Simply Irresistible (23 page)

For a moment, his lips rested against hers, then their mouths opened together and they explored each other. She tasted good. She felt good.

He cupped her other cheek, holding her gently. His eyes were closed too, but he couldn’t remember when he closed them. Maybe when she had. They seemed to be in tune on everything else.

He felt himself disappear into her, and knew, for the first time in his life, that he had found the person he had been looking for—even though he hadn’t realized he’d been searching.

It felt as if he had come home.

Then, abruptly, Vivian pulled away. She slipped away from his mouth, his hands, backing up until she slammed into the stove. Her mouth was open, her lips swollen from his kiss.

He felt her absence as if he’d lost a limb. He reached for her—and she shook her head, running deeper into the house.

Dex stood completely still, letting his heart rate slow. He thought she had felt the same way he did. He thought they were both enjoying the kiss, enjoying each other.

Had he used her mind to force her to do something he wanted? It hadn’t felt that way, but she was such a novice, and he—well, he hadn’t thought it through.

Dex bowed his head. Nurse Ratched was weaving through his legs, as if rewarding him for a job well done. He didn’t want to pet his crabby, somewhat psychotic cat. He wanted to go to Viv.

And he didn’t know if he dared.

Chapter Seventeen

Vivian fled blindly into the next room. It was a dining room, filled with an oak table covered with magazines and open books. An archway led into the living room, and she followed the path until she felt like she could have some privacy.

She sank onto a couch so old that its springs no longer worked. It looked like it had been pushed against the wall for decades. The carpet was matted in front of it.

Three cats peered at her from their perches on the coffee table below the picture window. Another cat’s tail dipped beneath the closed curtains. A wiry terrier, small and terrified, took one look at Vivian and disappeared beneath an armchair as old as the couch.

She had wanted Dex to kiss her. She had wanted him to touch her. The kiss had been wonderful, and then she realized that her mind had disappeared into his. She didn’t know where he began and she ended. They had become one person, moving in unison, just with a touch of the lips.

The thought had frightened her. No—it had terrified her. She was a strong woman, unafraid to be in a strange city alone. She’d handled the murder of her aunt, three odd women coming to her door, a change in her worldview, and an attack by an enemy she didn’t even know. But she had done that because she was secure in herself, because she knew who she was and what she wanted from life.

Even when Dex’s disappearance had made her uneasy, she had been able to smile at her own reaction, thinking it almost too traditional.

She hadn’t expected this, this loss of self. No matter how much she wanted him, no matter how attracted they were, no matter if she fell in love with him, she wouldn’t be able to be with him if it cost her herself.

She was shaking. Of all the things that had happened to her this day, from learning about magic to the headache to fainting to being bugged, this was the thing that terrified her the most. She couldn’t even trust whether her attraction was real. What if Dex was attracted to her, and all she felt was the echo of his emotions?

Something like that hadn’t happened to her since she was a child. And Aunt Eugenia had taught her how to handle those stray emotions.

Aunt Eugenia. Vivian frowned. She’d had a flash memory of Aunt Eugenia earlier. It had lasted only a second, and she hadn’t realized that was what the feeling was until just now.

But when had that happened? It felt important.

Vivian stopped shaking and leaned back. It was important. It had something to do with the Fates. Something—

“You all right?”

Vivian jumped, startled, and turned toward the voice. Dex was leaning against the archway, his hands in his pockets. The Siamese that had given Vivian the evil eye earlier was winding her way around his legs, and Sadie sat beside him, looking at Vivian as if she had betrayed Dex somehow.

Vivian hadn’t even heard Dex approach. She hadn’t felt him either. She couldn’t feel him now. The connection between them, which had been so fine earlier, had been severed.

Had she done that with her reaction? Or had he?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve never run away from a kiss before. It’s just that…”

She let her voice trail off. She didn’t know how to explain her reaction. She couldn’t really, not without sounding accusing.
Were you making me feel like you did? Was the reaction I felt during that kiss yours or mine
?

He was studying her, but she didn’t get the sense that he had heard those thoughts. She didn’t get any sense of him at all. And she missed it.

That emotion was hers. She knew it. She missed his reaction, missed him. How could she become so dependent on a feeling she hadn’t had the day before? She was in love with him—her emotions— and that made this somehow worse.

Because she would want to be with him, and she couldn’t. She couldn’t because they wouldn’t have a relationship of equals. She’d become a non-person, someone neither of them recognized—and, she would wager, someone neither of them liked.

“It’s just that what?” he asked gently. He hadn’t moved from the doorway.

Vivian blinked, surprised to find her eyes growing damp. “I got lost,” she whispered.

He nodded, just once, and looked down. “I thought that’s what happened.”

Vivian frowned. He sounded like this was a normal thing—and maybe it was for him. Maybe the women he kissed got so involved in him that they didn’t realize what was happening to them. But she did, and she didn’t like it.

Dex’s head was still down. He wasn’t looking at her. But the Siamese was. As soon as she saw Vivian’s gaze meet hers, the Siamese jumped onto the couch’s arm and stared at her. The stare seemed malevolent.

“I didn’t think,” he said after a moment. “If I’d considered it, I would’ve realized that might happen. You and I are so attuned …”

The cat’s ears flattened, as if she had understood what Dex was saying and didn’t like it.

“This has never happened to you before?” Vivian asked, and there was an edge to her voice. Anger. She was blaming him for this. The anger was coming out of her fear, and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop it.

Dex looked up. He seemed embarrassed. It felt odd to guess at his emotions. She had known them so intimately from the moment she met him that it almost felt as if part of him were missing.

“No,” he said. “It’s never happened to me before. Has it ever happened to you?”

She shoved her glasses up her nose with her forefinger, not because they’d been sliding down but because it gave her something to do while she remembered. She hadn’t been kissed a lot. In high school, the boys had considered her geeky. In college, she’d dated a few times, but the lack of connection she had felt with the boys there had actually bothered her.

Once she graduated, she’d been more focused on building her psychic hotline than on dating. Or maybe, as Travers said, she focused on her psychic hotline because she wanted to avoid dating.

She had a connection with her family, especially Megan and Aunt Eugenia. She loved Travers and Kyle, but Dex was the first person to make her feel complete—and the very thought embarrassed her.

“It’s never happened to me either,” she said. “At least not when I was kissing someone.”

That last statement made him raise his eyebrows. “When did it happen?”

“When I was a little girl.” Vivian ran her hands over her thighs, looking down. The couch had pilled—probably from generations of cats scratching on it. The Siamese was still glaring at her, but the cats on the coffee table had gone back to sleep. “Sometimes people’s emotions were so strong that I thought they were my emotions.”

Dex was watching her as intently as the Siamese was, only his expression had none of her malevolence. “How’d you fix that?”

“My Aunt Eugenia.” Vivian frowned. Aunt Eugenia again. What was it about her that had been triggered today? And when? Something to do with her death.

“What did your Aunt Eugenia do?” Dex asked.

“After this morning, I would guess she put some kind of spell on me so that my reactions wouldn’t be tied into other people’s. But at the time, I thought she taught me how to fix it.”

“Maybe she did.” Dex pulled his hands out of his pockets. He picked up the Siamese. She yowled at him and tried to bite his fingers, but he didn’t seem to care, setting her on the floor. “What did she have you do?”

“Pretend there was a wall between me and other people,” Vivian said.

“That’s the right solution,” Dex said, “although if you do it all the time, you don’t feel anything. Has it been hard for you to get close to people?”

Vivian started. She had just been thinking about that. Was that because of what Aunt Eugenia had taught her? Had Vivian been distant from everyone around her except her family because there had literally been a wall between her and the rest of the world?

Dex sat on the arm of the couch, where the Siamese had been. “It’s kind of like the glass jar you put around the building. It was there. It was real enough that it protected the Fates and real enough for this person who’s after them to touch it, and figure out who you are.”

Vivian turned toward him.

“It’s wrong, Viv, for us to say you won’t come into your magic until you’re older. You’ve already got some of it. That’s what your mental powers are. Just a hint of the magic to come.”

She hadn’t moved. There was still no connection between them, but she didn’t need it. Not at the moment. He was being sincere and caring all at the same time.

“What we all mean when we say you haven’t come into your powers is that they arrive one day, at full strength, and usually out of control, no matter how much training a person has had.”

He glanced out the window, clearly lost in a memory. Of the day he had gotten his powers? If what everyone had told her was true, that would have been more than eighty years ago. Would he remember what that trauma was like, then? Would it still bother him?

She wanted to ask, but she knew that she was merely diverting him, that some part of her didn’t want to hear what he had to say. She was afraid of this, just like she had been afraid when her Aunt Eugenia had called her over the years, asking her to come to Portland. To explore her future, Eugenia used to say. To see what was possible in the world.

Vivian hadn’t wanted to see what was possible. She knew. She had experienced the emotions, the thoughts, the fears of other people. She didn’t need to experience any of her own.

“You haven’t gotten your full powers yet,” Dex said, turning back toward her. He had such compassion in his eyes. She wanted to touch him. But she wouldn’t. She wasn’t ready. “You won’t get those for thirty years or so. But when they come, you’ll be one of the most powerful mages ever. You’ll probably be more powerful than all of the people you met at Quixotic today. More powerful than the person who’s after the Fates. The psychic powers you have—the mental powers—are amazing. What you did earlier today would be difficult for some people who’ve come into their full powers. You did it on one-one-hundredth of your strength.”

Vivian rubbed her hands together. She was shivering again, and she wasn’t sure when that started.

“What does that have to do with—what happened in the kitchen?” she asked.

He bit his lower lip, as if he didn’t want to say. But he straightened and looked at her. “For whatever reason, there was no wall between us. Maybe because you were using so much of your mental abilities to maintain the protection around your building when we met. Or maybe—the connection between us is strong enough to get past your natural defenses. I don’t know. But what happened was so overwhelming because we were—I don’t know. Naked with each other. Mentally, I mean.”

His cheeks were a faint pink. He seemed as uncomfortable as she felt.

“Then why is the connection gone now?” she asked. “Have I done that?”

He shook his head, stood, and shoved his hands into his pockets again. Then he walked to the window. The cats sleeping on the coffee table raised their heads. One cat rolled over on her back, paws in the air, asking him to pet her stomach.

He didn’t. It was as if he didn’t see her.

“I did it,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you, Viv. Ever. I should have realized what was going on. I just didn’t think. I’d been wanting to kiss you all day.”

He was staring at the curtains as if he could see through them. She wondered if he could.

“What you did,” Vivian said. “Can I do it?”

Dex’s back became rigid. She wondered if he misunderstood what she was asking. All she wanted to do was control what happened to her mind— to herself. She didn’t want to cut him out of her life. In fact, she was feeling better, knowing that what had happened hadn’t been intentional, and was something that could be prevented.

“Or could be chosen, if they so desired.”

Her cheeks grew warm. She put both hands on them, feeling their heat. Sex with him would be spectacular. It would be beyond intimacy. It would be—

“Yeah,” he said, so softly she almost didn’t hear him. “You can.”

She let out a long breath. “How?”

“If your mind can visualize it, you can create it, Viv.”

“You mean if I imagine disappearing, I will?”

He shook his head. He still hadn’t turned around. “No. What you have is the ability to create things— walls, glass jars—with your thoughts. It will take a lot of energy for you to sustain what you’ve created, especially if you create a lot of things or very large things like that glass jar. But you can do it, for now. Later, you’ll be able to do spells.”

She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her. The warmth was receding from her cheeks. “I understand. So I couldn’t have made that thing on my neck go away like Andrew Vari did, but I could have prevented it from happening by putting a shield on my neck.”