Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance

by Ashley Jennifer

  He’d been watching her at lunch.

  When, speaking low, she’d told Vince about the meeting with Michael—she didn’t include the Maisie-related details, just that a guy from the Rêve had come to see her, wanted her to do work in Rêve for him, that she felt uneasy about him—Vince had been concerned, too. Had said he’d look into it personally.

  So that was something, at least. Vince could tell the police who’d murdered her, if she didn’t get through the night.

  Tomorrow she’d pursue a restraining order.

  Jordan turned around and found Maze standing in her living room, toothbrush stuck in her mouth. She must have heard the loud scrape of the table against the floor and come to check out the racket. Lil’ sis was staying with her until they figured out all the angles.

  Still frothing, Maze pulled the brush from her teeth and used it to point to the table blocking the door. “Really?”

  Jordan didn’t care if barricading was stupid. “He came to see me at work. Followed me to lunch. What’s to stop him from coming here?”

  “Better him than Mr. Blandman.”

  Very funny. Vince Blackman was not coming, either.

  Maze pointed to her head with the toothbrush. “Besides, he’s not going to break through the door. He’d going to break into your head.”

  “You’re spraying.”

  Maze jabbed the toothbrush back in her mouth, turned on her heel, and went back into the bathroom. Slammed the door.

  Jordan dropped onto the sofa and flipped on the TV to distract herself. The screen flashed with action but the light only hurt her eyes.

  “Jory,” Maze said from the hallway behind her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you’d take to Rêve like I did. It’s supposed to be rare. I thought you’d just have a good time, maybe let yourself have a dream fling. God knows you need to unwind a little.”

  Jordan hit the menu button to scroll through her viewing options, refusing to look around. “What do you courier? For whom?” She was accepting no apologies until her sister came clean.

  “Ugh! It’s not your problem,” Maze said. “I’m handling it.”

  Jordan snorted. “I witnessed how well you were handling it.”

  Her sis came around the side of the sofa and dropped down next to her. “Yeah, well, I might’ve met someone who can help me. He’s with some sort of organization that polices Rêve. He’s legit.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “He seemed official. Was super uptight.”

  Uptight? Jordan shook her head. It was impossible to know whom to trust. Rêve was ripe for opportunists and speculators. Maze certainly couldn’t tell the difference. Criminals could be uptight, too.

  “I’d like to meet him.” And judge for herself.

  “I’ll ask him tonight.”

  “Hell no. You’re not going out.”

  Maze gave her a patient look.

  “What?”

  “I don’t have to go out to meet with him.”

  Jordan shook her head. Still didn’t get it.

  Maze grabbed the remote out of her hand. “I’m meeting him eyes closed?”

  “You have a headset?” The Envoi’s headsets had been artfully designed, more like a low, spirally crown. Dress-up.

  “Some of us don’t need headsets. He said he’d find me.”

  “A random man is going to find you in your dreams?”

  “Yep,” Maze said. “It’s just like…meeting at a bar.”

  She was meeting men at bars, too? Shit. “It’s not like meeting a man at a bar.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s just like the Envoi’s Rêve on that beach. You go up to someone, you talk. Not freaky.”

  It was an invasion of privacy beyond all others. “All of it is freaky.” Then Jordan stood up suddenly, horror flashing through her. “You mean Michael Reese can enter my dreams when I’m asleep?”

  From her lounge, Maze frowned low, one of her deep-in-thought expressions. “I suppose it’s possible. Not likely, though.”

  Jordan was never sleeping again. She’d binge watch TV all night—there were so many series she’d been planning to try. Now was a good time. Then she’d call in sick tomorrow, ’cause she would be. Hold out as long as she could on caffeine and panic.

  She gulped. “During the Envoi’s Rêve, Michael Reese touched me somehow.”

  Maze gave a deep chuckle. “Michael Reese is welcome to touch me however he likes.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s dangerous.”

  “Dangerously hot.”

  Jordan wanted to shake her. “Potentially deadly.”

  “No argument there.”

  Call the police? Have them laugh off her complaint? Rêve is safe. Your sleep is safe.

  “There’s no saving you, sister,” Jordan said. Lord, she’d tried. “You are totally screwed, and I’m not far behind.”

  ***

  She was having trouble falling; he could feel her tension drawing out with each breath, each slow, desperate blink back to alertness. It was as if she hung off a cliff above the ocean, fingertips sliding toward the edge in grain-by-grain increments.

  Wouldn’t take much to dislodge her, but she already didn’t trust him to catch her.

  “Come on,” he urged.

  Her nails clawed the edge, strength weakening.

  And then: a sudden outward breath and the silent fall into the dark water below. Down she plunged, her exhaustion like stones tied around her feet. But the rest of her body, her mind, relished the swift sink.

  God, she was beautiful, made of that silver and indigo light, with just the smallest hint of earthly coloring. She’d take on more definition the more lucid she became.

  Yes, Rook thought. This was so much better than the psychopaths Chimera had had him hunting, their twisted dreams giving life to his own suffocating nightmares. It was time someone else went into that darkness, because if he did again, he wouldn’t come back the same.

  Recruitment was a much better occupation. No wonder Coll stayed with it.

  Beautiful and fearful, she hovered in the flotsam of an incomplete dream, its components—a crumbling wall, the strobe of an ambulance, skeleton trees—blurred and barely recognizable in the waters of sleep. She spotted him, and in a rush of color and minute detail—each strand of hair, the mini mole on her neck, the almost imperceptible vertical striations of her lips—she became herself. In light pink sweats.

  For all her prickle, yeah, he liked her a lot.

  “There you are,” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”

  She backed away, but she could never lose him. And he’d watch over her until she conquered this plane and didn’t need him anymore.

  “What do you want from me? Why won’t you just leave me alone?”

  “I won’t hurt you—” Rook paced a circle around her, an uncomfortable compromise with the part of him that want to reach out and touch. “—but there are things here that can.”

  “You followed me today.”

  “I made sure no one hurt you, no one snatched you from the street.”

  “You threatened me at my work.” She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “I don’t need to threaten you. You’re already in danger, and you did it yourself.”

  She nodded, went stoic. “I should never have tried Rêve.”

  “Not if you had wanted a normal life, but that decision’s behind you now, because you’re here.” His circle had him at her back, and he paused there to feel the waves of her energy vibrate out of her. Felt like the sun shone solely on him.

  “Who are you really?”

  “I told you. I’m Reese.”

  That didn’t sound right. “What are you?”

  “I’m a Chimera. I help keep Rêve safe,” he said, “And I want you to join me.”

  “You want to recruit me.”

  “Yes. I want you badly.” In dreams, sometimes, the truth was hard to disguise. Hard to deny, too.

  “And if I say no?”

  “Eventua
lly you’ll have to agree. Others are sure to find you soon, if they haven’t already. I’m your best option, such as I am.”

  She looked over her shoulder to meet his eyes. “Is there a way to go back to the way things were?”

  He’d answered this already, but he would again and again until she understood. She’d changed. “No. And you don’t want to, anyway. Admit it, you like lucid dreaming, and when you discover what you can do here, the real world will pale in comparison.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want it.”

  Want? There was that word again, piercing through the conversation.

  He wanted to put his hands low on her hips and feel her arch back into him. He could forget what haunted him with her. He knew he could.

  “Are you making me feel like this?” she demanded. “Why do you make me feel like this?”

  “Like what?” Did she feel it too, then? This atomic attraction, like molecular bonds straining to attach?

  But her eyes just got wider, her glare accusatory.

  “It’s your dream, Jordan,” he said. “I can find you within it, but I can’t make you feel anything.” Though there were some agents who had the knack. He was just a humble tracker.

  “Well, you don’t have to stand so close.”

  “Your dream,” he said again. “Push me away.”

  He knew she could—it was well within her ability—and soon she’d be able to do so without thinking. Her dreams were her playground. It was only deeper into the waters of sleep, Darkside, that she’d have difficulty.

  But she didn’t push him back.

  Okay, still scared. Still disoriented. He needed her trust, so he’d give her the space she requested, and he would back off.

  Except…his backward motion was met with stiff resistance. She wasn’t pushing him away; she was keeping him close. He could break her hold. However strong she was, he had considerably more experience. He could break the dream, but he didn’t.

  A smile of deep satisfaction pulled at his mouth, an entirely foreign feeling to his face, to his soul. If he begged, would she let him stay here? He’d promise to keep the darkness at bay, because it would come. It always did.

  “Michael?”

  The false name was a reminder. There are rules. There are rules. There are rules.

  She rose on tiptoe, drawing closer by the pull of attraction between them.

  His hands found her hips, knew just the angle to his grip—she didn’t protest. He tugged her flush against him, and her back arched, just slightly, exactly as he’d hoped it would, her ass pressing—good God—into his groin.

  Warmth coursed through his gut and spread out to his limbs and mind. It was part lust—no helping that—and part peace. It was a full-body sensation, burning out pain and loneliness, leaving only this feeling of want and connection.

  She tilted her head back.

  All her little adjustments meant yes, yes, and yes.

  At the moment, hers was the only permission that mattered.

  So he kissed her.

  ***

  Michael Reese’s mouth on hers was like being struck by a prolonged bolt of lightning. Every nerve crackled, her blood heating and rushing faster, beating her mindless and throbbing at her core. She needed as if she’d never needed anything before, like oxygen in space or water in a desert. She needed him in order to survive, because she’d gone without feeling like this for so long, too long, since Mom had died. She’d starved herself of the pulse of being alive, of indulgence, of desire. Until now, she’d only chosen romantic fictions of men she could keep at a comfortable distance, and her soul was weaker for it.

  But this senseless, crazy rush?

  His hands shifted from her hips—she’d sob if he let her go—but he splayed one low on her belly, the other caressing none too gently up to cup a breast. She opened her mouth and their tongues rubbed and tangled. She wanted more, not caring any longer that he was basically a stranger, that she wasn’t being smart or safe. The electric shocks of awareness shook her so badly that she whimpered.

  She grabbed his hands where they heated her body. How could she get him inside her, to be full of this incredible feeling, mindless of anything else?

  His mouth ripped from hers, and she cried out. But he didn’t let her go. He found the crook of her neck where it met her shoulder and breathed there, panting hot and fast. His hands moved across her body, his arms banding her to him to control her shudders.

  “Shhh,” he said against her skin.

  The dream surroundings—shapes incomprehensible—gleamed so bright that her vision was dazzled.

  “Is it always this intense in dreams?” She wondered who the hell she was, didn’t recognize herself. Or was the heat of the kiss a product of her essential self, too long confined?

  “I’m pretty sure it’d be this way between us while awake, too,” he said. “We should experiment.”

  The huskiness of his voice, proof that he was similarly affected, made her glow. And like him, she already knew what the outcome of said experiment would be. She’d been putting distance between them from the first moment they’d met for that very reason.

  Not him. Dangerous. Bad.

  God, who had she thought she was fooling? From her first glance at him, her whole body had become painfully, frighteningly aware. It was just that she couldn’t afford to lose her mind over anything or anyone right now. Maze needed her, always needed her. She was in trouble again.

  “You think about it.” Didn’t seem like he’d accept an answer he didn’t like.

  Yes, she wanted to try this awake. “You warned me about danger.”

  He laughed, and it felt so good rumbling against her.

  “I didn’t mean me,” he said.

  “I’m pretty sure you’re the most dangerous thing in Rêve.”

  “Will you let me show you around? You’ve really got to know how to operate here.”

  She knew she was going to love it, no matter what might lurk in the dark. She felt amazing, all-powerful, as though anything and everything were possible.

  But then, Michael’s arms were still around her, so that might have had something to do with it.

  ***

  He had to release his hold—couldn’t very well travel holding her as tightly as he was—but he kept a grip on her hand. The hollow in his chest had lit with something. The sensation was so sharp and sweet it almost hurt, and he was scared that it might go out.

  Fuck it. Girl was never getting away. Not after a kiss like that. He was near cross-eyed with the need to finish what they’d started—and he would in the waking world. It’d never been like that. Never. If he’d known it could be, he’d have tracked her down years ago. Brought flowers. Begged.

  How weird that she was the kind of woman his mom would’ve liked. Pretty and sweet—a nice girl, a young lady. Next to her he was so rough.

  But when Jordan looked up into his eyes and said, almost daring him, “Show me,” he forgot how rough he was. Didn’t really matter. They were the same in at least one way that mattered. Dreams were like that.

  It’d been so long ago that he’d first tried Rêve, when he’d been plugged into a dirty dream cooked up by a street-corner dealer who’d shifted from selling silver to something even more psychedelic. The crash into sleep had been hard—dangerous by any standard—and the bootleg shared dream had been a twisted mindfuck with talking 2D animals doing bad things to Revelers.

  Jordan, on the other hand, was just waking to the possibilities of shared dreaming.

  She surveyed her surroundings, which were dimming and growing more detailed. The random crumbled walls became the red brick of a suburban house with windows so dark that they were empty, sad, and frightening. Where she’d grown up, maybe?

  Protocol said to begin by walking through her dream and showing her how to take it apart. However, this particular house was so meticulously recreated and solid that it went beyond the mere suggestion of real that was so typical of dreams, to something ic
onic in her imagination. He was hesitant to move her toward it after they’d started out so well.

  Didn’t feel right.

  When she yanked her attention away, he took her cue and ignored the house, too. Another time. He had things in his dreams he wanted to ignore, too, and no one should be forced to reveal their darkest places to others or even investigate them themselves if they weren’t ready or didn’t want to.

  Next up, the Agora, which she should know about anyway. That’s where she’d learn, crossing into Rêves and observing how they were created, until her talents became evident and she was sent out into dreamspace in whatever capacity Chimera saw fit.

  That she would become one of them was a foregone conclusion. Free agents never lasted long. And after she signed up and took her vows, he’d casually break it to her that Michael wasn’t his real name. It was a security measure for anyone who went out in the field.

  Rook turned away from the house and drew her down the street. “All the basic stuff to know you should feel, but I’ll go over it anyway.”

  In a regular dream, the rest of this neighborhood might materialize out of her memory, but since he was leading, the street gradually deteriorated, more and more houses seeming empty, incomplete, with missing walls. Haunted. The pavement crumbled beneath their feet.

  “The further you get from your own dreams, the less control you have,” he said. “Enter another Rêve, and whoever is in control there dictates the setting and what happens. You only control yourself.”

  Simple settings—like the Envoi’s beach Rêve—were easiest to create and very commercial, appealing to the masses. But some Rêves were becoming more complex, even plot-driven, so that Revelers could enact stories, each with myriad outcomes. Even he, who’d seen everything, was impressed.

  “When you opened that door into the Envoi’s beach Rêve, you broke through the barrier of your individual dreamwaters. Now that you know what it takes to get out, you can do it whenever you want. It’s a feeling, like learning to ride a bike.”

  Jordan sent him a sharp look. “What about others getting in? My sister brought someone into the Envoi’s Rêve. And here you are in mine.”

  Exactly. So smart. Like she knew what he was thinking. “Yes, some people have a knack for crossing boundaries.”