Read Online Lightning That Lingers by Sharon Curtis, Tom Curtis - Free Book Online Page A

technique.”
    I asked for that, she thought. How interesting of me. I wish—oh, dear Lord,
how I wish
—he would stop this car and kiss me again.
    The car did stop soon. He killed the engine in a small clearing and turned to her in the darkness.
    “Now we have to wait.”
    “What for?”
    “Our eyes need to adjust to the night. Do you know much about night vision?”
    “No.” She was beginning to find Philip Brooksmore and more fascinating. “Except that it’s an excuse to make kids eat carrots.”
    “Yes. Because deficiency in vitamin A can impair night vision. The retina of your eye is covered with rod cells and cone cells. The rods are sensitive to light. The cones are sensitive to color and they can’t function very efficiently in dim light. That’s why you can’t see colors in the dark.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her to his sturdy comfort. “Look at the sky.”
    Jennifer looked at the sky and thought about how close his sensitive fingers were to her breast.
    “That black velvet sky is just as blue now as it was in the day,” he said. “Our eyes don’t work well enough to see it. But they can still do much better than most people realize. There’s a chemical in the rod cells of the retina that decomposes as it reacts to light, but in dim light, you can synthesize it faster than light can break it down so you build up a good supply. Once your eyes are fully dark-adapted they become many times more light sensitive than in bright light. Hmm.” He tilted up her chin on a strong finger and examined her face. “You must have a higher threshold of boredom than most of my friends. You’re still awake! And,” he continued softly, “you’ve begun to smile, miracle of miracles.” His thumb was tracing the upcurve of her lips as they tipped to meet the slow descent of his.
    She heard him breathe, “Don’t stop,” just before the sparklingly sweet meeting of their lips. It felt good to her, so good, as his mouth moved against the tautness of her smile. Gently, he stroked her tingling flesh with his lower lip and then brought his mouth into light contact withhers, rocking against her mouth, parting her. His hand skimmed up her back to the base of her neck in a light, tantalizing massage before it swept slowly down to cover her breast. The pressure of fabric and of his steady fingers pushed heavy flutters of sensation through her chest and her skin responded to each nuance of his cupping palm. Some impulse of the night’s magic made her bring her arms up and clasp them around his neck, and lean into his body. One of his hands moved to accommodate her, pressing her close; and the other continued its lazily kindling motion against her coat and the flushing softness beneath.
    “How long does it take”—she drew in a shaking gulp of air as his thumb discovered her nipple—“for this thing to happen to our eyes.”
    “In thirty minutes we’ll be doing very well. In the meantime, tell me how you spent your day.” His voice sounded slightly breathless as he nestled her against his jacket.
    She protested with a startled, uncertain laugh that
nobody’s
boredom threshold was high enough for that.
    Smiling, he began to ask her questions. What time did she get up in the morning? Was getting up hard or easy for her? What did she eat for breakfast? Did she listen to music or was her house quiet? What did she sleep in? Some of the questions teased; others titillated. Some were serious and she began to find herself following the mood of them, explaining the flow of her day, her job, her thoughts, the people she saw and worked with. Never before had anyone explored her life in such lively detail. No one had cared before that she liked apple jelly and beds with fishnet lacecanopies, or that she was making a Shaker chair from a kit in her spare time or that she stopped every morning on the way to work at Lake Park to feed the uneaten half of her English muffin to the mallards. No one but her