She made a face. "Just as well. I don't think anyone was buying the interior-designer story. Not after those photos in Synsation. But, Nick, I have to warn you, dating me is probably not a good way to pursue your big plan to gain respectability."
"Don't worry about my respectability. I can buy that the same way I can buy everything else." His eyes darkened. "Except you. No one could buy you, Zinnia."
She touched his throat. "Or you."
"Neither of us is for sale." He smiled with an almost savage satisfaction. "We'll make it official tomorrow night."
"What happens tomorrow night?"
"I'm going to take you to the Founders' Club Ball."
She raised her brows. "Nick Chastain and the Scarlet Lady at the annual charity event of the year? Oh, my. That will certainly liven up the conversation in certain circles."
"Be sure to wear red." He bent his head and took her mouth once more.
She realized what he intended and managed to tear her mouth free long enough to protest. "Nick, for heaven's sake, not here. The waiter may come back at any moment."
"He won't come back until I call him." He held her with one hand and peeled the top of her swimsuit down to her waist in a single motion. He stared at her as if he had never seen another woman in his life. "You are so beautiful."
She knew full well that no objective observer would label her beautiful. But that only made his words all the sweeter. He was a matrix. Beauty was far more complex and multileveled for him than it was for most people. She framed his face with her hands. "So are you."
He lifted her partway out of the water and bent his head to take one taut nipple between his teeth.
She shivered. Water streamed from her hair down her arched back. She sank her nails into Nick and took fierce pleasure in the shudder that went through him. A glorious sensation of wild heady freedom flowed in her veins. She abandoned herself to her own womanly power.
Nick worked the red swimsuit down over her hips. A moment later it floated out of sight. His eyes gleamed as she slipped her fingers beneath the waistband of his suit.
She flattened her palms against his thighs and savored the feel of hard muscle beneath firm skin. Then she pushed the suit downward until it disappeared into the depths. She cradled his rigid erection in her hand.
He drew in his breath. "I told you, you're an inspiration to me."
She stroked gently, fascinated by the size and feel of him. "I take back what I said earlier. Maybe being an inspiration for you is enough for an overachiever like me."
"Come closer." He braced himself and pulled her legs around his waist. An erotic thrill shot through her when she realized that she was completely open to his touch.
He reached between her thighs and found her erect clitoris. He pressed it slowly, deliberately.
Ripples of anticipation gripped her. "I want you."
"You don't know what real wanting is," he said.
"Do you?"
"Yes." He eased a finger inside her. "God, yes, I know all about it. It's what I feel whenever I see you." He pushed upward against the top of her vagina. "Or think about you." He maintained the pressure inside her while he used his thumb on the small stiff nubbin that was a focus of so much sensation. "Or link with you."
Zinnia's eyes flew open. "So you do feel it."
He smiled faintly. "You mean this?"
Power crashed across the metaphysical plane, questing for a prism. Zinnia responded as she had the very first time, as she always did to him, instinctively, eagerly, with a sense of Tightness. The feeling of intimacy that was somehow sexual and yet far more than that, shimmered through the focus link.
"Yes," she whispered. "This."
"The first time it hit me I felt as if I'd stepped off the edge of a cliff." Nick pushed slowly, heavily into her. "I wondered if I'd finally snapped, the way they say high-class matrix-talents do sometimes."
"I thought I'd just met a real psychic vampire." She held her breath as her body stretched to accommodate him.
"I would never hurt you."
But you will, she thought. When Hobart Batt finds you the perfect wife, the woman who will fit into your grand plan for the future, you will marry her. And when you do, you will hurt me far more than you ever could with your psychic talent,
Nick thrust fully into her. In that moment she knew that he was not thinking about the nameless, faceless woman he would someday marry. In typical matrix fashion he was completely absorbed in the task at hand.
And that task was making love to her.
She would worry about the future when it crashed down around her, she promised herself.
On the metaphysical plane, vibrant energy pulsed through the crystal-clear prism. Zinnia gloried in the knowledge that, for a little while, whether or not he knew it, Nick was as much in love with her as it was possible for him to be.
Nick absently analyzed the pattern of the rain as it beat down on the glass roof. He felt as if he was still drifting, but it was an illusion. He was no longer in the pool. He and Zinnia were both wrapped in thick towels and stretched out on loungers that had been placed side by side.
Everything was supposed to be under control now. He had achieved his goal. She had agreed to the affair. So why couldn't he get rid of the cold uneasy chill of wrongness that had settled in his gut.
It was as if some element or coordinate was still missing from the design. But he could not figure out what he lacked to complete the matrix. He only knew that it was not yet right.
"Nick?" Zinnia turned her head and smiled at him. Feminine satisfaction gleamed in the depths of her warm languorous eyes. "Something wrong?"
"I was just thinking."
"Always a bad sign with a matrix."
He ignored that. "Why did you agree to the affair?"
"Complaints already?"
"I'm serious."
"You're always serious." She paused. "Or, almost always."
"I just want to know why you decided to go ahead with it."
"Nick, I know you're a matrix and therefore inclined to obsess on details that don't seem to fit into the pattern, but some things you just have to accept."
He gazed steadily at her. "Is it because of what we feel when we link?"
"No." She smiled. "Although I'll admit it's interesting."
"Is it because the sex is great?"
"No, but that's very interesting, too."
"Is it because you got tired of waiting for Mr. Right to show up and decided to experiment with me, instead?"
"No."
"Is it because you feel sorry for matrix-talents in general and since I'm the highest-class matrix you've ever met you feel more than the usual degree of pity?"
"You're starting to slip into paranoia, here, Nick."
He levered himself up and looked down at her. "Tell me why you agreed to have an affair with me."
"For heaven's sake, isn't it obvious?" She rolled off the lounger, tightened her grip on the towel, and started toward the cabana. "I decided to have an affair with you because I'm in love with you."
Nick stopped breathing. By the time he managed to fill his lungs with air, she had vanished into the changing room.
And the patterns in the matrix had tumbled into disarray.
He was still reeling from the shock of Zinnia's words three hours later when he walked into the richly paneled bar of the exclusive Founders' Club.
She loved him.
She didn't know it, but she had completely screwed up his entire world. He had been struggling to make her simple words fit into the matrix ever since she had flung them at him with such devastating nonchalance.
She probably hadn't intended the words to be taken literally, he told himself for what had to be the seventy-sixth time in three hours. She had probably meant that she loved the sex. After all, she didn't have much in the way of comparisons.