Read Online Timestorm by Julie Cross - Free Book Online

Holly seemed to have every emotion under control.
    “Okay, so you were drunk,” she summarized. “And people in your present don’t get drunk or kiss, apparently.”
    “They do kiss and everything else,” Blake said, finally looking at us. “It’s not usually so impulsive, more careful and planned. You get checked for immunities and cleared by a physician first. That’s how I was raised, anyway, and it’s all I knew. It could be different for some people in my present. I’m not really sure. Obviously, it was the same for Jean, too.”
    “If you know all about the Plague of 2600,” I asked, “then why didn’t any of you go back to 2600 and give the government the secret formula for the vaccine or whatever?”
    Blake sighed. “The division of government that supervised us wouldn’t allow any jumps to the plague period. It was off-limits. I think they were convinced that it would change too much about the future, that the world would have been overpopulated and too fearless.”
    “But they could go around altering people’s genetics?” Holly said. “I think we need to hear the rest of this one. Hit that button or I will.”
    Blake eyed Holly’s gun tucked in the side of her jeans and then sighed before starting up both the audio and visual replay.
    I did open my mouth, but more to reply than because I wanted to figure out what she was going to do. Her tongue carefully slipped into my mouth and I froze, not sure what came next. She closed her mouth again and started kissing things that weren’t my lips—cheeks, neck, collarbone. Then she grabbed my hand and placed it on her breast. I became so lost in feeling this whole new type of skin, I didn’t even notice the door open.
    “Jean!” Nora said. “Blake! What are you…?”
    We both jumped apart, reaching for our wrinkled shirts on the floor and banging our heads together in the process. Once my shirt was safely returned to its original spot, I glanced at Thomas, standing behind Nora. His expression was completely unreadable. But at least he didn’t look shocked or angry.
    “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” he said to Jean.
    Jean’s cheeks were flushed to a beautiful rosy color that clashed with her hair. My eyes bounced between the two of them, trying to understand Thomas’s words.
    He just shrugged and picked up the empty bottle on the counter, holding it for Nora to see. “Dr. Ludwig wouldn’t exactly be disappointed if two of his beloved time travelers were caught reproducing.”
    “Reproducing?” Jean and I said together.
    Then I moved to the opposite end of the couch.
    Creating offspring wasn’t exactly on my evening to-do list. Although I knew how it worked. Why couldn’t I have seen that was where we were headed a few minutes ago? I just didn’t think about it. I was too absorbed in the moment.
    “He’s sixteen,” Nora said to Thomas under her breath. “He can’t do that yet.”
    “Apparently he can,” Thomas said, shrugging again.
    Jean scrambled to her feet and headed toward the nearest exit. “I’m not feeling well.”
    I sighed with relief the second she was out the door. Now I really wouldn’t be able to make eye contact with her ever again. Not without turning the color of a tomato.
    “Did you tell her to do that?” Nora asked Thomas.
    “Not that. No,” he confirmed. “I told her to entertain the kid, make him feel more at home here.”
    My stomach sank and flipped all at the same time. And then I felt the wine bubbling up inside me, working its way toward my throat.
    I barely made it to the kitchen sink before regurgitating the dark purple liquid. “Impurities, right?” I gasped as my head hung over the drain. “In the water … the water used to make wine.”
    Nora raced over, standing behind me, and placed a hand on the back of my neck like my mother did when I was sick as a child. She pressed a button above my head, turning the stream of water on, allowing me to rinse my mouth.
    “Impurities