Out of This World Read online

  I held on tightly and closed my eyes. “Me, either. What do you think is wrong with me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I can see through things, Kellan.”

  He tipped my chin up, his eyes dark, his voice low and quiet and incredibly soothing. “I can’t explain that, but it’s this place. I know it.” He pulled back, and shivered.

  I realized I was shivering, too.

  He made a sound of concern and went to work on the buttons down the front of my pink, gauzy shirt.

  “Hey,” I said, holding the material closed, “I can do that.”

  “Okay.” Backing up, he turned away and eyed the couch, no doubt wondering who could possibly sleep there.

  Damn, he had a nice back, all smooth and sleek and tanned. Tanned? “When did you get sun?”

  “Uh, every day of my life?” He kicked off his shoes. “I swim all day long in the tanks outside, remember?” He went still, and glanced at me over his shoulder, his eyes shadowed from me. “More seeing through stuff?”

  I felt my cheeks heat, not because I’d been peeking, but because until now, I’d been mostly peeking south of his tanned back—waaay south.

  “You getting into a hot shower?” he asked.

  “Um…”

  “Let me rephrase. You are getting into a hot shower.”

  This assertive Kel was new. “Maybe, things will somehow seem better, or different, when we’re warm,” he said, slightly less gruffly, but no less forcefully.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes off him. “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Let’s. Yes, let’s take a shower.

  In fact, the image of just that flitted through my brain and stayed there—thank you so much, my overactive imagination—the two of us together beneath the spray, with Kellan naked and wet and gleaming as he pinned me against the wall to have his merry way with me.

  Sexual healing, huh.

  Oh boy. In my fantasy, he knew exactly how to sexually heal me. “Kellan?”

  “Warm up first.” He looked at me, and I had trouble breathing, mostly due to the fact that my cool, calm, laid-back and easygoing Kellan was not so laid-back and calm right now, no matter what his outside appearance said.

  This knowledge had not come to me through my mysterious and newfound talent of seeing through things.

  Nope, didn’t need to see through his jeans to see he was aroused.

  I actually had to lift my hand and fan my hot face. “You know what?”

  His voice sounded a little gruff. “What?”

  “Suddenly I’m warm. Very warm.”

  Chapter 8

  K ellan sighed, and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry, Rach. It’s that kiss. It’s messing with my head big time.”

  There, one of us had said it. Thank God. “The kiss?”

  He cut those amazing eyes to me. “You forgot about it?”

  Not likely. “No, I’ve, um, been thinking about it, too.” I’d also been thinking about getting another. You know, just to see if it had been a fluke. “And then there was what Axel and Marilee said.”

  His eyes heated. “About the sex thing?”

  I had to clear my throat to answer. “I believe they used the word ‘amazing.’ The ‘amazing’ sex thing. But yeah, that.”

  “Thought you might have been snoozing through that part of the conversation.”

  “No, I heard.”

  “Oh.” He brushed past me and went into the bathroom. I heard the shower come on, and a moment later he was back, propping a shoulder against the doorway as if he owned it. “I lit some candles. The water’s ready for you.”

  “Kel?”

  He looked reluctant to answer. “Yeah?”

  “Do you really believe that we’re going to find some sort of a wild connection this weekend?”

  “Rach, just get in the shower.” He definitely didn’t want to have this conversation with me, which perversely made me want to have this exact conversation.

  “Go,” he said. Begged.

  I was doing pretty well without the shower regarding that getting-warm thing. In fact, just looking at his lean, muscular frame made me feel as if I had an inner fire raging. “Kel—”

  “Look, I don’t really want to talk about any cosmic connection.”

  “How about wild sex? You want to talk about wild sex?”

  “No.”

  “But I do.” I had no idea how those words made it past my inner editor. Oh wait, that’s right, I didn’t have an inner editor. Still, I usually had some pride—meaning I never made the first move on a man, preferring instead to be chased. I stood there a minute, trying to figure out how things had changed.

  “Get in the shower, Rach.”

  “But—”

  “Please.”

  “Fine.”

  He looked pained at my word choice as I stalked past him into the bathroom. I shut the door and stripped by candlelight, then stepped into the raised bathtub and pulled the curtain around me, reminding myself that, unlike me, Kellan couldn’t see through the door or the curtain.

  For now, I was utterly alone.

  And because I was, maybe I could allow myself a few tears. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of those women who cried easily or well. I certainly didn’t look good while doing it. My eyes always got all puffy, my nose ran unattractively and my cheeks became blotchy. Now was no different as I stood beneath the steady stream of hot water and let the pity party begin.

  I sniffed noisily, then went still as I felt a whisper of movement. I stared at the shiny pink vinyl shower curtain surrounding me, then through it to the mirror on the wall reflecting my own astonished face right back at me, my hair plastered to my head, my wide, tear-reddened eyes. And then my eyes went even wider as I figured out what the sound had been.

  Kellan opening the door. “Rach?”

  I squeaked, then realized that while I could see him, he could not yet see me, since he hadn’t gotten hit by lightning. I slapped my hand over my mouth to keep back any telltale sounds that might escape, like the remaining sob.

  But he was looking right at me. Or at the curtain. I shrank back until my spine and butt touched the icy tiles, making me jump at the unexpected goosing. “Get out!”

  “Rach.”

  I pointed at him, even though he couldn’t yet see me. It didn’t matter. I still felt like I was naked in front of a crowd. “Out.”

  He gave a low shake of his head, and with a frustrated sob, I whirled away so I couldn’t see him, hugging myself tightly beneath the blast of hot water.

  I felt another shifting of the cool air, and then the curtain was swept aside, and I squealed again, whipping back around. My quick movement sprayed Kellan with water right in the face.

  “Get out!” I said.

  “Are you crying?”

  I swiped angrily at my eyes. Had he even noticed I was naked? “No, I’m not crying! And you’re peeking.”

  But he wasn’t peeking at all. He was looking directly into my eyes, his own full of things that made more tears leak out of mine.

  Damn it.

  “You are,” he said, and clamped his hands down over my wrists, tugging me toward him. “You’re crying.”

  “I’m going to be screaming in a minute,” I promised, trying to pull free to no avail. The hands that held me captive so easily were large and callused, and I liked the feel of them—too much—so I struggled to get loose before I lost all pride and threw myself against him.

  “Christ.” The word seemed to slip out of him as he tried to hold onto me without actually touching me. I realized how I must look—wet, soaped up, naked…

  And yeah, he’d definitely noticed the naked part.

  Through his drenched clothing, I could see his heart quicken, his abs tighten. I could sense the rush of blood to places that weren’t thinking about the lightning or my new eyesight, or anything but this—just the two of us. “Go away,” I whispered, thinking, Don’t do it; don’t really go.

  Eyes