by Michele Hauf
There seemed to be only men in her life, he realized then. That disturbed Max for reasons he couldn’t put a finger on.
“Almost done,” she said. “Sorry I didn’t have anything but green thread. Your hair will cover it, though. You sure you don’t have any broken bones?”
“Why? You know how to set bones, too?” He resisted putting his palm on her hip. She stood between his legs, bent over him, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth. “Nothing broken. Promise you won’t tie that thread in a pretty bow?”
“Promise.”
Now he did touch. He couldn’t stop himself. The slender curve of her hip was the perfect place to press his thumb and curl his fingers around back. He felt as if he was touching something he shouldn’t, and any second he’d get a swat of admonishment. He liked the dangerous aspect of their proximity.
For a moment they held each other’s stare.
What was that touch for? she seemed to ask.
I’m not really sure, he silently beamed at her. But I like it.
Aby was the first to clear her throat and start fiddling with her supplies.
“Green’s my favorite color,” he said of the slender skirt she wore.
“Really? Good pick. I like it, too. It’s one of few colors I recognize.”
“That’s right, cats don’t see red well.”
“Mostly green, blues and sometimes yellow. Good thing your eyes are blue.”
They appeared blue to her because of the demon shadow within. Max’s eyes were really gray.
He slid his hand up, pushing up the wet shirt to expose her skin. Soft, pale and warm.
This time her look said, I dare you, followed with a sweet, pretty please?
What the hell was he doing? That demon must have whacked him hard because he wasn’t thinking straight.
In proof, Max leaned forward, and kissed her on the soft patch of exposed skin. Then he pressed his cheek aside her stomach and held her, arms wrapped about her hips.
“You saved my life, Highwayman. Again.”
He’d do it again if he had to. But he shouldn’t have had to do it once if he’d been on the ball. Way to protect the girl, Highwayman.
And yet, he’d learned something incredible while fighting those demonic bastards.
He drew away and she tapped his forehead. Still a few stitches remaining. “They were after me.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because the leader, the ugly one, said Severo wanted my ass.”
“Severo?” She tugged the needle and Max winced. “But…Severo sent them? Do you think the one the other night…? Oh, gods. But why?”
“He’s looking out for you. I can understand that. I am the man who kills your kind. But doesn’t the wolf realize you could become collateral damage? Ouch.”
“Sorry. Just have to snip off the end. There. You’re good as you can get. Let me dab it with some alcohol.”
Max gritted his teeth as she went over his bruised face with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball, not because it stung, but because the heat of her touched him, enveloped him. He wanted to lean forward and bury his face against her breasts, and close his eyes.
He wanted to find silence. Peace. Dreams.
Thinking about dreams, he’d need to shadow, and soon. It always aided the healing process if he could surrender to the shadow following any kind of injury.
“Would you mind if I took a shower?”
“I was hoping you’d ask. I haven’t seen so much mud.”
“I’ll try to clean up your floor, too.”
“Don’t worry about it. I have a mop. While you’re at it, I need to call a certain werewolf and tell him to back off.”
“No, Aby.” He clasped her hand, so delicate in his. She was so…perfect. “Let the wolfman protect you. It’s his right. I can deal with a few demons. I just don’t want you getting hurt.”
“Exactly. Which is why I’m going to call him. If you toss out your clothes, I’ll put them through a wash and dry.”
“That’s okay.” He paid the maids at the hotel to do that. The last thing he needed was to walk around in Aby’s place with a towel about his waist. Mixed signals, anyone?
Yes, on both their parts.
Severo wasn’t answering his phone. Of course, it was nearly four in the morning. Aby left a message to call her when he got back in town.
Lying across the bed, she tucked her head against her arm and listened to the shower beat a syncopated rhythm with the rain.
The Highwayman was naked in her home. Heat infused her at the mere thought.
Aby yawned, and with visions of soap-slickened abs, she drifted to sleep.
Exiting the steamy bathroom half an hour later, Max found Aby lying on the bed, which had been moved up against the wall.
“Sleeping?”
Drawn toward her peaceful slumber, he stopped at the end of the bed to admire her. He stood long minutes, watching, trying to match his breath with her languorous ones. Wondering—for the umpteenth time—what it must be like to sleep.
And also, would she flinch out of sleep if he touched her there, where her breasts rose and fell with each soft breath?
Max drew his fingers away from her skin. He had no right.
But then, she did want to get to know him better. Wasn’t turnabout fair play?
Just a peek was all he wanted.
“It won’t hurt,” he muttered, with a grin. “Promise.”
The pull to shadow always manifested as a dark desire he would not resist. Clenching his fists at the tug to his soul, Max surrendered to the shadow. It melted over him, claiming, cracking away his humanity. He could be a solid man-shape as the shadow, or a mere blot upon the floor. The shadow chose.
Tonight, he hovered in solid form at the end of Aby’s bed. Adorned in darkness and raiments of night, the shadow devoured the peaceful quiet. Opening its maw, it breathed the silence.
Before it lay a sleeping being. It did not discern age or sex. The energy was strong. So strong, it drew the shadow forward.
It glided, dark night-robes of insubstantial shadow slipping across the rumpled white sheets. A hand spread out, its long taloned fingers splayed as it positioned over the sleeping entity’s head. There, where dreams dazzled and reviled. Dreams so delicious and wicked and cruel. It fed upon emotion ensnared by sleep. As the eyelids fluttered with movement beneath, the shadow hitched a ride.
This one smiled in sleep, a cozy slumber. Flickers of another being manifested in the shadow’s preternatural experience. Larger. Stronger. Shaped differently than the dreamer but of the same species. The being pressed its mouth over the sleeper’s mouth.
A kiss. The shadow knew the ways of mortal sleepers.
Freedom. Green. So clean. Scampering over grass. Not this time, but from time long ago. The images were not in the sleeper’s mind, though.
The shadow marveled at the strange connection to the other being’s dreams. The sleeper was not the one it observed. That being was…itself.
Curious. It had never blended with the dreamer before. It must know this one.
Another look.
Flashes of skin. Fingers dragging along flesh. Groaning bodies. Sweat glistening. Mouths kissing and moving along skin and curves and there, to a hard nipple.
The dreaming being arched her back. The other, dark and intent—him—slipped his fingers between her legs. In exquisite surrender the dreamer cried out.
He, the shadow as human shape, entered the dreamer, hilting himself inside her. He moaned, riding the tremulous promise of orgasm.
They fed one another until they could take no more. Until exquisite release overwhelmed both of them. The shadow experienced the climax with a surprising shudder. Its entire form trembled. And it felt the intensity of orgasm.
What was this? The sensation of climax felt so real as if it had shaken the shadow’s very being. It made it gasp and its form trembled.
Bleeding cowboys.
That thought hadn’t been
the shadow’s but the other—itself. It had little control. The nonshadow form would soon take over.
Delicately sinister, the ravishing tremors flickered away.
The shadow relented. Night receded from the white bedclothes. With it, the shadow extracted a minute chord of soul from the sleeper. It was a different sort. Not human.
Seeking the night, it turned and floated across the room toward the tall window it could easily permeate.
Aby sat up. Something was in the room.
“Max?”
She’d forgotten he was taking a shower. No sound came from the bathroom. The room had darkened considerably. She’d been so tired she must have drifted off.
She slid a hand down her stomach and realized she was moist between her legs. Dreams of the Highwayman had caused that.
The crystal crackle of glass alerted her, and she snapped a look to the patio door. A dark figure in glossy black clothing flashed her a blue-eyed stare. Then it turned to the door and became shadow, melting through the glass without damaging it.
“Max?”
No one answered. That thing—that creature—had been a demon. Nothing else had eyes that glowy color.
How had it gotten past her wards? Where was Max?
Scanning the room, she made sure no other shadowy things were about, then scrambled into the bathroom.
It was dark and empty, with only a wet towel caked with mud hanging on the rack. Max was gone. So, she wondered, what was that thing?
Tiptoeing out to the bed, she spread a hand over the sheets. Could that have been his shadow form?
It was the only explanation. No matter what the thing was, or how many wards she might have against it, if it had entered her home as Max, it had been given permission to be here.
With a shudder, she settled onto the bed and tucked her knees to her chest. There were some things in this realm she couldn’t comprehend. And that scared the crap out of her.
Max released the shadow outside the condo. Gasping, he clung to the stucco wall, palms skinning against the rough surface.
“What the hell?”
He felt out of breath, as if he’d just climaxed. Max struggled with what he’d experienced.
“Impossible. I’ve never…” He panted.
Never had he climaxed during a dream walk before. As a shadow he could watch lovers and feel the moment of pleasure in the dream. But he could never recall that pleasure or retain the feeling after dropping the shadow.
Besides, he couldn’t climax. Hadn’t since 1758.
Yet now…?
He slid a hand over his erection. Breaths still coming rapidly, he wanted to believe, but wasn’t that stupid. He’d felt Aby’s hands on him. Her hot wetness. He’d listened to her cries of satisfaction. He’d felt himself slip inside her. And then…
He slid a hand inside his jeans and felt a sticky wetness. Had he really—
Too good to imagine. But he’d felt it. It was real.
Max’s smile didn’t last long as the realization hit. He’d finally found the one woman who could give him all the pleasures he’d been deprived.
And she was on his kill list.
Chapter 12
S ometime in the early morning hours, Max decided to walk down the street to the café he’d noticed earlier, for hot coffee and cinnamon rolls. The smell satisfied him. Getting to watch Aby eat would, too.
Just getting to see her again would rock his world.
She’d dreamed about him. Them. Making love.
God, if he could dream, he’d dream the same.
During any dream walk through a sexual fantasy he experienced some form of satisfaction. He felt looser, relaxed, as if he had climaxed. Yet the inability to viscerally recall that pleasure did not cease to torment.
Until Aby.
He’d felt it all. He’d ridden the feeling even after shucking the shadow. He’d actually climaxed.
Bounding up the stairs in the foyer, he wanted to shout to the world. She did it! I did it! Aren’t you happy for me?
He had to tell her. To let her in on his darkest secret. After she accepted that he’d walked in her dreams without permission, she’d be happy for him. Because she would understand. She had to. Aby chose to understand him, even knowing that he was in it to kill her.
“Not anymore. Never.” He couldn’t kill the one woman who could give him pleasure.
And if she could also help him exorcise the demon? Man, he’d owe her the world.
Tracing his fingers along the tiled wall as he approached her door, he sensed the energy in the sigils hum through his fingertips. She was smart to have done this. He suspected, though, the werewolf might have something to do with it.
What was that man to her?
Even as he tried to put the wolf out of his brain, his hackles rose as he landed at Aby’s door and sensed the presence inside. He couldn’t smell them, or see through doors, but something about werewolves always made Max’s skin prickle.
He hesitated. It was presumptuous of him to think Aby would like another visit from him so soon. But he’d taken a piece of her into him last night. She had given him something he’d pined for over centuries. He could no more stay away than he could resist shadowing.
Aby had begun to sublimate his needs as much as the shadow.
He finally knocked. The door opened before he could rap a third time.
The werewolf actually snarled at him. “You?” He looked over the brown bag and coffee cup Max held. “Who the hell are you?”
“I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
Max strode inside, tightening his jaw to prevent showing the wince as the wards tugged at him.
The wolf hissed against his neck as he passed closely. He thought of drawing out the whip, but the look on Aby’s face immediately told him she hadn’t expected the wolf to be here.
“He can enter without permission? I thought I told you to stay away from him?”
“Sev, he’s a friend.”
“The Highwayman is your friend? Aby, what the hell has he done to you? This man kills familiars.”
“I wouldn’t harm a hair on Aby’s head,” Max interjected. And he meant it, too. He set down the bag and cup on the counter. “She’s different.”
“Different?” Severo smirked, then looked to Aby. “You said he wants to hire you without Jeremy’s assistance. Doesn’t sound like a friend to me. You have no friends, Aby.”
“Exactly!” She flashed Max an apologetic look.
Had he walked into a domestic squabble? Joy. But he wasn’t about to stand down from the sneering wolf. Not when he felt on top of the world.
“It’s business between Aby and me,” he offered.
That wasn’t true anymore.
He knew wolves marked their mates and could scent when they’d gone astray. If Aby’s claim were true, they were just friends. But did the wolf consider her marked and his own?
She stepped before the wolf. “Severo and I are just friends. And you are always welcome here, Max. Did you bring coffee for me?”
“And cinnamon rolls. Hope you like them.”
“He’s become your friend so quickly? A slayer?”
“Actually I prefer hunter,” Max tossed out. “I hunt all sorts—demons, vampires, ghosts.” Sparkly things. “Werewolves.”
“Is that supposed to be your means to threat?”
Severo stepped close to Max as Aby had gone to retrieve a plate from the cupboard. He sniffed the air, sneering at Max. “I don’t like you, Fitzroy. Of all the familiars in the States, why Aby? You could have easily sought help far from here.”
“I heard she was the best of the remaining few.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Look, I don’t mean to step between you lovebirds. I simply want to—”
Severo reared back at mention of lovebirds. The man glanced to Aby, then looked to the floor.
Why the vicious need to protect on the werewolf’s part? Werewolves usually only prot
ected their own, meaning their mates. And most male wolves preferred to mate with a female werewolf. For all their differences, the two of them shouldn’t even be in the same room.
“Severo isn’t staying long.” Aby offered Max water and he refused. She drank it herself, tossing the whole glass back in one swallow, and then set the crystal glass on the counter. “I told him about the demons attacking you and putting me in harm’s way.”
“That was not my intention,” Severo replied. “I couldn’t stand aside and allow someone who kills your kind to stalk you, could I?”
“I don’t begrudge you the need to protect Aby,” Max said. “I’d be surprised if you had not.”
“For all the good it did. You’re still here.” The wolf growled.
Just try it, Max wanted to say.
Aby rubbed a palm up her arm. A pale-green jersey dress caressed her figure and stopped above her knees.
The woman was his now. Kind of. He’d shadowed her. He’d tasted her soul. She dreamed about him. He’d climaxed—for real. And—All that meant nothing, actually. Not unless he could tell her about it.
“Boys. Will the two of you climb down from your high horses and chill?”
A lift of his chin put the wolf’s eyes above Max’s. The aggression in the air pummeled. But Aby’s presence softened Max’s stance and he stepped back.
“I consider you both friends, and I won’t be happy if either of you goes at the other.”
“Did you tell him about the presence here last night?” the werewolf asked slyly.
“Presence?”
“It was something dark,” Aby said. “I felt like…like it was hovering over my bed. It appeared after you had gone. I didn’t notice you slip out.”
Max swallowed and tilted his head. He really hated having to make this confession in front of the wolf. “That was me. I shadow after an injury. Helps the healing process.”
“I kind of thought so.” Aby’s worried gaze went liquid with unreleased tears.
Could she know what she had done for him? No. The dreamers were never aware of the shadow’s intrusion, though, as Aby had, they could sense a presence.
