No Kissing Allowed

Chapter 9: Voices in the Darkness

Chapter 9: Voices in the Darkness

It was the middle of a moonless night, and Cora stood alone with a man she barely knew, deprived of her sense of sight. He'd hit the light switch, and she couldn't have re-illuminated the situation if she wanted to.

Cora's pulse sped up. She should probably be alarmed.

"I can't sleep either." His whispered words pierced the darkness. "They took away all my books as well."

What did he mean with all the book talk? It had to be an act, an elaborate effort to attract her notice. Every species had their rituals. Bullfrogs literally changed colors during mating season, temporarily casting off their drab browns and greens for brighter hues.

Somehow, Jamie had surmised the kind of mating dance she might find attractive. It annoyed her that she should be so transparent to him.

"You think you read me like a book," she said. "but you don't."

"No? What have I gotten wrong thus far?"

His hand was touching hers. She couldn't see a thing, but she could sense his presence. His four fingertips were the only thing that held her anchored in space. They hooked against the pads of her own fingers. Curling gently. Beckoning.

"No looking," he had said just now. "No touching. Two disembodied voices in the darkness."

Cora was under no illusions that his intentions were as chaste as he pretended. At least, she hoped not. She'd sworn off love, but that didn't mean she had to live like a nun for the rest of her life.

The truth was, she hadn't anticipated the frustration-level from having him around all day, every day, and shirtless approximately 87% of the time. How could she not find that distracting, when she hadn't been touched by a man in how long? Nearly two years?

She'd been trying to work up the nerve for the past two nights to do something about it. In fact, she'd been standing here, practicing what to say to him in the bathroom mirror, when he walked in.

But the sight of him had rattled her. Every last word she'd rehearsed went skittering out of her head. She'd meant to say some line about how she'd only packed one pretty nightgown, so she may as well let someone see it. Instead, she went all blushing and tongue-tied, and her natural reserve kicked in.

It was more than his looks that intimidated her. He had a way of holding himself, a presence that filled her field of vision and blocked out her ability to think. The way he stood there in his boxers without a shred of self-consciousness, with his dark hair all disheveled... and all that glorious male skin...

The light switch had come to her rescue, however. With the visual stimuli eliminated, Cora's brain clicked on again. She unfroze like a video that finished buffering.

Cora trapped his fingers against hers with her thumb. "You don't know anything about me."

"Neither do you," came his answer. "We're both in the dark. That's the fun of it."

He was toying with her on purpose. He had been since the moment they met. That moment on the mini-date, when he'd reached across the table to fix her hair. His hand had brushed her cheek, whisper soft.

It meant nothing. No doubt he had intended it flirtatiously at the time, but only because he was desperate. He needed a partner to get himself cast on the show. He would have executed the exact same maneuver on anyone the producers had plunked across the table from him.

But then again... The cameras hadn't been rolling at that moment. It was before the "real" date had begun, while the crew was setting up. One of their rare moments of actual reality, not the manufactured kind.