Soon it was Allie’s turn to face the audience. He led her--still hypnotized--to a stool on the stage and helped her onto it. “You’re good at hiding what you want.”
“Yes,” she mumbled, not opening her eyes.
“But you do know what it is. You just need to admit it.”
Under the spotlights, her hair glimmered and her smooth, creamy face appeared even more beautiful. Vulnerable. She shifted a little, arching her back, dropping one shoulder so that one strap of the low-cut sundress she wore slipped off her shoulder.
From here, standing above her, he could easily see the curve of one breast, cupped by a lacy strapless bra. Soft, pink, as tempting as cotton candy. Both the bra...and her skin. Only the presence of the audience prevented him from lifting his hand and scraping the tip of his finger from the vulnerable pulse point in her neck, across her throat, and down between those lush breasts.
He forced the impulse off and got back to business. “I want you to stop hiding your dreams and say what you most long for.”
He held his breath, half-expecting her to say, “True love,” or even, “World peace.” He didn’t expect what he actually got.
“I want to be touched.”
Damon stiffened.
“Intimately. Sexually.” Her words were slow, almost dreamy. “I want a fantasy lover come to life.”
Now his back wasn’t his only stiff part. Damon shifted away from the audience, focusing entirely on Allie, whose sultry tone had shot through him like an electrical current.
“I want a man’s strong, powerful hands on me. Thick arms to hold me, a hungry mouth to devour me.” She sighed audibly, the sound amplified by the microphone.
He was tempted to stop her, because of the audience. But something--perhaps his own heated reaction to her throaty whispers--made him let her go a little farther. He did have the presence of mind to pull the microphone down a few inches, making the moment more intimate, as if she spoke only to him.
“I want to know what it’s like to have a man so desperate for me he can barely control himself.”
He was reaching that point. Maybe he had already.
“No games, no ulterior motives. Just pure, undiluted want.”
Like what he’d felt for her since the night they’d met.
“I want him so aroused when he looks at me that his hands shake as he strips off my clothes, piece by piece. He’ll handle me tenderly, as though I’m fragile, then more aggressively because he simply can’t help himself. He has to touch me, feel me...experience me absolutely everywhere.”
She moaned, a feminine sound of arousal and anticipation that made Damon think of rumpled sheets and wild nights.
“I want to do things I’ve never done with someone I trust not to hurt me--physically, or emotionally. To be wild and wicked. To make love for hours under a starry sky, with a strong nighttime breeze blowing over our hot, slick bodies. To be with someone who doesn’t have any other agenda than the pleasure we can make each other feel. And to finally sleep in his arms, knowing we’ll start all over again when we awake.”
She fell silent, her pose entirely relaxed. Damon stood beside her, unable to speak, her whispers echoing in his head. Silence surrounded him, broken only by the distant ding of bells and the cries of barkers hawking the games on the midway.
Finally, someone in the audience whistled. A whisper rolled through the crowd--“Who is she?”--picking up speed and volume as the wide-eyed onlookers continued to stare at the still hypnotized young woman on the stage. Damon bit back a groan, realizing what had just happened. He’d been so captivated by Allie’s erotic fantasies that he’d allowed himself to forget dozens of other people were hearing them too.
He couldn’t, however, turn around, he was still too hot himself. If he smoked, he’d surely have needed a cigarette. God, her voice was like audible sex and his whole body had reacted to it with pulse-pounding power. He was hard for her--dying for her--ready to give her every single little thing she asked for.
Unfortunately, he realized, every other man in the place probably felt the same way.
But she was talking to me. He was certain of it.
Finally, unable to ignore the groundswell of applause rising from the crowd behind him, he drew Allie--and the others--out of their trance. They all snapped to and were drowned by the crowd’s enthusiasm, none of them realizing why the men in the audience were whooping and the women staring at Allie in shocked envy.
He understood their reaction. After all, it wasn’t every day a woman was free to tell a man exactly what she wanted him to do to her, in great detail, and bear no responsibility for the telling. He’d wager any number of women would give a lot to have the chance to freely tell the men in their lives exactly what they wanted and how they wanted it. Especially if they weren’t happy with what they were getting and how they were getting it.
“Was it okay?” Tessa asked, wide-eyed and a little pensive, as if suddenly wondering just what she’d revealed under hypnosis.
“As long as your boss isn’t here, you did just fine,” he murmured as he led his volunteers forward to take a bow.
“Uh-oh,” she muttered.
Allie snickered. “Serves you right.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell Allie that her revelations had been much more shocking than her friend’s. At least not now, when they were surrounded by curious onlookers.
He’d tell her later. When he got her alone.
Then, if he had his way, he’d grant every one of her erotic, whispered desires.
