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, however, she suspected very strongly that most men were not as fortunate in their proportions as Ryan.
Or sheer beauty.
Not just of his genitals, Hope thought as her color deepened. All of him. There'd been a scar on his left shoulder, the whiteness of it contrasting with the darker surrounding skin.
She'd ached to touch that old injury, to feel his smooth, thick skin and the beat of his heart beneath her fingertips. He was male power personified—all those firm, rounded, delineated muscles on his chest, shoulders and arms, those strong thighs dusted with dark, crinkly hair. His testicles had hung like ripe, round fruit between his thighs.
And his penis .. .
Surely it wasn't possible to put such a large member inside of a woman, was it? But it must be so, Hope thought with wonder and increasing arousal as she lifted the hem of the Marlborough gown and stared at the thatch of hair between her thighs. The thought of Ryan's penis coming into such close, intimate contact with her body made her groan in stark arousal.
That forbidden piece of flesh that nestled so secretly between her thighs ached with longing. She slid a finger between the tender folds and found herself to be creamy. Her finger glided easily over her aroused genitals. She understood why she'd grown wet—that her body instinctively readied itself to accept a man when she became excited.
Her body prepared itself to receive Ryan.
Even though she couldn't see or touch him, she trusted the knowledge of her body. She rubbed herself with increasing desire, thinking of those electrifying, steamy moments as she looked her fill at not just any naked male, but the most glorious specimen of manhood she'd ever conjured up in her admittedly overactive imagination.
Would it hurt to have intercourse with Ryan? Hope wouldn't are if it did. She had learned from various sources—the most honest and matter-of-fact of which was Addie Sampson, the madam of the Marlborough Club—that if the man was patient and skilled at arousing a woman, the discomfort for her the first time was minimal and short-lived.
Hope had little doubt that Ryan would be a skilled lover. He made her so aroused and hungry and he'd never so much as touched her.
She burned to join with him ... to discover the raptures of sex. surely it must be awe-inspiring if everyone thought about it so much—whether they be preaching the sinfulness of it or lining up to spend a last hard-earned dollar on it at one of the Levee District whorehouses. Even her idol William Shakespeare seemed quite preoccupied by the topic.
She closed her eyes and imagined touching Ryan's hard muscles with her fingertips. She pictured the hot look that would gleam in his eyes if she placed her lips on his chest, ribs and belly and discovered his textures with that sensitive flesh as well.
A soft moan vibrated her throat when she imagined him pushing that engorged pillar of flesh into her body.
She wanted to touch him, to merge with him so much that her desire focused her will to a powerful white-hot flame. Something flashed in her room and her eyelids flew open in surprise. She looked around in slight disorientation only to find that everything was as it should be—
She gasped. Everything was not as it should be, or at least, not as it had been. Her room looked as it always did, with the fire crackling in the fireplace and her bedclothes tossed back on her bed. But it was no longer her own reflection that looked back at her through the looking glass.
"Ryan," she called out in shock when she saw him standing in the mirror, their distance from each other only two or three feet. She was so stunned at the apparition that it took her a moment to realize what he was doing and to recall what she'd been doing the moment before she saw him. She gaped when she took in the swollen organ in his hand.
Her own flesh sharply twanged with arousal beneath her fingertips.
She took a step forward and reached in blind need for him, her face collapsing in anguish when it encountered hard glass.
"No," she whispered in profound frustration. But at least his image hadn't disappeared.
Her hand tightened into a claw on the mirror. When she saw his tensed expression she noticed that her fingertips had smeared a thin coat of liquid on the glass.
The juices from her sex smeared on the mirror, put on display for Ryan to see. '
His stare on her fingers felt palpable. His lips shaped the word Hope, but she heard nothing. He released his penis. Hope watched in fascination as the heavy head of his member pulled the stalk down, although it still remained suspended in the air at a downward angle.