Mindlink (25 page)

Her breath came short and fast. “Not from where I’m sitting.
You’re doing fine. That’s what it feels like to be swallowed by, um, hormones,
or whatever it is that makes you want to make love to someone.”

“This is what love feels like?” Astounding. He’d never imagined
it would feel like dying and yet be so compelling at the same time.

“Um, bad choice of words. It’s not love, like being in love.
It’s just the human desire for procreation, if you want to be all clinical about
it. So, if this isn’t what you intended, what do you want?” she asked, and sat
back against the wall, her face shadowed.

He strained for an image or a sense of what she was thinking
but she blocked even a sliver of a thought. It bothered him when she did
that.

“It is not what I intended. I only want to be linked with you,
so I can breathe. That is all. The world makes sense to me when we are
joined.”

“You’re tired,” she said and disappointment swamped him. Her
disappointment. By some miracle, she’d wanted him to kiss her. “It’s weighing me
down as much as you. Why don’t you go back to your own room and try to
sleep?”

He would never convince her to link again if he went to sleep.
For a moment, everything had been like a dream, a wish coming true, and it was
all sliding away. He was fumbling, about to lose his only link to
sanity—Ashley.

Rising panic forced words from his mouth. “I did not wait here
with the intention of kissing you. However, it is what I want.” Operating on
instinct alone, he crawled to her and touched her lips with a fingertip. “I want
to kiss you and not stop. I want to experience being human. With you. Help me to
process, to learn, to feel. The link is vital, necessary, but it is suddenly not
enough.”

“Is there the slightest chance I’m misinterpreting what you’re
asking?”

He shook his head, images of their uncovered bodies twined
together flying between them. “You know what I am asking. I want the most basic
human experience possible—the one you introduced to me at the river. Guide me.
Show me what I have been missing.”

Her lashes fluttered closed and a myriad of emotion bombarded
him, most too jumbled to sort. But he couldn’t mistake the whorl of pure longing
underneath. The yawning abyss called to him, opening its jaws wider with every
passing moment he spent in Ashley’s company, and the time had come to jump or
step away from the ledge forever.

“Ashley. What do you want?”

In the long pause, he waited for her answer with every ounce of
air in the room trapped in his lungs.

“To jump.” Slowly, she rose up on her knees, her skirt
whispering against her legs in the sudden silence. “There are some rules.
Listen, because this is important. Anything goes. Everything goes. Except for
asking about my memories. Can you do that?”

“This is what you have feared. Why you block your thoughts,” he
said as the certainty dawned. She wasn’t afraid of him, just his questions. “You
have secrets you wish to keep hidden.”

“Yeah, so?” Her expression closed in. “Everyone has stuff they
don’t want other people to know about.”

He spread his arms wide. “I do not. You already have knowledge
of my greatest shame. Everything else is available to you as well.”

“Why can’t you be normal?” she asked, her voice strangled as if
the words had gotten tangled up in frustration. “I don’t know what to do with
you.”

“Then we are equally balanced for I do not know what to do with
you either.”

She was so close yet so far—on the other side of the abyss
instead of on his. Ready to jump but not with him. The link allowed him to see
her thoughts, to communicate in the most rudimentary way, but did not join them.
And that was what he sought.

“What I hope to share with you is worth whatever price you
place on it.” Knee to knee, eye to eye, he stared at her for a moment,
assessing, and then nodded. “I will follow your rule. Will this make me
normal?”

A tear sprang into the crevice of her eye. “Nothing will ever
make you normal. Thank God.”

He captured the tear on his index finger and wiped it away with
his thumb. In a flash, the indecision, confusion, all her stubborn caginess
vanished. The heavy weight in his chest fell away and he dragged in a breath for
what seemed like the first time in ages.

With the rules laid out and his agreement in hand, she came
alive. Brightened. Her hair caught the dim light differently, shimmering and
begging to be touched. It slithered against his palm as he wrapped it around his
hand. He steered her head to the side and rubbed a cheek across the gorgeous
expanse of hair.

Anything
goes
. He let his imagination run. “I want to feel
your hair brush across my skin.”

“So do it,” she advised, breathless, her voice rising a notch
as she received the images he projected. “Yes. Like that. Exactly like
that.”

Feeding on the urgency in her tone, he grabbed the hem of his
shirt and whipped it off, then gathered a large hank of her hair to trail down
his chest. It prickled and tickled at the same time. “Citizens do not grow hair
like this. It is extraordinary. Beautiful. I wish I could see it in color
through my own eyes.”

“I’m sort of glad you can’t,” she countered cryptically as flat
pictures of her paraded across his mind panoramically. Still shots from
different angles, often with words plastered underneath like “Ashley V Sued by
Clairol.” He’d made a vow not to ask, and honored it.

The tips of her fingers came to rest on his chest and a muscle
flexed as his skin warmed under her touch. A strange glint surfaced in her eyes
as she slid her hand up to the healing Khota Marong bite near his collarbone.
She stopped before touching it and a clear sense of awe and reverence
accompanied old images of his flesh when it had been raw and bloody.

“Does it still hurt?” she asked.

“Some. Not enough to forgo physical activity, if that is your
concern.”

Her smile was tremulous. “You got that protecting me. I don’t
like you hurting because of it.”

“It was worth your safety to have sustained injury. May I
continue?” He tilted his head downward. Eyes bright, she nodded, reaching for
his pants. As she eased the fabric over his hips, her thumb grazed him at the
tip of his hard length. His lungs all but collapsed as sensation rocketed
through it. He sucked in a breath.

With a smoldering expression, she closed a hand over his and
brushed strands of hair over the exact same spot. “Lie down,” she whispered.
“Let me.”

As he’d reached the point of abject befuddlement, he complied
and then dissolved into pure bliss as she flipped her head, splaying a waterfall
of hair into his face and dragging it the entire length of his naked body.

“Why does this happen when you touch me?” He pointed at the
swollen flesh jutting from the juncture of his thighs.

She smoothed her hair behind her head and peered at him from
between his feet. “What, you mean an erection?”

He filtered the word through his mind. “Yes, an excellent
description. It becomes elevated and hard. Almost painfully so.”

“I, um, know what happens,” she said, her voice muffled. She
giggled into her arm. “I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t realize this was going to be
a birds and the bees thing as well.”

“Is that not acceptable?”

Instead of answering, she rose on all fours and climbed up his
body. The fabric of her skirt rushed along his skin, different than hair, but
extremely pleasurable. She lowered herself onto his chest and placed her chin on
top of crossed arms. “I kind of dig it. I didn’t think I would, but it’s really
hot.”

Then, while lying on his chest, body to body, she explained the
basics in a matter-of-fact way, conversationally, until his eyes surely bulged
from their sockets. Some of the things he’d discovered before seeking Ashley’s
room clarified. Kir Barsha’s food pellets contained hormonal suppression agents
designed to decrease aging and the effects of emotional fluctuations, as well as
eliminate the urge to procreate. The suppression wore off quickly.

“Perhaps we should have dispensed with the lesson,” he said,
and shifted, trying to alleviate the crawling along his spine. “I prefer to
learn as I go.”

She misinterpreted his movement and slid off to sit beside him.
“Okay. This is your party. I’m here for you. What do you want to do next?”

Her nonchalance bothered him. Of the approximately fourteen
thousand images of the two of them intertwined he’d either received from her or
imagined independently, he had the distinct impression they were both fully
engaged and the experience was much more elemental—for her as well. He was
missing a piece of this somewhere.

“When I am aroused—” he glanced at her to be sure he used the
new word correctly, “—I have an erection. What happens to you?”

“Oh. Um, that’s better left for later. I’m focusing on you for
now.” She smiled, dismissing the question. But the answer was important. How
could he fully experience being human alone, when as best he could tell, it
should be done together? He’d smashed into an indiscernible barrier, which he
must identify and eliminate.

He sprang onto his knees and faced her. “Next, I would like to
see you. When I kissed you last, it was dark. I see you in my mind and it is not
enough.” As she reached for her shirt, he stilled her arm. “No. Allow me.”

So slowly an ache sprang up in his hand, he pulled the billowy
shirt from the skirt’s waistband. He guided it upward and bared her skin
millimeter by smooth and creamy millimeter. She raised her arms and he whisked
the fabric away to gorge on the sight of Ashley uncovered. Though not nearly
uncovered enough.

“Now the skirt. Stand,” he instructed, impatient for her to
comply.

Once she did, he unfastened the waist, fumbling with it before
determining how the mechanism released. With a whisper, the fabric fell to the
ground, ballooning into a pile around her ankles. He stared up at her, knees
numb, unable to speak. He’d seen unclothed women before. He’d seen
this
woman unclothed.

It was poles apart to have done the disrobing personally, to
know this woman stood before him in all her natural splendor, bathed in the
faint glow of light, because he desired it. To know he had free access to do
whatever his newly discovered human impulses dictated. The power rushed through
his veins and sparked a mad fire as it raced, unchecked.

“May I touch you?” he asked, hoarsely, surprised by the quaver
in his voice. She hadn’t wanted him to touch her, back in the river, and a
denial now might kill him.

“Your show,” she reminded him. “I won’t bite. Unless you
ask.”

At his quizzical look, she grinned, and images spilled into his
head—so many and so unbelievable, his brain went fuzzy. “Truly, I was not aware
I still had the capacity to be shocked.”

“Oh, honey, I haven’t even started on the really great
stuff.”

He groaned as a vivid picture sailed into his brain. It shot
straight to the erection, impossibly lengthening it.

—
Ashley’s
tongue
against
his
erection
,
lithe
and
quick
,
circling
—

“That one was tame. I’m going easy on you. Weren’t you going to
touch me, or did you change your mind?”

Every drop of saliva fled his mouth and it took several
swallows to lubricate his tongue enough to respond. “My mind is not capable of
functioning at this moment, let alone allowing me the luxury of changing
it.”

With a sultry laugh, she bent and laced her fingers through
his, then guided his hand to her waist. Up her ribcage. Turned and inched his
palm along her bottom. Fascinating. So smooth and silky to the touch. His pulse
spiked as he watched her hand on his, gliding across her skin. At last,
something they could do together. He nudged the other hand into hers and let her
take him wherever she so desired.

“What does it feel like when I touch you?” he asked. “I see
your images but they are vague. Tell me,” he urged when she hesitated.

“It feels good,” she said, with a gasp and arched against the
brush of his thumb across her inner thigh. Power whipped through him at her
reaction and he repeated the motion, with both thumbs. Directed by both her
hands and images, he slid upward and into the crevice between her thighs.

She bucked, startling him. Then she writhed, her features
twisted.

“Did I touch you incorrectly?”

“No,” she ground out through clenched teeth. “I just wasn’t
expecting that.”

Confused, he dropped his hands. “I only did as you showed
me.”

“For the love of— Don’t stop!” she cried. “It feels like you
poured liquid nitrogen down my throat. Like spiders are crawling across my skin
with razor feet. I’m about to climb the walls here, okay? That’s what it feels
like for you to touch me. You couldn’t do it any more right.”

A thrill hit his midsection. He’d done that to her.

What else could he do?

One of Ashley’s pictures flew into his consciousness. Aided by
instinct and illustration, he began touching her on his own, moving his hands
faster than she had on the exploratory journey earlier. Where his hands went,
his tongue followed. He tasted every millimeter of her until she sobbed out his
name and fell to her knees.

“You have to stop,” she begged, eyes closed, mouth tight. “Dear
God, I had no idea the backs of my thighs were so sensitive.”

“You have not been licked there?” he asked, pleased beyond
measure to have given her a unique experience. “What else have you not
done?”

She shook her head. “This is not supposed to be about me. That
was never part of the deal.”

“You specified one rule and I have followed it. Is there some
reason we cannot both experience being human? Together?” He drew one of her
palms to his lips and watched her over the ridge of her wrist as he grazed her
flesh with the tiniest of nibbles.