Unexpectedly, Dahlia laughed. She lifted the thick mass of her blue-black hair off the back of her neck and let it fall in a cloak around her. “I’m a voodoo queen, of course. I’ve cast my spell, and it’s too late for you to get away from me.”
He wanted to swear. He wanted to cross the room and pin her down on the bed and see if she dared laugh at him then. She’d melted whatever ice had run in his veins, and now she was sitting there in the middle of the damned bed laughing.
The smile faded slowly from her face, from her eyes. She pulled the pillow to her chest protectively. “It wasn’t you, this time, Nicolas, it was me.” Color crept under her skin as she made her confession. “I thought it was safe to indulge in a few fantasies. You didn’t say you were affected when I was thinking about you.”
He counted to ten silently to give himself time to collect his scattered control. “You didn’t tell me you had fantasies about me. Especially erotic fantasies.”
She sighed. “You don’t have to throw it in my face. I am human after all. I may have been raised in a sanitarium, but I do have the usual hormones.”
A slow, very male, smile of satisfaction settled on his face, relieving the grim lines. “For which I’m grateful. Why did you stop? It left me frustrated. I wouldn’t be complaining if you’d finished what you started.”
Her flush deepened, and her gaze shifted away from his face. When he stirred as if to take a step toward her, her eyes widened in alarm and he immediately regained her full attention. “We don’t really need to talk about that. I’ve thought of something else important.”
“If I’m going to survive the night, we definitely need to talk about it.” He folded his arms across his bare chest.
To Dahlia, he looked like a statue, lovingly carved of stone. Someone had paid attention to each detail of his body, of his face. She sighed as she pressed the pillow tighter against her midsection. “I didn’t know exactly what to do.”
He had to strain to hear her confession. He stood looking down at her, wondering how he could be such an idiot when he was reputed to have a high IQ. His smile widened, until he was grinning like an ape. She was just so beautiful, looking flustered and embarrassed, caught with her erotic fantasies just as he had been.
Dahlia threw the pillow at him—hard. “Go away. I’m thinking about very serious matters and you’re not helping.”
He caught the pillow in midair and stalked her across the room, looking every inch the prowling tiger. “I think sex is a very serious subject.” He sat on the edge of the bed.
Dahlia glared at him. “You take up a lot of space. And air. I can’t breathe with you in the room.”
“I’m teasing you, Dahlia.” His voice was so gentle, almost tender, and her heart did a funny little flip. She wished she had the pillow back.
“Are you going to tell me how you managed to run across the ceiling?” he asked.
“I didn’t manage it. Only partway, and then I fell. It’s a matter of bending gravity.” She shrugged her shoulders again, and he tried not to stare at her flawless skin.
“Bending gravity?” She would never cease to amaze him.
Dahlia nodded, her face brightening. “Not exactly bending it, more like shielding it or modifying it. Basically, I have to gather a tremendous amount of energy in one place, which for me isn’t all that difficult, and then I turn myself into a kind of energy superconductor.”
He nodded. “I’ve noticed, but that doesn’t explain how.”
“I began playing with energy when I was child. I build a strong magnetic field around me, and as the energy builds up, it causes the nuclei of the atoms, in whatever part of my body I choose, to spin very fast. If I manage to align the nuclei with each other and get them spinning fast enough, then I can create a gravity field and aim it so it counteracts the earth’s gravity field.”