Kiss Across Chaos (Kiss Across Time #10) - Tracy Cooper-Posey Page 0,25
a jumper—no choice.”
“But you like it, so…?”
He sighed. A gusty one this time. “Male jumpers don’t get to keep their ability once they’re turned.”
Oh… Now she thought she understood. “Then you want to be turned, one day?”
“Right now, the idea of growing old and decrepit seems…wrong,” he said softly. “There’s so much out there I still want to see.”
The yearning in his voice!
Jesse wrapped her arms around her knees, as the heat of the fire bathed her back, instead. “You can grow old and not be able to jump, or be turned and still not be able to jump.”
Aran closed his eyes. “I’ve conversed with Plato, with Cicero, with Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius. Newton. Einstein. Kings, queens and heroes. I’ve watched the Titanic sink, the Battle of Britain, Martin Luther King’s last speech, the protests in Tiananmen Square. The Berlin wall being built and then being pulled down again. The pyramids being built. Games in the Colosseum. The Gettysburg Address.”
Jesse remembered to breathe. “When did you do all this?” she whispered.
“My time is limited,” he whispered. “I squeeze it in.” He turned his face away from her gaze. “Washington has always seemed like the minor leagues to me, but it’s my league, so I played my guts out. Only, now I’ve been booted out of the arena and I should be pissed. Or upset. Or both. And all I feel is…relief.”
Getting drunk sounded like a moderate response under those circumstances, Jesse thought.
Aran turned over, his back to her. She understood that, too. He’d just revealed his inner core. She would feel as exposed as he was, if it was her.
Jesse said lightly, “If you ever go back to the Battle of Trafalgar, take me with you. That is a battle I would like to see.” It had only turned the fortunes of Britain and made it the world power than controlled the oceans—which had given Britain access to the rest of the “colonial” world, well before the other European empires had got their shit together.
Aran didn’t answer. She hadn’t expected him too. She stretched out on the sand, wriggled until she was comfortable, pillowed her head on her arm and tried to sleep.
A long while later, she did sleep. When she woke, it was broad daylight and the fire was cold ash in front of her, smelling of gum resin and charcoal. The plaid blanket that had been on the bed was now over her and the bed was empty.
Jesse sat up and brushed sand from her skin. The early morning sunlight bounced off the sea with eye-watering intensity. No wonder Marit always wore sunglasses.
The little bay was about a mile from tip to tip, and the pergola was almost in the center of it. On the southern headland, half a mile from here, she spotted Aran as he strode out of the water, then hastily looked away because he was naked.
Not that she could see any detail from here, except for the long lines of his body and the surprising width of his shoulders. Aran had muscle the slim suits hid.
And she was watching him, after all, she realized.
He walked up the beach to where she could just spot the pile of dark grey suiting, shaking off water, then bent and plucked one of the items from the pile.
Jesse made herself turn and find something else to do. She pulled one of the water cannisters from Marit’s pack and drank several cupfuls. The other cannister she dropped onto the bed for Aran when he returned. He had to have a raging thirst by now. She buried the ashes from the fire by pouring more beach sand over it and tossed the remains of the firewood back into the bushes lining the back of the bay.
Marit popped into view, balancing a bowl on a potholder, with a spoon in it, and a bread plate with toast stacked on it in the other.
“Oh, he’s…there he is,” Marit said, looking over Jesse’s shoulder. “Doesn’t look any worse for wear, damn him. I’d look like a zombie, after something like that.” She shifted her gaze back to Jesse. “Oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, almonds and dried apricots for you. Dry toast for him.” She put the plate on the bed and carefully transferred the bowl of oatmeal over to Jesse. “Mind your fingers. It’s hot. Coffee or tea? I left the kettle boiling.” She bent and gathered up the Esky and the considerably lighter backpack.