The Virus (28 page)

A person can imagine a
thing, or read a book, or even see a graphic movie about it, but
there was simply no rival to experience, cold, hard, one-on-one,
physical experience, on which the mind could feed and the
consciousness could absorb. For Delilah, this was that experience.
Perhaps, this was the culmination of things destined from the
beginning to usher her into a reality other than her own, or maybe
her brain had finally had enough of mind-numbing excess. Maybe it
was neither of those things, and no more than a coincidental fluke.
Whatever it was, a change was being effected in her as she
continued to look on at what had become of the world she once knew,
a world she would never know again. Suddenly, escape didn’t matter,
seeing her father again didn’t matter; pedicures, manicures,
facials, none of it mattered. In fact, nothing mattered. Everything
as far as her eyes could see, her mind could think, and her heart
could feel, was only wasting destruction and debris. The world had
spun off its axis and was careening wildly into the open recesses
of space. Unhampered chaos had taken over.

She turned to Geoffrey,
who had been looking at her with his head slightly cocked as if he
was listening to something. His eye brows furrowed as if he was
startled by whatever he was listening to. She buried her face in
his shoulder, and did something she hadn’t done since she was a
very little girl. She cried. Delilah had never been the crying
type. Her father would never find her bawling on the floor after a
nasty spill, as was the case with most children. Instead, she would
look at whatever she had fallen over or into for a while, as if to
assess its formidability, then she would likely hit it or throw her
hands up as if to ignore it. The sight of her as a toddler striking
the floor she had fallen on rather than rolling on it, crying, was
something Lenard soon became used to. It was a resilience she had
inherited from her mother, and something that, also like her
mother, would remain in her very makeup as long as there was warm
blood in her veins. At least, that’s what Lenard had thought, but
if he could see his little girl now, assuming he was even still
alive, he likely wouldn’t have recognized her, sobbing violently
and helplessly in the embraces of a relative stranger. However,
this was not the same Delilah. Call it maturity, call it shock, but
both the world and Delilah had undergone an irrevocable change. As
is always the case with any truly irrevocable change, neither would
ever be the same again.

Chapter 26

Delilah had been crying
into the Geoffrey’s chest so long that a well-defined portion of
his shirt from shoulder to pants was now clinging to him,
saturated. It didn’t appear as if she was ready to finish any time
soon. It was as if all the tears her inherited hardiness had not
allowed her to shed over the years were finally being released in
one long gush. Even though he was being all but drowned in that
warm, torrential gush, Geoffrey made no effort to push Delilah
away. In fact, he held her tighter as her body shook from
uncontrollable sobs. He knew that this was a first for her, and
with it, there came a first for him. For the first time since he
had managed to scale the initial shock of his telepathic abilities,
he tried
not
to
hear the secret thoughts of others. In this case, ‘others’ meant
Delilah. Listening to her thoughts while she was enduring such a
genuine and profound upheaval just felt wrong to Geoffrey in a way
that had never struck him before. He didn’t need to listen in on
her private thoughts to know that a once in a lifetime paradigm
shift was taking place inside her, turning her and everything she
held as truth, inside out, upside down, and every other contrary
way possible. He felt that to be in her head now without her
knowledge, was a violation, and especially at this very complicated
and difficult junction in both of their lives, he wanted to leave
her private thoughts her own.

As he held her torso
against his own, her full breasts pressing against his chest, and
being likewise soaked in a flood of tears, an erotic warmth
pervaded his body. As he had already stipulated to Dr. Crangler, it
had been an incredibly long time since he had seen, not to mention,
held, a woman. All that time without interaction with the opposite
sex made this experience now all the more potent. Strangely enough,
though, another sense accompanied the natural arousal that Geoffrey
was feeling, a purer, less sexually oriented sense that lay just
beneath the surface. He had been rubbing Delilah’s neck and upper
back, but now, he took to stroking her thick, shimmering black
curls with a gentle caress that was beyond that of simple
eroticism. If he was indeed giving vent to something more than
merely a year’s worth of pent up sexual frustration, then Delilah
certainly had more base things in mind, as was apparent when she
finally stopped crying and, hesitantly, but nevertheless,
resolutely, turned her tear-streaked face up to his. She had a
sultry look in her eyes, and an inviting—no, demanding—pursing, was
on her lips. With Delilah’s makeup streaking dull colors beneath
her reddened eyes, over her slightly swollen cheeks, and across her
upturned chin, she may’ve not been completely fit to have a picture
taken for one of the many fashion magazines that she had often
sought for her daily dose of celebrity gossip, but as far as
Geoffrey was concerned, she was as irresistible as he had ever seen
her.

Prolonged confinement,
especially in a place as devoid of excitement as the secret
facility was, can have a profound effect on a person. Just as the
cold, steel bars and concrete barriers of a prison facility can
change a person in a way that nothing else can, so Delilah’s
imprisonment had changed her. She was much more receptive to
Geoffrey than she had ever been with anyone else in her entire
adult life, and though a large part of that cooperation had been
inspired by his special abilities, much of it was from just a good
old fashioned need for affection and friendship. Like Geoffrey,
Delilah craved interaction with someone other than one of her
captors, so when this young fellow captive showed up and was more
than willing to supply her with all the attention and care she had
so desperately missed, it was only natural for her to lower her
guard. Still, it wasn’t hard for Geoffrey to see the truth in Dr.
Crangler’s assertion that this young woman was the most difficult
patient he had ever dealt with, by a large margin. In fact, just
from her secret thoughts and open conversations, Geoffrey could
tell that, as far as spoiled went, Delilah was the real thing. A
luminary in her own right, and with an insanely wealthy father,
Geoffrey could tell that this girl was not the type to take any
shit from anyone, and had enough money that she didn’t have to
offer anything else to get whatever she wanted.

Now, she was offering her
most important commodity—herself—and all of herself at that. She
was like unspoiled waters to a man who had been roaming the deserts
for days, ready at any moment to collapse from exhaustion and
thirst. Geoffrey was that roamer, but now that he had found those
crystal clear waters, it would seem that they were so awe inspiring
that it was improper to just throw his entire head into the stream
and dirty it with his lustful lapping as he had planned to do.
Instead, and quite to his confusion, he wanted to cradle those
waters securely in his outstretched hands and imbibe himself with
the relief they promised in something closer to love and further
from lust. These were the thoughts that unexpectedly flooded and
filled Geoffrey’s mind as he gazed down at Delilah’s sumptuous
lips. They were soft, longing lips, that promised great pleasures
to the one granted the opportunity to handle them properly. It was
as if her lips were the first pair Geoffrey had ever set eyes on,
but for the life of him, Geoffrey could not ravish those lips with
his own, as he would’ve done without a moment’s hesitation an hour
ago.

Instead, he stared into
Delilah’s gorgeous face, completely oblivious to the time and space
around him, until she finally opened her eyes, wondering why in the
world she hadn’t been kissed passionately by now. The look on her
face as she righted herself in her seat, was what ushered him back
into reality. Her brow was knitted, not so much in discontent, as
much as in confusion. She knew that, even without the aid of her
normally routine beauty treatments, she was still a very attractive
women, and she also knew (women just seemed to have an intuition
about these things. Perhaps telepathy wasn’t so new to the globe
after all) that Geoffrey wanted her. Since their very first
introduction, she knew that he wanted her, and that to have her was
his primary motivation for all he did for her afterward. Not that
she was complaining. As with many attractive women, she was used to
the dirty desires of men and the benefits that flooded in with just
the coy batting of an eyelash or the seductive flourishing of a
hip, as a result of those desires.

Considering the
circumstances, she had received a certified plethora of worthy
benefits from this guy’s desires. She had been pampered,
appreciated, given skin treatments, hair styling, manicures,
pedicures…Why in the hell did this guy seem to be an expert in
everything she thought she needed, anyhow? Never mind that, the
benefits were well welcomed. As Delilah’s mother had taught her,
this was one of the easier points of manipulation as far as men
were concerned. Most times, that desire, that visual lust, that
deep, hot craving to conquer, that infected most men’s eyes and
genitals, was such that a women need not ever actually give in, to
plunder the spoils of courtship. In the right hands, or rather,
within view of the right cleavage, most men could be milked
completely dry with just a
suggestion
of sex. Again, a warm
smile, fluttering eyelashes, a flare of the hips upon exiting—hell,
just a relatively short skirt would do it for many men—and a
well-trained woman could have the world hand delivered to her door
and never have to part her legs to receive it.

“Men are dogs,
Sweetheart,” Delilah’s mother had often said to her daughter,
“we’re here to take the leashes and make sure they get led and fed
properly.”

This was why Delilah was
confused. She had rung the metaphorical dinner bell loud and long.
There should’ve been an instant and ardent, if not violent,
response by now. Was this guy saying that she wasn’t good enough?
Geoffrey had been looking on as these thoughts ran through
Delilah’s mind. He was still trying not to listen to her inner
musings so he was more than a bit distracted, but as the confusion
evident on Delilah’s face begin to morph into real apprehension, he
understood that, whatever she was thinking, if he didn’t act now,
his chance with her may be lost forever.

“Oh, I’m so sorry…I mean,
I didn’t…I wanted to…” Geoffrey stuttered and stammered badly, but,
much to his relief, it produced a smile on Delilah’s lips where a
hard line had been forming. Also, like many attractive women,
Delilah couldn’t help but enjoy being able to reduce a grown man to
a quivering faltering mass at a whim. It was intoxicating to be
reminded that, even now, she still had it. Seeing the opportunity,
Geoffrey decided not to foil things up with inane babble, and
commanded his body to move forward, toward the still-smiling
Delilah.

His body moved with much
of the same stammer with which his tongue had moved earlier, but it
did move. When he was again close enough to feel the heat from
Delilah’s body, he commanded his lips to approach hers. They too
spluttered, but obeyed. When his lips at last made contact with
Delilah’s, it was not the sensation of a grown man kissing a grown
woman, but more akin to the ecstasy of a high schooler’s very first
kiss, and his very first crush. It felt to Geoffrey like he had
discovered feminine lips for the very first time, and it was an
explosive experience. Her lips were as soft and warm as a familiar
pillow, and it was only after a long while and the boom of
Lieutenant Dan’s voice, that Geoffrey realized that he had again
lost track of space and time. He threw his head back and saw that
Delilah, eyes closed in rapture, had been enjoying the exchange
immensely as well.

“Please excuse the
interruption, Mr. Summons.” Lieutenant Dan’s voice filled the room
a second time.

“Yes?” Geoffrey answered,
still gazing at Delilah.

“We are about to reach our
destination, and your requested meal will be available
shortly.”

“Thank you very much.”
Geoffrey answered without much enthusiasm. A few moments earlier,
he would have been grateful for the lieutenant general’s
interruption, since it would’ve interrupted a very awkward
situation, but now…

Delilah must’ve sensed
this, because she answered almost immediately, “It’s okay, I’m
really hungry anyway.” The smile that had resurfaced on her lips
was unmistakable. She had enjoyed the kiss as much as Geoffrey had.
After a few moments, though, a question in her mind summoned her
attention elsewhere. She looked around the cargo area of the truck
where she and Geoffrey were. Of course, there was nothing to see
besides the outside world, and
that
was something that Delilah would’ve liked to put
away from her mind for as long as possible. She looked up toward
the steel barrier that separated her and Geoffrey from Lieutenant
Dan and his driving minion. There was no door, no means of direct
physical interaction that she could see, only the small window, and
it looked thick and unmovable. She looked at the barrier more
carefully before grimacing. “Major Whatever up there says that our
food will be ready soon, but how in the world is he going to get it
to us?”