Sensitive by Sommer Marsden Page B

somewhere, emitting a low level current through my skin. It was pleasant and somewhat erotic, if you must know. “I know. I know you’re new. And I’m Alex. Alex Church. I live up the road.”

    Gotta love the country. It’s not the street, it’s road and it’s often pronounced rud .

    “Hi, hi.”

    He leaned in and I inhaled deeply without thinking. The smell of him filled my head. It was a sweet, spicy, yummy but manly smell that eluded me. If you mixed leather with cinnamon and sugar and wood smoke with a hint of pine tree, that is what he smelled like. Or close.

    “Are you sure you’re going to be okay here? It won’t be too much for you?” he whispered like a confidant.

    His breath was sweet and minty on my face and my lips tingled at having his mouth in such close proximity to me. Other bits of me tingled too, but I tried not to think about that. I was off the men. Men could get bent. No men for me. Ever. If my house had come with a nun’s habit, I would have been a happy, happy girl.

    Maybe he was just crazy. I leaned in to meet Alex Church, just a tiny bit more, completely ignoring the irrational lust that seemed to race through me. I held my breath to steady my jangling nerves. “Of course. Why would I not be okay here? This is my brand-new dream home. There is even a window seat, a root cellar and fireplace,” I said.

    “Very nice for you,” Alex nodded.

    In the house someone dropped something. The sound of tinkling glass hit my ears and I tried not to flinch. “It is very nice for me. I’ve wanted a house like this forever…and now I have it!” I waved my hands in a magical kind of fancy witch gesture, hoping to actually conjure up the good attitude I was presenting to Alex.

    “Oh, good. Because I was just worried for a minute that it was too close in proximity.”

    He did that weird thing where he appeared to be listening to someone or something not visible to me. He surely was an odd duck. And a tiny bit annoying if you must know. “Close proximity to what ?”

    “To that,” he said and gently turned my head. So his fingers on my skin caused a decidedly stimulating reaction. I had a vivid mental flash of moving astride Alex in all my sexual glory. Slipping up and down the length of his perfect hard cock and relishing the feel of his hands coming up to tangle in my hair and then…I saw what he was pointing to.

    “Oh,” I said.

    “Yes, oh.”

    “But how do you…”

    He shrugged. “I’m kind of a sensitive too. One could say that, anyway. So I know a sensitive when I see one.”

    Well, balls and damn and holy hell. His long fingers, perfectly rugged and manly in their gesture, had pointed my eyes to a sight I had not wished to behold. A cemetery.

    An old one that had been around for a while it seemed. “How the hell did I miss that?

    How?” I asked.

    Alex shrugged and his big shoulders caught my attention. Which I promptly wrestled away. No, no, no! I am a sensitive. I pick up on the feelings of those around me. Dead and alive. I’ve managed over years and years and god-blessed years of practice to control it. However, the vicinity of that many dead people was going to seriously screw with me. And in my case, the title sensitive was appropriate because when my sixth sense went into overdrive my other senses tended to be over-engaged.

    As in, I loved to smell, touch, taste and devour everything. Including men I found attractive. And though, oddly, I found Alex and his baggy-cut, trench-coat-sheathed shoulders pretty yummy.

    “Well,” he said, helpfully, “Were you upset when you came to see the house?”

    How did he know this stuff? “Actually, yes,” I admitted, sighing. My body was tingling and my ears were ringing. The muted sunlight in the overcast sky seemed too big and too bright, though it wasn’t. And I swore I could feel the heat and the pheromones baking off Mr. Alex Church. I cleared my throat. “I had just broken up with my boyfriend. I had let