Out of Mind

Billy and that woman?”

“All the more reason for me to take it out.”

“If it doesn’t take you out first,” she said. Another wiggle and she was near enough to settle with the top of her head beneath his chin.

They both stopped talking.

Willow pressed her lips to his neck and Ben shuddered along his length. He wrapped her in both of his arms and she rested her head on his shoulder.

“Are you like Marley, then?” Willow asked. “Do you travel out of your body, and that’s why I sensed you were gone, but didn’t see you go?”

“No. She goes for extended periods—usually many minutes, and only when she’s called. I travel of my own will—but very fast, so fast I return with no apparent lapse of time. That’s how I brought you back from that house. Through a nanogap. Sykes is concerned about that. In case you lack whatever makes it okay for me. We don’t want you harmed.”

“It hasn’t hurt me.”

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

She considered that. When she’d realized she had returned from the Brandts’ and was sitting on her own couch again—with a dog she had never seen before at her feet—she hadn’t thought to check the time.

“Can you hear what I’m thinking?” she asked.

He shook his head, no. “I often open to you in case you want in, but you’ve never come or invited me—except by accident, like yesterday.”

She loved his grin. “But you’d know if I invited you?” The thought was comforting, mostly because she didn’t want him to know everything that crossed her mind.

“Willow, Sykes has told me a great deal. So have Marley and Gray. We may not have much time to set things right.”

“What do I do about Chris? If he really is somewhere weird, I need to get him.”

“It’s not time.”

“It is. He’s scared and stuck.”

“But you haven’t seen what you can do about it yet. We’re waiting, Willow. That’s the hardest thing for people like you and me, but there will be a next step. Maybe any minute. Part of becoming what you really are is learning to accept that you will grow stronger, but not immediately. We should think.”

What he meant, Willow decided, was that she was supposed to lie there and hope for the next scary happening while Chris kept trying to climb up a sheer wall of glass.

“Relax,” Ben said. “That’s exactly what I mean. You’ll know when it’s time to do something—and what that is.”

Making fists, she attempted to push away from him. “You said you didn’t read my thoughts.” He was too strong for her to shift against him.

“You opened your mind to me,” he said, sounding aggrieved. “I felt you.”

The fan vibrated. Willow didn’t want to fight him about anything. “I want you to kiss me,” she said.

“This is getting to be hell,” Ben said, his voice gravelly. “You sent me away.”

“And now you’ve come back,” she pointed out and hiked herself up until she could find his mouth with her own.

He kissed her back. Their lips softened, but the searching was there, too. Kisses weren’t enough.

Willow put her arms around his neck and leaned until he rolled onto his back. She combed her fingers through his thick, blue-black hair. He wasn’t wearing it tied back.

“Not yet,” he whispered, but he let her lead him in another kiss.

When the intense sensitivity was too much, she pulled his shirt out and ran her tongue from his breastbone to the low waist of his jeans, and nipped him there.

She heard him laugh, then, abruptly, he forced her up again and held her where he could see her face. “What are you trying to do to me?” he said.

“Make love to you,” she said without hesitation. “Don’t you think it’s overdue?”

“Why now?”

“You know why. You feel what I do.”

He stroked her hair, kissed the end of her nose. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Willow’s cheeks stung. “What do you mean?” Her voice sounded small and lost.

“My love, you know what I mean. Don’t you think I want you? Look at me.”

When she did, he continued, “I could…I want you, and you know how I’m hurting because I want you. But it’s not time yet.”

“You thought it was time two years ago.”

“I was wrong. If I hadn’t been, we would never have parted.” He raised her chin. “Have I hurt you? Sweetheart, please don’t be hurt—there’s something we have to do before we take the steps we want to take.”

He wouldn’t hear it from her, but he could not have hurt her more if he had struck her. “Okay, Ben. What is it you think we have to do?”

“Commit to each other. For eternity.”

“Ben.” She watched his face until he frowned, and she thought he had heard her.

“I’m going to take my clothes off. It’s too hot in here.”

“Is that your way of telling me to get out?”

They would do this—just do it. “It’s my way of telling you not to leave.”

“See how well we communicate?” he said, but conflicting emotions crossed his face. The dominant one was a tight and raging desire that distended the veins in his neck while he pulled away from her and flung his arms over his head.

Willow raised her hips and slid her white jeans down.

Ben’s breath came in bursts. She could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

The jeans hit the floor.

“This is more than I can control,” he said. He rolled toward her, stroking her legs from knee to thigh, pushing his thumb under a leg of her panties and into the hair covering her mound.

Two more fingers followed, slipping down into the moisture she could not disguise. Her hips jerked upward again, this time because she wanted more of him.

But the instant his fingers met the core of all her sensations, he withdrew his hand and put it over her mouth instead, drowning out her protests.

In one move he sat astride her hips, rocking back and forth, gritting his teeth and sucking up her emotions with his eyes.

“Your jeans,” she said.

Ignoring her, Ben started with the bottom button of her shirt and slowly undid the row all the way to the one at the neck. He spread the shirt and she felt his arousal throbbing through his jeans.

His hands covered her breasts in the skimpy, pink lace bra she wore, pushed them together and buried his face in her cleavage. His tongue did magical work, tracing a line just beneath the edges of the bra where her soft flesh swelled, gradually delving a little deeper to curl around a hard nipple.

“It’s all fire. Everywhere you touch me burns. There’s pain.”

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Ben said. “But if all pain were like this, people would line up to get some.”

“Don’t stop!” Willow cried aloud.

She heard her own thin moan, and wondered at the way her hips pumped up against him. Her reactions had a life of their own.

The muscles in his chest tightened with her touch. She pinched his nipples, and he leaped away, shucking his jeans and briefs.

He penis sprang hard and huge. Willow squirmed, reaching for him.

Standing beside her, Ben shuddered when she held him. He unhooked her bra and pulled it away. He bent to