Fear Itself
Chapter 2
My legs were slick, and my mind was definitely not on what I was doing, when I passed the younger bodyguard walking toward downtown with a cell phone to his ear. I slowed down to pick him up.
“Don’t,” the bodyguard with me said. “Give him a chance to cool off. It was his choice to ignore your instructions, and the walk might do him some good.”
I nodded and sped back up. He noticed and flipped us the finger. I gasped, and my power spiked a bit. I started to slam on the brakes when I felt a hand on mine.
“He has a weapon, remember?”
My power spiked so high that he yanked back his hand like my touch had burned him.
“Nobody touches me.”
“Just keep driving,” he gasped.
I drove, took some deep breaths, and eventually settled down. I glanced over at my passenger, feeling a bit guilty. His eyes were closed and he was shaking, but he was taking long slow breaths and hadn’t jumped out of the moving car.
“I never caught your name,” I said.
“Will ... Will Puller” he replied. “You aren’t just scary, are you Miss Itself? You have powers like those people on that TV show, ‘Are You a Superhero?’.”
“Yeah, I do.” I let out a long breath and dampened my power down as low as I could get it. “And I can’t turn it all the way off. Why are you still in the car when I slapped you with it?”
“I’ve been in real danger,” he said. The memory brought a spike of fear with it, nearly as bad as what I had hit him with. He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask.
I gave Will an excellent review and an even better cash tip. I let Will explain why I picked up two bodyguards and returned with one in whatever manner he chose.
On my way back to my hotel, I reviewed my day. Thinking about Kyle made me feel all tingly and guilty at the same time. On one hand, I didn’t know anything about the man, other than I could give him a boner on command. On the other hand, if I didn’t seriously pursue Kyle, I could end up dying as a wrinkled old virgin. He was literally the only chance I had at a semi-normal relationship.
I also thought about that new scent. Technically, I don’t smell emotions, but I’ve yet to come up with a better word. Mix yellow and blue and you get green. Mix jasmine and orange scents and you get something new in the blend, but you can still smell the jasmine and orange. For me, emotions are more like a salad of scents than a color... and not all of those scents have names yet.
Anger is usually fast. The emotion I call bravery is a slow build that ‘smells’ like anger atop the fear—as if somebody in an argument were deliberately throwing insults into the argument so that they had an excuse to fight. I can’t hear the mental discussion, just the anger-like emotion slowly rising until it is greater than the fear. I’ve seen people do brave things without that emotion, so what I sense isn’t a requirement—I just don’t have a better word than bravery for what I sense.
I didn’t have a word at all for what I sensed from Kyle. Bravery might be like anger, but this new emotion was different from anything I had sensed before. Either Kyle was psychotic and feeling something that nobody in the world had ever felt around me, or he was feeling an emotion that usually isn’t mixed with fear. He just met me. It couldn’t be love.
Could it?
I’m usually fairly cynical, but I’ll admit my mind had segued into romance novel/Prince Charming territory by the time I arrived at my hotel room, stripped out of my work clothes, and showered the mousse out of my hair.
At home I have a fairly industrial shower massager that both Bambi and I love, but the hotel shower was a water-saving mist that didn’t have a handheld unit at all. After I got clean, I still had some time to kill; so I toweled off just enough to not drip on the floor, pulled a favorite candle and a couple other things out of my luggage and started a bath.
I don’t have Bambi’s curves, but what my breasts lack in size they make up for in sensitivity. With my handheld shower between my legs and my hands on both breasts I can usually get off pretty quickly; but there was no need to rush today. As the tub filled, I lit the candle then lay back and let the steaming water fill around me.
I started slow and gentle, tracing a fingertip across the little bumps around my nipple, while I traced my other hand lightly across my tight belly. Giggling slightly, I closed my eyes and imagined other, hungry eyes looking down on me. I clamped a hand over my mons and arched my back, lifting my breasts out of the water. An errant zephyr played across them like a man’s cool breath. My second hand joined the first, and I squeezed my breasts together with my arms, lifting them for his view.
Falling back into the water, I kneaded my breasts and pulled my nipples a bit too hard, imagining rough masculine hands instead of my own, and gasped at the sensation. Usually I don’t imagine anyone in particular in my fantasies, just strong masculine hands, a quiet lack of fear, and a confident bass chuckle. Today, I tried out adding Kyle’s face to the fantasy—imagined him with the masculine hands and the quiet chuckle.
I pulled and stroked my body, letting my hands grope freely. My legs seemed to lift on their own. My calves left the water and rested upon the sides of the tub, while my body slid down until only my face and the tips of my nipples poked out of the suds. I writhed and I stroked and I started to insert a finger into myself. Then I felt my hymen.
In most women, the hymen is crescent shaped. I have a cribriform hymen; it fully covers my vaginal opening except for microscopic holes. It thinned after puberty but remained sensitive to the touch. As I touched myself down there, I realized that Kyle would not be fearlessly taking me. Hard-on or no, I scared the shit out of him.
Kyle wasn’t fearless, he didn’t have a bass voice, and he probably didn’t have rough hands either. Let’s be honest; I’m a scary bitch and a total stranger. If he had any sense at all, he would be anywhere other than at my room tonight.
I tried valiantly to recapture the mood, without success. Not even my waterproof vibrating rubber duck helped. Finally, I gave up and got my pruned-up body out of the tub.
I was still feeling surly after toweling off, so I put on my favorite lavender knee length nightgown patterned with Eeyore the mule, and my purple and white striped knee-highs with the individualized toes. I then ordered some hot chocolate from room service and tried to find something good to watch on television.
Television wasn’t bad, and I was just considering a second cup of hot chocolate when I heard a knock at the door. I opened the door and Kyle was standing there, dressed in nice clothes. Wiping the hot chocolate off my lip, I blushed up to the roots of my hair. I glanced over at the clock. It was eight o’clock exactly.
“I ... I didn’t think you would come.” I said, sounding a bit lame even to my own ears.
“I can come back later, if you would like,” he said with a bit of a smirk. The smirk annoyed me and my power spiked. His smile vanished. “Seriously,” he said, “I can wait in the lobby for you to get ready, if you want.”
I felt his fear, and I felt that other emotion, and it made my body tingle all over. Fuck it if he wasn’t Prince Charming. I would have probably left Prince Charming impotent and shivering in the corner.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m certain you are a really wonderful person with lots of interesting qualities that I would love to find all about; but today, I’m a twenty-four year old who’s tired of being an involuntary virgin, and you are a man with a hard-on. I don’t want dinner and a movie. I just want to get fucked.”
He gaped like a fish a few times, and then a smile slowly spread across his face.
“I think I can deal with that,” he said.
“I thought you might,” I replied, as I grabbed his shirt and pulled him into my room.