Author's Note: Hi all. Thank you very much to the following people for reviewing the last chapter: kie1993, Theta'sWorstNightmare, Imorgen, MountainLord-92, LexySummers, MayFairy and the very nice anonymous person!

Was going to write other stuff, but feeling tired today, so I won't.

Fair bit of sexual content in this one - if you are not old enough to read, or if that sort of thing offends you, please don't read, OK? I could do without any hassles.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Doctor stared out the window of the car as Amy drove, horrified at what he saw on the streets of London. The temporal "hot-spots" were everywhere now, tiny little hiccups in Time, with dozens of humans repeating what they had just done and then going on, as if nothing unusual had happened. It gave the surrounding city a surreal quality, like trying to watch a television show while a capricious child was playing with the remote-control.

The worst part was, even though Tejana was the one who had caused this, he couldn't help blaming himself. He had travelled to thousands of worlds, cast fear into the hearts of evil creatures across constellations, saved the entire Universe from destruction too many times to count. The Doctor - the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds - the man who supposedly made things better. But when it came to healing the people he loved, that...oh, that he was not so good at. Instead of trying to help the Master back on Gallifrey when they were young, he had simply left him behind. When the Bad Wolf had made Jack a fixed point in time, he had run as far away from him as he could. Instead of telling Rose that he loved her, instead of claiming her for his own, he had taken the coward's way out and abandoned her in Pete's World with his clone. And now, when his daughter needed him most, he had let her down, unable to reach out to her, leaving her to be driven to the ultimate recklessness by her grief and loss.

"Oh my God, this is way beyond bizarre!" Rory said in disbelief, watching cars going around a roundabout, only to disappear and then reappear again, before completing yet another circuit. "Why isn't anyone noticing this is happening except us?"

"Travelling within the Time Vortex changes the way you see the Universe forever, makes you more sensitive to temporal fluctuations," the Doctor replied. "To an ordinary human, time seems to be flowing normally, because their tiny little minds can't fathom anything any different. But you can see the truth, that it's all slowly starting to splinter and break down."

"But what about Tejana?" Amy asked, hunched desperately over the steering wheel as she tried to negotiate the bewildering tangle of appearing and disappearing cars. "I've seen her sense temporal distortion before, like an itch on her skin. Why isn't she picking up on all this? And the Master's a Time Lord too, he should be able to feel it, shouldn't he?"

"They can't sense it because they're the ones causing it," the Doctor said. "They're at the eye of the storm. Which is why we have to stop them, before it's too late."

The Master froze in shock, feeling Tejana's soft lips brush his, tantalizing and tempting, parted and moist in explicit invitation. She tasted like wine, heady and potent and somehow illicit, like the promise of dark, erotic nights and urgent, driving passion.

What the hell was going on? Was this the Doctor's plan? For Tejana to distract him by seducing him? But no, surely not, that wasn't something his saintly arch-enemy would do, bartering his own daughter like that. And Tejana was far too proud to ever allow it.

But here she was, trembling under his hands, her mouth searching his, as if he was the only thing she would ever want. Unexpected lust shot through him, pleasure searing through his veins as he felt his body harden in heated response to hers, a need more primitive than anything he'd ever felt before. With that, everything changed and suddenly he was the one controlling the kiss. One hand came up to tangle in the long cascade of her hair, holding her still while his mouth ravaged hers, the other splayed across her back, just below her waist, angling her hips to his. She didn't struggle or try to fight him in any way. Instead, she slid her arms around his neck and held him closer, kissed him harder, her tongue twining with his, matching every move he made, as though she had done it a thousand times before and knew just how to arouse him, just how to drive him wild. Without quite knowing how it had happened, he realised he had slammed her back against the nearby wall, his hands pinning her wrists as he kissed her, so that the entire front of her body was pressed against him and he could feel every inch of her. Breathing hard, he dragged his mouth from hers and looked down into her face.

"You shouldn't start something you won't want to finish, little girl," he rasped, fighting for control of himself.

Her cheeks were flushed, her lips swollen from his savage kisses. But the look in her eyes was one of pure, unbridled desire.

"Who says I don't want to finish it?" she responded defiantly. "And, just so you know, I haven't been a little girl for a very, very long time."

He had a sudden piercing vision of a tiny blonde girl wildly hurling tomatoes at a white wall, her face twisted in pain, so long ago now. There had been many times in the passing years when he had wondered if he had done the wrong thing back then, if perhaps he should have taken her with him instead of leaving her behind on Gallifrey. She had been such a sad, lonely little girl, so desperate for someone to cling to. It would have been so easy to manipulate her, so easy to talk her into going with him. And what sweet revenge would it have been on the Doctor, to know that his daughter's loyalty was no longer with him, but with the Master instead. But in this moment, looking down into her heated green eyes, he had no regrets at all. If she had gone with him when she was a child, she would have seen him as a father figure, a replacement for the Doctor. Feeling her soft, delicate body crushed against his, he knew that sort of relationship was the last thing he wanted.

Unable to hold back any longer, he kissed her again, his mouth hard and possessive, taking her lips and then tracing along her jaw, before moving to the sensitive spot beneath her ear. Tejana drew in a tight breath, moaning low in her throat, tilting her head back so he could explore the long line of her throat.

"Mekhil," she whispered. "Amin Mekhil!"

Master...my Master...

The words shuddered through him. She was so small and vulnerable against him, his, all his, for the taking, as and how he pleased. He had no idea what this strange turn-around was all about and suddenly he didn't care, her unlooked-for submission exciting him more than anything else ever could have.

"Say it again!" he demanded. She tugged against his hold, but still he gripped her hands, caressing her with his lips and tongue and teeth, kissing and licking and biting down her neck until she writhed against him in pleasure. "Again, Tejana!"

"Amin Mekhil." Her voice was almost a sob, trembling and husky with need.

All rational thought left him. Right now, in this tiny fragment of Time, there was no grand plan to follow, no Doctor to fight, no Universe to conquer. There was just her. Just him. Just the white heat rising between them. Just the driving lust he ached so badly to satisfy.

Picking her up, he carried her to the comfortable couch at the back of the room.

"Here!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Stop here!"

Amy slammed on the brakes and skewed the small car to an immediate halt, ending up half on the footpath and half on the road. Rory groaned theatrically. "And I thought we were supposed to be worried about the Doctor's driving. I always said you would never have passed that driving test if you hadn't been wearing a short skirt."

"Oi, I got you here, didn't I?" Amy retorted. "Stop complaining, stupid-face."

The Doctor wasn't listening to their bickering. He had already climbed out of the car and was looking across the road at an elegant doorway, where two more of the black-clad guards were standing, one on each side. Above them, a discreet sign read "Saxon Party Campaign Headquarters."

They were in a quiet street in one of London's premier financial districts, not far from Canary Wharf. Up and down the street, the Doctor could see dozens and dozens of people repeating the same action over and over again, like some kind of strange pantomime. The temporal distortion was so severe here that the Time Lord nearly staggered, the twisted sensation making him feel physically ill. Directly overhead, as if drawn to the building like a magnet, the peculiar funnel of cloud boiled and churned, growing by the minute.

"It's getting dark," Amy said, getting out of the driver's seat and closing the car door behind her. "Doctor...it's only three o'clock in the afternoon...why is it so dark?"

Sure enough, a heavy, grey twilight seemed to have descended like an unpleasant blanket, wrapping the city in gloom. A cold, eerie wind was blowing, a mournful lament that raised the hairs on the back of the Doctor's neck.

"They're coming," he said sharply, striding across the street. "We don't have much time. We have to get to Tejana, now!"

"Who's coming?" Rory demanded.

"The Reapers!" the Doctor replied. "Creatures that live in the Time Vortex. When there's a big enough wound in Time, they can sense it and they come to sterilise it."

"Sterilise it?" Amy quavered. "What do you mean, sterilise it?"

"They're like white blood cells in the human body, always on the look-out for infection. And when they find one, they surround it and devour it. Those clouds up there are actually a gateway into the Time Vortex. If this paradox gets any worse, the gateway will open and the Reapers will come through."

"And?" Rory asked fearfully.

"And I'm not sure I'll be able to do anything to stop them from devouring the entire city of London."

Tejana was drowning in sensation. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew this was wrong. The mouth that claimed hers, the hands that pulled open her shirt and searched her body, the lithe, hard body that lay on top of her...they didn't belong to her Koschei. This was Harold Saxon. Her Koschei was dead. But the taste of him, the warm, aroused smell of his skin, the incredible feeling of his hands on her, his touch bold and sure and dominant...it was all so achingly familiar and she wanted it so much, so much.

There was no gentleness in their embrace, just a head-on collision of their bodies as he took what he wanted and she allowed him to do it, every part of her hungry and out of control.

"Yes, oh yes," she cried, the touch of his lips and tongue on her naked breast sending fire streaking through her body. She arched helplessly against him, her head swimming with memories. He'd always been able to do this to her, always finding new ways to bring her to the edge, always knowing when to tease and when to demand, playing her like an instrument until her whole body sang.

Then his right hand was sliding downwards, tracing sensually across her bare skin, heading for the button of her jeans, inexorable, unstoppable...until it smoothed over the slight mound of her stomach.

With a muffled curse, he stopped short with his hand on her belly, as still as if he had been turned to stone.

"You're pregnant!" he spat furiously.

Reality crashed in around her like a tidal wave. The baby! Oh gods, what was she doing? He couldn't know the truth about the baby. That would turn the causal nexus inside out.

At last she began to struggle, trying to get away from him. But he pinned her easily with his weight, refusing to allow her to move.

"Whose is it? Who have you been sleeping with?" he demanded, his face tight with menace. "Is it Captain Freak's, Tejana? Is it?"

Trapped beneath him, completely out of options, Tejana knew she had to lie. As much as it hurt, as much as it stripped her soul to do it, she had to tell him the baby was Jack's, there was no other way. But before she could open her mouth, something happened that she couldn't control. With the Master's hand upon her belly, as if sensing and responding to his father's touch, the baby chose to move for the very first time, pushing solidly against his father's hand. And in that moment, with the three of them joined so intimately together, the psychic link opened and the Master knew.

"He's mine!" he gasped in disbelief. "You're carrying my son!"