Chapter Eleven #3
Teasing Elena was becoming a habit. “I’m changing the program over here,” he told her, “so when you come back, you’ll be bent over in a special chair and I’ll be inside you, fucking you senseless.”
Her response was spontaneous. Intense. The sensation of being turned over and taken from behind...
he realized immediately that he was catching her visual thought and her excitement made him hard as a rock.
And in that instant of joint mental concentration, his inner vision “opened” and he began to clearly see her surroundings, what she was looking at.
The first sense was the smell of antiseptic in the air.
“Bastard. One day, I’m going to tie you up and make you my love slave for a week.” She sounded breathless. “But I can feel your connection, like you’re part of me.”
Another interesting development. She hadn’t said that before. “I’m more or less having the same experience as before.” Except that he really wanted to make love to her even more so than before. “Antiseptic, Elena?”
“Yeah. I’m getting out of the car. Moving down this long tunnel. Corridor, not tunnel. Doors on left and right. Okay, antiseptic smell is definitely everywhere. Medical place?”
Here she was in charge. He could only follow her. He could only absorb everything she saw and felt, and nothing more. It was both exhilarating and frustrating.
“Look to the left and right so I can examine the walls and doors,” he told her.
They were so new at this, she was forgetting that he was there as another pair of eyes, to see whether he could recognize places, faces, and objects.
Walls might hold no interest to a remote viewer who was immersed in the experience—and in his position, he understood the compelling need to be an explorer in a different world because he, too, wanted to do just the same thing—but he mustn’t lose sight that he was also here to protect her and they had come to this place, wherever they were, because the intruder was here.
Walls could tell him a lot. A well-decorated wall, for instance, would suggest some place entirely different from a bare white one. If this was a medical facility, there would be clues.
“The walls? Why...oh, okay, never mind, got you.”
Jed examined the walls through her eyes. Bare so far. Some wood paneling, but nothing ornate. Nothing to clue one in about their whereabouts. Light in the far corner. There was a window at the end of the hall.
“Let’s look outside,” she said. “Maybe there’ll be more clues. All building corridors look alike to me.”
Slow down, Elena. But he chose not to say that. “All right, but keep looking at the walls.”
“Yes, sir.” Her voice was lightly mocking. “You know, I could just say, Oh look, surveillance cameras! But I figure that’s not a problem for us.”
He smiled inwardly. “I can feel your sarcasm.” Along with a bunch of other interesting feelings. He was beginning to discern the different layers of her emotions.
“Oh, yeah? Then tell me why I don’t like the feel of this place. Can you sense that?”
He could tell she was curious. He tried to explain it to her in words.
“Elena, I’m awash with all your emotions.
I can’t help but sense what you’re feeling, but it’s more complicated than that.
For example, when you mentioned ‘tunnel’, I was sensing the same thing almost instantaneously, and so I have to wait for your conclusion that we’re in a corridor of sorts before I actually ‘feel’ that too. ”
“In other words, you have to wait for me to make sense of my senses.”
Satisfaction seeped into his consciousness. Not his. Hers. He smiled again. “Right. So, I can feel your discomfort but it’s mixed up with your physical discomfort too. You have to direct me, Elena, or I’m going to be just as lost as you are.”
“Interesting. You must really hate it then, not being in control.”
He’d learned to be very, very careful when practicing NOPAIN on a GEM operative.
They fought right back with the same stuff.
“Slight correction. You mean, not being totally in control. I still have you comfortably arranged under me right now, as a matter of consideration.” He so enjoyed the way they kept each other on their toes.
“Elena, your holding your breath like that makes me dizzy.”
“I don’t know why I bother talking to you. You’re always trying to manipulate me.”
“And you want to test me,” he pointed out, amused. Like a puppy. But he’d better not bring up that comparison or that would really get her going. “You’re in charge of where to go right now. Take us to the window. Let’s see what’s out there.”
“Enough about the silly blank walls, huh? Here we are. I see lots of green. Wow. Nice yard, mamma.”
Jed sucked in his breath. “Look around more. Can we go through the window and float outside?”
It couldn’t be. He caught a panoramic visual of the “yard” as Elena scanned the area. Something went very still inside of him. Not a yard. He had been here before. Twenty years ago, he’d stood right next to that fountain and had taken a photo in front of it.