Season Of Strangers. Kat MartinЧитать онлайн книгу.
soft feel of her breasts had triggered a memory of her naked, thrashing on the blue-veined curlon examination table, her small, well-formed body fighting the invisible force that had held her in place.
The meshing of that memory with those Patrick Donovan carried, heightened by the close physical contact, had caused his reproductive organ to grow momentarily hard. He knew it meant the male of the species was physically aroused, that he wanted to mate with the female and deposit his sperm.
He just hadn’t understood the way the sensation would make him feel.
He said nothing as the nurse wheeled him silently down the hall, but soon his thoughts of Julie Ferris were swamped by more pressing sensations. The noise of footfalls in the corridor, the soft thud of rubber-soled shoes mixed with the crisp slap of leather. The dull roar of mingling voices, some of them low and speaking in whispers, others raised in heated debate as they hurried through the halls. The odors he had noticed in his room earlier were magnified a thousand times out here, some of them so strong they made his nostrils burn.
As they approached the front doors, sunlight streamed into the reception area. Val blinked several times, wincing as the bright rays stabbed painfully behind his eyes.
“Take care of him, Ms. Ferris,” the nurse said, pushing the wheelchair out through the automatic doors and onto the wide cement steps in front of the building. A strong female arm helped him stand up. “I guarantee he’ll be a handful.” She winked and Julie smiled.
He watched the woman walk away, saying nothing, too caught up in the sights and sounds pressing in on him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Julie asked, her expression worried, her eyes fixed on his face. She linked an arm through his, helping to steady him. “All of a sudden, you look kind of pale.”
Val ran his tongue across lips that felt rubbery and numb. Even if he could tell her what he was feeling, he couldn’t possibly begin to describe it. There was no way to express the riot of colors—the bright green of the lawns and trees, the azure blue of the sky, the stunningly vivid red of a sports car roaring past them on the street.
“I’m fine, Julie. I’ll just be glad to get home.”
She studied him with concern. “The car’s right out front in the passenger loading zone. We don’t have far to go.”
She said nothing more and neither did he. He could barely function for the jagged sensations ripping through his head. Toril was a planet of peace and serenity. There were no bright colors, no loud noises, no pungent smells. It was a pastel world, a world of grays and browns and a few muted blues, a palette of shaded colors that seemed amazingly washed out in comparison to the splashy, vibrant hues that enlivened the world of Earth.
Aside from the clothes he had seen on the subjects they had been studying, and what they had observed of the planet through their surveillance devices, he had never experienced anything to compare with the rich display spread before him like a banquet for the eyes. On Toril, the sky was a nondescript white, the plant life, even in blossom, brightened to no more than shades of weak pastel. People dressed in solid colors of those same watered shades, the styles varying little between social orders, the three different races, or male and female gender.
Here it seemed as though each individual tried to carve out his own identity by the color and style of his clothes. It gave the place an atmosphere of constant festivity, a parade of vibrant stripes, prints, and plaids all run together in a mishmash of design and color that splashed against the inner wall of the eye.
They had nearly reached the curb when a car horn blared and he stumbled backward. Another horn answered then another and another, driving the cacophony straight into his head. His hands came up to cover his ears, and beside him he felt Julie stiffen.
“Get in the car,” she commanded, opening the door and easing him in. Noticing his growing pallor, she moved the seat back a little and helped him settle his long legs inside.
The car was small, a Mercedes, Patrick’s memory said. But the top was up and so were the windows. When Julie closed the door, some of the loud noise abated. As she eased herself into the driver’s seat, snapped her seat belt then his, Val leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
“You don’t look good. Maybe it’s too soon for you to leave. Maybe I should take you back inside.”
His eyes snapped open. He sat up a little straighter in the seat. “I’m fine. I just want to go home.”
“Are you sure, Patrick—and don’t lie to me. I’d feel terrible if something else happened to you.”
He turned his head in her direction, an odd tingling warmth in the pit of his stomach. “Would you?”
The color rushed into her cheeks. He knew the surge of blood was caused by feelings of embarrassment. He understood the sensation, since it had already happened to him.
“Of course, I’d care. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes…friends.” But in his head, something said friendship wasn’t all that Patrick had felt for Julie Ferris and it was never what he’d wanted.
Val lay back against the seat as the car rumbled to life, the funny vibrations running up his back and shoulders. In the confines of the car, a faint, sweet fragrance drifted over from Julie’s side of the car, a smell so subtle he hadn’t noticed it before.
“I like the…perfume…you’re wearing,” he said, testing the word on his tongue.
“It’s Michael Kors. Your father bought it for me last year for my birthday. It’s expensive, but it’s definitely my favorite.”
“Mine, too,” he said, inhaling deeply. There were no vile smells on Toril, not like the ones he’d noticed in the hospital, or those drifting up from the gutter he had whiffed as he’d slid into the car. But there was also nothing like the soft sweet fragrance of Michael Kors, either. He liked the way it mingled with Julie’s own special scent, giving her a softly feminine fragrance all her own.
The small car hummed along. Val settled back in the seat, stretching his long legs out as best he could. Outside the window, the landscape of Beverly Hills slid past in a blur of sound and color. Automobiles of every design and hue crammed the streets to overflowing. People crowded along the sidewalks, hurrying to destinations he couldn’t begin to guess. Buildings rose up from the pavement, their storefronts shaded by bright canvas awnings, the windows glowing with vibrant signs made of…neon…yes, that was the word.
“We’re almost there,” Julie said, turning the car off Wilshire onto Oakhurst Drive. Just past Burton Way, she slowed the engine, turned, and pulled off the road, stopping in front of the heavy metal fence that enclosed the parking garage. “I found this with your clothes.”
She held up a small square box Patrick’s memory said opened the door to the underground parking. “One of your lady friends must have come by and picked it up along with the rest of your things.”
The woman called Anna, he recalled. A tall, slenderly built blond female who had come to see him several times in the hospital. She had kissed him, he recalled, not an unpleasant sensation, but when she had reached beneath the covers to stroke his sex, he’d nearly had a second heart attack.
Patrick’s memory had kicked in, enlightening him on their recent acquaintance—and the fact the woman was a great deal of the reason that, aside from the part of Patrick that Val had absorbed, the living, reasoning essence of Patrick Donovan was gone.
Still, the transformation was not as he’d expected. With each passing hour, he felt a subtle shifting, a reaching out, a melding of consciousness as new information, more of Patrick’s being was fully absorbed. He had expected to be solidly in control, less vulnerable to the thoughts Patrick once had, the emotions he had experienced.
Instead it was if he and Patrick had merged, begun to form a third, distinctly different being. It frightened him. Made him worry what residue those changes might leave inside him.
Fear.