Out of This World

Was I okay? Hmm, wasn’t that the question of the hour? Trying to figure out that very thing, I looked back up into the sky, watching the raindrops coming down, one by one. Wow, it was really beautiful.

Every part of everything around me seemed deeper, more colorful, richer…

More intense.

“Rach?” Kellan tossed aside his glasses and leaned over me, protecting me with his body, stroking my hair from my face. “You’re silent. You’re never silent.”

A bird flew overhead, and when I concentrated on its body, its wings flapping, I found I could see its heart pumping, beating…

Oh.

My.

God.

“Rach.”

“I think I broke a nail,” I whispered.

He stared at me. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’m kidding.” I lifted my hand and studied my plain, trimmed-by-my-own-teeth nails.

“You’re scaring me, Rach. Here, can you sit up?” He took my hand to pull me upright, then steadied me, his hands firm on my upper arms. “Are you all right?”

Without his lenses, his eyes were so clear and blue, I could have just looked at him all day long.

Wow. Gorgeous.

I wobbled, then set my head against his chest. Beneath the drenched shirt, his heart beat a bit fast but steadily, and he was warm, deliriously warm. Sturdy and solid and always-there Kel.

He extended his arms, pushing me back, so he could peer into my face. Man, he was cute. I smiled up at him dreamily, thinking I’d no idea just how cute…and while thinking it, a shiver wracked me. Probably it was the cold, but it might have been the totally and completely inappropriate surge of lust I was experiencing.

Kel kept his hands on me, drawing me back against his warm body, making me all the more aware of him, of his sweet but firm touch, of the strength that allowed him to easily take on my weight. I sighed in pleasure.

“You’re scaring the shit out of me, Rach.”

“Did you know you have the most amazing eyes?”

They narrowed on me. “Huh?”

“Seriously,” I said, reaching up, touching his face, which was wet from the rain. “I could drown in ’em. Anyone ever told you that?”

“Uh, no. You’re the first. Hold on there, champ,” he said when I tried to get up, holding me down with a hand to the middle of my chest. “Don’t move.”

Good idea, since everything had begun to swim. I put my hands to my head. “What happened to me?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you.”

He was so cute with all his worry that it made me smile. “Kel? How come we’ve never gone out?”

“Out?”

“Hooked up.”

He went still, then lifted two fingers. “Okay, how many?” he demanded.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“I thought we were erasing that word from the English language.”

I tried to stand up on my own. “Whoa.” I reached for him, because maybe I wasn’t so okay after all. “Hey, stop the world, would ya? I want to get off.”

“You’re dizzy?” He gripped my shoulders. “What the hell happened? Did you fall?”

I closed my eyes. But just like on the plane, that only made it worse, so I opened them again. I focused on a tree. Again, I saw right through the tree, as if I had X-ray vision, meaning I could still see the long line of carpenter ants making their way through the trunk. I followed their line down to the ground, where they emerged from a hole only a few inches from me.

One crawled out near my foot, and I would have sworn on my own grave that it craned its neck and glared at me for being in its way. I stared at it, stunned. “Uh…Kellan?”

“Jesus,” he breathed, and for a minute my heart surged, thinking he could see through stuff, too, but he shook his head and pointed at my clothes.

They were smoking.

“You were hit by lightning,” he said, and looked into my face. “My God. Are you okay?”

His eyes still seemed luminous, and filled with far more worry than before. I dropped my gaze from his, and then gasped.

Like with the moon, like with the tree, I could see through him. As in beneath his clothes.

Um, yeah, I was definitely different.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I mean, what are the chances?” Leaning in again, he began to run his hands over my limbs. Up my legs, over my hips, over my ribs-

“What are you doing?”

“Checking for broken bones,” he said tightly, mouth grim.

“I didn’t have an accident.”

“You were hit.” Beneath his shirt, his muscles rippled with every movement, and this mesmerized me. Muscles rippling? Kel?

When had that happened?

“Kel, I’m okay.” Okay enough to enjoy his hands on me…

“If you’re okay, then why are you looking at me funny?”

Because I just realized you have this hard chest and nicely chiseled abs, and you’re totally, completely ripped.

Only two weeks ago, he’d come over to help me wash my car. This had, of course, involved a spirited water fight, and I’d been the victor, nailing him good with the hose from head to toe and back again. We’d laughed, and before going inside my apartment, he’d stripped off his shirt.

I hadn’t nearly swallowed my tongue then. Not once.

And yet now, staring at him, through his clothes, at his hard pecs, sinewy biceps and that yummy belly, I just wanted to lap him up, or swallow my own tongue.

And then this.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that I must’ve hit my head after all.”

“Jesus, really?” He pulled me into his lap right there on the wet ground, slipping his hands beneath my hair, cupping my head, gently probing. “I don’t feel a lump. I think that’s bad. Look at me.”

I didn’t want to, but I did. I looked back into those drown-in-me eyes. Then, because I couldn’t help myself, because they were such a gorgeous color, I sighed.

“Hurting?” he asked.

“Um…a little. But I’m okay. Really.” My clothes were indeed smoking, a disconcerting fact, let me tell you. “So how much electricity is in a lightning bolt anyway?”

“Enough to fry a few brain cells.”

I laughed, sounding a bit hysterical even to my own ears. So I’d fried a few brain cells. I had spares.

I think.

But how to explain that I could see right through everything? “Kel, can you-Now, I know this sounds weird, but just stick with me here…Can you see through me or anything?”

“Okay, that’s it. Stay seated.” He took a good look at my pupils, pretty darn cute in his concern. “You do know who you are, right?”

“Yep.” I noticed a scar low on his belly, and remembered his emergency appendectomy in high school. Then I struggled not to look lower…

“And you know me,” he demanded. “Right? You know who I am?”

“Double yep.”

“What year is it?”

“It’s 1605,” I quipped.