BlindHeat (10 page)

What she did know was that something she said jarred Marcus.
He was staring at her with a look that was like being lost and found all at
once. She tried to make sense of that impression. His reaction resonated in
her, a fluttering high in her stomach that quickly settled into a calm that
rippled outward, as if something important had found the place it belonged.

His fingers were in her hair, at first just a brush of
fingertips, pushing a lock back from her face, but then curling in the soft
depths and a fist followed. The tug of it went past the roots of her hair and
into her belly, deeper than that, into a place she couldn’t acknowledge. She
had to bite her lip to hold in an answering moan.

“Who are you?” he murmured, as if he was asking himself
instead of her.

His gaze fastened on her lips. She realized she was chewing
her bottom lip and stopped. His attention flicked up to a spot over her right
shoulder. He pulled back, releasing then smoothing her hair. She shivered with
the loss.

In a clatter of china, the waiter was there, sliding salads
from tray to table, topping off water glasses they’d barely touched. Allie
doubted Marcus had concealed the muss he’d made of her hair. Even if he had, he
couldn’t erase the flush tingeing her skin, tingling in her cheeks, or the
barely banked blaze burning in his eyes.

The waiter took the hint and kept his presence minimal. Marcus’
fingers trailed down her arm, over her hand, and then gently maneuvered the
fork from between her wrist and the plate. She watched, mesmerized, as he
speared a grape tomato and lifted it to her lips rather than his. The red fruit
glistened, moisture clinging to its skin. His swallow mirrored hers. Was that a
tremor in his hand when he lowered the fork?

They fed each other salads. Maybe it didn’t qualify as
indecent behavior, but feeding Marcus felt like sex in public. Could you be
tossed out of a restaurant for feeding your lover? She didn’t know if anyone
noticed. She was too caught up in the spell, watching his teeth close on the
greens, then his lips closing around the fork, the glide of silver between his
lips as she pulled the fork back. He licked his lips after every swallow. It
happened so quick, like a reflex, she doubted he was aware. She was. Every time
those lips parted, his tongue sliding between them, she had to fight back a
shiver.

The main course was a blur. They had eggplant parmesan that
was a sensual delight unto itself. They didn’t feed each other, but their eyes
stayed locked in a lovers’ embrace she couldn’t control.

“So you’re from Russia,” she said, hoping to pull her brain
out of its lust-induced fog. “I wouldn’t have thought that based on your
accent. You sound more southern European.”

“I lived in Siberia as a child. Your awareness of the
nuances of tone and accent is unusually acute. This is one of the ways you tell
people apart?”

“Doesn’t everyone recognize the voices of people they know?”

“I’ve never met anyone who responds to changes in my tone
the way you do. It’s as if my words are physical things.” He lowered his voice
then, to a sensual whisper, an I’m-going-to-fuck-you-senseless whisper. Goose
bumps rose on her skin. He ran one finger lightly over her forearm. “It‘s
almost as if you hear sound with your skin. Perhaps you developed the
sensitivity to compensate for the face blindness.”

“I’m not blind.”

“No, you are prosopagnosic. It isn’t that you don’t see, but
that you don’t recognize the unique features of faces.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nerves knotted her
stomach. No one had ever figured out that she couldn’t recognize others. She’d
never met anyone, like herself, who couldn’t recognize people, had thought it
merely due to inattentiveness on her part. “I see your features just fine.”

“Allie, I have been to the newspaper twice a week for a
month. You and I have had long conversations. Every time we meet it is like the
first time to you.”

Suddenly the air in the room seemed too thin. She felt
dizzy. She didn’t remember meeting him before that morning. Who else could be
following that she didn’t notice? He knew her from work. It made sense.
Sometimes after completing a complex design, she’d discover a stack of ad
request forms in her inbox. Her handwriting clear proof she’d taken the orders,
but she couldn’t recall any details of the interactions. It was as if a part of
her ran on autopilot, handling the mundane details of her job, while a creative
task—making a funeral home’s ad a work of art—held her awareness captive in an
altered state.

Marcus put his hand over hers, squeezed, and she felt the
reassuring presence of the moonstone.

“It’s not a well-publicized condition. Many people who
suffer from it don’t know they have it. They develop a set of coping skills and
assume everyone sees faces the same way they do.”

“So what? There’s a pill to take to recognize people?” Would
it help her pay attention? She wasn’t admitting anything, but if there was a
pill…

He shook his head. Something in his eyes warned her she
didn’t want to know what he was about to say. She had to hear it. She squeezed
the rock so tight her fingers went numb.

“There’s no pill, no operation, no cure. Science doesn’t
have an answer for you, little cat. But I do.”

She waited a beat, tried to convince herself she didn’t need
whatever he offered. But she did. That he knew it was evidence enough that she
did. “What is your answer?”

“You need to learn to see with more than your eyes. I could
train you.”

“I’m sure. Why do I get the feeling there’s a catch,
something about this training you don’t want to tell me upfront?”

“As I said before, we won’t do anything you don’t want to
do, Allie. The technique is somewhat…unconventional.”

“Uncoventional how?”

“It’s easier to show you than explain.”

They agreed to skip dessert.

* * * * *

“I know it’s not very big, but—”

Marcus cut Allie off when she flipped on her light switch.

“Not big? Sweetheart, my bedroom closet is bigger than this
apartment.”

“On the upside, it takes five minutes to tidy it up.” Allie
tossed her keys on the desk. Marcus inched her forward and closed the door
behind them.

“Come here,” he said, catching her wrist, pulling her
against his chest. Fingers tangled in her hair, tipping her head back to expose
her neck. His teeth scraped her collarbone, nibbled their way up her neck, and
at last his mouth opened over hers. He tasted electric, energy sparked across
the meeting of tongues, and she sighed. Kissing Marcus was like turning back
the covers on the bed. It made her want to strip her clothes off, immerse
herself in the warmth and fantasy waiting for her.

When he pulled back, she drew a breath and held it, the room
slowly stopped spinning.

“It’s too hot for all these clothes,” he said. She had
slipped her hand in her coat pocket, the little stone he’d given her tucked
tight in her fist. He unbuttoned her coat with long, nimble fingers, and her
mind ran off with visions of just where she’d like those fingers to be. When he
hung their coats on the hook attached to the back of her door, smoothed the
material with his hands, she felt it physically as if it were her skin his
palms skimmed over. She wanted it to be her skin.

There were a lot of reasons why sex with Marcus was a bad
idea. She couldn’t remember one of them. She tried to concentrate on what he
was saying to her. Most of it didn’t make sense.

“Everything that touches the mind speaks to a person at the
heart of who they are. Everything outside the body is a metaphor for what’s
within. We can use the metaphor of undressing as a tool to see into who and
what you need to become.”

Desire, a glowing coal in her belly all evening, flared to
full flame now. It was, indeed, incredibly hot. Too hot for clothes. But for
the same reason she slipped her hand into a quilted mitt before picking up a
hot pan, she was reluctant to peel away the shields between her body and his.

“I don’t know that taking off clothes will help,” she said,
when he unhooked the dress, slid it down her arms. She hugged herself, trying
to keep it in place, looked longingly at the doorknob. How angry would he be if
she fled right now? Not that she didn’t want sex. If he only wanted sex, she
could handle that. “Stripping me naked only feeds the flames,” she told him.

“Flames. Mmm,” he said. “Fire. Perfect. That’s the next
element we will wake in you. A perfect sequel to water and the drenching this
morning.” His finger slid down the length of her spine. She surrendered the
dress. He draped it over the back of her desk chair. Again she watched his
fingers caress the fabric, felt it in the sticky heat of her pussy, sensation
so real that she cupped her hand over her sex to shield it. The black silk was
slippery with moist heat. Control over the situation was slipping away from
her. She grasped at the last thread.

“Is it possible for you to teach me this thing you know,
without the sex? Would you tell me if it were?”

He brushed hair back from her eyes, cupped her face between
his hands. “I don’t have to resort to silly tricks to get a woman, or you, into
bed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t think of me as a
woman?”

Something flashed just behind his eyes and was quickly
shuttered. “I think of you as so much more than a mere woman. A mystery, an
answer, a promise. But let’s not get off track.”

He pushed hair off the back of her neck, his tongue warm and
wet made a swipe. Followed by teeth—a nip, a scrape. And then he covered the
back of her neck with his mouth, his teeth pressed lightly against the skin on
either side of her spinal column.

She had to clutch fistfuls of his shirt to stay upright.
That fast, he owned her, as if every cell, every nerve had disconnected from
her own will and now served his. Worse, an infernal humming tremor vibrated
from a bone-deep place, a buzzing that rippled out and ran along the surface of
her skin. It was so strong that she imagined it moved through Marcus too and
turned back on her magnified.

He pulled back then and she pulled away, backed up against
the door into the coats—wishing she could sink into the layers of heavy fabric
and disappear. She hugged herself hard until the humming sensation receded. He
planted both hands against the door, one on either side of her head, as he
gathered himself. Shock, she supposed, a reaction he was fighting to conceal.

She couldn’t look at his face, lowered her eyes as all
reasons this was a mistake came back to her. She listed them for him.

“I am such a mental wreck, Marcus. I know it. You know it.
My brain won’t recognize a face. I have these humming seizures. Next thing you
know I’ll be back to sleepwalking naked. There are no answers or promises in
me. I’m not a more than. I’m less than your average girl.”

His reciprocal hum lingered, a tingling vibration against
her lips when he kissed her.

“Hush,” Marcus said. “There’s nothing happening to you but a
perfectly normal response to something I did.”

“My seizures aren’t a normal response. I’ve suffered with
them since I was a teenager.”

“That was not a seizure. That was simply the mesmeric force,
energy that rises in response to primal stimulus. Animal magnetism is a natural
gift for you. A gift I intend to help you channel and master.”

She tried to smile and it quivered briefly before slipping
away. “You’re calling me an animal?”

His smile showed his teeth. “The potential is there,
sweetheart. And it’s bringing out the animal in me. So, let’s do what we can to
keep it in check while I answer your first question.”

She couldn’t remember what her first question was.

He turned, and with only two options for sitting—the chair
or the bed—he chose the bed and pulled her to sit beside him. He hooked one arm
around her waist, while reaching to pluck something from his jacket coat pocket
with his free hand.

“Now, could I teach you to channel the ethereal medium
without sex? Possibly. It would be much harder because we are talking about
opening all your senses to a degree few manage to achieve. It takes years to
achieve that level of focus. Sexual stimulation puts you down that path much
faster, advances your control to a greater degree than anything I know—save
drugs, and I’m not going to drug you to teach you this.”

“I don’t see what any of this has to do with me recognizing
people.”

“Humans rely too heavily on sight to give them the
information they need to survive. Think of how animals use their senses. Cats
cannot tell one face from another, but they can tell a beloved human companion
is coming home before they are close enough to be heard or scented. When a
human companion is about to have a seizure, a pet can sense the oncoming
electrical disturbance. When there is a tsunami or hurricane approaching,
animals need no weather forecaster or siren system to tell them to take cover.
You’ve heard of these things?”

Allie shrugged. “Yes. I don’t know there’s not some
exaggeration involved.”

“That’s good. Always trust your instincts rather than just
swallow what you are told to believe. Test the truth yourself.”

“And how, exactly, will we test truth? Me having sex with
you?”

He tucked a stray lock behind her ear and withdrew his hand from
the coat pocket. He held what looked like a wooden box, most of it stayed
hidden in his grasp. He let his hand rest over it in his lap.

“What’s about to happen here is more than sex. Sensual
stimulation is a better word. Multidimensional sensory stimulation is probably
more exact—a bleeding of one sense into the other, tasting colors, visualizing
sound, seeing with your skin. You already exhibit those abilities to some
degree. I want to help you gain some control over how and when that happens.”