Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set
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She’d screwed up, though, calling him ‘Brann’. No wonder his conscious mind had started filling in the blanks.
It was a weird conundrum to face the man she’d been having sex with for the past several months and unable to tell him that’s what they’d been doing. Or how it was done. Or even that he’d forbidden her not to say a word. Very bizarre.
But there was another reason why she didn’t want Brann to consciously know the truth. She knew, with every cell of her body, that the moment she fessed up, he’d never come near her again. Brannick had demons that kept him locked up tight as a drum. He’d gone berserk when he became an alter vampire and lost his family to the alter serum.
She’d heard about his mania and how he’d become a one-man death squad, attacking anyone in the drug trade. He’d kept it up until the cartels had sent assassins to take out his parents and abduct his sister, Tracy. Only then had he stopped his vigilante killing spree.
Juliet had heard many versions of his sister’s fate, but the one consistent element was that Brannick had been forced to watch while dark coven witches used her as a human sacrifice.
Juliet couldn’t imagine how Brannick had survived both the loss of his wife and children, then the guilt because of the deaths of his remaining family.
She cut the man a lot of slack because of it.
She sighed. She really, really didn’t want her time with Brannick to end. She wanted him in her dreamgliding bed until she was lying in the Tribunal’s overburdened morgue, an inch away from cremation.
She released a heavy sigh.
“Feeling guilty?”
She’d been staring at the cement of the garage floor, lost in thought. Brannick now stood in front her having finished stacking the boxes.
Looking up at him, she shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.” She’d play dumb as long as she could.
“You’re dreamgliding me, aren’t you?”
He didn’t look nearly as upset as he had earlier, but she still wasn’t going to tell him anything. “What got you all upset before?”
He planted his fists on his hips, his biceps flexing. His lips turned down. “So you’re going to play it this way, dumb as shit?”
She sighed. “I’m under a strong obligation to keep my mouth shut.”
His green eyes narrowed a little more. “I don’t get it. Who has you under an obligation?”
“You do.”
He snorted. “Oh, that’s damn convenient.” He turned away from her. She could see he wanted to let loose with a few obscenities. His lips were definitely mouthing the words.
Then he grew very still and frowned, though staring at nothing. “I remember that we talked and you asked me something. You asked me if I would finally give my permission, but I refused.” He turned back to her. “Permission for what? Does this have to do with drugs?”
“No. Oh, God no.” She waved a hand in the air. “No drugs, I promise you.”
“Juliet …” His deep voice carried the exact tone he used in the dreamglide, affectionate and almost weightless. “Talk to me.”
She rose slowly to her feet as another compressed sigh forced its way from her body. “I can’t, Brann. You have to trust me in this.”
“Can you at least tell me how long this has been going on?”
“You told me not to tell you anything,” she said.
“As much as I can’t imagine how some dreamlike part of me would insist on your silence, I’m giving my permission now, here, in real-time. So, how long have you been sexing me up in the dreamglide?”
It took her a moment to make the decision, but she finally decided she couldn’t hold back. “Five months.”
“Holy shit.” He shook his head back and forth very slowly. His lips worked again, only this time she didn’t think he was uttering obscenities. Maybe he was trying to frame the right words for what was going through his head right now.
He frowned even harder. “You want to know what I saw earlier? What came to me?”
She put her hands to her throat and smoothed her fingers down the length. She was trying to ease the knot that now felt like a noose. Given that every dreamglide she’d ever had with Brannick either began or ended with sex, she found it hard to breathe.
The Brannick in the dreamglide was all in, one-hundred-percent. He was an exceptional lover and an engaging companion. If Juliet had to guess, they’d probably spent as much time in conversation as they had tangled up in each other’s arms.
But there was only one answer to give him in this situation. “Yes, I want to know. Please tell me what you saw.”
He moved to stand just a couple of feet from her. “We made love, in my bed, and you said the color of my red comforter was called Alabama Crimson. Dreams usually don’t have such specific details, do they?”
“Sometimes they do.” And just like that, she was right back there, with him. They often made love in his bed, sometimes in hers, sometimes they ended up in all sorts of places. The dreamglide could be amazing.
But this time, yes, she’d been in his bed.
He searched her eyes as though trying to understand. She knew he was thinking the whole thing over.
He moved closer still and took her arms in his hands. “It’s as though I’m two people right now, Juliet. One of them knows you extremely well, the other is a stranger.”
He leaned close and ran his nose over her temple, drawing in his breath at the same time. “You feel so familiar to me, yet not, and you smell like strawberries.”
“It’s my shampoo. And Brann?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
He drew back and met her gaze. “Well, I’m angry.”
How many times had she stared into his haunted, green eyes? A hundred? A thousand?
She knew he was struggling with the nature of the situation. She also knew that this could be the last time she’d ever be close to him in real-time. For one thing, he could easily drop her from his operation and she’d never see him again.
So, she slid a hand around the nape of his neck and mirrored what he’d done to her. She swept her nose over his cheek. She smelled soap and the citrus fragrance of an aftershave, only everything was more vivid because it was real-time.
She also caught the scent of him, the sweat on his skin, his vampire masculinity. All was new, yet familiar at the same time. The dreamglide could communicate part of the sensory experience, but not all of it.
She pressed herself up against Brann and slowly met his lips with hers. When he didn’t pull away, she kissed him harder.
The same.
But different.
Yet so much better.
Real. So real.
She trembled as his arms slid around her in response.
Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe this would make things a thousand times worse. After all, Brannick would never forgive her for coming to him illegally as she had. He was a man of rules, procedures and control.
She started to draw back, but he followed with his lips and captured her mouth. She gave a cry as his tongue drove within, familiar, yet so much more.
She slung both arms around his neck.
Brann.
She hadn’t meant to communicate telepathically, but she was overcome.
She was in his arms at long last, this time for real.
CHAPTER 2
Brannick had served on the Crescent Border Patrol for years. He’d faced death squads in Rotten Row. He’d had witches put their sizzling fingers up to his temple ready to kill him. He’d been cut open with a dozen sword swipes from fae and dead-talker bad guys. He’d had drugged out shifters, in wolf form, tear chunks out of his arms, legs and once his abdomen.
He knew what pain was.
He knew how to battle the enemy.
He’d grown strong on all fronts because of the hellhole he lived in called Five Bridges.
What he didn’t have either the will or the strength to do, was to let go of the woman in his arms.
He could recall the dreamglide now in perfect detail, how just hours ago he’d been buried inside her, watching passion move in erotic waves over her creamy, freckled skin. He could hear her moans and see how he leaned down to kiss her cheek. He’d shifted his position and given her a solid rock of his hips to which her whole body had rolled with pleasure.
But it had only been a dream. No, that wasn’t accurate. It had been a dreamglide, an alternate reality the powerful fae could create.
He drew back and met her gaze. Holding her right now, however, was real life or ‘real-time’ as the fae called the present.
Setting his memory of the shared dreamglide aside, he could feel the flesh of her body through her dress and the way her breasts rose and fell against his chest. She felt amazing beneath his touch, familiar yet not, but now oh-so-fucking-real.
“Brann, what are you thinking? Talk to me.”
“That you feel the same but so different. Better. More physical. More … real.”
She nodded three times very fast, and her breathing was erratic. Her tongue touched her lips. Because of the dreamglide, he knew the signs of her arousal and how easily he could take her to bed because of the state she was in. She was clearly vulnerable to him, which turned him on.
Christ, he’d been her lover for five months now.
But what did any of it mean?
Slowly, he let his arms fall away, then took a step back. He needed distance on so many levels. In an essential way, he didn’t approve of dreamgliding. In terms of his work, it was illegal to turn yourself over to a fae who could invade your dreams.
Some of the more gifted Revel dwellers, like Roche, could do intensive searches within a dreamglide and ferret out all sorts of high-profile, highly classified information. The streetlights throughout Five Bridges and each of the security checkpoints at the main bridges were all governed by computers. This kind of information could be extracted during a dreamglide state and sold to anybody willing to pay.
Not that Brannick suspected Juliet of doing anything like that. Not at all. He trusted her allegiance to his cause.
Something else occurred to him. “You say this began five months ago? You mean around the time we met at the White Flame club?”
She tilted her head slightly. “The first time was that same night.”
Brannick knew he’d been a willing participant, and he knew why. The whole time he’d interviewed her, he’d been in a partial state of arousal.
He’d sat across from her in a booth. She’d sipped a mai-tai, while he’d worked on a scotch. He could even remember what she wore, a somewhat loose-fitting glittery black dress, not too different from the gauzy one she wore now, but made for clubbing. She didn’t seem to like snug clothes. Still, he’d thought her sexy as hell.
Nothing about her had been flirtatious, either. She hadn’t come to charm him, only to support the image of a couple on a date while he interviewed her. She’d kept the conversation serious and to the point. She wanted to help. Mary had been talking to her for weeks about joining the rescue operation and Juliet didn’t care that she’d be risking her life. She’d seen too many bad things in Revel Territory not to get involved.
After he’d made his assessment and welcomed her to the team, the conversation had shifted to their current lives and work. She was apprenticed to a woman named Agnes, a sage fae of great power, who served on the Board of Sages, which governed Revel Territory. Roche was on the same board and stonewalled most of the improvement projects the several good fae tried to move forward. No surprise there.
In turn, he’d told her about his work as a border patrol officer, the level of violence he faced every night and that he’d learned to carry a kit in his car to stitch up minor wounds. She’d asked what he considered a minor cut, and he said he measured it in inches—anything longer than a certain number and he’d head to the clinic to have a professional do the job.
Then she’d surprised him by offering a double-entendre about anything else he measured in inches and did he seek a professional to take care of that problem as well.
He’d been shocked at first. The woman had seemed so self-contained and somewhat prim. She didn’t even blush, though she did offer a smiling apology. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I was married to a great guy. We used to joke all the time.”
Of course, she’d looked away from Brannick at that point. Hurt had flashed in her eyes when she mentioned her husband, reminding him of the pain he’d suffered thirteen years ago when his wife had died. Jesus, sometimes, at the oddest moments and without warning, grief could come boiling to the surface.
Juliet had taken a big drink of her mai-tai and ordered a second. He’d done the same with his scotch. He should have left then and there, since he’d concluded his business with her, but dawn had still been a couple of hours away and he didn’t want to leave. Looking back, he realized his conversation with Juliet had been the first normal one with a woman in years, maybe since he’d come to Five Bridges.
“What are you thinking about?” The warm, musical quality of her voice brought him back to the present.
“About our conversation at the club, the night I met you for the first time.”
She inclined her head slowly, her lips parted. “I think about that sometimes as well. Of course my cheeks tend to warm up as I recall what I said to you. Do you remember?”
“Yeah. About what else I measured in inches.”
She smiled. “I’m still embarrassed.”
He caught her elbow in his hand. “I liked it. It felt so easy. But I was surprised because you didn’t seem like the type.”
“I guess I don’t.” Her smile grew crooked. “But I am.”
He continued to stare at her. He knew he was frowning harder than ever, but he couldn’t help it. He was trying to understand how he’d let this happen. He lived a controlled life, something necessary because of his simmering, ever-present rage about being an alter vampire.
Giving himself over to a dreamglider meant he’d had no control. So, why had he done it?
He searched her eyes, her face, looking for some kind of answer that she couldn’t possibly provide. He felt like he’d double-crossed himself and was now vulnerable in a situation that could easily spin out of control.
Finally, he let her go, then shoved a hand through his hair. “We should get out of here.”
“Yes, we should.”
He moved toward the door that led into the house and knocked quietly. His host, Carl, opened the door grim-faced no doubt because of the earlier unexpected visitor.
Brannick had already made his decision about what needed to be done for the host couple.
Carl led them into the family room. He moved off to the side of the sliding glass door, joining his wife. He slid an arm around her shoulders, then shook his head. “Sorry, Brannick, but we can’t do this anymore. It’s meant a lot to me and my wife that we could help these women, but we won’t jeopardize our lives, not like this.”
Brannick lifted a hand. “Don’t worry about it, Carl. I hold to my word that if there was ever the smallest sign that your house was suspect, we’d be out of here, and that’s what’s happened tonight.
“I’ll have contractors here within the hour, sealing up the tunnel at your home’s exit point. They’ll build in the closet like we discussed, though they’ll dirty it up so it looks like it’s been there a while. We backfill the stairs with dirt and pack it in good. Even if someone tried to break through the closet, they wouldn’t get far. How does that sound?”
His wife burst into tears. Carl held her close. “Sounds real good. What about the van? Will you still wait to remove it?”
“Procedure has taught us that the van should sit there for at least a month now. I’ll have my human team take it away sometime during the day when most of
the alter species will be asleep. How does that sound?”
“Good. Real good. And we’re sorry about this.”
“Not your fault and please don’t give it a second thought.”
Brannick pulled his phone from his pocket and made a call to one of his human contractors and arranged for the tunnel work. When he put his phone back, he said, “They’ll get started right away, though you probably won’t even know they’re here and they’ll work through the day. Tomorrow night, go ahead and move whatever you like into the closet. Just try to arrange everything to make it look as though it’s been settling for a while.”
“Thanks so much, Brannick.” He compressed his lips. “Do you have any idea how we became suspect?”
He shrugged. “It’s possible a neighbor saw the van pull in and called the Crescent station. That’s all it would take. But don’t worry. I’ve closed up tunnels dozens of times.”
“Will you have to dig a new one?”
“Not entirely. We’ll arrange for a replacement host, hopefully on a nearby street not far from the tunnel, then cut in from there. Again, the contractors are skilled at what they do.” He clapped Carl on the shoulder. “Thank you for your service. As for this evening, four more women were delivered safely through our network and are by now headed to a local Phoenix hospital and will get the care they need.”
“That’s good, but I sure wish that officer hadn’t shown up.”
Brannick nodded then glanced toward the night sky. “I wish you both well, but right now Juliet and I need to get going.”
Carl drew back the sliding glass door.
Brannick stepped through. When he moved onto a small patch of grass in the center of the yard, ready to take off, he realized Juliet hadn’t followed him.
He glanced in the direction of the house and saw that she was holding Carl’s wife in a warm embrace and speaking softly to her. When she drew back, the woman smiled then wiped her cheeks with her hands.