Dying Dreams (Book 1 of Dying Dreams Trilogy) (16 page)

She turned off the shower, dried off, and put on the clothes Rice had laid out for her. At 5’2” she was short by anyone’s standards, and Rice was a good ten inches taller than her and broader than her by at least that. She pulled the sweatpants on, tied the waist as tight as she could, and then rolled it over about six times. At least they would stay on, but she still had to roll the cuffs several times. The t-shirt he’d given her must have been too small for him, because it didn’t fall to her knees, but the sweatshirt swallowed her.

She didn’t even bother checking the mirror to see how ridiculous she looked. She walked out to the living room and found Rice, in jeans and a t-shirt, pacing like an angry tiger in a cage. When he saw her, he smiled, and something in her stilled and relaxed.

“I guess my clothes are a little big on you.”

She just couldn’t resist an intro like that. “You could help me take them off.”

There wasn’t a moment of confusion clouding his face, the heat she’d seen earlier was back in a heartbeat and then he was across the room and his hands were sliding up her back under the sweatshirt and the t-shirt and his mouth was on hers. She pressed herself against him and slid her tongue into his mouth, reveling in his warmth and how good he tasted. He groaned, tightening his grip on her, before his kiss became harder and more desperate. She lost herself in that kiss, in the feel of his body against hers, in the way the calluses on his hands tickled her skin.

She ran her hands under his shirt, and felt the hard muscles in his back move as he moved against her. She could feel he was hard in all the right places and she knew, more than she’d ever known with any other man, that he wanted her. Possibly even more than the air he breathed, he wanted her. She could feel it in the way he pulled her close and hung on, like he couldn’t get enough, and how he kissed her like they had a time limit or an expiration date. Doubts flashed in the back of her mind, but she pushed them away, because what she was feeling with him was too good to overthink.

“No,” she said, her voice sounding husky even to her own ears, when he moved away.

Pain flashed across his face. “We shouldn’t do this,” he said. “Frankie’s right about me. I’m a terrible boyfriend. I’m terrified of commitment, and–”

“I’m not asking for commitment.” She stepped back into him, pushing his shirt up and kissing his ridged belly. If they stopped and she had time to think, she’d probably agree with him, and she didn’t want to stop. Her whole life, everything she’d dreamed and wanted, was gone, and her new life involved scary as shit pirates with missile launchers. She wanted to indulge herself and luxuriate in him for just a little while. He moaned, but he put his hands on her shoulders and moved her gently away from him.

“While I appreciate that, we need to tread carefully here. If everything goes as planned, we will be partners and if Reynolds finds out we’re sleeping together–”

“We’re not sleeping.” She knew he was trying to be serious, but she was in no mood to listen to reason.

He didn’t roll his eyes or get frustrated. He just smiled at her. “I want you to understand what you’re getting into. If Reynolds finds out–”

“Then I’ll get stuck with a new partner or fired. Or we could end up hating each other and still have to work together. Plus, you’re shit at relationships and I fall in love way too easily. I get all that. This whole thing is a recipe for disaster and I should go sit over there on that couch and you should sit in that chair and we should talk, but I’ve had a shitty few days and I’m scared… no, I’m fucking terrified and you… you are the first thing that’s felt good and right in a very long time.”

He took a step closer to her, but he didn’t put his hands on her and her body was starting to get really angry at him for that. “I don’t want to hurt you, or screw your life up any more than I already have.”

“I don’t want those things either but, right now, I want you and I’m willing to risk the other stuff.”

He took another step forward and, that time, he put his hands on her and slid the sweatshirt and t-shirt over her head. He looked down at her naked breasts and groaned. “God, you are perfect.”

“Oh, I’m far from perfect,” she said, as he cupped her breasts in his hands and ran his thumbs over her nipples, bringing them to attention. He kissed her again, a bit less desperately, then he picked her up and carried her to his room, his mouth still on hers.

He laid her gently on his bed, stood and pulled his t-shirt off from behind his head. He took her breath away. She’d been with a lot of men, a lot of very good-looking men, but he had muscles in places she didn’t even realize a person could get muscles, he was all ripples and planes and perfection. She sat up and put her hands and then her mouth on him, feeling his contours. He stood perfectly still, not touching her, barely breathing, and let her explore him. For a few minutes anyway, then he said, “My turn,” and pushed her back down on the bed. He pulled her sweatpants off, laughing at how many times she’d had to roll them over, but he stopped laughing when she lay before him completely exposed.

She tried to sit up, but he met her eyes, his own hot and hazy, and pushed her gently back down. “It’s my turn,” he said. So she submitted, but she wasn’t able to keep her hands still like he had, she ran them through his hair and over his back, feeling the muscles there flex and loosen as he moved his mouth over her. He tasted his way down her, skipping over her center and kissing the inside of her thighs before making sure her calves and her ankles felt loved. It felt so good she couldn’t stand it and, just when she was about to ask him for more, he moved up and put his mouth on her, right where she wanted him to be. He licked and sucked like he knew exactly where she wanted to be touched and he had her screaming his name so fast it was almost embarrassing. He moved back up her, and smiled at her. “I do have neighbors, you know.”

“What’s your point?” She pushed at his shoulders, and he leaned back and let her unbutton and unzip his jeans. He wasn’t wearing boxers and she saw him, large and ready and waiting. Her smirk at the possibility of embarrassing him with his neighbors faded as her smugness was replaced by desire. She tried to push his jeans down, but they stuck on his bare skin and his solid, she assumed well-formed ass. She looked up at him for help, only to see him smirking down at her with an expression similar to the one she’d had moments before. “Is that funny, Sloane? ‘Cause I’ve already gotten mine, so I can just walk away if you make this too difficult.”

Her threat didn’t appear to faze him, and she considered carrying it out, but then he licked those lips and said, “I didn’t expect you to back down from a challenge so easily.” Obviously, the physical buttons on her body weren’t the only ones he knew how to push.

“I don’t like you, at all. Not even a little bit.” She pushed and pulled until she got those jeans down, then she leaned back on her elbows and just looked at him. His thighs were corded with muscle as thick and carved as the rest of him. He leaned over her, but she pushed him away. “Stand up and let me see what you’ve got.” He stood and faced her, his eyebrows high. She lifted a hand and spun a finger in the air. He rolled his eyes, so she did it again with a bit of a pout. He spun, but too quickly for her to really take him in. When he was facing her, she spun her finger again. “Slowly.”

He sighed and turned a slow inch at a time. When his back was to her, he flexed his butt a few times and raised his arms in the air for a few muscle man poses. There was no doubt the dude was ripped and Liza might have laughed at his show if she wasn’t marveling at how beautiful he was. “You may face me,” she said.

She was a little worried the show might have caused his interest to droop, but he was still ready, so she sat back up and had her mouth on him before he’d completed his spin. He gasped and she smiled against him. She teased him with her tongue and tasted him, taking him in as far as she could. She heard his breathing increase, “That feels so good, I don’t ever want you to stop, but I want to be inside you.” She let him pull her up to his mouth and he kissed her so well she forgot where she was for a moment.

He magically produced a condom and slid it on. She was so fascinated by his hands on himself, she was pretty sure she could watch him all day and not get bored. Then his hands were on her and she decided that was better. He pushed her back down and slid into her, and he felt so good and so right that she gasped and all thoughts left her as he moved against her and brought her to that screaming vista of pleasure. He took her there two more times, before he reached his own climax.

When he was done, he hugged her to him so tightly that she felt something inside her break wide open. Tears pricked her eyes, but she swallowed them back down. She didn’t want to have to explain him that she was crying because, for the first time in her life, she felt like she belonged somewhere, she felt like she’d come home, and an emptiness inside her no longer felt so cold and dark. She couldn’t tell the commitment-phobe that she wanted to stay with him in that moment forever.

He sighed in her ear and then he let her go and left to clean up in the bathroom. She lay there, terrified of what she felt for him and fully aware of how badly he could, and probably would, hurt her. Sleepiness overcame her fears and her thoughts and she was just starting to drift off, when she felt Sloane return to the bed. She expected him to snuggle down and wrap himself around her and, when he didn’t, her comfy, sleepy feeling vanished. Maybe he wanted her to go, she realized.

She wrapped the comforter tight around her and sat up to see him watching her, a wariness in his eyes. “God, I almost fell asleep. I should get dressed and head home.”

His hand on her wrist stopped her and she looked at him. “I’d like it if you stayed.”

His words were right, but his expression was all wrong and Liza knew all about overstaying a welcome. “I’d like to stay, but I have a dog and a cat and they’ll expect to be fed and walked. Thank you for… and I’ll see you.” She tried to climb out of bed, but Sloane didn’t let go of her wrist.

“Frankie’s right,” he said. “I’m not very good at relationships and I don’t know that I won’t screw this up and hurt you, but I want you to stay. I should let you leave and pretend like this never happened. Us, together, will probably get us fired or killed or… worse, but I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want us to go back to being just a little more than strangers. I want you to stay here in my bed and… in my life.” It touched something in Liza to see him looking so vulnerable.

“Okay,” she said. “I’d like to stay.” And she realized she wasn’t just saying that for him, she wasn’t just saying that because she was a sucker for vulnerability in anyone. She wanted to stay for herself. He made her feel safe and wanted and there was nowhere else she’d rather be. That thought scared her more than anything else. She’d had plenty of relationships and gotten serious with a handful of guys, but she’d always kept some distance. She’d always avoided getting too attached. She already felt that necessary distance slipping and she knew she should walk away, before she got lost in him, but she couldn’t. He wrapped her in his arms and she wasn’t strong enough to pull away.

“Good, because there’s another reason I want you to stay. My grandmother is a full siren and she told me some things about Banshees and their abilities. It’s too late to talk about all of it, but before you go to sleep, you should know that you can block the dreams. You don’t have to have them. There’s a poultice you can make and–”

“I don’t want to block the dream tonight. I want to help that girl if I can. I want to find out what happened to her.”

He nodded, his chin bumping her head, like he wasn’t surprised. “Okay. I’ll be here. If there’s anything I can do…”

“Thank you.”

“We can talk about what we saw tonight and my grandmother in the morning, but before we go to sleep, I need to know why you weren’t more afraid of those pirates.”

She laughed, relieved that the question was so easy to answer. “I was terrified. I thought I was going to pee my bikini bottoms, but it wasn’t my first encounter with pirates and I knew they’d kill us both if we gave them the opportunity.”

“You knew right away they weren’t really the Coast Guard, then?”

Her pause must have given away her shock, and he chuckled. “Of course, not. Well, you had me fooled. I had no idea you were scared, and you have great instincts. You saved our lives.”

“No, I–”

He put a finger to her lips and shook his head. “You saved my life, and I’m glad you’re going to be my partner. Fulsom would have sold me up the river in a heartbeat.”

She couldn’t help but smile, even though she was pretty sure he was full of shit. He tightened his grip on her and they snuggled down and fell asleep together.

*SLOANE*

Sloane woke up to Liza screaming. He reached for her but, in the dim light from the moon, he could see her eyes were still closed and he didn’t want to interrupt her dream if she was re-living what had happened to the woman she’d touched. Well, he
wanted
to interrupt her, there were tears streaming down her face and she stopped screaming and began whimpering, and he wanted to wake her up and take her away from that place so badly he had to fist his hands in the sheets and hold on with everything he had not to shake her awake. Then holding the sheets wasn’t enough and he had to get up and pace the room. The distance between them and the pain on her face made him want to punch something. He couldn’t leave the room, he couldn’t leave her alone, but when her eyes finally flew open and she looked at him, terror and hurt and anger so clear on her face, he moved toward her.

He wasn’t fast enough. She leaped off the bed and into the bathroom before he made it to her side. He jumped onto and over the bed and into the bathroom. He knelt next to her on the cold tile floor and held her hair and rubbed her back while she wept and vomited. When she was done, she turned and snuggled into him, and sobbed like her heart was breaking. She was shaking and sweaty and she smelled like vomit, and he couldn’t hold her tight enough. He couldn’t do anything to make her pain and fear go away and it killed him. It killed him that he couldn’t do more to help her and it killed him that she would want to do it again, that she would want to help other people and she’d dream again.