“What was that all about?” Zoe asked, her tone grating against his nerves.
His fingers dug into the carpet as the reality of his situation hit him hard. There was only one reason for that much power to pour suddenly and abruptly into someone’s body. Only one result from what he’d just done.
Nathan pushed himself upright to settle unsteadily on his knees. It couldn’t be possible. He wasn’t that irresponsible. He wouldn’t do that to anyone, much less the woman threatening to make him homeless. But it had happened. Without his intention, he had poured all of his power into her. And now…His belly clenched with horror. What had he just done?
“I woke her tigress,” he whispered.
“Really? Awesome!” Zoe giggled. “Can you wake mine?”
He barely had the energy to laugh. “You don’t understand. An uncontrolled—untrained—tigress can kill. It’s her female energy. It’s primal, it’s vital, and it’s awake.”
Zoe frowned. “That’s bad?”
“She hasn’t the foggiest idea what to do with it. It’s energy roiling around in her system, building and building until—”
“Orgasms for days on end?”
“No,” he snapped. “Heart attack. Aneurism. Hell, her leg could spasm while she’s driving and crash her into a tree. At the very least, she’ll become a nymphomaniac.”
Zoe was silent for a long moment, then she dipped her head in a sage nod. “Bummer.”
Chapter 4
TRACY’S CELL PHONE went off as she was driving. She cursed at the ring tone, swerved around a drunken student who’d decided to cross in the middle of the street, and nearly plowed her truck into a tree. “Yeah?” she snapped.
“Good evening to you, too, sis,” drawled her brother’s gravelly voice.
Tracy smiled for the first time that evening. “Hey, Joey! Done studying? Need me to pick you up?”
“Yes and no. Tommy’s dad is finishing their basement and needs help with the shelving. His mom said I could stay the night if me and Tommy do the heavy lifting. She’s even doing my laundry, so I got clothes. Copacetic?”
“Tommy and I,” she corrected while disappointment weighted down her spirit. Still she kept her voice light. Joey didn’t need his older sister tying him down even if she really hated how they’d left things this morning. “And yeah, copacetic. Though I’d really like to talk more about—”
“Cool. Bye!”
She sighed. So much for communicating with her brother. She shut her cell and directed her attention back to the road. The raw, unsettled feeling she’d had all day was stronger now, quivering inside her like a living thing. She tried to ascribe it to the strange happenings with 4C—she didn’t even want to say his name—but she knew that she was fooling herself. Yeah, he had certainly exacerbated her problem. With his quiet intensity and silly stick-figure posters, he was…He was…
Hell, she didn’t know what he was except that he bothered her. From the very beginning, he’d made her belly quiver and her breath skip. Why else would she start fantasizing about a tenant? But now it was so much worse. She couldn’t even think about him without her toes curling in…lust? Frustration? She couldn’t decide, and that bothered her even more. Perhaps she’d been fantasizing about him too much. She’d created a perfect man in her head and then wham, reality didn’t meet fantasy and she ended up confused and angry.
Except, of course, reality was so much more interesting than fantasy. She’d lusted after a perfect man who catered to her every sexual whim. And wow, had she had sexual whims! Eight years worth! Then he’d walked into her apartment building, all exotic with rippling muscles and sleek black hair, and she’d had a living, breathing fantasy.
Tracy blinked, startled by her train of thought and the sudden liquid heat down low. She was getting much too worked up about his physical body. What did she think of him? She knew that what she had experienced with him this morning and this evening had been beyond amazing. This morning, her skin had tingled and her breath had felt free, as if she had been breathing through a straw all her life and suddenly got to take a deep breath.
But then she had gotten frightened and backed away. All that extra oxygen had gone to her head and freaked her out. Within moments, she had been back to her usual self but with one key difference: she remembered. She knew what it was like to take that full, deep breath and she wanted to do it again. She’d tried to block it from her mind, but couldn’t. So she had gone to his class. She had to know if she had imagined everything.
It hadn’t been her imagination. Tonight’s experience had been beyond anything she thought possible. Not only had she breathed deeply again, but she had felt that air going to every part of her body. Every cell had popped awake. The tingling had been in her face, her arms, her core. Her womb had tingled, and if that wasn’t cause for freaking out, she didn’t know what was.
She’d lost all sense of time and place. All she’d known was Mr. Nathan Gao and the sweet wonder of a body electrified inside and out. She might have orgasmed—she wasn’t even sure. It had been such a tiny piece of the overwhelming pleasure that she didn’t even know.
So yes, it was real. And it all had come from Mr. Nathan Gao. So what had she done? Oh, her usual cut and run. She’d been so terrified of the experience, so overwhelmed by the sexual nature of it, that she had just bolted. Everything she’d felt was so far beyond reality that she’d had to choose: run screaming into the night or change everything she’d once believed was true. Obviously, she’d chosen option one: run screaming. But option two lingered in her thoughts. It had been real, right? She could experience it again, right?
She was halfway down Michigan Street when it happened. She’d just passed the droopy maple where Joey had fallen and broken his arm when he was eleven. The normal-ness of the memory was futilely fighting with her other memory, of Mr. Gao, when both were obliterated by a bolt of lightning.
Tszzzzz! It fried through her thoughts and her brain, making her hands spasm on the wheel. Her foot jerked, slamming on the pedal. Fortunately, she’d been slowing down, so the lightning made her jam her foot on the brake. The truck stopped with an ugly lurch, but her face didn’t. She slammed forward, her arms too numb from the lightning bolt to resist. Her face and jaw hit the steering wheel with bruising impact. She gasped, blinking as her vision flowed from stark white to black to semi-normal again.
At least the air bag hadn’t deployed. In truth she hadn’t done anything but slam on the brakes for no reason at all, but she felt as if she’d just been in a ten-car pileup. Tracy sat there in the middle of the road, breathing deeply, feeling her jaw throb, and…
Wow. She tingled all over. Serious tingling with a side of throbbing, and not just in her face. 4C zipped into her thoughts, and just like that, her breasts tightened, her belly quivered, and lower down…Wow. She seriously needed to get a grip. A zillion fireflies were zipping through her system, firing up the most inappropriate places.
She took a deep breath, trying to settle her nerves. Unfortunately, that only rubbed her breasts against her shirt, setting off another firestorm of sensations. Jeez, what was that? It was like a lightning strike of the hornies.
Mr. Gao was still in her thoughts, only now her imagination made him naked. She could see his rippling muscles as clear as day, lean and perfectly sculpted. Then the two of them were in his bedroom, and he was promising to do amazing, erotic things to her. It was just how she’d fantasized a zillion times. Except this time, she wasn’t in the privacy of her bedroom, she was in her truck in the middle of the street! Without her wanting it, her breath shortened, her pelvis shifted on the seat, and the throbbing lower down deepened into a bass drum.