Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set (12 page)

CHAPTER 7

I
t hadn't been much of a date. Or a date at all. Had it? Just as lunch hadn't been more than just, well...lunch... Damn it, now that he was home alone with a stomach full of cheesecake and too much coffee, all Kent could do was overthink things.

Over the past few months, he and Stephanie had met about once a week in the office and had shared dozens of emails, a few phone calls, once or twice an instant-message conversation on the computer to update him on some new developments. She had a terrific laugh. He knew she was originally from California but was renting an apartment locally, because they'd talked about their mutual love for the big fancy grocery store chain that had been putting in a location near his office. He knew she liked punk rock and indie music, because he'd caught a glance at her playlist once when she'd set her phone on his desk. She was smart, quick-witted and kindhearted, and he knew all of that because for the past six months, he'd been pretending he wasn't completely into her.

Now it was all he could think about.

After her friend had not-so-subtly mentioned to him on her way to the bathroom that Stephanie was sitting by herself, Kent had not intended to ask her out. He'd made his way over to say a friendly hello, that was all, but...well. A crappy birthday, a recent breakup, the stress about his job and Mom... Stephanie had given him a friendly smile and that laugh, and he'd been a goner. He'd asked her to join him for dessert on impulse, figuring she'd give him a gentle excuse. It wasn't a workday lunch, after all. She could've easily given him an excuse. Even when she agreed to go with him, he hadn't expected to have such a great time.

Something had told him she'd been surprised, too. They hadn't kissed or anything like that, it not being a date and all, but she'd hugged him. She'd smelled good. She was warm and soft, and she'd pressed her cheek to his at the end of the night in a way that had reminded him of the dream. That kiss. The feeling of her against him.

Ugh. With a groan, he forced himself to roll facedown to press himself into the pillow and try not to pay attention to the semi starting to throb in his pants. He wasn't that much of a creep, was he? But as his dick got harder the more he thought about the way her hair smelled and how she'd felt against him, Kent had to admit that maybe he was.

He wasn't in any good place to even be thinking about dating someone, not with the lingering scent of Carol's perfume still haunting him from unexpected places like the linen closet and the back bedroom upstairs that she'd used as an office. It didn't matter that things had been over with Carol long before she'd walked out. It didn't matter that he'd been noticing Stephanie for months.

“See you,” Stephanie had said just before she got into her own car outside the restaurant and drove away.

Had she meant at work or something else? Kent let out a low mutter of frustration. When had he gotten so bad at this? Before Carol he'd certainly been no Lothario, but it wasn't as if he'd ever been afraid to ask a woman out.

“That's it,” he said, determined. He pulled out his phone and found Stephanie's number.

Hey, it's Kent
, he typed.
I had a great time tonight. Maybe we can do it again sometime?

There. Sent. More casual than a call but not quite as impersonal as an email. He glanced at the clock. Just past one in the morning. If she answered him right away, that was a good sign, right?

She didn't, though, and five minutes later he'd begun to regret sending the text at all. Oh, well. Nothing to do about it now except feel like a jerk and go to sleep.

Except he couldn't. Not with the steady pressure in his boxers, his erection straining the front. He ran a hand over the soft material, cupping himself for a minute. Pretending he wasn't going to jack off for about thirty seconds before... Fuck, why pretend when he knew exactly what he wanted.

Well, it might not be what he wanted, but it was what he had. He shucked off his boxers, then stroked himself fully erect. He bit back a groan, arching into the pleasure. Lower, he used his other hand to cup his balls. He set the pace easily, steady and rhythmic. No teasing. Nothing fancy. He was going to get off, that was all.

That was the intention anyway, but as his mind filled with the memory of soft hair, sweet perfume, a lush body pressed to his, Kent found himself slowing. Stroking, languid, then palming the head as he pushed upward into his fist. Fuck, it felt good. Closer, closer, he edged himself.

He'd started off wanting a quick, easy climax, but now he wanted to linger. Savor. He wanted to lose himself in desire and keep himself teetering right there, in that place where nothing mattered but the feeling of flesh on flesh. Where he could let his mind run free and imagine all the things he wanted to do, and tell himself later he was swept away with lust. That it didn't matter.

He muttered, low, a small curse. He fucked his fist a little faster, then slowed to squeeze just behind the head to keep his orgasm at bay for a little longer. With his other hand, he slid his thumb down the seam of his balls, pressing that sweet spot that would not only help him fend off the climax but also make it that much more intense.

Up, up, tighter, twisted. The pleasure built and surged, and Kent rocked with it. Until finally, there it was, that moment of no return. Like that initial crest of a roller coaster in the front car, looking over that precipice before the first screaming, delighted plunge. Ecstasy burst through him. His cock pumped, spurting his belly with hot fluid. Spent, gasping, he let the last final strokes finish him off.

Blinking, Kent stared at the ceiling while his heartbeat slowed. The stickiness on his skin prompted him to roll a little to grab a cloth from the nightstand. Cleaned up, he settled back onto the pillows and closed his eyes. He sought sleep.

When he couldn't find it, he contented himself again with thoughts of Stephanie's laughter and the curve of her smile.

CHAPTER 8

T
he sly beep of an incoming text tugged at Stephanie's subconscious just as she was turning around in her usual entry spot into the Ephemeros. She ignored the text. She had only a few hours before dawn, and while she wasn't going to have any trouble sleeping far past that, all of the times she'd encountered the thief had been during local “normal” sleeping hours.

That didn't mean he was actually in her area or time zone, just that he was sleeping during those times. Experience had taught her, though, that it was likely the shaper who was pulling these stunts was in fact pretty close to her. It was why Vadim had sent her here to Central Pennsylvania to find him. She could've worked remotely from California, sure, but it would've meant a fucked-up sleep schedule for her.

Sinking deeper into the dream, Stephanie focused on her representation. She'd worked cases where she'd had to use a different sort of face and body, even a few times a different form altogether, and she liked the challenges of forming and keeping those changes. This case hadn't required her to be anything other than who she was, at least beyond the fashions. So far, though, that hadn't worked out so well for her. The closest she'd come to getting near the perp was the night she'd represented in that romantic gown, and look what had happened.

Kent.

What had that all been about tonight? Cheesecake. Laughter. He'd very carefully not tried anything even remotely romantic. Should she have been relieved or offended? Maybe she ought to have been a little more aggressive. Made the first move.

She didn't have time to worry about that now. She was going to find out the real-world identity of Mr. Slick tonight if she had to travel the entire Ephemeros to do it. Then she'd be done with this job and that would mean the weird work issue with Kent would no longer matter. Of course, it also meant she'd probably be heading back to California.

She'd worry about that part later, too.

For now, Stephanie stretched, loving the way her muscles and bones worked together inside the dream world. Nothing hurt, nothing cramped or ached. Sure, she could get injured if she wasn't careful, but she'd been doing this for such a long time that the only way she really got hurt was if someone did something to her before she could stop them, and not something nice like shaping a platter of dessert in front of her or tempting her into a kiss she really wanted anyway.

On her last case she'd ended up going face-to-face with a woman bent on terrorizing her cheating husband into a heart attack while he slept—that bitch had been righteously crazy, and while Stephanie couldn't blame her for wanting revenge, murder was still murder even if you committed it while you were sleeping. That woman had claimed not to know she was shaping anything, but her innocence had been a farce, proven when she'd turned herself into a mass of seething snakes and launched herself at Stephanie. The bites had been excruciating, leaving scars, but nothing Stephanie hadn't been able to handle. She'd managed to wrestle them into a knot and shove them inside a box, slamming and locking the lid until the woman had begged for release.

Of course, her remorse might not be lasting. That was the problem with punishment in the Ephemeros. You couldn't make it stick, not without doing major harm to the sleeper's real-world body. Putting someone in a permanent coma to keep them imprisoned in the dream world was a last resort, saved for only the worst sorts of criminals.

Stephanie's goal on this case was to find out Mr. Slick's real-world counterpart and then send the information to Vadim. Other members of the Crew would connect him to the actual thefts. It might require some fancy finagling of records or “proof,” because it wasn't as though they could go in and explain how he'd been using dreams to manipulate people into giving him their financial information so he could simply take what he wanted without leaving a trace. But it was Vadim's job to assign a Crew member skilled in creating those sorts of tracks, not hers.

Her job was to find out who he was.

When she had, she was going to take a long vacation, just as she'd promised Denise. Someplace warm, with lots of drinks and food and dancing, and she would stay up late every night and barely sleep at all.

Stephanie settled deeper into the dream world with a concerted push of her will. She was aware, as always, of her sleeping body. Her head on the pillow. The weight of the blankets. The white-noise machine. Those things were her touchstones. Her way back in the unlikely event she found herself lost in here. It had never happened to her, but she knew it could.

Every shaper she'd ever met knew the stories of others who'd lost their way and couldn't wake up. She'd never met one, had not in fact met anyone who ever had, but like urban legends about bodies stuffed beneath hotel mattresses and spider eggs in bubble gum, there was always someone who knew someone who'd heard about someone else. Unlike the spider eggs, Stephanie believed in the real truth of being made incapable of getting out of the Ephemeros.

It was also not likely she was going to come across Mr. Slick tonight, it being so close to morning, but she figured she had to try. Where might he be? How about a place where a lot of other people were still clinging to their dreams before the alarms went off. So she opened herself to the push and pull of the collective will that shaped the dream world and let herself be drawn toward... What would it be tonight?

The last time it had been that Victorian mansion. Sometimes it was a dance club, others an amusement park, a shopping mall, a stadium. The places where people congregated in the real world were often represented in the Ephemeros, too, sometimes with bits and pieces of all those sorts of locations all in one. Tonight it was a park, a big one, with green grass and trees and benches and sweetly curving paths on which some people strolled in old-fashioned clothes and others rode bikes or skated on wheels they'd manifested from the bottoms of their feet.

She saw a few people manifesting with wings or horns or tails, a few curious creatures that looked like beasts but that she knew were really people who wanted, at least for a night, to be animal and not human. She saw no sign of her target. Maybe he'd had a run-in with the Crew before now and recognized her, or maybe he was just wily, because he always managed to disappear before she could get to him.

“Hi,” said a man from beside her. He was dressed like Bert from
Mary Poppins
, the Disney version. Striped pants, white jacket, pink bow tie. A cartoonish penguin kept step beside him, a part of his manifestation and not a separate entity.

“Not tonight, buddy. Sorry.” Stephanie shielded herself from the sleeper's hesitant attempt at shaping her into the matching nanny to his chimney sweep. What sort of dream
that
guy was having, she had no desire to discover. She tried hard not to judge what people dreamed about, but damn, there were some things she really didn't want to know.

He was easy enough to put off. So was everything else going on. She didn't feel any other shapers here right now, at least none who were working hard to mold the Ephemeros to their will. Like herself, they were going along with whatever the collective unconscious wanted. She didn't try to seek them out. She did, however, send out a firm but discreet push.

Have you seen him?

She shaped it as a text message and a photo of Mr. Slick's silhouette, appearing in identical phones in every hand she could reach within the scope of her talents. When no answers came, she moved through the park, shaping and sending without much hope of an answer. She hadn't set herself an alarm, but others clearly had, because one by one many of the locals began fading away. Not all of them, obviously. There were always going to be people sleeping and dreaming all over the world at all different times. But for the most part, those in her part of the world were beginning to wake.

With a sigh, Stephanie sent out one more push. She should wake up, too, so she could accomplish some things in the real world and get back to sleep tonight at a decent time. First, though, she thought she might enjoy herself a bit.

That was when the answer came in, of course, just as she was getting ready to shape herself a warm and sunny spot on a sandy beach. Her phone vibrated in her hand. She looked at it.

I've seen him.

She spotted him at once, a tall man with angular features and the phone she'd shaped in his hand. “Kent?”

He smiled, and while his representation in the dream was slightly different tonight—he was a little more muscular, dressed a little better, his hair a little longer, that smile was exactly the same. “Hi, Stephanie. Did you get my text?”

“You've seen him?”

“Not that one. The other one. The one I sent you earlier, about what a great time I had tonight.”

Neither of them had taken a step, but they now faced each other with only a few inches between them. He'd done that, and she'd been so surprised to see him that she hadn't resisted his push. It was the same as it had been in the mansion. Stephanie laughed lightly.

“Oh...no. I'll get that one when I wake up. But thank you. I had a great time with you, too.” Honesty was so much easier here, where people might shape themselves to look different but almost never lied about how they truly felt.

“Good. I'd like to take you out on a date,” Kent said.

Stephanie laughed again. “Sure. If you ask me, I'll say yes.”

“Yeah?” He grinned.

She shrugged, knowing that whatever they talked about in here, he was probably not going to act on it when he woke up. He'd play it off as a dream. Not real.

More important, she had a case to work on. “So. You've seen him. This guy.”

She pushed another grainy photo onto Kent's phone. It was the best she had. He looked at it, then nodded.

“Oh. Yeah. He's been around here. What's he done?”

“He steals money from people by making them give up their private account information in the dreams, then uses it in the waking world to access their credit cards and stuff.” She tilted her head to study him, wondering if he'd put the pieces together.

Kent in the waking world had seemed like a pretty smart guy, and he maintained that here. “He's the guy who's been hacking into Member's Best?”

“Yes. And probably lots of other places, too. Where have you seen him?”

“He was talking to that woman over there.” Kent pointed.

Stephanie looked. The woman was sitting on a bench, feeding a covey of colorful pigeons. Not the most exciting dream she'd ever witnessed, but again, she wasn't going to judge.

“Hey,” Kent said as she moved toward the woman. “Wait a second!”

Stephanie glanced at him. “I'll see you in your office on Monday. Ask me out on that date. I'll say yes. I promise.”

With that, she moved away from him, heading for Mr. Slick. “Hey!”

He turned. At the sight of her, the fangs he'd been sprouting shrank into his gums. He took a stumbling step back. The woman he'd been talking to made a small noise of relief.

“Can I go? Can I please go? Please, I want to get out of here!”

Without looking at her, Stephanie said, “Yes. Get.”

The woman moved away but remained, a shadow standing in silence. Mr. Slick didn't move at all. He had no face, not really, just an amorphous blob of features struggling to rearrange. Into what? Something that would scare her?

“You might as well forget about it,” she told him. “I know what's what in here, and you're not going to scare me. So why don't we have a little talk about this business with the bank accounts? What do you say? I promise you, it'll be much better for you if you cooperate.”

Mr. Slick's laugh was low and bubbling, like something rising from a mud puddle. A mouth appeared, or the semblance of one. “I know you.”

“Do you?” Stephanie kept her gaze on him while she used her will to weave an invisible net, sticky, thinking she might at least bind him in place with it long enough to get some answers.

“Yes. I do. I've seen you before. But you don't pay attention to me, do you? Just that once. But every other time, I'm just...” Mr. Slick stopped and shook his head. Features formed and disappeared. He grew taller, thin, long arms and legs. Menacing.

“You mean out there? In the waking world?” Carefully, she twitched her fingers to toss the slightly glimmering strands around his ankles without alerting him to the binding. It wouldn't hold him long once he knew about it, but she hoped it would keep him in place a little longer anyway.

“Yes. Nobody pays attention out there. In here, I'm...somebody important. I do things. People give me things!”

Stephanie tugged the binding the tiniest bit tighter. It would trip him up, at the least, if he tried to run. “You steal things. That's what you mean.”

“What difference does it make? Out there, nobody gives me anything!” Mr. Slick's voice wavered, getting thin.

The air between them wriggled, like the heat waves coming off a summertime road. Mr. Slick himself grew thin, transparent. Not waking, but definitely disappearing.

“Stay right there,” Stephanie warned. “I need to talk to you.”

“I don't have to talk to you! You're not my... You're not anything to me!”

Gone was the tall silhouette of the vampire, the werewolf, the slick thief in black leather. Replacing it was a smaller frame—black hair, pale face, dark eyes, a red slash of a mouth—but something nevertheless familiar about it. And then he was pushing her, hard, slamming her with a vibrating force that was not physical and yet might as well have been, because it sent her stumbling back.

She lost hold of the binding. She caught her balance before she could fall on her ass. Her heart raced, expecting an attack, but Mr. Slick only pushed again. Harder this time, sending Stephanie back another few feet.

“You can't stop me! I can do what I want, and I'm not hurting anyone! They can all make more money!”