racing across my skin. "Your boss is damned lucky he's gay." In a daze, I watched Cross's body lower to mine, my legs sliding apart to accommodate the width of his hips. My muscles strained with the urge to lift toward him, to hasten the contact between us that I'd been craving since I first laid eyes on him. Lowering his head, he took my mouth again, bruising my lips with a fine edge of violence. Abruptly, he yanked himself away, stumbling to his feet. I lay there gasping and wet, so willing and ready. Then I realized why he'd reacted so fiercely. Someone was behind him. 4 Mortified by the sudden intrusion into our privacy, I scrambled up and back into the armrest, yanking down my skirt. "...two o'clock appointment is here." It took an endless moment to realize Cross and I were still alone in the room, that the voice I'd heard had come through a speaker
He growled, a low sound in the back of his throat; his lips curled back over his perfect teeth. His body shifted suddenly, half-crouched, tensed like a lion about to pounce. I backed away from him, glaring. "You wouldn't." I didn't see him leap at me -- it was much too fast. I only found myself suddenly airborne, and then we crashed onto the sofa, knocking it into the wall. All the while, his arms formed an iron cage of protection around me -- I was barely jostled. But I still was gasping as I tried to right myself. He wasn't having that. He curled me into a ball against his chest, holding me more securely than iron chains. I glared at him in alarm, but he seemed well in control, his jaw relaxed as he grinned, his eyes bright only with humor. "You were saying?" he growled playfully. "That you are a very, very terrifying monster," I said, my sarcasm marred a bit by my breathless voice. "Much better," he approved. "Um." I struggled. "Can I get up now?" He just laughed.
mighty Wurlitzer in tension-filled movies like Psycho, The Birds, and Vertigo, but he was not alone, for all good directors know instinctively how to use their tools to make us feel something, physically and emotionally. T h e y employ everything in the toolbox — story, characters, editing, lighting, costumes, music, set design, action, special effects, and psychology — to bring about physical responses such as holding the breath in suspense, gasping in response to surprises, and exhaling in relaxation when the on-screen tension is released. In fact, the secret of drama may come down to control of the audience s breathing, for through the breath all the other organs of the body can be regulated. In the 1 9 7 0 s the special effects—laden movies of Irwin Allen (Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno) were heralded, and sometimes condemned, as a new wave o f visceral entertainment, playing to the body rather than the m i n d
Her initial offensive had stalled at the Marne and her gray-coated troops had been locked in the futile trench slaughter ever since. Civilians were living on potatoes—a result of the stranglehold of the British blockade. Fifteen-year-olds were being conscripted. Greece and Portugal had recently entered the war against her. Like the Allies, she could see no immediate hope for victory. Except one. Unleash the submarines, the generals cried, and England would soon be "gasping in the reeds like a fish." The blockaders would become the blockaded. For months the generals had hammered away on this theme, and, as the signs of exhaustion multiplied, they finally prevailed. Foreign Minister Zimmermann, who had long opposed the idea, fell in line. But this big jolly bachelor, the first to break the Junker barrier in the higher regions of the Kaiser's officialdom, perceived that the repeated sinkings of American vessels would sooner or later torpedo American neutrality, and
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