Twelve Shades of Midnight:

by Liliana Hart

  She wrapped her thighs around his hips and met him thrust for thrust. He buried his lips against her neck and groaned. The intensity built with each stroke, but orgasm remained just out of reach.

  “If you want to come…” he said against her neck.

  “We need to wake up,” she finished for him.

  “Do you want this?” he asked.

  “God, yes. Do you?”

  He nibbled on her collarbone as he rocked his hips against hers. “More than I’ve ever wanted anything, ever.”

  She curled her fingers through his thick hair. The slide of his cock inside her gave her the most intense edge-of-orgasm pleasure she’d ever experienced.

  She took a quick breath and said, “Wake up,” at the same time he did.

  Her eyes popped open. She was in the master bedroom, her body wrapped tightly with Rhys’s. His mouth was on her neck, her fingers in his hair. His hips nestled tightly between her thighs, his erection pressed against her center.

  But they were both fully clothed.

  Chapter Three

  “Holy shit!” Rhys said, his chest heaving as he jolted away from her. “That couldn’t have been real.”

  Sienna teetered on the edge of the bed, trying to catch her breath, as reality sank in. She gripped the soft fabric of her T-shirt. A shield. Proof the sex had only been in their minds. But considering they’d shared the dream, it had, for all intents and purposes, happened.

  Anger suffused her as his words in the dream sank in. “Your name is Rhys? You lying sonofabitch!”

  His eyes widened. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “You told me.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “So we…just did—and didn’t—have sex. How is that possible?”

  “The mask. It’s been sending me dreams, thoughts, and emotions for the last two months. This was the first time it invited anyone else to the party.”

  His handsome lips twisted in a sexy smile. “That was some party.”

  She felt her cheeks redden as the finer details of the dream sank in.

  He shook his head and lost the grin. “This is nuts. I don’t want to believe it, but… When I first came to you, we weren’t here. We were in a storage space, overloaded with boxes and crates. There was another man there. Tall, gray hair, heavy lines on his face, which was red—from yelling at you?”

  “My client, Adam Helvig.”

  “Was he…with us in the dream?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so. That part felt like a normal dream—my dream, which you glimpsed. Then he faded out, and we were here.”

  “And it changed from being your dream to our dream.”

  Her flush deepened, and she imagined she looked like a damn cherry. She’d told him her deepest sexual fantasy, and they’d both acted on it. She cleared her throat but could no longer meet his gaze. “You still haven’t told me why you lied and claimed to be Chuck Vaughan.”

  “I never said I was Chuck. You assumed I was, and I went with it. You even asked if I’m ‘Mr. Vaughan,’ which I am. Rhys Vaughan.” He offered a hand. So polite.

  She glared at his outstretched appendage. “I think we’re beyond that, don’t you? And don’t quibble with semantics. You pretended this house is yours. That was a lie.”

  He dropped his arm and shrugged. “I’m an attorney. My life is semantics. For the record, I never actually lied. I just let you continue believing what you’d assumed. I didn’t say one word claiming this house is mine.”

  She frowned, remembering how he’d had no clue what NAGPRA stood for. If she hadn’t been so intent on unloading the mask, she’d have realized immediately he wasn’t the tribal CRM. She was such a fool. “Semantics to you, but still lies in my book.”

  “Hey, I came clean before we had sex. And you didn’t care then.”

  She wanted to deny they’d had sex, and yet... couldn’t. More semantics. She hadn’t done anything she didn’t want to do, and part of her wanted to finish what they’d started in the dream right here and now.

  Goddamned cursed mask.

  The sound of breaking glass chimed, and they both came to attention. A jolt of pain stabbed her in the occipital nerve. “The mask,” she whispered through the pulsing agony. She gripped her head, which throbbed in time to her heartbeat.

  Rhys held his head in the same manner. The mask must have claimed him too.

  Well, at least she wasn’t alone in her insanity. Nice of the mask to pick a hot man to join her in loony land. Except he’d deceived her, so the desire she couldn’t help but feel after the dream they’d shared was now unsettling.

  The pain ceased as quickly as it had begun. From the next room, she heard the squeak of a window being raised.

  Rhys bolted to his feet and pressed a finger to his lips. He made a beeline for the closet and eased open the door, then plucked out a shotgun. He paused before her, leaned down, and kissed her—a quick, hard, familiar gesture—as if they’d been lovers forever. His blue eyes burned into hers as he whispered against her lips, “Stay here. Don’t make a noise.” He silently slipped from the room.

  A moment later, she heard the spine-chilling sound of the shotgun cocking. Banging and thumping sounded from the adjacent room, followed by more shattering glass as, she assumed, the intruder exited through the window.

  She raced to the bedroom window, which overlooked the backyard, as did the window in the room where she’d left the mask. The window, she knew from the flash of imagery the mask had sent as it stabbed at her brain, that had been broken moments before.

  It was a shade darker outside now than it had been when she went to sleep—just shadowy enough that she didn’t catch anything recognizable from hair color to clothing as the intruder raced around the corner of the house. He’d broken in during the fifteen minutes of sundown. All she could be certain of was male, average height and build.

  “Get away from the window!” Rhys said from the doorway, his voice tight and low.

  She swung around to face him, feeling her face reddening at the censure in his tone. “He’s gone. I was trying to see who it was.”

  “He might not have been alone, and you’re presenting a target.” He frowned at her. “If I’d been alone, I’d have cornered and questioned him, but with you to worry about, I chose to scare him off by cocking the shotgun.”

  He said it like his decision was her fault. “If you’d been here alone, there wouldn’t have been an intruder. He was after the mask.”

  “You don’t know that. He could have been breaking in because he had something to do with Chuck’s poisoning.”

  “Poisoning? What poisoning?” Then she shook her head. “And we do know he was after the mask, because it told us.”

  Rhys grimaced and, with the hand that wasn’t holding a loaded shotgun, rubbed his temple. He glanced at the bed’s rumpled sheets, proof they’d done more than cuddle in the dream state, then down at his T-shirt and sweatpants, proof there was a line between dream and reality that hadn’t been crossed. “Let’s move this conversation into the living room. We need to talk.”

  She let out a sharp laugh that held a bitter edge. “That’s an understatement.” She stepped toward the door.

  He held up a hand. “Someone just tried to break in. I go first.”

  He leaned the shotgun in the corner, then pulled out a small hard-sided suitcase flagged with special security tags and flipped the latch. The lid popped up, and he plucked what could only be a gun case from inside. She watched as he efficiently rammed a magazine into a pistol and checked the load. “You don’t handle the gun like a lawyer.”

  He shrugged. “I served in the army prior to law school. Two tours in Iraq as an explosive ordnance disposal specialist. I know guns, bombs, pretty much anything that explodes.”

  “That must be why the mask chose you.”

  “Chose me?”

  “It’s been haunting me for two months. In all that time, it’s never reached out to anyone else until you. I think it
chose you because you can protect it in a way I can’t.”

  Rhys studied Sienna. He had a feeling the mask had chosen him to protect Sienna, not the mask, because the ancient piece of carved wood could, clearly, take care of itself.

  The dream had started with her being threatened by her client, and he’d been flooded with a sharp need to defend her. Plus, what better way to convince him to protect her than to put them in bed together? He’d never been a sex-without-emotions kind of guy, and already he felt strangely primal about her, and yet they were virtual strangers. He’d kissed her before stepping out to face the intruder, as if it were natural. As if she were his. It had been uncontrollable, that kiss. A reflex.

  And he wanted to do it again. And again. Hell, he wanted to bury himself deep inside her and reach the climax that had been just beyond reach in the sexiest, most intense dream of his life.

  A dream that hadn’t been a dream at all. Dreams were solitary, while that experience was decidedly not.

  Yet he didn’t even know if he liked her. Or could trust her. Or if she had anything to do with Chuck’s poisoning.

  She had the mask. That alone should have him questioning her as if she were a hostile witness. Or, more likely, defendant.

  Time to get a grip and find out what the hell was going on. “Coffee?” he asked as she followed him into the living room.

  She bit her lip, which he’d seen her do once or twice, but now it felt achingly familiar, like something he’d seen a million times. Something he wanted to see a million more. “I haven’t been sleeping well since the mask started messing with me. I gave up caffeine, hoping it would help.”

  “Has it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you like coffee?”

  “After my sisters, coffee is my best friend in the world.”

  He laughed and stepped into the kitchen to brew a pot. While he was there he stepped into the utility room and moved her clothes into the dryer, noting as he did so that her underwear was very sexy.

  After the coffee was ready, he dropped down on the couch beside her and handed her a steaming mug.

  The couch. Where the dream had begun. She looked sleepy and tousled, and he wanted to see if she tasted as sweet as she had in the dream.

  Goddamned manipulative mask.

  She held the mug just below her nose and inhaled the brew. Her warm amber eyes hooded, and she took a sip as if she were savoring a gourmet meal. Finally she met his gaze, the tightness around her eyes relaxed with simple pleasure. “So, Chuck Vaughan is your cousin, and he was poisoned?”

  Rhys shook his head to clear it of all arousal. “Yes. Someone tried to kill him, and they nearly succeeded. He’s in a hospital in Anchorage. We don’t know if the damage to his kidneys is permanent. He may need a transplant or dialysis treatments for the rest of his life.”

  She gasped and her eyes widened, while her hand flew to her mouth in an expression of shock. “That’s horrible!” Her outrage appeared genuine. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “It happened six days ago, but I didn’t make it to Anchorage until Monday.” It was very early Wednesday now, and the days had already started to blur. It would only get worse with the endless daylight of Itqaklut. “Chuck asked me to come here to investigate, because the police don’t believe it’s a criminal matter. You and I were actually on the same flight.”

  “But you arrived at the office first, because I had a flat.” She glanced toward the room where the mask rested in its wooden box. “I know it’s crazy, but I can’t help but wonder if the mask caused the flat—and the delay—so we’d meet. But then, everything about this is crazy. I’ve lost my frigging mind.”

  “Apparently, I have too, because even though it goes against everything I’ve ever believed, I can’t deny it happened. To me. To us. The mask set us up.” Too much had occurred—and not just the shared sex dream—for him to blow her off as a nutcase. “I couldn’t lift the box from the trunk. If it had been stuck to the trunk somehow, then when I tried to lift it, the car would have rocked. It didn’t.”

  “And then there was…” Her voice trailed off as her cheeks turned a pretty shade of red.

  “Our perfect, consequence-free fantasy fuck,” he finished for her.

  Her eyes widened. She set her coffee mug down and straightened, as if it weren’t far too late to present a professional demeanor. “I think it would be best if we pretend that didn’t happen. It was just a dream. Subconscious in action. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You and I both know that wasn’t our subconscious at work. We might have been dreaming, but everything we did, everything we said, was deliberate.” He was at half-mast just talking about it. “I’m not embarrassed,” he added with a smile. She’d been so brazen when she’d believed she was indulging in a fantasy—one in which he’d played a rather integral role. “I enjoyed the hell out of that dream and have no desire to pretend it didn’t happen.”

  Her brow furrowed, and he loved the way her imperfect, crooked brow slanted over her right eye as she tried to figure out how to respond. She licked her lips as she tugged on the leg of the sweatpants, as if she were adjusting a prim skirt. The mixed signals clearly showed her confusion. “Well then, we’ll just agree to disagree on that point, shall we?”

  He leaned toward her. “Maybe we should just screw right now, so we can get rid of the questions about how real it was and if it counts.”

  She shook her head and let out an incredulous laugh. “For a man who has recently been possessed by an artifact, you’re awfully nonchalant.”

  “The mask didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want. Or that I don’t want to do again. Awake this time.”

  She rolled her eyes as her lips canted in a wry smile. “Typical man.”

  He leaned in and nipped her adorable, freckled bottom lip. “I distinctly remember you calling me exceptional.”

  She tweaked a lock of his hair. “You couldn’t possibly live up to your performance in the dream.”

  He grinned. “Well, now that sounds like a challenge to me.”

  She pushed him away. “I will concede I enjoyed the dream. But I’m not ready to accept there’s anything between us other than manipulation by an annoying dead shaman.”

  She was clearly as turned on as he was, but more in control. Then again, she’d been dealing with the mask for months, whereas he’d only had to deal with it for a few hours. And except for the jolt of pain right after the break-in, for the most part, the manipulation had been decidedly pleasant.

  How much of this was real now, and how much was the mask still pushing him?

  It struck him that maybe the intense attraction that colored every thought and reaction he had toward her wasn’t real. What if, without the mask’s intervention, he’d feel nothing?

  And what if, deep down, she felt nothing for him?

  The idea left him cold. He huffed out a sigh. “Sorry. I’m not usually… such an ass. We need to talk about the mask and Chuck, and try to figure out if what’s happening to you—to us—is connected. And then we need to call the police and report the break-in.”

  She gave a short nod. “Agreed.” She plucked a pencil from the coffee table and held it between her teeth as she gathered her reddish locks from her neck and rolled them into a knot, which she secured with the pencil.

  The light shone on the fair skin of her slender neck, revealing a faint bruise, which he’d put there when he sucked on her sweet skin as he thrust inside her. Proof he had sucked on her neck, even though he hadn’t really been inside her.

  He stood and crossed the room, choosing a spot between the credenza, loaded with photos of Jana and Chuck, and the woodstove. He sat on the floor and leaned against the wall, facing her but no longer able to see the hickey, no longer close enough to smell her warm, sexy scent. “I’d better sit here so we can get through this conversation without me scooping you up and tossing you on the bed so I can fuck your brains out.”

  She flushed with heat, making him cert
ain what he’d guessed in the dream was true. She was turned on by the word fuck when used that way. It was going to take all his willpower not to exploit that to talk her back into the bedroom.

  He had a feeling he’d never feel satisfied again if they didn’t finish that dream.

  “We’ll start with the mask. I want you to tell me everything you know about it,” Rhys said, proving he could jump from sex to business in a single sentence, while Sienna was still trying to catch her breath.

  He sat not far from where he’d peeled off his shirt in the dream, making it impossible for her to ignore the fact that his T-shirt hugged broad, muscular shoulders. Hard to believe the guy was a lawyer. But then, he’d been in the army, and clearly, he’d taken good care of himself after leaving the service. His perfection made her feel even more self-conscious than usual about those ten… if she were being honest, fifteen… extra pounds she carried.

  Guys like him went for blondes with tiny waists and big breasts. Her breasts were okay—thanks to those extra pounds—but the rest of her was nothing a perfect ex-soldier-turned-attorney like him would be interested in. His interest in her was just proof the mask had warped his mind.

  “Sienna?” he asked.

  She shook her head. Right. Stay focused. He wanted to know about the mask. She glanced from the photos of Chuck—who was obviously a tribal member—back to Rhys’s striking blue eyes. “Are you part Itqaklut?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No. Our fathers were brothers—sons of Welsh immigrants. Chuck’s mother was Itqaklut.”

  “Rhys is a Welsh name?”

  He nodded and cocked his head. “What about you? Where does the name Sienna come from?”

  She was tempted to tell him her real, full name. Hell, he knew her sexual fantasies; sharing the truth of her name was nothing compared to that. But she chickened out. “Hippy-dippy parents. Mom is an artist and archaeologist, Dad a botanist. I’m named for the earth pigment—and thankful Mom didn’t push to name me ochre, or worse, umber. They named my sisters Larkspur and Juniper.”