“Talent, what do you mean? How do you know me?” His small faltered. He frowned.

It was hard not to knock her hand aside, but the minute you touched somebody things got confrontational and he wasn’t that kind of guy, not on a lot of levels. The air carried the charge of an electrical storm, the heaviness of humidity: a sky about to burst and rain hell on the earth, but it was clear overhead for miles.

An introvert at heart, Brian craved distance from people he didn’t know. This – she – was an extreme. When he met her eyes, he felt looked into. Pinned in place. That finger, jabbing near… stirring up a knot of anxiety and love and angst and lust and loneliness and frustration, deep in his ribs where he buried it until it forced its way out in telekinetic release. Brian half-expected her to taste her fingertip.

Force the issue of respect…

Echoing in his ears.

A trickle of sweat ran from his ear to his neck and soaked into his collar.

“Who are you?”