Extrasensory (2 page)

Why did she have to be the one these things happened to? Why did
she
have to have what her grandmother called a “special gift”? More like a curse than a blessing, she often said.

But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the book. The image on the page kept shifting, first the photo of the painting, now that stupid little rock with its jerky movements. Finally, the shadow hands reaching for it. Like a broken record, the vision continued to repeat itself over and over again, taunting her to find its hidden meaning.

Mia slammed the book shut and shoved it away from herself. It was just like always. How on earth was she supposed to figure out what the vision meant? A rock was a rock, right? Still, she’d learned to be extra cautious over the years. The images that came to her without warning and at the strangest times were not always easy to interpret. She’d been wrong more times than she’d been right because she’d misinterpreted what she’d seen. Or because the visions had come to her after the fact.

She had no training in deciphering these things and certainly no place to go to find any.

When she was younger there was a desperation in her determination to find answers. Getting people to listen to her was a battle itself. Her parents had always considered her a strange child—aloof, shy but apparently making up weird stories to capture attention. They never believed her stories about “visions”.

“Don’t keep telling people those crazy stories,” her mother said too often to count.

“They’ll think
you’re
crazy. They’ll think we’re all crazy.”

“The neighbors are all talking,” her father admonished her. “I don’t want them pointing fingers at our family.”

They even sent her to a psychiatrist who was supposed to “deprogram” her. What a lot of fun that had been.

But still the visions continued to plague her. Too often the images had been too vague or misleading and now she’d almost become a pariah. When she did get someone to listen and she had success, the media called it a fluke. The frustration of not being able to make people understand the things she saw and the rejection because of her

“oddness” had finally caused her to isolate herself from everyone else.

When she finally escaped to the University of Michigan, she convinced her father to pay the extra money for a single dorm room, then she eventually moved into a studio apartment. She chose art history as her major, because she could lose herself in the richness of the creations of the artists and sculptors, the potters and temple rubbers. The orderliness of delineating art history gave her a personal discipline that allowed her to exert some measure of control over her existence.

The visions, for whatever reason, came less frequently while she was at school, all the way through her postgraduate studies. When they came, they were so fractured she made herself ignore them, even if the effort sometimes made her physically ill.

But finally she was finished with her studies, sporting her brand new PhD and the visions came roaring back. Not knowing how or when they’d appear, she isolated herself more and more except at work. She lived alone in her house, surrounded by the books and music she loved. It wasn’t that she was antisocial or weak, just self-protective. It took strength to deal with the impact of her visions and the primarily negative responses she’d learned to live with.

Her life, for the most part, focused on her career with the museum. Her job suited her perfectly, since it allowed her to work alone the majority of the time. She was always on edge that a vision would explode from nowhere and being isolated allowed her to deal with them without distraction or embarrassment. During those instances when she had to meet with the museum curator, she found herself praying that she would not be disrupted by one of her visions. They came without warning and she didn’t think Mr. Hunter would be too impressed by them. For someone who appreciated art, he was definitively black and white in his outlook.

Today, thank God, he was away on a trip and unlikely to wander into her office unannounced. Her newest vision had disrupted her work half a dozen times already this week. Just seconds each time. That was all. A brief flash. But it wouldn’t go away and she had no idea what message she was supposed to read into it.

She’d almost begun to believe that whatever was causing this to happen to her had disappeared. She hadn’t had one of what she’d taken to calling her “episodes” in months now and had almost begun to relax, thinking they’d gone away for good. Not so. Her stomach was doing the jitterbug as it always did at the beginning of one of her incidents and an aspirin-proof headache was already beginning to build behind her eyes.

And then, without warning, a sharp pain stabbed her head. She leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, willing whatever was after her to go away. Suddenly the headache eased and a sense of peaceful bliss stole over her. No, more than that. Erotic feelings were creeping through her body dampening her bikini panties and making her breasts ache inside the silken cups of her bra.

The image of the man that shimmered before her shook her, both because of its startling clarity and because he was so completely, devastatingly masculine. Tall and lean, his muscles rippled enticingly beneath his olive skin, he had black hair that touched the nape of his neck and black obsidian eyes. His face had a grimness that bespoke too much exposure to life’s misery.

And he was nearly naked!

Clad only in tight knit boxers, she saw the strength of his thighs and the impressive bulge of an erection that made her mouth water.

I want to fuck you.

Shock vibrated through her. Had he actually said that or did she just imagine it?

Imagine, of course. This wasn’t real. She’d heard voices before but never like this. Never focused on her so personally. Never erotic! And why now was she having one of her rare visions where the image was as clear as if this man had really been in her presence?

She was aware of every detail of it, awake and in a trance at the same time. Sensuality radiated from his body, reaching out to her like shimmering tentacles of heat.

Did you hear me? I want to fuck you. Take off your clothes.

An unfamiliar urgency gripped her and she had her blouse unbuttoned and half off before she snapped back to reality. She blinked her eyes, hard, and the image disappeared. Her hands were shaking and she was sweating. But more than that, the pulse in her womb throbbed with an insistent beat, demanding attention. Craving release.

What the hell?

She could barely catch her breath.

An unfamiliar bolt of lust speared through her, and her body was so hot she was sure she had a fever. She had a sense of actually watching herself, not being a part of this, even as she felt every throb, every sizzle, every electrified enhancement of her senses.

On legs not quite steady, she stumbled to her office door, closed and locked it. Her trembling body collapsed into her desk chair and with almost frantic haste she unzipped her slacks and splayed her legs. Something sizzling in the core of her was demanding satisfaction, craving release. Every sense she possessed, normal and psychic, was on high alert. Desperately she slid her hand under the silk of her panties until she found her very wet cunt. The tips of her fingers grazed across her clit and shock sizzled through her, intensifying the low thrum in her body.

Mia leaned her head back and started to close her eyes.

Open your eyes.

The voice was rough, commanding. Her eyes flew open.

Watch me while you do that.

Watch him? But as she fastened her gaze on him the boxers melted away and he stood before her in magnificent glory with an erection that defied description. Long and thick, it jutted from a nest of black curls that seemed to glisten. Slowly he wrapped the long fingers of one hand around his erection and stroked in a languid movement from root to tip and back again.

Don’t close your eyes.

Now she couldn’t have closed them if she wanted to. As she rubbed her clit, letting the pleasure streak through her, he matched the strokes of his hand to the motion of hers. Fire danced in his dark eyes and every plane and angle of his face stood out in stark relief.

You have no idea how much it turns me on to watch you like this. You have the most
gorgeous cunt I’ve ever seen. Sweet, pink, glistening with your juices.

The walls of her pussy were already quivering, anticipating the release that was spiraling through her so quickly. His words aroused her even more, lust spiking through her like shards of lightning.

That’s it.
He increased the tempo of his hand.
Rub harder. Work that little clit. God.
I
can just imagine the feel of my lips around that bundle of nerves. Do you know when it swells it
turns a rich, deep rose color? I want to suck it into my mouth and nibble on it with my teeth.

The throbbing inside her vagina was so strong it vibrated through her like the waves of a tuning fork. She was so close now, her cunt slick with her juices, pre-orgasmic shivers flexing the walls of her pussy. The head of his cock was darkened and a bead of liquid seeped through the slit.

I want to see you slide your fingers inside your cunt, imagine it’s my hand down there, my
fingers fucking you.

It took only a few more strokes before her climax gripped her, shaking her body, muscles clenching and unclenching. Faster, faster. She increased her movement and so did he, the broad head of his cock seeming to swell before her eyes.

Now
, he commanded.

She pushed three fingers into her slick cunt and bucked against them, hunching and moaning as her cream flooded her hand. At the same time his big body tensed and ejaculate spurted from the slit on the head, spilling over onto his fingers. He held himself until the tension stole from his body as it did from hers.

Next time take off all your clothes.

Next time?

Holy mother.
What
next time.

Quiet at last but weak, Mia leaned back in the chair, waiting for her breathing to even out and some measure of strength to return to her body. Finally she blinked, the vision shimmered and disappeared.

What had just happened here? What had she just done? Masturbating in her office was never on her to-do list. And who in god’s name was that delicious vision who had poked himself into her brain? In all the years since she’d first realized she had extrasensory abilities, she’d never had a vision like this one. Not even close. And certainly not one who spoke to her. What was going on with her brain?

She reached into the drawer for her purse, took out her hand mirror and examined her face. Her eyes had an unusual slumberous look, her cheeks were flushed and somehow her hair had acquired a mussed appearance. She looked as if she’d, well, as if she’d just been…been…
fucked.
Well, that would never do. Not for proper Mia Fleming, museum staff member, who certainly never masturbated herself at her desk.

She wondered if somehow she’d fallen for a moment into an alternate universe.

Digging in her purse again, she found one of the wipes she habitually carried and dabbed her face, then wiped every trace of fluids from her hand.

Holy hell!

When she was sure she had herself under control again, her clothes properly rearranged and in place, she stacked everything in neat piles on her desk and put away her pen and magnifying glass. Okay, time to go home. Letting out a slow breath, she rose to her feet, making sure she was steady enough to walk out of the building to her car. She needed to get her visions under control—the one with more clarity so she could interpret it better, the other to disappear. She didn’t need very sexy men showing up in her mind and destroying her control like that.

What she needed was a hot bath and a glass of wine. And a good night’s sleep.

* * * * *

The five people sitting in the darkened conference room stared at the big flat screen monitor hanging on the wall. The lean, sandy-haired man was doing his best to sit quietly but the rubber band he kept stretching betrayed his edginess. When he and his head design engineer had first discussed the project, they’d seen it as an almost unattainable challenge.

But as they’d begun developing it, trying different things, testing different components, their level of excitement had risen. Now an enormous amount of money had gone into this development—the most expensive project they’d developed yet.

Today they’d find out if the investment was worth it.

The picture on the screen showed an adobe house, one story, sitting on a sandy lot surrounded by scraggly looking plants and a scattering of rocks. To one side was a rusted pickup, parked at the side of a dilapidated shed. There was absolutely nothing to relieve the depressing air of the place.

Suddenly one of the larger rocks, about six inches in height, began to move forward, its progress a series of jerks and bumps. The house was abruptly lit up with six infrared heat signatures. A thin wire emerged from the top of the rock, extending upward and the darkened room was alive with static-filled sound cackling from the speakers mounted in the corners.

“
Need to be prepared…

“Guards posted at every exit…

“New shipment due in tonight…”

The rocklike figure continued to move forward until it was about ten feet from the house. A team of ten men, all in black, moved in silently from both sides of the screen and surrounded the house. The observers watched as, in silence, stealth-like, the team moved forward. They heard the sound of the front and back doors slamming open, echoing in the dark room. Then a series of shots. Fast. Not loud, more like the soft pops bullets made on guns with muzzle suppressors. The people directing the exercise had decided to use the silencers to make sure the robot could pick up the softer noise.

When the team emerged from the house they herded four other men in front of them who were covered in red. One of the men in black touched his lip mic.