Daring Time by Beth Kery Page A

night he'd found them. But he found that his imagination was all too sufficient when it came to fantasizing about Hope.
    So he remained in place, his right hand jacking his cock with more and more force. If only it were her small, elegant hand caressing the straining column of flesh. He squeezed just beneath the head and a stream of clear pre-cum oozed out of the slit. He imag-lined the liquid melting on Hope's pink tongue as she looked up at him with huge, velvety eyes that always seemed to convey a sense of her innocence and a profoundly carnal nature all at once.
    The image was so real he groaned roughly. A light seemed to flash. He opened his eyelids, startled, only to find that it was no longer his own image staring back at him from the mirror.
    Hope stood there, her cheeks flushed a bright, vivid pink. She once again wore the tiny, sheer gown.
    And her hand was every bit as busy between her thighs as Ryan's was.

FIVE
    Hope turned the last page in her book of sonnets and set it down dispiritedly on her bedside table. What had she really expected, after all? Ryan hadn't told her to try to communicate with him using the book. Instead he'd specifically mentioned the mirror.
    Her gaze traveled to the opened wardrobe door. Despite the fact that she'd been quite busy today—taking up her post at Central Station and planning her father's birthday celebration with the housekeeper— she'd still managed to stare into the depths of the gilded mirror at least a hundred times today.
    Never once, however, had she caught a glimpse of Ryan's handsome face.
    The memory of how he'd looked standing in that tub, like a naked statue of some warrior god come to life, left her breathless yet again.
    It surprised her a little that she believed wholeheartedly that he was a man from the future. Hope supposed the reason for the relative ease for her faith in the impossible was Ryan himself. There was something about him that she couldn't see with her eyes or put precisely into words, but she sensed it nonetheless.
    Ryan Vincent Daire was different. He wasn't of her world.
    There was something else she knew about him instinctively. She desired him. Hope supposed desire is what one called this overpowering need and hunger that overcame her in his presence, anyway.
    And even in his absence.
    She had said she would use the mirror to try to contact him again, but what, exactly was she supposed to do to penetrate the barrier of time? All she possessed were her too brief memories of him ... and her desire.
    She stood slowly from the brass bed. A moment later she extricated the balled-up Marlborough gown from the deep recesses of her wardrobe.
    The last time she'd seen Ryan in the mirror she'd been wearing the Marlborough gown and he'd been looking at her with a mixture of surprise and stark arousal. Hope had become all too familiar with that addicting hot look in his eyes when he'd studied her half-naked body last night in the bathroom. She moved quickly before she could change her mind, locking her bedroom door and lifting her cotton nightgown over her head.
    The Marlborough gown slipped over the sensitive skin of her breasts and belly, finally tickling the tops of her thighs as it settled on her naked body as lightly as a lover's whisper.
    Her throat spasmed convulsively when she once again stood before the gilded mirror. Did Ryan enjoy seeing her in the Marlborough gown? What sort of women did a man who lived in the twenty-first century find attractive?
    At five feet six inches, Hope considered herself relatively tall for a woman. But Ryan towered over her. Were people perhaps larger in the future? He was so big. Everywhere.
    Her cheeks and chest flushed with color when she pictured his long, shapely penis. Hope knew she had nothing to compare Ryan to except the statues she'd studied in France, Italy and Greece during her grand tour with an avid curiosity that could not be termed wholly artistic in nature. From what little knowledge she possessed,