chance to protest. Luckily, the furor over my abrupt appearance had fizzled out and the crowd had dispersed, at least relieving the worry that the Program Director would be shaking a 150-year-old newspaper with stories about a magically appearing girl at me when I returned to the control room.

“Really, you don’t have to do this,” I insisted.

He batted his eyelashes at me. They were distracting in the way that his clinging, striped pants had been distracting. “Why, of course I do. I’ve saved your life and so now I’m responsible for you, or so the adage goes. And Miss Jenkins,” here the wicked mouth curved, “let me tell you it is an honor to assume responsibility for you.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
Do Victorian girls really fall for this claptrap?
I knew the answer was yes, and I felt very proud of sensible 2030s courtship. But at the same time, this overwrought flattery wasn’t entirely without its charm. Especially coming from Mr. Henry Devitt, possessor of Coffee Eyes and tight pants.

“What brings you to London, Miss Jenkins?” We navigated our way to Halkin Street. I could already see the many-chimminied roof of the Chapel Hotel—chosen waypoint for most travelers to this time, mostly due to the discretion of the proprietor, but also due to its closeness to modern hygiene standards.

“Oh, study,” I said vaguely. Always be vague. It was safest.

“I studied at Oxford myself.” His wicked mouth lost all its pique and verve. Something dark was left in its place. Something bitter.

“Didn’t end well?” I asked dryly and then remembered myself.
Shit!
What was wrong with me? Normally, I had no problem assuming Emily’s meek, time-appropriate demeanor, but the time-storm and crash-landing must have left me addled.

But Mr. Devitt wasn’t upset. “No, it didn’t. I left a couple of years ago without testing for my degree. And you? Girton?”

Naming a college would violate my vagueness rule, but in this time period, it was difficult to be vague about schools that admitted females—there were only a handful. Because of this, I’d taken the time to research the faculty and classes at Girton, so I could fake my study there more effectively. “Yes, Girton.”

“Oh, Girton girls,” Mr. Devitt said, but then fell silent before he could elaborate. His mouth was wicked again. I decided I didn’t want to know what he’d done with those Girton girls. Not much probably. Victorian girls were not usually the fast type.

“My hotel,” I said, never so happy to see this stupid tourist trap. Already I could see the slightly dazed and giddy expressions of the tourists and the patient gestures of their tour guide. Some of them had even brought old plate cameras and were taking pictures of themselves in front of the hotel. I could see that some of the women wore wigs—contemporary haircuts like bobs and pixies tended to draw attention to the fact that the traveler was not exactly from these parts, so the tour companies provided very realistic (and very itchy) wigs. I’d grown my hair out to avoid just this problem, although sometimes the dark, stubborn curls were much more hassle than they were worth.