Jessa Slade - Seduced by Shadows

From behind, his hands slid over her shoulders, down her arms, then skipped to her bare hips.

That made her shy away as nothing else had. “Don’t touch me.” Not there. The unspoken words echoed in her head.

He framed the scars with his hands. The long shadows of his fingers hid the red and white puckers of stitched flesh. “I will make you whole again, as if you’d never been broken, nothing left behind.”

Speaking of dreams, everyone said she was dreaming when she’d promised herself the same after her accident. “What, you’re a physical therapist?”

“Quite the opposite.”

While she pondered what that might be—as if the riddles in dreams even mattered—he eased her back against him. The leather of his coat was cool on her backside and shoulders. Her thoughts scattered.

“I will take away your loneliness, your fear,” he whispered into her hair.

“I’m not afraid.” And, stupidly enough, that was true.

“You will be.”

His warm breath over her ear made her sigh. It had been a very long time. There’d been the accident, before that taking care of her father and his work at the church, before that raising her brothers. Why shouldn’t she share the burden and the solace, if only in a dream?

“I have the answer to all your questions.” His lips, brushing the curve of her ear, sent a shiver down her spine, through bones shattered and cobbled together again.

She tipped her head, whether drawing away from his lips or exposing her neck to draw his kiss, she wasn’t sure. “My questions? Like why in the hell am I still talking to a dream?”

“Hell doesn’t have answers.” He spun her slowly in his arms. When had he undone the long row of buttons on his coat? The leather parted around his chest. “Hell doesn’t have this. Oh, to feel . . .”

She braced her hands between them, holding him off with palms flat on his smooth skin.

“Sera,” he whispered. “You called. I came for you. I will give you what you want.”

“Man, I even went to school for this.” She frowned. “After the crappy day I’ve had, of course I’d dream up a big scary dude who morphs into my devoted love slave.”

“Slave, yes. Only for you. I will be here for you always. I will give you what you need—”

“Right, right. Tell me more.” She slipped her hand up to his neck. He’d said she was close to giving in. Well, what was wrong with that occasionally?

He matched her embrace, cradling the back of her head in one hand. “Bind me.”

Between the heat of their bodies, a cold, hard knot pressed into her breastbone. She winced and peered at a pendant hanging around her neck on a black cord. The stone shone a moment, then dimmed, like a cheap opal.

“Wow, jewelry. On the first date.” She tugged on the stone and the cord unraveled. She dropped the necklace to the floor. “Thanks, but I don’t need to hear sweet little lies, even the ones generated by my own subconscious. But until the pills wear off . . .”

She pulled him down to her kiss.

He resisted. “Will you take me? Will you let me in?”

In answer, she opened her mouth. His lips on hers were as cool as the pendant stone; his fingers in her hair held her in place. Not that she was going anywhere. It was her damn dream, after all.

She gripped the open edges of his coat. The silvery violet mist seemed to pull closer in her tangling fingers, wrapping them in a drifting, luminous shroud. She wanted to melt into him, to swap her own frailty and uncertainties for the powerful male energy that had enthralled her on the bridge.

“Let me in,” he murmured.

“Yes.” Her eyes drifted shut. His mouth slanted across hers, tongue plunging deep. A shivering thrill coursed through her, rippling inward from skin to bone so her knees buckled. Only his compelling grip kept her upright against his bare chest. The faint chill of his skin made her shiver again.

A scent like cold, wet rock nagged her. Had she left the shower running? No. No pesky reality allowed. But she opened her eyes—and froze.

He was still there, arms tight around her, mouth hovering over hers.

But his eyes, locked on hers, were wrong, not the dark of the man on the bridge, nor any other human color.

White on white eyes. Ice. Ash. Ancient bone. As she stared at him, speechless, a point of blackest oblivion surfaced in the white, then another, and another, until an insectile horde of dark specks crawled across the pale sclera.

Okay, this was worth a scream.

She tried—and choked.

She woke, crouched at the bottom of the shower, spewing water from her mouth and nose. Glacial water nailed over her shoulders.

She fumbled for the spigots, hands numb. The drain had backed up into a shin-deep pool. The ceramic was frigid; the water smelled like cold lead. How long had she been under?

She crawled over the lip of the tub, shivering too hard to stand. Snatching for her towel, she curled into a ball, wracked by tremors.

“Dreams suck,” she gasped.

Her hips and spine screamed in pain. Her bag, with the prescription bottle, was on the table by the front door. She could drag herself that far.

Hand on the doorknob, she hesitated.

What if he was still out there? As suddenly as the thought surfaced, she banished it. Of course he wasn’t out there. He’d never been out there.

Had he even been on the bridge? Had she? Or had that been part of the dream—nightmare—too? Maybe she hadn’t gotten fired from her job tonight, after all.

“Now I’m just making things up.” At least the fleeting wish that Marion was a mere figment of her imagination short-circuited the frantic circling of her thoughts.

She levered herself to her feet. Her knees wobbled, and her skin was blanched cold and white as the ceramic tub. Pulling on her fleece robe, she barely felt the soft nap.

“What’s worse than death warmed over? Death not warmed over.”

She opened the door and gazed across the hall at the doorway to her bedroom. Streetlights through the blinds lit the room, the same as in her dream, but no tall man was silhouetted in a silvery purple mist.

Too bad, since this time she would have screamed. And then maced him. And then retrieved the cane from the landing and beaten him with it. How dare her dreams tease her with hands that hid her scars and coaxed pleasure from her bones?

She needed to get her body temp back up. Moving like one of her geriatric patients on arthritic last legs, she crept toward the kitchen and a nice cup of tea—caffeinated. She didn’t want to fall asleep where her dreams could watch her, whether the eyes were dark, shot with violet, or dead white and crawling with bugs.

“Maybe I’ll have an espresso,” she muttered. “Heck, make it a double.”

Only the soft hiss of the gas burner under the kettle broke the silence. She stared down the hallway. No one was there. If she’d heard anything else, it was only the plink of water falling into the clogged tub.

She slid a cleaver from the butcher block. She needed something sharp to unclog the drain.

She’d left the light on in the bathroom—the empty bathroom. It shone into the empty bedroom—empty, just as she’d known.

She knelt stiffly beside the tub and rolled up her sleeve. A black band looped around the drain. Had the gasket on the plug popped off? She fished her hand into the cold water, grasping the loop.

She lifted the cord and the ovoid stone pendant broke the surface with an opalescent flash, one sly vanishing wink that took with it the last of her breath.

The demon had gone to ground. The flaw where it had crossed the barrier of ensnared souls was hidden again—a last lingering link between the realms. Still, Valerius Corvus imagined the terrible bruise left by the crossing.