The light level in this room could zap him into a stress flashback if he didn’t protect his eyes. Not only that. The dark shield strength contact lenses hid the animal flash of amber luminosity caused by his visual implants. Outsiders couldn’t be allowed to see that. The room was packed with outsiders. He wanted them gone.
Especially Simone. Which made him a total asshole. He tried hard, really hard, to feel guilty. Not so much as a twinge. His conscious mind had been almost totally hijacked by the dancer.
He wanted to throw everyone else out and lock the door. Study that woman with his naked eyes, dancing under the spotlight. But only for him. He wanted to gulp in the whole data flow. It was being filtered out in real time and lost to him forever, and it drove him . . . fucking . . . nuts.
And he couldn’t do a thing. Not with an audience. His fists clenched in fury.
Heart racing, temperature spiking. Sweating profusely. No way to hide it. It was an AVP stress dump. A massive dose of fight-and-conquer energy, channeling straight into his dick, which strained desperately against his pants.
He struggled to grab onto the analog hooks that he’d established. His hooks were emergency mental shortcuts, activating an instant, deep withdrawal into the ice caves of his subconscious mind when the AVP got out of control. Best way he could devise to calm his stress reactions and stay on top of himself.
Not a hook to be had. Couldn’t find them, couldn’t feel them. Couldn’t use his highly developed power of visualization at all, after years of grueling practice. All gone.
He was fully occupied imagining that woman naked and writhing beneath him.
His intense reaction to this spectacle made no sense. He’d seen belly dancing before and been unmoved. He did not have complicated fantasies or fetishes. He didn’t even get the fun factor. He wasn’t known for his sense of humor. In fact, he had no imagination at all, unless you counted biotech engineering designs, or plotting ways to grow his business, or scheming to keep his chosen family alive, secret, and safe.
That demanding enterprise left no bandwidth for fun and games.
He wasn’t playful about sex, either. He was tireless, focused. Relentless in making sure that his partners were satisfied. To the point of exhaustion, even. Theirs, not his. They would tell him he was the hottest lover ever and then call him cold.
So? Noah didn’t do emotions. Cold was safer for everyone concerned.
Not that he could explain that to whoever happened to be in bed with him.
He couldn’t change his nature. He saw to it that his lovers had many orgasms to his one, to compensate for those mysterious intangibles. Whatever the fuck else they wanted from him, it just wasn’t there. He didn’t even know where to look for it.
The dancer’s arms lifted, swayed. He inhaled the scent of her dewy skin as she spun closer. Fresh, sweet, hot. Sun on the flowers. Rain on the grass. His mouth watered.
Since what happened at Midlands, his senses were sharper than normal by many orders of magnitude. He had ways to blunt the overload, but not this time. He was catching a full data load now, shields and all. Tripping out on her undulating hand movements.
He was reading her energy signature, right through the shield lenses. A cloud of hot, brilliant colors surrounded her. Her floating purple veils blended with trailing clouds of her body’s energy, to which his AVP overstimulated brain assigned all the colors of the spectrum and more besides. Colors not visible to anyone but him.
Along with it a strange sensation was growing. Tension, anticipation. Dread.
He was used to being alone in an insulated bubble. Other people’s drama raged outside that protective barrier and left him completely untouched. He needed it that way to stay in control. Maintaining isolation required constant effort and vigilance.
Now, suddenly, he wasn’t alone. The girl had danced through his force field. Invaded his inner space. It was messy and crowded in there now.
She took up room. Confused him with her colors, her scents. Her smile was so unforced and sensual. She was bonelessly flexible, yet still regal in her diaphanous veils.
It made him jittery to have someone so close. The intimacy felt awkward. Ticklish.
He felt hot, red. No control over his face. Stuck here, sitting among colleagues and family, right next to his fiancée. Any one of them could watch him watch her. At least the massive conference table concealed his colossal hard-on.
He had not felt this helpless since Midlands.
Her luminous green eyes met his and then flicked away, but the electric buzz of that split instant of intimacy jolted him to depths he’d never felt before.
He knew he’d never seen this woman before, and yet he recognized her.
*
Caro narrowly missed slamming her hip into the table. For the third time.
Look away from the guy, for God’s sake. Get a grip. It’s just a dance.