“It’ll be cooler in the living room,” she said and hoped he didn’t hear her swallow.
“Nope. This is the coolest room. This side of the building always is.”
“This is my bedroom, Ben.”
“I noticed.”
What was she supposed to say to that? Walking out would make her feel like a silly kid, but it was what she ought to do.
Ben went around the bed, flipped off his shoes and stretched out on the other side. He patted the mattress beside him and Willow turned hot, then hotter. She radiated heat.
“C’mon,” he said softly. “I’m not dangerous. Promise. We’ve earned some relaxation time.”
“And lying on my bed with you beside me is going to make me relaxed?”
“We-ell—you do have a point. But it’s up to you to control yourself.”
She bit back a smile. He always had the smart comeback. Willow sat carefully on top of her white cotton spread at the very edge of her bed.
“What was happening down in the courtyard?” he asked. “You saw something, didn’t you?”
“You know too much,” she said. “I keep telling you you’re too powerful for me.” Willow closed her mouth firmly. That was not what she had intended to say.
His silence unnerved her.
She undid her sneakers and kicked them off, then threw her socks on top. Very carefully, she settled herself in the horizontal position, but as far from Ben as she could get without falling off the bed.
The fan moved a soft breeze across her face. It felt good, or it might if her stomach didn’t keep turning over and over and her heart would stop trying to leap out of her chest.
She would wait until he said something.
All she heard was Ben’s quiet breathing.
He had said he was tired. More or less. How dare he come into her bedroom, get on her bed and just go to sleep….
Steamed, that’s how he made her feel. She rolled her head toward him—and looked directly into Ben’s blue-flame eyes. He didn’t smile, but he stared back at her and they didn’t need to touch for her to tingle all over.
“Do you want to go first?” he asked.
“No. It was a bad idea to say I wanted to talk. There
are things we have to do alone.” Like deal with shrimpy little creatures that sounded like people she knew. Telling him about that would
really
make her sound well-balanced.
He reached out and settled his fingertips on her cheek. They both drew in a sharper breath, but Ben’s gaze grew so intense Willow felt it branded her.
“Ben, after we left Nat’s office this morning, what happened while we were talking on that sidewalk? When I told you about something touching my neck?”
His eyes never left hers. “I listened to you. I believed you.”
Gathering her courage she said, “You left, didn’t you? Just for…part of an instant? I didn’t see it, but I did in a way. Where did you go?”
“I was there.” But his mouth set in a hard line, and the way he watched her changed. She had surprised him.
“Are you going to tell me what I saw?”
“Have you accepted that you aren’t what you like to call
normal?
”
If she avoided the dreaded question, he might assume she’d meant to say yes, and tell her what she wanted to know.
His fingers brushed from her cheek to her hair and slowly down over her shoulder and along her arm.
Willow tried to keep staring at him but failed. She screwed up her eyes and sucked a breath through her teeth.
“Look,” he said, with all kinds of persuasion in that one word, “you
are
normal, but you’re gifted. Will you admit you have the gift?”
“The gift?” she muttered. “Why is it called that?”
“Just answer me.” The tips of his fingers traced tendons on the back of her hand. Back and forth, back and forth.
“Are you being fair?” she said.
His smile did just what he intended; it made her smile back.
“This isn’t about being fair,” he told her. “And it’s not a joke, not anymore. We’ve got to circle the wagons, my love, for everyone’s sake. I need you to admit what you are and let me know I can trust you to use the talents you have.”
“What am I, Ben?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know.” She looked at his face again, at his eyes. “Chris is in terrible trouble. He’s trapped in sand or something. In a thick glass thing. There’s a woman with him.”
“At least he’s not alone,” Ben said, showing no surprise at what she had told him.
“That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. Believe me, two is better than one most of the time. Is this what… In the courtyard, is this what you found out?”
“I heard Chris, then I saw him. Then I heard her, but I didn’t see her. I never did see her.”
“What would you say that makes you?” he asked quietly.
“Not normal.”
“You can do better than that.”
“First I feel strong emotion—not mine, someone else’s,” Willow said. “Sometimes, after that, I see what made them feel the emotion. Fear is the strongest one.
Pain. Sadness. I felt anger and fear everywhere before I heard Chris. Then I knew he was trying to be funny and brave for the woman.”
Ben took her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.
“I think I may be clairvoyant,” she said softly.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” His breath was warm on her skin.
“Give me a break. Now I’m admitting it. That isn’t easy for me, and it’s not easy to admit I’ve heard what other people are thinking. I’ve only heard you when you talk to me—without talking.” If she was supposed to feel relief at saying all this aloud, it wasn’t happening.
He held her hand against his chest. “But you’ve tried to listen to what I’m thinking?”
She felt the steady beat of his heart. “Yes,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You’re only human,” he said.
“Evidently only barely,” she said bitterly. “I’ve fought this for a long time.”
“I know. Now it’s time to quit that and start using your strengths.”
Willow spread her fingers on his chest. “One of our rules is that we can only use our talents for good. And we’re not supposed to listen in to other people without asking permission first. If we don’t get it, we don’t listen.”
“Good stuff,” he said. “Unless by breaking a rule you do the right thing. I did leave you when we were walking this morning—just for a nanogap.”
“What does that mean?”
He gave an eloquent shrug. “Planck time. Parallel
shift. The shortest measurable length of time, and it appears instantaneous. I passed through a nanogap because I thought I saw the suggestion of a manifestation.”
She held her breath and waited.
“I did see it. A wisp of a thing that moved as if it flew. It shot upward—away from you—and I followed, but couldn’t grab the thing.”
Willow shifted closer to him. “No! I’m glad you didn’t touch it. What if it did—you know—what happened to Billy and that woman?”
“All the more reason for me to take it out.”
“If it doesn’t take you out first,” she said. Another wiggle and she was near enough to settle with the top of her head beneath his chin.
They both stopped talking.
Willow pressed her lips to his neck and Ben shuddered along his length. He wrapped her in both of his arms and she rested her head on his shoulder.
“Are you like Marley, then?” Willow asked. “Do you travel out of your body, and that’s why I sensed you were gone, but didn’t see you go?”
“No. She goes for extended periods—usually many minutes, and only when she’s called. I travel of my own will—but very fast, so fast I return with no apparent lapse of time. That’s how I brought you back from that house. Through a nanogap. Sykes is concerned about that. In case you lack whatever makes it okay for me. We don’t want you harmed.”
“It hasn’t hurt me.”
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
She considered that. When she’d realized she had
returned from the Brandts’ and was sitting on her own couch again—with a dog she had never seen before at her feet—she hadn’t thought to check the time.
“Can you hear what I’m thinking?” she asked.
He shook his head, no. “I often open to you in case you want in, but you’ve never come or invited me—except by accident, like yesterday.”
She loved his grin. “But you’d know if I invited you?” The thought was comforting, mostly because she didn’t want him to know everything that crossed her mind.
“Willow, Sykes has told me a great deal. So have Marley and Gray. We may not have much time to set things right.”
“What do I do about Chris? If he really is somewhere weird, I need to get him.”
“It’s not time.”
“It
is
. He’s scared and stuck.”
“But you haven’t seen what you can do about it yet. We’re waiting, Willow. That’s the hardest thing for people like you and me, but there will be a next step. Maybe any minute. Part of becoming what you really are is learning to accept that you will grow stronger, but not immediately. We should think.”
What he meant, Willow decided, was that she was supposed to lie there and hope for the next scary happening while Chris kept trying to climb up a sheer wall of glass.
“Relax,” Ben said. “That’s exactly what I mean. You’ll know when it’s time to do something—and what that is.”
Making fists, she attempted to push away from him. “You said you didn’t read my thoughts.” He was too strong for her to shift against him.
“You opened your mind to me,” he said, sounding aggrieved. “I felt you.”
The fan vibrated. Willow didn’t want to fight him about anything. “I want you to kiss me,” she said.
“This is getting to be hell,” Ben said, his voice gravelly. “You sent me away.”
“And now you’ve come back,” she pointed out and hiked herself up until she could find his mouth with her own.
He kissed her back. Their lips softened, but the searching was there, too. Kisses weren’t enough.
Willow put her arms around his neck and leaned until he rolled onto his back. She combed her fingers through his thick, blue-black hair. He wasn’t wearing it tied back.
“Not yet,” he whispered, but he let her lead him in another kiss.
When the intense sensitivity was too much, she pulled his shirt out and ran her tongue from his breastbone to the low waist of his jeans, and nipped him there.
She heard him laugh, then, abruptly, he forced her up again and held her where he could see her face. “What are you trying to do to me?” he said.
“Make love to you,” she said without hesitation. “Don’t you think it’s overdue?”
“Why now?”
“You know why. You feel what I do.”
He stroked her hair, kissed the end of her nose. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Willow’s cheeks stung. “What do you mean?” Her voice sounded small and lost.
“My love, you know what I mean. Don’t you think I want you? Look at me.”
When she did, he continued, “I could…I want you, and you know how I’m hurting because I want you. But it’s not time yet.”
“You thought it was time two years ago.”
“I was wrong. If I hadn’t been, we would never have parted.” He raised her chin. “Have I hurt you? Sweetheart, please don’t be hurt—there’s something we have to do before we take the steps we want to take.”
He wouldn’t hear it from her, but he could not have hurt her more if he had struck her. “Okay, Ben. What is it you think we have to do?”
“Commit to each other. For eternity.”
“Ben.”
She watched his face until he frowned, and she thought he had heard her.
“I’m going to take my clothes off. It’s too hot in here.”
“Is that your way of telling me to get out?”
They would do this—just do it.
“It’s my way of telling you not to leave.”
“See how well we communicate?”
he said, but conflicting emotions crossed his face. The dominant one was a tight and raging desire that distended the veins in his neck while he pulled away from her and flung his arms over his head.
Willow raised her hips and slid her white jeans down.
Ben’s breath came in bursts. She could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest.
The jeans hit the floor.
“This is more than I can control,” he said. He rolled toward her, stroking her legs from knee to thigh, pushing his thumb under a leg of her panties and into the hair covering her mound.
Two more fingers followed, slipping down into the
moisture she could not disguise. Her hips jerked upward again, this time because she wanted more of him.
But the instant his fingers met the core of all her sensations, he withdrew his hand and put it over her mouth instead, drowning out her protests.
In one move he sat astride her hips, rocking back and forth, gritting his teeth and sucking up her emotions with his eyes.
“Your jeans,” she said.
Ignoring her, Ben started with the bottom button of her shirt and slowly undid the row all the way to the one at the neck. He spread the shirt and she felt his arousal throbbing through his jeans.
His hands covered her breasts in the skimpy, pink lace bra she wore, pushed them together and buried his face in her cleavage. His tongue did magical work, tracing a line just beneath the edges of the bra where her soft flesh swelled, gradually delving a little deeper to curl around a hard nipple.
“It’s all fire. Everywhere you touch me burns. There’s pain.”
“Tell me if it’s too much,”
Ben said.
“But if all pain were like this, people would line up to get some.”
“Don’t stop!” Willow cried aloud.
She heard her own thin moan, and wondered at the way her hips pumped up against him. Her reactions had a life of their own.
The muscles in his chest tightened with her touch. She pinched his nipples, and he leaped away, shucking his jeans and briefs.
He penis sprang hard and huge. Willow squirmed, reaching for him.
Standing beside her, Ben shuddered when she held him. He unhooked her bra and pulled it away. He bent to kiss her breasts, to run his tongue in circles, growing ever closer until he took each nipple in his teeth and she writhed.
On her side, she used two hands to guide him between her lips, letting the very edges of her teeth rake him all the way.