Ill Wind

The clingy, flirty shirt? The rain had turned it about as transparent as fishnet.

I wasn't wearing a bra. And my nipples were as hard as thumbtacks from the cold wind.

I crossed my arms over my chest and tried not to look too much like the fool I felt. My lab partner— somebody I'd had a crush on from about the first ten seconds of laving eyes on him—didn't care how much of one he looked, apparently, because he just blinked and kept staring.

"You were saying?" I asked.

He clearly drew a blank.

I sighed. "Yes, I'm a girl. Don't tell me you never noticed before."

He had the grace to blush, and he did it well—one of those neck-to-hairline flushes that makes some men look all the more attractive. He was one of them. Dark hair, bedroom eyes. Not that I cared, of course. Much.

"Here," he said, and stood up to take off his jacket. He started to hand it over, then hesitated. "Maybe you should, um, turn around first."

When I did, he draped the jacket over my shoulders and let me situate everything to my not-so-high standards of modesty. The jacket was warm dark leather, and it smelled like aftershave and male sweat. When I turned around, he was working hard at being the gentleman the jacket offer implied. I was frankly a little disappointed.

"Guess we'd better get to work," I said.

"Not yet. You're freezing."

I was shaking, all right, but it was half hormones; the lab was empty except for the two of us, and we had it scheduled for the entire afternoon. Rain lashed the windows, and thunder rumbled so deep, I felt it like a caress.

Showing off, he warmed up the room by about five degrees. I was grateful, but we both knew it was a violation of the rules. No adjusting of temperature for anything but assignments. Still, no teachers taking notes.

"I'm okay," I said, and took my seat at the table. My hair was still wet and dripping, so I bent over and squeezed as much out of it as I could. When I straightened up, the jacket gaped open, and I saw his eyes dive to get another look.

We pretended to work for a while—okay, maybe we even did work for a while—and actually came up with some right answers for the day and recorded them in our logs. Fast, too; we finished the assignment and had at least an hour left. The storm was still blowing outside, and the energy tingled all over, begging me to come out and play. I was almost dry now, but still wore his jacket, and he hadn't asked for it back.

"Well," I said, and stood up. "I guess we might as well get out of here."

"Might as well." He stood up, too. Taller than me. Broader. Standing too close.

I looked up into his eyes and slid the jacket slowly down my arms, and held it out to him. He took it and dropped it on the floor somewhere behind him.

I looked down at myself. The blouse hadn't quite dried; my nipples were still clearly visible through the thin fabric.

He took one step forward and put his hands on my waist. When I didn't step back, he moved his hands up along my sides, thumbs out, up, along the underside of my breasts. Those thumbs settled on the second most sensitive area on my body, where he moved them in a slow, gentle circle that took my breath away.

"So," he said, and his voice was coming from somewhere much deeper than it had before, "we're supposed to be researching energy, right?"

"Energy," I agreed. My voice was shaking.

"Heat."

"That, too."

He leaned down, and our lips met and melted. No shortage of heat there, or friction. I was shaking all over again, but I'd never felt so alive, so fully in my skin as I did at that moment.

Rain, and rain, and rain. His jacket made a pillow on the floor behind the lab table. We fumbled at each other's clothes until they slid away. The sting of cool air on naked skin, then the flare of shared warmth. Not a lot of foreplay, but hell, I didn't need it; the storm combined with the energy passing between us had made me as ready as I'd ever be. The pain took me by surprise, and so did my sudden desperate desire to make it stop, make him stop.

And with the tearing of my hymen, something else happened. Power. Power raced into every nerve in my body and snapped me into full awareness. I knew the man who was making love to me, every cell, every nerve, every pulse beat that echoed between us. I felt… everything.

I felt the huge rumbling cascade of his power as it flooded me, making me arch hard against him, and the extreme pain of it, the pleasure… sparks snapped between us, blue-white, bleeding off energy that our bodies weren't built to contain. Power, echoing between us, waves bouncing from one of us to the other and getting stronger with every second.

He wasn't prepared any more than I was. We were swept away on a rhythm like the sea, and when the tide came, it came high, and I drowned on waves and waves of a pleasure I'd never felt before, felt him drowning with me, clung to him for dear life.

I heard things shattering around us. Lightbulbs. Glass windows. I felt wind scream over us in whipping, out-of-control gusts.

And then it was over, and we were lying together, sweating, weak, and still feeling the power building between us.

He realized how dangerous it was before I did. He pulled away from me and kept going, far away, scrambling backwards until his back touched the wall. I scuttled back and hid under the lab table. All around us, the wind whipped and screamed and overturned tables and chairs until it finally faded to a breeze, then a sigh.

Stillness.

"God," he whispered, and put his head in his hands. I sympathized. My head was pounding, too. Every nerve in my body felt crisped.

I licked my lips and said, "It's not supposed to happen like that, right?"

There was blood on the floor where I'd been lying. I stared at it for a few seconds and saw he was staring at it, too.

He looked utterly stricken. "No," he whispered. "God, I'm so sorry. I didn't know—"

I didn't know whether he was apologizing because I'd been a virgin or because we'd almost destroyed the campus. I didn't really have time to find out.

The man was, of course, Lewis Levander Orwell. And so far as I know, he never again touched a girl who was in the Program.

I was still looking for my panties when Professor Yorenson arrived to find out what the hell was going on.

I don't know what I'd been expecting. A message from above, complete with cherubs and singing choirs, inviting me to join Lewis in whatever hole he'd crawled into? Crap.

We cruised around I-40, looking for signs from the heavens while I restlessly cycled through radio stations, hoping for a cryptic message.

Nothing.

If Lewis was here, evidently he didn't want to talk to me.

I finally pulled up in the parking lot of a La Quinta Motor I

"He's here?" David asked, frowning. I was on the verge of hysterical tears or worse, hysterical laughter— worn down to nothing by the strain.

"He's around," I lied. My voice was shaking. "I need a shower and a good night's sleep in a real bed. If you've got a problem with that, thumb a ride."

He shook his head and followed me into the hotel lobby.

I checked us in with the last of my cash. I was so tired, I would have taken a cell in a monastery, but La Quinta turned out to be quite a showplace, with an indoor pool and a bubbling jewel of a hot tub that we passed on the way to the elevators. They'd booked me third-floor accommodations, facing the parking lot and the approaching storm. That was perfectly fine with me. Always best to keep your eye on what's coming.