Dark Daze (6 page)

The need overwhelmed her, slithering along
her skin toward her most delicate places. He pushed up her skirt.
She shoved at her panties, lifting her legs to help them fall. She
pressed her nose to his neck. He smelled amazing. Like some
fantastic spice, cloves maybe. And cedar or pine.

Incredible.

Ian jerked her bra beneath her breasts and
his mouth caught one sensitive tip as his fingers slipped inside,
rubbing against her most sensitive spots. She moaned and pressed
her head back into the wall. God his skin was so hot against hers.
Electric arcs of passion snapped between them, running along her
skin, looking to find a way beneath it. This was all too fast. It
couldn’t be real.

“Yes. Please. I need you,” Brie cried out and
dug her nails into his firm shoulders.

He straightened, his lips exploring hers. She
slid her fingers down the hard muscles of his abdomen and to the
top of his jeans. She needed him inside her. God, now. She pumped
her hips in time with his thrusting fingers and all thoughts of
halting fled.

“Thank God,” she said as he stuck a condom
wrapper between his teeth and ripped. “At least one of us was
prepared.”

“Like a good boy scout,” he panted, “I’m
always prepared.”

She giggled, but when he lifted her leg,
hooking her thigh across his, her smile faded. Something deep
inside her connected with him as his palms slipped behind her and
he brought her up, supporting her against the wall.

Her sudden weightlessness shocked her. “Don’t
lift me. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I
am
hurting.” He pressed himself
into her opening and moaned.

Brie clung to him, wanting all of him—more.
Hard flesh drove into her waiting body. Desire washed over her,
driving her mad with its power. Currents of passion flowed their
way along her skin as the sensations built deep inside her.

First, a trickle.

His teeth and tongue found all her secret
spots.

Then a wave.

She strained against the wall, her body
shaking.

Finally a deluge.

Ian thrust one last time and she moaned, her
insides exploding into forceful orgasm. She buried her face against
his neck, letting herself get lost in him. He pulsed deep inside
her, pressed to her quaking body, and shuddered.

He kissed her, and she held tight to his
shoulders as the stinging in the base of her skull abated. His
breathing slowed, and he lowered her to her feet. She drew her
panties up her wobbly legs as he buttoned his jeans.

Brie had never done this before. Not this
soon. The frantic urgency of the tryst had been unbelievably sexy,
but very out of character. And out of her control.

Almost like a flip.

“Well, I’ve never done anything like this
before.” She let out a nervous giggle, not sure what else to
say.

He smiled, rubbing his hands along her arms.
The gesture seemed so natural. As if he’d done it a hundred times.
It comforted her in a way nothing had since her mother’s death.

Placing a finger alongside his chin, she
winked and said, “Get me some food, then I want to meet this dog of
yours.”

<><><>

What in the world happened?

Ian still felt a bit shaken as Brie pulled
him across the living room toward the kitchen. She’d been sexy in
her demure red dress, but he’d never been the type to go to bed on
the first date. He’d never gone to bed…without a bed.

It had been seriously hot though. They’d have
to do it against the wall in the future. Or perhaps across the
table.

But the strange compulsions to do things he
hadn’t done before—like drink beer and watch football—tainted the
moment a little. He needed his mother’s gift for understanding. If
he talked to her, she might know something about the bizarre
happenings. Maybe she’d even painted something helpful already. If
she had, she would be able to give him answers, even if they didn’t
make sense yet.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge, popped the
cap, and took a swig.

What the hell?

He hadn’t bought any beer in the first place.
Now there seemed to be an endless supply in his refrigerator. “What
the hell is
this
doing here? This whole thing is driving me
insane.” Was there a pooka plaguing him? A pan or sprite playing
tricks? He thrust the beer toward the counter. It tipped,
spilling.

He grabbed the bottle and righted it then
stared, with widespread hands, at the beer pouring onto the floor.
Brie placed a hand on his shoulder, guiding him back a step.

“Calm down. No need to cry over spilled
beer.” She smirked, an adorable tilting of her lips. It put him at
ease. A nod of her head drew him to the table. They sat, and she
watched him for a moment, brows furrowed. “So, tell me what’s
happening here.”

“I don’t know. It all started earlier today.”
Before he realized it, he’d told her the whole story. Strange
behaviors, claws, black-hole eyes, child-like fears, mental health
concerns, the whole ridiculous tale. He went on for almost an hour
and she sat listening to him in silence. She never had a “you’re
crazy” look on her face. Never the frozen smile, the blank stare,
or the crease of concern on her forehead he’d kept expecting.

When he finished, she sat back, finger to her
lips. “This explains a lot…”

“No diagnosis of certifiable?” It still
surprised him that she hadn’t left the instant his story had begun.
Or even the second he’d asked her to leave the bar with him. “I
don’t suppose you will want to see me again. Outside of a local
psych ward anyhow.”

She surveyed him for a moment, lips pursed,
then smiled. “You know why I got into psychiatry?”

He shook his head. Ah, perhaps this turn of
the conversation would give him a chance to say something without
it coming out as the gibbering of an imbecile, or worse, a
loon.

“When I was a young girl, we took a family
vacation to a lake. One day I started having strange feelings.” Her
voice dropped to a whisper, and he leaned in to hear. “On Dark
Day.”

His breath caught in his chest. He’d tried so
hard to forget that day. To forget what happened to his mother…his
father.

“My parents and I stood in the living room of
our cabin, set to play a board game. My brother had stormed off in
a huff because he didn’t want to play. The sky went dark.” She took
a shuddering breath. “The Dark Day experiences are not just tabloid
stories. And all the talk about the darkness being a rare solar
blackout out or a mass hallucination was wrong, because something
happened to me too.”

Slush replaced the blood in his veins,
chilling him to the bone.

“Mom insisted Dad go into the black to look
for him. Soon after he left, my head started to tingle. The strange
sensation frightened me. I was so hot. I heard her ask me what was
wrong, but I couldn’t answer.” She took a deep breath, as though
steeling herself for something difficult. “Then I experienced my
first flip. The world in the living room disappeared, and I was
outside. I stood by the river, but it wasn’t me. I wasn’t in my own
body. I saw my brother’s hands, heard his thoughts.”

Ian thought of how he’d felt moments before.
Like someone had taken over his body. Her eyes focused on the space
between them, and she didn’t seem to see him any longer. Her eyes
filled with tears, and Ian’s chest constricted at the sight.

“In my brother’s body, I walked along the
dock and slipped, falling onto a rock. Then my mind came back to
the living room. I thought I was dreaming until we heard my father
scream. My brother had slipped and fallen on a rock. He died that
day.”

Her chin trembled and she glanced toward the
wall. What a horrible experience she’d gone through. He hated that
he couldn’t take her pain away. Ian’s gut clenched, and he fought
the urge to punch something. Instead, he rubbed her forearm. He
wasn’t sure how else to offer comfort for such a horrid event. He
couldn’t say sorry and relieve her heartache. All he could do was
rub.

It took her some time before she spoke again,
and when she did, her voice sounded strained. “When I told my
parents what I had seen, my father offered psychiatric help.” A
bitter smile curved her lips. “Can you believe it? He treated it
like a mental illness, as if I hadn’t told him exactly what
happened to Roge. So I decided I would become a psychiatrist, and I
wouldn’t be afraid to believe people when they said unusual things.
I would dig out the truth and not say ‘you’re probably crazy’ to
every person who had an experience I didn’t understand.”

“Of course you weren’t crazy.”

“The real laugh was, for a while, I believed
him. I talked to psychiatrists who told me it was in my head. I
tried to pretend my flips didn’t happen. Until my brother’s autopsy
came back, and they determined his cause of death. My father kept
talking about how much I needed help, but my mother believed me.
She always said it would prove to be a gift. She told me I would
use it to save the world one day.”

Her laugh held so much anguish that Ian
almost told her to stop. But he didn’t. Her painful memories
connected them in a way he’d never connected with anyone other than
his mother. He finally had someone else in his life. Someone to
fill the gaping hole.

“When she died, a little more than a year
later, she warned me to hide my gift. Said she didn’t want me to go
into an institution or end up on a tabloid like some of the other
Dark Day conspiracy theorists.” She made quote marks with her
hands.

“Like Cassandra with her premonitions.” He
hated what she must have gone through, knowing all too well how
she’d felt. She’d done it for the same reason he hadn’t mentioned
the black hole eyes—or what happened to his father and mother on
Dark Day. Start talking about things like that and people aren’t
going to believe you. Unless you meet an amazing brunette who is
smart and unusual herself.

“I worried I might be insane for almost a
year, until it happened again.” Brie’s gaze drifted to her hands,
clasped together in front of her on the table, and she studied them
for a moment. “Some things may seem nuts, if you’ll pardon the use
of such a vulgar word, but are not always so.”

“It’s not strange or nuts.” He took a deep
breath. She was so brave. Time for him to be courageous too. “My
family had a Dark Day experience too.”

Brie’s gaze flew from her hands to his face
in an instant.

“My mom was painting when the sky went dark,
and you have to understand, even before Dark Day, nothing could
take her away from her art when she was into it. Once, I considered
telling her the house was on fire just to see if she would put the
brush down.” He smirked. “Anyhow, after the darkness fell, she lit
a gas lamp and kept painting, but the lamplight seemed to be sucked
from the room. She sent my father to the basement for candles to
supplement the light. I tried to get her attention because my skin
was tingling. Like an electric shock, or the zap you get when you
rub your socks on the carpet and then touch a doorknob, but
everywhere. No matter what I did, she wouldn’t stop.”

Time fell away and he could see the room
again. His mother’s fevered movements, eyes never leaving the
canvas.

“It wouldn’t stop building…the terrible
electricity. She just painted and ignored me when I called out to
her. My father ran into the room and surprised me—”

His frantic need to tell the story fought
with the growing knot in his throat. The knot won. He looked away.
He’d never admitted what he’d done to anyone. Technically, he
hadn’t even told his mother.

“It’s okay, Ian.” Brie rubbed a soft thumb
over the back of his hand. “You don’t have to talk about it if it’s
too hard.”

No. He needed to say it. It had weighed him
down for far too long.

“I almost killed him.” He pressed a palm to
his forehead and slid it down his face as he spoke. “I don’t
understand it, but electricity just shot out of my chest. It hit
him, and he fell.” He let his hand drop and it hit the table with
an audible thump. “I don’t understand…”

Brie lifted a cool palm to his cheek, and he
wanted to bury himself in it. To curl into the comfort of her
embrace and let the past go. His whole life had been an exercise in
denying the very moment he now faced, and he felt somehow
different. Like he couldn’t go back to the way he had been. The
happy-go-lucky realtor without a care in the world. He knew he
would, because he had before, but it didn’t feel like it.

“My mom’s trance lifted a moment later. We
waited for hours for the paramedics to come and help my father.
With all the deaths and injuries on Dark Day, it took a long time
for emergency response.”

“I know, it took almost the whole day for
them to come for my brother.” Brie murmured.

In the following months, the media had
covered the phenomenon over and over again. They endlessly debated
the newest theories as to the cause. Then they talked about its
benefit to the health care industry and the economy, with the
increased health care. But it hadn’t helped his mother or him as
they waited next to his unconscious father.

“When we looked at her painting, she’d
painted it.” He closed his eyes, trying to block the image he’d
managed to avoid for ten years. “In the painting, I stood facing
the door, a shaft of light piercing my father’s chest. A dark
image, the shadow of death I think, hid in the corner watching with
a shark-toothed grin. My father couldn’t handle it, and he left
soon after he healed.”

There, it was out now. What neither he, nor
his mother had mentioned since Dark Day. Would Brie leave, knowing
what he’d done? What he was?