ago. “I spent too much time at those conferences trying to learn everything I could. In doing so, I probably attracted too much notice. I was careful not to ask questions or call attention to myself, but …” She trailed off.
She’s ready to run, Diego. Everything in her is in a hurry to leave. I can feel her anxiety. I’m just as anxious for her to stay. If we’re really paired together, why isn’t she fighting to find reasons to stay? Would Whitney have paired only me? Not her? I heard that on occasion he will pair the woman with a man but not the man. Would he do the opposite?
Her looks alone would have garnered attention. Rubin found himself really studying her. There was something ethereal about her. Her skin. Her hair. Even her eyes. She almost glowed from the inside out. Her hair was just that little bit too blond. Her eyes weren’t just blue, they were cornflower blue with interesting silver irises now that he had the opportunity to look closer. Outer silver rings as well as inner silver. She would definitely draw attention, especially if she attended more than one conference. It wouldn’t matter if she stayed quiet or if she tried to stay in a corner somewhere, her energy was too strong, drawing others toward her like a magnet.
That was essentially what she was—a magnet for electrical charges. Human beings reacted to electric fields, even to sensing the fields, much like animals did. Living cells moved along electric fields when healing wounds. The human body had at least one sensor mechanism for detecting an electrical field and was certain to have many more.
I don’t know. She’s skittish, that’s for certain, but she’s too cool with the two of us as her enemies, Rubin. She has to be very dangerous to be so confident in herself.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Jonquille snapped, and dropped both feet to the floor. She wanted to run away and hide from that inspection. She’d spent her childhood under a microscope.
Rubin, tall and good-looking on the podium, delivering a speech that made the most sense of anything she’d heard, had given her hope. She’d actually, for the first time in her life, been attracted to a man. She put it down to what she considered his genius and giving her a real sense of hope. Being in the small room with him gave her claustrophobia. She hadn’t spent time with others in a very long time. She’d had fantasies about this man, and it was a rude awakening to have him look at her as if she were a science experiment—the way Whitney had.
“Stay still,” Rubin ordered in the same mild voice. “I’m figuring this out. The human body certainly produces electromagnetic fields. In organs. In cells. In varying degrees. Your body clearly produced those fields in much higher amounts, and then Whitney in his usual godlike manner boosted those amounts to an alarming rate. How your body keeps from overheating is another mystery altogether, but that is something else to figure out. Right now, at the very basic level, what we’re dealing with is an electromagnetic field. Do you always need a gathering storm to conduct lightning?”
His tone, that same dispassionate, calm tone coming out of this handsome man, upset her beyond comprehension. He had thick dark hair that could use a cut, spilling onto his forehead, accenting his very dark eyes. His shoulders were wide, his body toward the lean side, but all muscle. She’d been attracted to him from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him at the conference, and she’d never been able to get him out of her mind. It was strange that she didn’t feel the same way about his brother when they looked almost identical. She could tell them apart easily and always would be able to.
Rubin’s energy was low-key, which was a good thing. Sometimes when people were angry or violent, or just overly excited, her body absorbed their electrical energy rapidly. Unfortunately, she seemed to feed off a variety of different types of energy, siphoning off dark tendencies and fear as well as flat-out rage. Neither Diego nor Rubin gave off enough energy to even detect it, let alone absorb it. That was good so she could be in their company, but bad if she wanted to know they were around.
“Jonquille?” Rubin’s dark eyes met hers. “Do you need a storm to conduct lightning?”
“You’ve indicated that you can’t help me,”