Chapter Fourteen
ALEX
*
I drove away from Paxton's apartment building with that used bookstore down on the main floor, and marveled at how hard my heart was beating.
The whole date, it had felt strangely exciting, new and different from anything I'd done before. Sure, I'd been on plenty of dates – but at the back of my head, I'd always known that, if something really went wrong, I could always fix it with just a thought. Nothing was ever totally out of my control.
But not with Paxton. My powers didn't work on her, and I didn't get any second chances. Her continuing distrust of me, ever since my first words to her, certainly proved that point to be true.
But then, when something went right...
I reached up and touched my lips, still remembering how she felt when she pressed back against me. I'd walked her up to her doorstep more to tease her than because I expected to get lucky. She'd been so flustered, I nearly burst out laughing at her innocence. She acted like it was the first time a guy ever brought her home!
Hell, that couldn't be true. My brain remembered that enticingly low swoop of her shirt, the way her figure seemed built out of nothing but yielding, tempting curves that drew the eye as if by invisible magnets. I knew that she'd had a great body hiding under those shapeless clothes! I remembered how she pressed against me when she kissed me, how my hands sunk slightly into her softness, how I'd had to hold back from ripping those clothes off her right there.
She had to have been on plenty of other dates with guys that saw those curves, that insane rack, and wanted some of it. One of them probably hurt her, made her put up shields. That was probably why she'd been so suspicious of me.
But then, at the end when she reached out to grab me for another kiss, throwing herself at me with raw need that hit me like a speeding truck...
I hit the brakes, pulled over to the side of the road before I crashed from the distracting images swimming in my head. I had to grin, had to laugh at how good I felt.
Despite taking home dozens of supermodels, probably hundreds of women by this point, that had still been the most exciting, most thrilling date I'd ever had.
I opened my car door, stepped out into the cool night air, still smiling. What was wrong with me? Hell, I hadn't even gotten lucky. By most standards, the date had been a failure, in that I was now left with a throbbing erection and no willing, pliant girl to relieve that pressure building inside of me.
But oh, the memories of Paxton losing her oh-so-valued control and throwing herself at me, all softness and need and desire poured into the body of a buxom fantastic Valkyrie! That was a win.
I looked up at the sky, frowned for a moment at how the stars didn't seem to be shining nearly brightly enough.
I could fix that.
A thought, and fireworks exploded in the night sky, the boom echoing down across the city as massive starbursts lit up the night with twinkles of gold and white and pink and red. I wondered if Paxton was still awake to see these, or if she'd immediately dove into the research she said she'd do for me, burying her nose in a book.
I stood there and watched the fireworks for another few minutes, directing them with my mind. I let myself replay the date, wondered briefly if telling Paxton my secret had been the right choice.
Surprisingly, she'd come to believe me fairly quickly. Of course, I had pulled off some impossible feats, but it still seemed like she'd accepted that I was magic with an open-mindedness that I hadn't anticipated.
Was I going to regret telling her? I really hoped not.
As I climbed back into my car, I considered one of the few limitations of my power, one that I hadn't mentioned to her. Aside from my powers not working on Paxton, they also couldn't tell me what would happen in the future. It had been one of the earlier things that I tried, back when I'd first found myself gifted with the powers in college. I'd tried to predict the next day's lottery numbers, not yet realizing that I could simply wish for stacks of money to appear in my bank account.
I hadn't seen the next day's winning lottery numbers. Instead, I ended up stuck in bed for several days with a crippling headache, one that left me too weak to even venture outside, to compose a single sentence without wincing and needing to pause and recover. The future, it seemed, was too complex for me to understand, even if I tried to only see it in little bite-size chunks.
Now, I almost wished for the ability to know the future, to see what would happen next with Paxton. With most girls, when I dropped them off at the end of their date (usually the next morning, to be honest), I knew exactly what would happen. They'd call me if I wanted, or would go off without a second thought of me if I didn't want to see them again. They moved according to my wishes, almost like...
...puppets.
I frowned as I pulled into the garage beneath my apartment building. I'd never really seen them in that way before tonight, but it seemed to strangely fit, in a way that I didn't particularly like. I didn't want to think of myself as a puppet master, making people dance on strings around me.
Paxton, however, wasn't attached to any strings. I didn't have any way of knowing if she'd want to see me again, although the intensity of that kiss boded well. I'd just have to wait, my number now in her phone, and see if she called.
Strangely, the thought left me excited and nervously anxious.
It wasn't until I'd laid my head down on my pillows in my massive king-sized bed that my excitement began to shift to concern. Had I really made the right choice, deciding to reveal my powers to her, before I really even knew anything about her? What if she told someone else, betrayed me?
I'd always harbored a secret fear in the back of my head that, sooner or later, someone unscrupulous would figure me out. Of course, I could always make them forget, if I had a moment of control – but what if the CIA, or the NSA, or one of those other organizations with an acronym of a name made up of capital letters, decided that they wanted to capture me? They could keep me permanently drugged up, too groggy to ever use my powers, while they did all sorts of experiments on my brain and took me apart to figure out how I worked. What if they tried to turn me into an asset, forcing me to use my powers for their nefarious purposes?
I'd never told anyone else about these secret fears, but they were one of the reasons why I chose not to meddle with any global affairs. There might be a war going on in some far-off country I'd never heard of before it appeared in the news, but what if someone noticed that these attacks mysteriously ended for no reason, and tracked me down as the cause? I didn't want to draw that kind of attention to myself.
So I'd done my best to keep my secret – up until this date with Paxton, when I opened my fat mouth and let it all spill out.
But it didn't feel so bad, now.
Back up in my apartment, I grabbed a beer from the fridge, took a sip as I slid open the glass doors to step out onto the expansive balcony. Up this high, amid the other skyscrapers, gusts of wind were chilling, and I shivered as one blew through the gaps and swept heat away from my body.
Still, even despite the cold, my smile remained on my face. Already, I found myself thinking ahead to what I'd do next.
She said that she wanted to do some research. Oddly enough, research was one of the things I'd never really bothered with before now. I tried, now and then, to look for any sign that others had powers similar to me – but I gave up quickly when I encountered a dead end. I'd once tried summoning, with magic, a book of my power's history – and that hadn't worked, either.
But what if Paxton could find something more?
I took another pull of the beer, wondering what she might find. Maybe she'd have an explanation, a reason why these powers mysteriously appeared in my head one day, after I'd been ordinary and boring for my entire life before that point. Maybe she could tell me how to use them to their true potential, or even how to get rid of them.
That last thought brought me up short. What if there was a way to get rid of my powers? To no longer have the ability weighing so heavily on my shoulders of being able to reshape the world however I saw fit?
If I had that option, would I give them up?
"I don't know," I muttered out loud, answering my own mental question.
It's not as crazy as it sounds. There were times when I hated feeling all this responsibility weighing so heavily on my shoulders, as if I was expected to be some sort of Superman, donning tights and a cape and flying off to fight all the problems and troubles of the world. That wasn't me. I did good deeds, when I could, but I always hated the little voice in the back of my head telling me that I needed to do more, that I needed to devote my entire life to helping others without a thought for myself.
What about my own life? I wanted to live on my own, to feel good when I did something to help others without the nagging guilt that I ought to be doing even more. And if giving up these powers could get me that kind of freedom from stress in my life, I'd be willing to at least consider it.
I looked up at the stars overhead. "You're getting ahead of yourself, Alex," I said aloud. I shook my head. "She probably won't find anything. You didn't, whenever you looked for answers."
But her searching could give me more chances to see her. Heading back inside, I briefly pictured the two of us, side by side at a desk in the back of a huge, empty library, surrounded by our own little bubble of privacy. Our legs would bump against each other as we both bent over the same old book, and we'd both feel intensely aware of the other intruding in on our personal space, so close and seductive...
I pictured slipping my hand around Paxton, feeling those soft curves move against me in response. I pictured drawing her onto my lap, kissing her and peeling off her clothes right there in the back of the library, watching and listening as she tried in vain to keep her moans and sighs of pleasure from coming out. Can't make noise in a library, even if you're being undressed, even if a man is running his hands over private, intimate places that she wants him desperately to seize and touch and arouse and penetrate and satisfy...
Maybe it had been Fate that put Paxton in my path. Maybe I'd only talked to her because of random chance.
No matter the circumstances, however, I couldn't wait to see her again. For the first time in... as far back as I could remember, I realized with a jolt, I found myself brimming with anticipation for the next date with a girl.
And I couldn't do anything to make it come sooner, couldn't guess the outcome.
How strangely exciting.