WIP Snippet & Writer Drama

It took every ounce of willpower I possess, but I managed to refrain from purchasing an MP3 player and car adapter recently. See, I have this lovely trance playlist, and I drive for hours up into the nearby Appalachians when I need inspiration and to re-energize my writer's mind. Mountains=no radio signal. Older car=no auxiliary port. Me=very sad.

[Insert melodramatic sigh here.]

I have spoiled myself with my digital playlist to the point where listening to a cd where I get a couple good songs in a soup of worthless noise is no longer acceptable. Amazing what technology does to us, isn't it. ...Now, if I could get Pandora in my car? I'd be a happy little lark.

Of course, I'm a Frugal Writer, and try to stick to the necessities in life. (Half my brain is screaming, "OMG! It's music, it's a flippin' Necessity, thankyouverymuch!")

So...
Here's an excerpt from Black's sequel, Blood Red to taunt your taste buds and whet your appetite...

[Jhez has just finished a bit of a sparring match with Konaton, which ends in her having a choke hold on him. She knows he's not fighting anywhere near full force, but testing her. Feeling her out. So she decides to do the same. In her own way.]

"You think I don't. Twenty years and more a Nightwalker, and you think I don't know what I'm asking of you. I find that fascinating." I breathe each word against his neck, close but not touching. Not with my lips, at least. My aura thrums along the edges of his, tangling around his legs, hips, arms--which hang limp by his sides as if the appendages are utterly forgotten.
When I drag my fingertips over the hollow of his throat, up the meridian of his face, he stops breathing. Waiting, poised. I push my way up under his skullcap, rucking it up and off his head. His scalp is all but smooth and hairless, the faintest film of stubble catching at my touch.
I slide my hand back down his meridian, doing my best to ignore how much I enjoy the sweat-slick warmth of his skin against mine. That's not what this is about, at all. He inhales deeply, finally, when I reach his breastbone. His chakras are quiescent. There is no flair of heat to delineate one from the next. Not a single imbalance to indicate a weakness that would give me an 'in' to his aura.
He's battened down the hatches of his energy like a nuclear submarine getting ready to dive.
That impression shatters when I map the contours of his abdomen again, when my fingers snag against his belt.