All Tomorrow's Halloween Parties by Gwen Campbell

Heat Rating: Fire

Content Warning: Graphic sexual scenes between a man and woman.

She's his future. He's her past. Too bad they're opposites in every way.

Ash woke instantly. He sat up straight, looked around his darkened bedroom, strained to hear something.

There was nothing.

Still, all that government-funded training hadn't let him down so far. He listened to his adrenaline rush instead of the normal quiet of his house. Normal yes but something was needling him, something out of place. Dressed in a t-shirt and boxers, he slipped out of bed, retrieved his Glock from the night table and padded out into the hallway.

Everything was quiet, normal. He began to doubt his intuition but that didn't stop him from searching the house. Ash had just come off an assignment that morning. Six weeks of undercover work for the DEA did things to your head, made you see things in the shadows, believe the fantasy was reality. Most of the time that was a good thing.

He crept down the stairs, avoided the creaky floorboard at the bottom, checked the back hallway, the back door. The security system was armed. It didn't show any open doors or windows. Nevertheless, Ash held his gun steady with two hands, trained the barrel around doorways, crept soundlessly through the house.

He'd been away for awhile but not long enough to forget the way the place looked at night, the way it felt. Something about the way it felt tonight was just...off. He knew the patterns the streetlight made on his polished wood floors, knew the way a narrow beam of light found its way around the edge of his living room shutters and left a pale stripe on the back of the sofa. He knew the way the porch light from the neighbor's back yard made the chrome appliances in his kitchen glow.

Tonight, the glow wasn't right.

Ash leveled his weapon and flicked on the kitchen light with his elbow. "Freeze," he bellowed. "Federal agent."

A woman stood in the pool of light spilling out of his open refrigerator. The milk carton in her hand--the milk carton he'd picked up just that afternoon--hung motionless in front of her mouth. When she looked over at him, her eyes were the only part of her that moved. Some of the milk escaped the carton, missed her mouth and trickled down her chest, her very naked, very spectacular chest. A drop hung from her nipple. The rest of it slid down her belly, curled across her bare mound before falling to the floor and forming a small puddle around her bare toes.

Staring at him like a deer caught in the headlights, she raised her hands slow and easy. The milk carton rose with them.

From the utility room tucked in behind the kitchen, he heard his washing machine ping.

"Are you...are you using my stuff to wash your clothes?" he barked. Special Agent Ashby Wakefield had seen crackheads do some mighty weird things but he was appalled to find one standing in his kitchen, drinking his milk straight from the carton and washing what were no doubt some seriously skanky clothes in his nice new front loading washing machine.

In addition to that spectacular rack, this particular crackhead had legs that went on forever and a very pretty, clean shaved pussy that, at any other time, would make his johnson stand up and salute.

"Um, yes," she answered quietly and started to lower her arms.

Ash snapped his arms up in response, held his weapon a little higher. His index finger, which had been laying parallel to the barrel, was now on the trigger.

When she raised her arms again, the movement lifted her breasts even higher. Despite the situation, he appreciated the view. She had a hint of an accent, something he couldn't place. He had no problem understanding her but he wondered where she was from. That wasn't the only thing he was wondering about. The naked woman standing in his kitchen looked too healthy to be a crackhead. Intelligence shone through the fear in her wide, blue eyes.

"You don't look like a junkie," he growled, picked up the phone hanging on the wall and dialed 911. An operator answered promptly.

"Special Agent Ashby Wakefield of the DEA," he introduced himself curtly, never taking his eyes or his weapon off the burglar standing in his kitchen. "There's an intruder in my house.

"No she's not armed. Yeah I'm pretty sure about that," he added after a pause and looked her up and down. "Tell the responding officers that I'm a federal agent, I'm armed and I'm holding the intruder at gunpoint."

After he gave them his ID and section numbers and hung up, the woman started trembling. She looked scared, more scared than before but also resigned. "Can I put this down?" she asked, glancing up at the milk carton.

"Yes," Ash said. "Do it slowly. No sudden moves."

She nodded and when she did, her brown shoulder-length hair shimmered in the bright overhead light. Like the rest of her, it looked too clean, too healthy for your average B&E artist. Most of them stole to support drug habits.

When the carton touched the counter, Ash lifted his chin and directed her away from the refrigerator. "Turn and face the wall," he barked in his best command voice and tried not to think about how sexy she looked. "Put your hands behind your head. Spread your feet." The front of her had been amazing. The view from the back was just as good.

She complied without hesitation. Without those wide, blue eyes staring back at him and eating up his trained and honed confidence about how he was responding to the situation, he reached into his junk drawer, grabbed a long zip tie and tied her hands behind her back.

"On your knees. Cross your ankles," he ordered, held her elbow tight enough to show her he meant business and guided her down onto the floor. Quickly, keeping an eye on her, he kneed the refrigerator door shut, popped his head into the dining and utility rooms, making sure nobody else was inside the house.

The woman was now pale, sweating, breathing fast and shallow.

"When did you last use?" he asked.

"Use? I don't understand the question."

Mentally, Ash rolled his eyes. "Cut the bull, lady. Are you coming down or did you smoke too much?"

"I...I am..." She collapsed onto her side. When Ash looked, he saw that her eyes were big and teary. He knew better than to fall for the fake sick junkie trick. Still, he was a cautious man by nature so he picked up the phone to redial 911 and ask for medical assistance.

"It's called Operation Hallows Eve," she gasped. The color had drained from her face and she looked like she was in pain. "Your name was Roger Allsaint. Safe word is peppermint whip."

Ash felt his mouth drop open. How did this woman know classified information about the assignment he'd just finished? He put the receiver down.

"Who the hell are you?" he whispered, grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the zip tie. He helped her to sit up. Like somebody had flicked a switch, color flooded her cheeks, she stopped sweating and her breathing returned to normal. Rubbing her chest, she looked up at him.

"My code name is AJ Latimer."

*

Cari kept rubbing her chest, trying to erase the memory of the crushing pain. When it stopped, she started rubbing her left arm. "ID number 1554 Charlie Tango Igloo. The contact number for my handler is..." She rhymed off a local DC phone number at random. Shivering lightly as the sweat on her skin evaporated, she watched Special Agent Ashby T. Wakefield pick up the phone and dial. While he did, she took stock of her physical condition.

The chest pains and the pain radiating down her arm had faded. As soon as she'd started spouting a made-up government identification, it got easier to breathe. Her head was no longer filled with the sound of her heart pounding erratically then stalling. She felt better with each passing minute. The lethal contraction of the self-destruct band around her heart had stopped. This was the first time Cari had time traveled but logic and training told her she'd make it out of this kitchen alive and would return to this era to plant false government records to back up the gibberish she'd just spouted.

Ashby reached someone on the telephone. He seemed satisfied with their answers. Huh. Apparently Cari was going to hire an answering service too.

The records hadn't mentioned how gorgeous he was but then why should they? He had beautiful eyes--big, brown, soulful and they held hers. His hair was straw colored, streaked by the sun and shaggy in a way that intrigued her. The legs peeking out from beneath those odd shorts he was wearing were long, muscular and particularly tasty.

"So what's your real name and what the hell are you doing in my kitchen?" he asked quite suddenly, hung up and offered her his hand. Enthralled, she touched the flexible square of paper he pulled off a roll and handed to her. He took another one, used it to mop the milk off the floor then discarded the paper in a waste bin under the sink. Copying his actions, she used her square of paper to wipe the milk off her body.

She wanted to rub her finger between his eyes until the furrow there relaxed. "My name is Cari Smith. I'm on a reconnaissance mission and the records said your house was unoccupied for six weeks," she answered honestly and watched him put his handgun on top of the refrigerator, high enough that she couldn't reach it. Ashby might have just confirmed her identity but he obviously wasn't ready to trust her. "I'm sorry I broke in but I needed to wash my clothes and get something to eat. Thanks," she added when he massaged the feeling back into her wrists then took the paper from her and discarded it. She would have added that she didn't mind him stealing glances at her body but he was so obviously trying not to let her catch him doing it that she played along and kept her mouth shut.

"Reconnaissance?" he huffed and put the milk back in the refrigerator. "That's a pretty lame story even by government standards."

"Oh. Um. A stakeout," Cari said, cursing herself for using an inappropriate term.

"Hmm. Better. But unless my seventy-something neighbor across the road has taken to smuggling illegal aliens into her weekly bridge games, there's nothing around here to survey. It's a quiet suburban street. I know. I vetted the neighbors before I bought this place."

They looked up at the sound of approaching sirens.

"Give me your shirt," Cari ordered.

"My what?"

"Your shirt," she repeated, waved her hands in front of her naked body and shot him a look.

"Oh. Sure," he said and started pulling off his t-shirt. "I should have offered. You kind of caught me off guard." He looked away while she dressed. "Come with me," he said and held out his hand. "We'll meet them at the door together."

"What do I say?" Cari asked nervously.

"You? Nothing." Ash led her through the house, flicking on lights along the way. "Let me do this," he added with a grin. "I've been known to act pretty fast on my feet." He opened the door and Cari shaded her eyes against the bright flashlights shining on them.

Ash identified himself when two policemen began barking questions, then invited them in. They looked at Cari's legs longer than necessary before glancing around the place.

"We got a call about a break in," one of them said.

"Yeah. I called," Ash said. Despite wearing nothing but those odd little shorts, he looked comfortable, confident as he took control of the conversation. "Seems I wasted your time though." He nodded in Cari's direction. "I just got off a long assignment and some buddies of mine decided it would be funny to sneak a strip-o-gram messenger into my house as a belated birthday present. I thought she was an intruder until she showed me the work order."

"You have ID, Miss?" one of the officers asked as he flicked off his flashlight and hung it in a loop on his belt.

"Yes. Of course." All three of them followed her into the utility room. There, she produced a purse that contained a DC driver's license under the name Cari Smith, photo ID from an employer and an ACTRA card. She also handed one of the officers a folded piece of paper with Ash's name and address on it, along with the date, time and how much clothing she'd be required to remove.

Grinning, the officer handed the paper and her ID back to her and left the cramped room.

The look on Ash's face told Cari he was too freaked out to say anything...for the moment. When one of the officers asked, he jogged upstairs, retrieved his ID and after they looked it over, they left.

When Cari turned away from the front door, Ash was standing behind her. His gun was again in his hand and he was pointing it at her.

"Enough bullshit, lady," he growled. "Who the fuck are you really? Unless you're a mind reader with a laptop and a printer tucked up under that hair there's no way you could have pulled that work order out of your purse. I know there's nobody else in the house who could have planted it." He put his finger on the trigger and glared at her.

Cari laid her hand on her chest, waiting for the crushing pain to start. It didn't. That shocked the hell out of her. She tried to think up another lie and couldn't. "I'm a historian," she admitted quietly. "I'm here to witness a pivotal incident in the life of a child who'll grow up to be the first female president of the United States. What, you're a techno-phobe?" she groused when his eyebrow shot up. "This is cutting-edge stuff. Top secret. In fact, this is the first time I've time traveled."