Ill Wind Page 0,70

And with the tearing of my hymen, something else happened. Power. Power raced into every nerve in my body and snapped me into full awareness. I knew the man who was making love to me, every cell, every nerve, every pulse beat that echoed between us. I felt . . . everything.

I felt the huge rumbling cascade of his power as it flooded me, making me arch hard against him, and the extreme pain of it, the pleasure . . . sparks snapped between us, blue-white, bleeding off energy that our bodies weren't built to contain. Power, echoing between us, waves bouncing from one of us to the other and getting stronger with every second.

He wasn't prepared any more than I was. We were swept away on a rhythm like the sea, and when the tide came, it came high, and I drowned on waves and waves of a pleasure I'd never felt before, felt him drowning with me, clung to him for dear life.

I heard things shattering around us. Lightbulbs. Glass windows. I felt wind scream over us in whipping, out-of-control gusts.

And then it was over, and we were lying together, sweating, weak, and still feeling the power building between us.

He realized how dangerous it was before I did. He pulled away from me and kept going, far away, scrambling backwards until his back touched the wall. I scuttled back and hid under the lab table. All around us, the wind whipped and screamed and overturned tables and chairs until it finally faded to a breeze, then a sigh.

Stillness.

"God," he whispered, and put his head in his hands. I sympathized. My head was pounding, too. Every nerve in my body felt crisped.

I licked my lips and said, "It's not supposed to happen like that, right?"

There was blood on the floor where I'd been lying. I stared at it for a few seconds and saw he was staring at it, too.

He looked utterly stricken. "No," he whispered. "God, I'm so sorry. I didn't know-"

I didn't know whether he was apologizing because I'd been a virgin or because we'd almost destroyed the campus. I didn't really have time to find out.

The man was, of course, Lewis Levander Orwell. And so far as I know, he never again touched a girl who was in the Program.

I was still looking for my panties when Professor Yorenson arrived to find out what the hell was going on.

I don't know what I'd been expecting. A message from above, complete with cherubs and singing choirs, inviting me to join Lewis in whatever hole he'd crawled into? Crap.

We cruised around I-40, looking for signs from the heavens while I restlessly cycled through radio stations, hoping for a cryptic message.

Nothing.

If Lewis was here, evidently he didn't want to talk to me.

I finally pulled up in the parking lot of a La Quinta Motor Inn.

"He's here?" David asked, frowning. I was on the verge of hysterical tears or worse, hysterical laughter- worn down to nothing by the strain.

"He's around," I lied. My voice was shaking. "I need a shower and a good night's sleep in a real bed. If you've got a problem with that, thumb a ride."

He shook his head and followed me into the hotel lobby.

I checked us in with the last of my cash. I was so tired, I would have taken a cell in a monastery, but La Quinta turned out to be quite a showplace, with an indoor pool and a bubbling jewel of a hot tub that we passed on the way to the elevators. They'd booked me third-floor accommodations, facing the parking lot and the approaching storm. That was perfectly fine with me. Always best to keep your eye on what's coming.

The room was spacious, tasteful, with a huge king-size bed and pillows big enough to qualify as mattresses in their own right, or maybe that was just my exhaustion talking. David went straight to the far corner and set his backpack down.

"Why the hell do you carry that? It's just window dressing, right?" I was pins and needles all over, aching, itching for a fight. "Like the clothes. To make me think you're really human. Well, give it up. I know better now."

"Do you?" He sat down on the bed and put his hands on his knees, watching me pace back and forth. "I doubt you