My mind is still a fuzzy mess, but I get the feeling I am safe and that’s really all that matters. My life on Earth had become intolerably boring. I know I wanted to escape. I must have succeeded. Hurray me.
“So. Uh. How do we know one another?”
“What do you mean?”
He looks at me in a way that makes me think he’s hiding something. The question clearly makes him uncomfortable, which is strange because he does not strike me as the sort of alien man to get uncomfortable. He looks confident, and strong, cocky, and maybe even a little dominant. The way he pulled me out of that bush, he was touching me like he owned me. He was definitely talking to me as if he knew me. Still is.
“We know each other. You took me out of the bush. You knew I was there.”
“Oh. Right. I found you there.”
“Just now?”
“Uh.”
I cock my head and fold my arms over my chest. “What is going on?”
“It is somewhat complicated,” he fails to explain.
“You better tell me what’s happening.”
“Or what?” He cocks a brow at me and I feel a sudden flash of hot excitement between my legs. Oh, he’s hot. He is Really. Fucking. Hot. And that dominant hunch was not wrong either. The way he’s looking at me now gives me an absolutely irrepressible urge to fuck with him.
“Or I’ll make your life difficult,” I promise him.
“You’ll do that anyway, knowing you.”
“Just how do you know me?”
We are back to the original question, phrased in a slightly different way. I have the strangest feeling, like I know Zed somehow. He feels familiar. But how. And why?
“There’s someone I need to hunt down,” he says, changing the subject in an artful and charismatic way. “Someone who tried to hurt you. Someone I can’t suffer to live.”
“Wow. That’s…” What’s the word I am looking for? Intense? Terrifying? Absolutely bonkers? “That’s something.”
“Don’t worry. This time I’m going to get it right,” he says.
“Do I have amnesia?” The question bursts out of me. “You keep talking about this time and doing things again. Have I missed or forgotten something?”
He sighs and sits down in his chair in a slumped sort of way, which does nothing to stop his stomach rippling in an excessively manly way. Is this alien comprised entirely of muscles? How does he make his hair so incredibly rakish? And his eyes, those purple eyes. How are they so piercing and intelligent, commanding and fascinating?
I’ve never met an alien before. I hoped I would one day when I got shuttle patrol duty, but I never imagined any other life form would be this fucking hot.
“What can I do to not have this conversation?” he groans the question into his big palm.
I smile. I can think of a lot of ways he could distract me if he really wanted to.
He catches my look, and a slow grin begins to spread over his face. “Maybe you remember more than we think.”
“Does that mean…” I point at him and then at myself. “Have we? Done? It?”
“Have we been intimate in past times? Yes, Ava. Very much so.”
“Wow.” I clasp my hands over my face. “Wow. I can’t believe I can’t remember that. How could I ever forget that?”
“It’s not so much that you’ve forgotten anything, as much as it is you never experienced it at all.”
“God, you are so weird,” I comment, but not in a negative way. I am astonished and astounded. I am intrigued. I am aroused.
“And you are an impertinent brat, who has gotten herself spanked within the hour no matter what timeline she finds herself in.”
“Really?”
“I suspect as much. I can’t be sure.”
“I guess we shouldn’t let this one be the exception then, should we?”
He laughs, a deep, masculine, safe sound. “You don’t know what it feels like to be spanked, do you?”
I don’t. But I can imagine what it will feel like to be pressed up against his body and touched in a firm and commanding way. I have a suspicion it will be hot as hell.
“I have missed you,” he says. “But that may have to wait. Time truly is of the essence. We have very little of it.”
* * *
Zed
This time around, I have remembered everything. She recalls nothing. It seems to be a cruel twist of the time schism that only one of us is able to hold the memories of previous events at a time. I am determined this will be the last time. This will be the last loop. I think I know what I need to do.
“Then you don’t have time to keep pussyfooting around what is happening here,” she points out, pretty as she is pragmatic.
“Alright. Short version. We’ve been here before, you and I. Many times. I recall three of them personally at this moment, though there could have been dozens more…”