Page 31 of The Scent of Intuition
Seventeen.
Urgency.
Eighteen.
Bea felt light-headed and nearly forgot to count. His hands, firm on her waist, anchored her to the present, to him.
Nineteen.
Her senses were alight, and every touch and breath shared amplified the feeling of completeness that enveloped her. It was as if they were discovering a secret language, one spoken not through words but through the meeting of souls and the gentle exploration of hands.
Nineteen and a half?
Was he keeping count, too? She mustn’t ask for more than the twenty seconds he’d been willing to give.
But the pleasure was a wave so powerful it threatened to sweep her away; it drove her to cling to him, her fingers tangling in the fabric of his shirt as if he were the only thing anchoring her to the earth.
“Twenty,” she whispered. The time allotted was up.
He immediately let go of her waist, broke the kiss, and stepped back.
Bea swallowed hard, her lips swollen as if they’d doubled in size. She was dizzy.
The room went dark around the edges.
Alfie cocked his head and said something, but he sounded like an echo far away.
And then there was blackness.
Chapter Twelve
Bea drifted ina haze that wrapped around the edges of dreams, softening reality into mere whispers. Voices floated to her, muffled and distant, as if she were underwater and the voices on the surface were discussing her fate.
“Why did she faint?” A man’s voice asked. Perhaps Andre.
“I didn’t even know she was with you.” Pippa’s voice rang familiarly. “Thank you so much for preventing her fall and carrying her here.”
But as Bea lay there, the voices sharpened, clawing their way through the fog of her consciousness. The bed beneath her felt unfamiliar, not the comforting embrace of her own but something foreign, too firm, and yet oddly yielding, like sinking into a cloud that refused to let go.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” a male voice said, and then Bea felt something cold, and round on her chest—a stethoscope. Then, someone touched her wrist and waited. “Her pulse is quick but stable,” the voice said.
“Thank you, Andre,” Pippa said.
For a moment, she imagined she was adrift in a dream, one of those vivid ones that felt tantalizingly real yet slipped away upon waking.
“Was she flushed or pale before this happened?” Andre asked.
“Flushed.” Alfie’s voice sounded grumpy but had the same effect his kiss had previously had. Bea felt her knees weakeningagain, and she was glad she already lay flat on a bed, for she’d swoon again.
The scent in the air was different, too; it lacked the comforting notes of lavender, chamomile, cloves, and alcohol from the apothecary.
“Is that a bad sign?” Pippa asked.
“Flushed before fainting means that she swooned,” Nick said but his voice sounded a bit farther away. Were all the doctors surrounding her and Pippa with them?
Another growl came from the room’s far end, but Bea couldn’t see anything. Her eyelids felt heavy as if weighted down by the remnants of sleep, but curiosity—or instinct—urged them open. The blur of colors and shapes that greeted her slowly coalesced into a room she did not recognize: stark white walls, a window with curtains that fluttered slightly with an unseen breeze, and shadows of people moving just beyond her line of sight.
A pang of fear knotted in her stomach, sharp and sudden. This wasn’t a dream. The realization hit her like the first breath after diving deep underwater. Real. Too real. The voices weren’t figments of her imagination but actual people, talking about her, discussing her as if she weren’t there, or perhaps as if she were nothing more than a problem to solve.
