Can’t.Think.His hands were gentle but insistent, his fingers enjoying the slick feel of her. She tumbled against the wall as pleasure spiraled uncontrollably. He was deliberately letting her see what he was doing to her.
What did he say before that? What did he say? Some part of her urged her to try to remember. But she couldn’t focus.
“All I have to do is open my eyes, Elena, and do this to get your attention back to me. I need this connection. Every time you start analyzing, I lose focus here.”His voice in her head took on a silky edge.“We’re still new at this. It’s the only way I know to make you stop thinking.”
The sensations were all hers now. Every shudder of pleasure. She couldn’t tell whether he was just sending her one of his fantasies or if he was really doing this in virtual reality. It didn’t matter. Her concentration came back to him, to his hands and lips, everything.
“I want to be inside you, but I can’t. Not now or we’ll both be mind-fucking. Take us back to the first building, Elena. Open your eyes.”
His voice was seductive, like a man with sex on his mind. She knew better. Yet her body shivered in delight at the thought of mind-fucking... The smell of antiseptic overwhelmed her. She opened her eyes. They were back at that other place. She wrinkled her nose. Nothing like antiseptic to stop a good mind-fuck.
“Happy now?”she growled, angry and frustrated.What did he say?that inner voice repeated urgently.
Helen shook her head. Too many damn voices in her head.
“Not really, not where it counts. Does it make you feel better if I apologize? I’m sorry I have to use our sexual desire to get you to do what I want.”
“But you’re not going to stop,”Helen said, rubbing the sides of her arms, trying to stop the tightness in her lower body that had nothing to do with remote viewing.
“No. Not if it means you going off without taking me with you.”
“My mind isn’t yours, Jed!”
“Not all the time. Just now. Want another demonstration? With my apologies first, of course.”
Helen wanted to scream. She was spitting mad and turned on at the same time. She turned around abruptly, ignoring his chuckle in her head. She was going to find that damn intruder. Then she was going back to virtual reality and kicking his virtual ass. Then kick his real one after that. It would double the satisfaction.
JED RUTHLESSLY STRANGLEDhis own sexual thoughts as he focused in on Elena’s senses. The fact that he could feel her desire too wasn’t helping his own raging need to go away that easily.
He’d done what he did out of reflex. He told himself it was necessary, but a part of him regretted that he had to. He pushed the feeling away. Careful. Elena was beginning to get wisps of his thoughts too. This brainwave entrainment experiment was unpredictable; no one knew exactly how she or he was going to be affected with prolonged synchronization.
Capturing each other’s thought-images as a side effect was logical. If he’d been doing it to her, it was also logical she would probably be able to do it to him too. His lips quirked. So far, it was fortunate they didn’t actually read each other’s minds. He didn’t think that would be possible, seeing that the brain generated a multitude of random thoughts and sensations in a second.
Jed shook off the analysis. Later. Questions and analysis would make them inattentive and put Elena in danger. He concentrated on Elena’s perception of this new wing of Stratter’s Pointe. He shouldn’t be surprised that the old building had been renovated and added on to. After all, it’d been twenty years or longer.
This new section looked nothing like the rest of the place. Very clinical, like a hospital. Stratter’s hadn’t had a medical wing when he was there.
“There are bars on the inside of windows on this floor, Hades.”
“Yes, I’m seeing them.”Jed frowned. Prisoners in need of medical attention? At Stratter’s? Things had changed.
“There’s a reason why I bilocated here, Hades. Our intruder is somewhere in this place with bars in the windows that smells of antiseptic. I’m going to go check out a few of the rooms.”
“Your attacker, Elena. Be careful.”
The intruder somehow had managed to do something to Elena. In Jed’s book, that made him dangerous. That they had to deal withsomething as yet unknown, someone who could possibly hurt Elena while in remote-viewing state, didn’t sit well with him. It was difficult to protect someone from the unknown and it was his job to make sure she remained safe.
“I hear something. Follow it?”
“Yes.”
Jed let go of his thoughts about his past and concentrated on Elena. He knew, from previous experience, if he just kept quiet and let her work instinctively, she would relax enough to allow their thoughts to immerse even more, thus projecting her experience on him naturally. When Elena wasn’t concentrating too much on being tied to him, he’d found that her thought-images even projected themselves into the virtual reality environment, that he could see her surroundings with his eyes open. It was as if he’d bilocated with her. It didn’t happen often because they were both controlling persons by nature; sooner or later their self-consciousness intruded and he would find himself blinking away the sudden double vision.
He saw four people in a room. One of them was curled in a fetal position on the bed. He was drawing deep, sobbing breaths, as if he was in pain. A doctor was attending him. The others, in suits, were doing most of the talking. Their words, murmurs in the background, became more comprehensible as Elena focused in. Jed emptied his mind, letting the whole scene immerse like a movie into his consciousness, listening to the conversation taking place.
“The doctor said to let him rest up for a few days. Maybe we should.”
“He can rest on the plane. Bring the doctor, in case he needs more drugs to calm down, that’s all. Right, Doc?”
