DISCLAIMER: THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE HOLLOWS AND ALL CHARACTERS THEREIN ARE OWNED BY THE LOVELY KIM HARRISON.
~ The Dressing Room ~
CHAPTER 2
"Rachel?" he said more forcefully. "You're wearing my clothes, why?" he said with a curious lilt to his voice, and I could have sworn I felt him shaking.
"I don't know. I just… saw you left your coat on the chair and it looked so soft. The velvet. I just… wanted to touch… it…" I replied, my eyes focused on his mouth.
What the hell was I saying? I sounded like an awkward teenage girl flirting with her first crush. My mind felt fuzzy. I was trying like hell to keep it together, but I felt like I was in a dreamstate, completely enraptured by whatever was transpiring between Al and myself. I blinked my eyes a few times in an effort to clear away the fog. What the Turn was I doing?
"You wanted to touch it," his mellifluous voice a touchless caress, gently stroking my ears, moving down my neck, and electrifying every synapse as it slowly worked its way down my spine like the warm, tender fingers of a lover.
I nodded. "Uh huh." My eyes were still focused on his lips, his eyes focused on mine. I felt my pulse slow to a rhythm steady and strong and felt myself slipping into a trance. Into Al's trance.
I blinked again and tried to shake my head gently in an attempt to formulate a coherent thought. "Al, what the hell are you doing to me?" My accusation, much to my disappointment, lacking the weight of any anger. How the hell could I express anger while talking like a porn star and floating on a cloud?
Al brought his gaze away from my lips, with what looked like a considerable amount of effort. He turned his head slightly and shifted his focus to my shoulder and I felt him shift his grip as he brought his hand to rest on my upper arm, gently stroking the fabric of the coat. His coat. The one I was wearing. He blinked twice and then said in a soft monotone, "You smell like me."
This was so weird. Standing here with Al reminded me of my early days living with Ivy, she and I struggling to circumvent her natural instincts and find a way to live together platonically without me pushing her buttons every five minutes. It took a good long while til we found what worked and we could never, ever share clothes without risking her vamping out and wanting to sample me like tasty vampire treat.
Could this be similar? Were Al and I vamping out, our scents mixing together to stir something sensually visceral? Was this a demon pheromone thing? Do demons even have pheromones? God, I didn't know. And if Al knew he wasn't telling. This, though, was different. This was affecting me as much as it was Al. Not once in my interaction with Ivy or Kisten, or even Piscary, had it felt like this, not even when someone was playing upon my scar - the scar that Al had given me in our first encounter. What I felt now was coming from someplace at the very core of my being. It felt like something ancient, and primal, and really good. It was a tingling in my belly and a warmth that spread to parts below.
"Al?"
"Yes, Rachel?"
"I feel strange," I confessed, struggling to maintain my composure.
"Strange," his voice still a focused monotone.
"Strange," I said through the fog. "I was fine when you weren't here. But now I can hardly speak and I can't move. What's happening, Al? I can't move away from you. I feel almost paralyzed."
Al's eyes were trained on the coat, his gaze narrowing slightly as he seemed to focus on something I couldn't see. It was a subtle gesture and one I may have missed if I hadn't been staring so intently at his face, taking in every nuance as we both fought whatever force was conspiring to overwhelm our self control.
I reached up with my right hand and touched the side of his face, running my fingers over the edge of his eyebrow. He looked at me again before his eyes fluttered shut when I touched the corner of his eyelid, tracing the fine lines that marred his otherwise ageless face. His skin was warm and smooth beneath my touch. With my palm open I stroked the side of his face, touching his cheek and moving my fingers along his jaw line until my two fingers were touching his lips, feeling their softness. Why are his lips so soft? What am I doing?
"Rachel, we're going to have a bit of a problem," he said with a labored breath and with more than a hint of panic in his voice, as he leaned in towards me and my fingers continued to caress his lips as they moved in time with the syllables of his words.
And no sooner had he spoken those words when the hand I had pressed to Al's face pulsed with a strong current of force like electricity - lightning coursing through my blood. The gold of my aura was suddenly a visible shell emanating from every surface of my skin. Al's own aura became visible, the same gold as my own with no signs of the imbalance accrued from a lifetime twisting curses. I felt my awareness expand and my aura gain strength as it pressed against Al's. Al's aura strengthened in response and felt heavy as it pressed against mine and I fought to maintain the separation between our energies. Without intent, I tapped a line and energy flowed into my thoughts. I quickly began spindling it as fast as I could but the tide of line energy was so strong it threatened to overflow my synapses. No, no, no, no, no! Bis wasn't with me to help take the excess and I gasped, trying to break my connection with the line. This… was not good.
My hand fell from Al's face as his hand slowly dropped from my shoulder, our hands traveling down the length of each other's arms until they joined together, my small palm lying to rest on top of his much larger one. His glove suddenly gone, my pale skin contrasted with the dark, ruddiness of his. I felt Al tap a line and, in unison, we dropped our heads to where our hands had joined. Where our bodies touched, our auras flashed a brilliant, almost blinding white and began merging together.
It was an ecstasy a thousand times more pleasurable than what I had experienced blending auras with Ivy – a stimulation exponentially more powerful than what I had experienced with Pierce.
I looked up to see Al staring back at me, his expression a mixture of anxiety and arousal. I was sure it mirrored my own. I was completely enraptured and drowning in his presence as I felt the last vestiges of my free will slipping away.