“What’s worse than basic training?”
“Wanting you. I even want you in my sleep. What the hell is that? I am completely disciplined at all times. What have you done to me?”
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.”
“And then what happens?”
She grinned at him. “Every woman’s dream. I lose weight and can utilize the field to play in. I can run up walls and do all sorts of things. I’m not actually running up the wall, you know. I’m moving my feet to give the illusion, but I’m actually floating. Like an astronaut. It isn’t the same thing I use out in the field when I’m working. This requires a tremendous amount of concentration actually. Going onto the ceiling is extremely difficult because I have to be upside down and use the top of my head as the superconductor. Which is why I take a few falls now and then. To make it look as if I’m running up the walls I have to make minute adjustments in the gravity field strength of various parts of my skin.” She waved her hands to dismiss the subject. “It keeps me mentally balanced to try new things. It’s just fun.”
He smiled at her. She had no idea how special she really was. She was more embarrassed to be caught running up the walls and falling from ceilings than she was to be na**d in a towel in front of him. Because she found it fun. The knowledge burst over him like the rays of the sun. She was embarrassed to be caught playing.
“It’s amazing, Dahlia. You must have put in a tremendous amount of study time on antigravity fields and how they work. What made you decide to try?”
“When I was little, I didn’t know what I was doing, but energy gathered around me, rather than dispersing as it normally would seek to do, so I played with it. I prefer to keep my mind and body active, and since I’m all about energy, I do my best to learn as much as I can about both. There are a few physicists who are working on superconductors, and I think they’ll discover very soon that controlling gravity is possible on a much larger scale than they first thought.” She frowned and rubbed her chin. “Though they’ll first have to figure out how to create organic, room-temperature superconductors. And they’ll have to realize that they can direct the effect several different ways, not just upward.”
Nicolas shook his head. “You’re using various parts of your own body as a superconductor?”
“Well, yes. If I used the entire surface of my skin, the front would cancel out the back. If I’m lying on the floor and I turn the skin of my entire backside into a superconductor, then the antigrav field generated by it will levitate my entire body. If I move my feet, I look as if I’m walking up the wall. That’s fairly basic though and not much fun.” She sent him a quick grin. “Hanging upside down is a lot tougher because I have to just use the top of my head to generate a much stronger antigravitational field capable of floating my entire body from that one spot.”