by Megan Hart
Kent took her hand. “Mom. You’re dreaming.”
Slowly, her eyes opened. With a furrowed brow, Mom looked at him. Then smiled. “Hello, lovey.”
“You were sleeping. Why don’t we get you upstairs?” Kent laughed a little. “Must’ve been some dream.”
Mom frowned. “I don’t quite recall it.”
She didn’t struggle to get out of her recliner, though Kent stood by waiting in case she did. Physically, Mom had few issues beyond a bit of arthritis. It might’ve been easier, he thought as she made sure he’d appropriately packed up all of his leftovers, if she were frail. He could’ve done something for her to be really helpful, instead of simply suffering through watching her slowly deteriorate mentally.
“Give my love to Carol,” she told him at the door as he bent to kiss her.
Kent smiled. “I will, Mom.”
In the car, it hit him, though. The long lonely night ahead of him. A trunkful of food he would eat standing over the sink. A birthday cake covered in coconut.
A night of frustrating, sexy dreams featuring Stephanie Adams.
As far as birthdays went, it had been a pretty shitty one. It got worse when he slipped his phone from his pocket to put in the center console while he drove and saw the missed text from Carol. He didn’t want to read it, but he did.
Happy B-day!
It was a nice thing for her to do. To remember. Carol was nice. The life they’d had was nice, at least, Kent had thought so until he came home to find her half of everything moved out and a note on the table telling him that she’d gone to stay with her mother while she looked for a new place to live.
He missed her, of course, but as he pulled up to his driveway and saw the dark windows, he thought that maybe it wasn’t Carol he missed as much as simply...someone. They’d been together four years, most of them good, and he’d happily have gone on for four more, or forty, probably. Being with Carol had been easy, not a challenge. It hadn’t been much work.
That was the problem. He hadn’t put much work into things. That was probably why they’d ended up splitting. You had to put the work in.
Too little, too late, that was the problem. He could think of a hundred ways he might’ve been able to salvage things with Carol, but none of them mattered now. He could’ve answered her text, too, though at the moment he saw no point in it. What was she going to do, chat with him about the day? Ask him again if he was recovering without her? That was only going to rub it in about how terrible a birthday it had been.
His stomach rumbled. Dinner at Mom’s had been good, but though he’d told her a little white lie about being too full for cake, the truth was he’d left plenty of room for it. And damn it, it was his birthday. Why shouldn’t he celebrate it, even if he had to do it all by his loser, lonely self? It was Friday night. He was hungry. The food in the trunk would keep with the temperatures as cold as they were.
Instead of pulling into his driveway, Kent kept on going.
CHAPTER 6
“I’m not gonna make it.” Stephanie held back a yawn as best she could, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t stop it. Her jaw cracked. Her eyes felt filled with sand.
Denise frowned. “C’mon, Steph, wake up. It’s not even eleven.”
“Yeah, but I’ve been up since about three this morning.” After the sexy dream with Kent, her frustration about losing sight of her target had kept her awake no matter how hard she’d tried to fall back to sleep. Nothing had worked. Now she was tired, angry with herself and cranky.
“Damn. No closer?”
“No, I’m closer. I actually saw him last night.” She paused. “But then I got interrupted.”
Denise’s brows rose. “By what?”
Stephanie definitely didn’t want to tell her friend what had forced her out of the dream. Not only was it an embarrassing failure in her control, but it would let Denise in on the whole crush she had on Kent. Stephanie pressed her lips together.
“Ooh, he was in your dream, huh?”
“He was... A lot of people were...”
“Last night I dreamed I was schtupping my high school biology teacher,” Denise said with a chuckle. “In some crazy hedge-maze thing. Man, that was wild.”
Stephanie said nothing.
“You were there!” Denise slapped the table and tipped her head back to laugh so loud it earned her several appreciative looks from the guys at the table behind them. “You and Mr. Bank Manager?”
“Keep your voice down!” Stephanie shook her head. “It was nothing. It was a dream.”
“Sure it was. Because nothing that happens in dreams is real,” Denise said with a deliberately blank expression that quickly shifted again into humor. “Uh-huh.”
“That doesn’t make it okay. Anyway, I’m beat.” Stephanie fought another yawn. “At least tonight I won’t have trouble getting to sleep.”
Denise sighed and looked around the bar. “Fine. Slim pickings here tonight anyway.”
“The job’s kicking my ass. That’s all.”
Denise frowned and leaned a little closer. “What’s Vadim say about it?”
“He says keep hunting.” Stephanie took a small sip from her beer, letting the flavor roll around in her mouth before swallowing. Last week she’d had a drink in the Ephemeros that had tasted of flowers and chocolate, a combination she doubted would be any good in the real world but which had been almost orgasmic in the dream. “Got a couple new reports that tie in to that same guy.”
“You need a break.” Denise looked serious. “I know you think of yourself as some kind of lone wolf, but really, you need someone helping you out.”
Stephanie laughed. “Lone wolf?”
“You know what I mean.” Denise didn’t join in Stephanie’s humor. “You think you need to take care of it all on your own, but it’s dangerous. Too much time in there, and—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I might not come out.” Stephanie shrugged. She knew it was possible, but she couldn’t let it freak her out. She was more likely to end up in a coma from getting hit by a bus than from letting her time in the Ephemeros get away from her.
“Just because you think you’re invulnerable in there doesn’t mean you are out here,” Denise said.
Stephanie gave her friend a grin meant to ease her worries. “I’m fine. I promise. Soon as I figure out who this guy is out here, I’ll be done with this case and I can take a vacation.”
“Promise?”
“Yes. I promise.”
Denise sighed again. “Maybe we can go away for one of those all-inclusive deals. What do you think? A week or so of sun and fun and hot guys in thong bathing suits?”
“Oh. God, Denise, ew.” Stephanie laughed.
“What? They’d be European. Totally hot. With accents,” Denise added, laughing, too. Her gaze cut away after a second, looking over Stephanie’s shoulder, and her giggles became a sly smile. “Oh. Hey. Look who’s here.”
Stephanie glanced behind her, not expecting to see that familiar long, lean body. Kent Gordon’s profile was angular, his dark hair touched just the tiniest bit with silver at the temples. His steel-rimmed glasses flashed as he settled on the bar stool and nodded at the bartender.
Pretty much her ideal guy in every way.
“You should go say hi.” Denise nodded.
Stephanie turned away, hoping he wasn’t going to turn around and see her there. “Ugh. No.”
“Why not? You told me you thought he was cute! You’re having sexy dreams with him! He took you on a date.”
He was cute. That was the problem. “He asked me to join him for lunch. I told you, it was so not a date. And I have to work with him.”
“So?”
“So, I haven’t exactly been bringing him anything he can use,” Stephanie said. “And wha
t can I tell him? That I’ve been searching for this guy who stalks people in their dreams to steal their money in the real world but I haven’t quite managed it yet?”
“You could just tell him you’re still investigating. That’s the truth,” Denise pointed out with another glance over Stephanie’s shoulder. “It’s not like you work for him. He’s just your point of contact at the bank. Vadim’s the one in charge. He should take the heat.”
“Yeah, but I’m the one who has to come up with a plausible explanation for how we’re going to nail this guy, something to explain to Kent and the board at Member’s Best that doesn’t make me look like an incompetent idiot.”
“Part of the job,” Denise replied unsympathetically.
Stephanie laughed. “Wow, thanks. Yes. Part of the job, but look. You know I can’t get involved with a normie.”
“There you go with that normie business again. God. I’m a normal, and you like me!”
“You,” Stephanie told her friend again, “are so not a normie.”
Denise rolled her eyes and tipped her beer toward the bar. “Well, I can’t do what you can do anyway. And you never know. Mr. Sexy-Pants Bank Manager might be a shaper.”
Stephanie stole another look at him. He’d ordered a beer, the same as her, though he didn’t appear to be drinking it. The same as her, really, she thought as she turned the bottle in her hands and felt the slosh of liquid against the glass. She’d been nursing the same one for an hour. It was warm.
She could go up to the bar. Order another. Sit beside him, smile, toss her hair...
“Shit, Denise,” Stephanie said. “He really is cute, huh?”
“Yes!”
Still, Stephanie shook her head. “I have to get home and get to work.”
“All work and no play,” her friend said. “I’m going to run to the restroom. Don’t leave.”
“Sure.” Stephanie stifled another yawn while she waited, glancing up a few minutes later when a figure moved to slide into the booth across from her. “Ready to get out of here? Oh. Hi.”
“Hi,” Kent said with a small smile. “Your friend told me you were here.”
“I am.” It was a stupid thing to say, but there it was. Stephanie coughed a little, embarrassed at feeling caught this way. She twisted in her seat to look around for Denise, though she had a suspicion she’d been set up. “Did you happen to see where she went?”
“She left. She told me to tell you she’d call you tomorrow. She...um, she told me you like scrambled eggs for breakfast.” Kent echoed Stephanie’s awkward cough.
Her jaw dropped. Then she slapped a hand to her forehead, closing her eyes for a moment before looking at him. “That sounds like Denise. Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” She’d seen Kent smile before, but not like this.
This smile warmed her all the way to her chilly toes. It spread a flush up her throat and into her cheeks that she sincerely hoped he didn’t see. That smile made her want to crawl across the table between them, straddle his lap, take his face in her hands and kiss the breath out of him.
Whoa.
“It’s my birthday,” Kent said suddenly.
Stephanie’s brows rose. “Happy birthday, Kent.”
“It hasn’t been the greatest,” he told her, not sounding as if he were complaining, just being honest. “I’m not usually the guy who makes a big deal out of it, but you know, at least on your birthday you should have cake, right?”
“You didn’t have cake? That sucks.” Stephanie frowned, holding back another yawn threatening to squeak out of her. She was getting so sleepy that it would’ve been easy to convince herself she was already dreaming. She shot a quick glance at the menu to be certain she could read the words there. The fastest way for her to tell if she was indeed inside the Ephemeros was that letters and numbers no longer held their places but squiggled all over and refused to be read.
He nodded. “Yeah. My mom made me a cake covered in coconut frosting. She forgot I didn’t like coconut.”
“That really sucks.” Stephanie frowned. The beer had been a mistake. She should’ve had coffee or a cola, even an iced tea. Driving home was going to be hard.
“Yeah. She’s having some problems with her memory.” Kent paused. “Now that I’ve unloaded my whole sob story on you...”
“It’s okay. Birthdays should be fun and special. I don’t blame you for being a little cranky about it.”
They stared at each other across the table.
“I know a place that makes a killer chocolate raspberry cheesecake,” Kent said finally. “Would you go with me?”
Her eyes were full of sand and she wanted to make this table a pillow, but at the sight of Kent’s hesitant smile, she sighed. Oh, she was so going to kill Denise later. A little bit anyway.
“Far be it from me to turn down a guy on his birthday.”
Kent’s widening grin sent another of those disturbing sets of tingles all through her. He got out of the booth and reached for her hand. And, as she had last night in the dream world, Stephanie let him take it.
CHAPTER 7
It 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.
