Black Coffee
Part Three: Kiss and Tell

Summary: Sensory memories
Rating: PG-13 for adult situations.
A/N: The closest Karasuma will ever get to Carrie Bradshaw.
For everyone who's been there for me this summer.

So, you want to know what it was like? Of course you do, it's not every woman who to gets to sleep with Tall, Dark, and Broodingly Beautiful – and we few lucky ones are expected to do our part, to "tell all" to a group of girlfriends so that the whole myth can live on. It's how romance novelists have made their living for years. Living vicariously, wish-fulfilment – in fact, we should be gossiping about this over sassy cocktails at a trendy singles bar, a la Sex and the City.

And I have to admit, the ... call them sensory memories ... do give me the shivers. I should have known it; that man is too good at what he does to be careless in bed. When he takes all the energy usually focused on surveillance, data processing and risk analysis – all the things he does almost automatically, when he's working – and focuses it, the results are almost frighteningly intense.

Sex with Amon was something decidedly low on finesse and high in ... well, urgency. Actually, we were groping and fumbling like a pair of kids in the backseat of a car, all the way to the bedroom. I've never been grateful for the small size of my apartment before; it was no more than six steps from the couch to the bed, and I swear to God, Amon crossed the distance in two. I'm not sure if he was carrying me or simply dragging me, but I don't remember my feet touching the ground more than once or twice. Not that I gave a damn by then.

Anyhow, I think I closed my eyes at some point, so it took me a while to realize something rather odd was going on. (Remember, I was ... rather distracted, as well.)

He seemed to be on autopilot. Well, not that exactly – but when he looked at me, I wasn't sure what he was seeing. His hands and mouth were urgent, almost fumbling (in fact, I was wearing turtlenecks to the office for a week) but his eyes had this odd look to them. A little bleak, a little reckless, with a hint of despair under their flint-hard surface. He wasn't the kind of man who softened during sex.

I know. Right now, you're wondering, "What the hell is wrong with this woman? She's wasting time thinking about motivations?" I suppose you do have a point – but remember, this is what I do. What I've done all my life. I'm not just psychic, I'm a Hunter – and that means keeping a part of me detached at all times, observing the people around me and storing that knowledge away. And I can't block my Craft entirely; it's always there. It's like part of me is an emotional radio, always set to 'receive.' I can turn down the volume, but the underlying data stream is always there.

I could feel the desperation in Amon's touch. It was like a signal, a light flashing behind my eyes, and I knew that I was more of a means to an end, than a lover. A lightning rod, a ground wire – a way of taking an unbearable emotion, and directing it away from a vulnerable area.

I suppose it was a compliment of sorts, that Amon trusted me with this. He knows me better than anyone alive, he must have known that I would figure it out. That I would know that my hands, mouth, body were a sort of surrogate for what he really wanted. He also knew ... that I would figure out who it was, that he was imagining. Who it was that he saw, when he looked into my eyes.

Is it any wonder that I'm sitting in this goddamn bar, drinking Irish coffee and trying my hardest not to think about it?