Free Exposed by Lily Cahill Page B

wasn’t trying so hard to be simply pretty and placid. 
    Ivan shoved the jacket away from him before he did something really stupid, like pull it back on and drive to her house and tug that dress over her head so he could run his tongue down her skin. 
    “ Der’mo !” Ivan swore loudly and stalked away from the damned jacket. 
    Of course he couldn’t scrub June from his mind. She was beautiful. It was her job to be beautiful. What other reason did she spend a hundred years in the mirror but to make herself more pleasant and liked by others. Her beauty was so shallow. And she was nothing but her beauty.
    Ivan picked up a saw and started working. 
    The crickets outside his window came together in a twilight symphony. The evening birds sang until the world went quiet and dark. Yet Ivan worked, sawing wood and fitting cabinet doors together. He worked until sweat ran a course down between his shoulder blades and he shucked off his shirt. And still June remained rooted deep inside of him.
    Finally, finally, he gave up. Ivan collapsed back onto his bed and stared out the window beside his bed. Lightning bugs lit the forest in flashes of gold, but Ivan felt alone in the world. Like he was the only human for miles. It had always been a comforting feeling, but moments like this he sometimes wished for a warm body against his. 
    Arms locked behind his head, Ivan peered up at the ceiling. Sometimes, when a deep loneliness crept up behind him in the dark and grabbed him tight, Ivan would go into town just to walk around or sit in the back of the theater for the late movie. With people, yet apart. It’d been what had drawn him to town the evening he’d stood under those pines with June—her eyes dark in the shadows, her hair wet. Her blouse slick against her stomach, her ribs, her breasts. The pucker of her nipples.
    Somewhere behind his navel, his body tightened. First with arousal, and then with his power. It was always there, coiled and waiting to stretch free. In the darkness of his room, he let it. There was a line of seeds on the windowsill beside his bed on which he’d been practicing his power in the weeks since the sickness. Ivan unhooked one hand and plucked a seed into his palm. 
    It was easy—incredibly easy—and suddenly there was an unfurling leaf where once there had been only a seed. It was so sudden, so effortless, that he dropped the seedling in shock. It landed on the plane of his stomach and sprouted wispy vines that tentatively inched across his stomach and curled over his hip.
    A creeping vine explored up his chest and reached into the air in front of his face. The vine hovered there, and he watched as two buds sprouted from the plant and unfurled into petals of navy blue. They were thick velvet and crowded the head of the flower in a thousand spiky petals. Navy blue like the dress June wore yesterday at the market. The petals were narrow slips, like the way her dress hugged her slim body.
    Ivan propped himself up on his elbow and stuck his nose deep into the flower. It smelled almost spicy. Coriander and black pepper, with a hint of citrus.
    It was the way June smelled—the scent that had clung to his jacket from her wearing it. Surprising and spicy. Sweet but with a tartness underneath. Blond hair and brown eyes that sparked with determination. She showed her teeth when she smiled, and there was a tiny gap between her two front teeth.
    The vine crept faster now, exploring, poking, inching over Ivan in hunger. It curled around his wrists and caressed his neck. Ivan shut his eyes, his body relaxed but tight at the same time. Something flooded through him, hot and cold, spicy and sweet. And Ivan breathed deep and pictured June.
    Pictured touching June. Kissing her. Doing things to her he’d never imagined doing to another woman he knew in real life. The vine tightened around his wrist, his thigh. It squeezed and pulsed until Ivan was nearly desperate for the release.
    And then his front door banged