Before I Wake (28 page)

“survival guilt.” John had escaped the shooting with a bullet in the leg—the least serious of all the injuries. He had come out of it fine, while some of his friends were dead, one was paralyzed, and another had been in the hospital for weeks, finally coming out of the coma with significant brain damage, some of which was permanent.

It was no wonder the poor guy was messed up. But I was seeing improvement. The dreams were fading in intensity, and the more we talked—the more I listened and provided nonjudgmental support—the easier it was starting to become for John to integrate the experience into his life and move on.

By the time John left, I was feeling a little drawn from the emotional work, but all in all it had been a fabulous morning. I found comfort in dealing with him and Megan. Their issues weren’t related to Terrors—not the kind with physical form, not really. While there were beings in The Dreaming responsible for the images John kept seeing, they were trying to help—trying to force him—to face the bigger issue. They weren’t trying to kill him.

In other words, they were the kinds of dreams I was more than prepared to help my patients face.

At lunch I had a craving for soup and a sandwich, so Bonnie and I went to this little deli just around the corner from the clinic. I ordered tomato soup and tuna salad on whole wheat—comfort food or what? Bonnie ordered a Reuben with extra slaw.

We sat at a corner table near a window, so we could watch people walk by. Unfortunately, they could watch us too.

“So,” Bonnie began just after I’d taken a big bite of sandwich. “Was Noah as good as I always thought he’d be?”

I choked, of course. I think that might have been her plan. Then I took a drink of water and swallowed.

“What the hell?” I croaked. “Jeez, Bonnie! Are you trying to kill me?”

She patted me on the back, like burping a baby. “Sorry, sweetie. But that is what has you all doughy-looking today, isn’t it?”

I could tell her it was bloat, but what was the point? If there was one person who would stand up and cheer for my sleeping with Noah, it was Bonnie.

“He’s not my patient anymore.” Bonnie might not care, but I wanted that out in the open first.

Bonnie arched a tinted, perfectly waxed brow. “You can still play doctor.”

“That is so wrong!” But I laughed anyway. We both did.

“Are you happy?” she asked after taking a drink of her iced tea. “Does he make you smile?”

I shifted in my seat, a little uncomfortable with the question. I looked down at my sandwich and picked at the bread. “Yeah. I think so. It’s…complicated.” Oh God, now I sounded like something off a TV teen drama.

She smiled—sympathetically, I thought. “I’m here if you need me, kiddo.”

I nodded, my throat strangely tight. “Thanks.”

We finished eating and headed back to the clinic with five minutes to spare. After being late this morning I couldn’t afford to take a long lunch as well, especially when I was expected to be in the lab with Dr. Canning for the rest of the afternoon.

He was civil to me when I got there, but I could tell from the look he gave me that the police visit this morning had him in a pissy mood. I hadn’t needed to be any higher up his shit list, but I knew I was. He blamed me for Noah’s leaving the study, and he didn’t like the fact that this place wasn’t my life. I suppose I couldn’t blame him for either because he was right. Noah had left because of me, and ever since Karatos came to town, I had started spending more and more time embracing the part of me that wasn’t human—the part that didn’t pay the bills.

I was going to do whatever he told me to do, suck it up and take it—even his crappy attitude. Not for the first time, I entertained the notion of looking for another job. It was time for me to move on. I’d gotten good experience in the clinic, but I wanted to do more counseling, more research, and less watching people sleep.

Less listening to a man who used to be my mentor and was now little more than an arrogant windbag.

Of course, my plans to behave and be the model employee were shot down by a simple phone call. I was in the middle of listening to Dr. Canning and Dr. Revello discuss a patient with severe sleep apnea when Bonnie’s voice crackled over the interoffice telecom, informing me that there was a call for me on line two.

Neither of the senior doctors looked impressed when I asked them to excuse me, but they didn’t say anything. I went over to the phone on the wall and punched the blinking button as I picked up the receiver.

“Dawn Riley. Someone had better be dead.”

“I know you don’t mean that.” It was Warren, and the concern in his voice immediately turned my stomach into a churning pot of anxiety. I could think of only one reason why he would call me at work.

“Warren. Is Noah all right?” I had to keep my voice low and turn toward the wall because Dr. Canning was watching me, and I had already lied (sorta) to him about my relationship to Noah.

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “Have you been talking to him today?”

“This morning. He sounded tired, but fine.”

“I’m worried about him. I think he’s coming down with some kind of flu bug, but he won’t go to the hospital. He’s just lying on the couch doing nothing.”

How was I supposed to tell him his brother was fine without him asking how I knew that? “It probably is just a bug. He was fine when I…spoke to him last night.”

“Would you do me a favor? I’m on my way out of town. Would you check in on him for me later? I’ll leave a key under the mat.”

“I’m at work until five, but I can check in before I go home, sure.” What did it say that I was tickled just to have an excuse to go see Noah without seeming the clinging type?

A soft sigh blew through the line into my ear. “Thank you. Give me your cell number, and I’ll text you the alarm code as well.”

Ah, good. I liked that he wasn’t foolish enough to put a key where someone else might find it without a little added security.

I gave Warren my cell number and listened as he repeated it back to me. He thanked me again, and we hung up. Dr. Canning was still watching me.

“Is something wrong, Dawn?”

“No, sir.”

“I thought perhaps there was since that sounded like a personal call.”

It was none of his business. This wasn’t a prison last time I checked. “You misheard, sir.” I said this as coolly but professionally as I could, holding my boss’s gaze.

Dr. Canning caught the slight barb and flushed. Proper thing. Maybe he wouldn’t be so quick to eavesdrop next time, jerk. He cleared his throat. “Very well then.”

I walked up between them, a little cocky now that I had the faint taste of victory on my tongue. “How’s work on the SUNDS

case coming?”

“There haven’t been any more cases,” Dr. Canning replied, but he didn’t look at me. “The police think it may be a bacterium, or maybe a biological agent. I’m inclined to think it wasn’t SUNDS at all.”

That was a convenient way of putting the blame on the police and not themselves for not finding the “link” they wanted. I had told them it wasn’t SUNDS, but I wasn’t about to bring that up. They would only mock me or ask for my theory, and I could hardly tell them that a Terror from the Dream Realm was killing people in their sleep in order to siphon their essence to cloak himself from Morpheus. It sounded crazy even to me, and I knew it was true.

“That’s too bad.” I didn’t sound all that sympathetic, and I didn’t care. “The clinic could have used the publicity.” I picked up my clipboard and walked away. I could feel the two of them watching me. They’d be talking about me as soon as they were sure I was out of earshot, and I just couldn’t bring myself to care. People were dead. Karatos had killed them, and nothing could change that.

Not even me.

Noah’s apartment was silent as I stepped inside. I punched in the alarm code and relocked the door before calling out his name.

No answer.

At the top of the stairs, I slipped out of my boots and looked around. “Noah?” Still nothing. I checked the kitchen, which was empty, but there was a bowl with a spoon in the sink and half a pot of cold canned chicken soup on the stove.

The living room was also silent but had signs of life. A rumpled quilt was bunched up on the sofa, an open book spread like a butterfly facedown on the coffee table. Noah had been here, so where was he now?

I went up the stairs to the “second” floor of the apartment, which was really more of a loft. Because the space was open and airy, the rapidly sinking sun managed to peek through the many windows and cast an orange-and-golden glow over the smoothly polished floor. Two heavy square columns rose from floor to ceiling, flanking the foot of the king-size bed. The headboard sat between two partial columns built into the eastern wall. The bed was unmade, the snow-white sheets and marshmallow-plump pillows a crisp contrast to the gold-and-bronze duvet that lay half-buried beneath them and spilled onto the floor.

“Let me guess—”

I yelped at the sound of his voice, body jerking around as my heart leaped into my throat.

Noah grinned. “Warren sent you.”

He stood in a doorway on the far side of the room in nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans with a towel slung around his neck. His tanned skin was flushed from the shower, and his inky hair was damp, sticking up in thick spikes around his head.

I pressed my palm against my chest. My heart was trying to squeeze through my ribs. “He was worried. Did you tell him you were sick?” And damn he looked good. I could have started at his toes and licked my way up.

Noah held the ends of the towel around his neck as he approached me, a faint smile curving his lips. He looked a little drawn, but I’d seen him look worse after an all-night painting session.

“It was either that or tell him that I was attacked by one dream thing, healed by another, then spent the remainder of the night having a really good Nightmare.”

I grinned—and even blushed a little—at the double entendre. “How good?” Ego, it was a horrible thing.

He chuckled and tossed the towel on a chair just a few feet away before stopping right in front of me. He smelled warm and clean, and I wanted to bury my face in the hollow where his neck met his shoulder and just take one deep breath.

His eyes did that glow thing that made me all warm and mushy inside. “Very good,” he murmured, slipping a hand behind my head. Then he pulled me close and kissed me, and my stomach flip-flopped in response.

I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him close, so that we were pressed together from knee to chest. Both of his hands held my head now, in that gentle but firm way that kept me from pulling away—as if I would.

He tasted like vanilla-mint toothpaste, his mouth hot, wet, and sweet as our tongues moved together. I slid my hand down the small of his back to cup one firm, round butt cheek. He had such a great ass.

My stomach growled. Probably I should have been mortified, but I wasn’t. I started laughing instead. Noah did, too. We laughed with our mouths still touching. Leave it to me to ruin the moment with a need to feed.

Noah grinned as he lifted his head from mine. “I was just about to order in. You like Vietnamese?”

I do, and I told him that. He made the call, pulled on a T-shirt, and we went to the kitchen, where he took down some wineglasses and poured us each a glass while we waited for the food.

“Wine on an empty stomach,” I mused, swirling the dark red liquor around the bowl of my glass. Usually I didn’t like red, but this was good. “You’re not going to get me drunk and take advantage of me, are you?”

A lopsided grin crossed his face as he hooked a finger in the waist of my pants and pulled me closer. “Do you need to be drunk first?”

I couldn’t even fake chagrin. I just laughed and kissed him.

We took our wine to the living room and sat on the couch. I’d only taken two more swallows before we were kissing again, and Noah had me pinned beneath him on the overstuffed cushions. We ground against each other, necking and panting and groping like teenagers.

I was so glad Warren had asked me to go over and check on Noah!

I was two humps short of an orgasm when the buzzer went off. I hadn’t been so horny since high school. Noah lifted himself off me with a rueful grin.

“Don’t look so disappointed,” he told me with a kiss on the nose. “You’re not the one who has to answer the door with a hard-on.”

A hard-on that was all because of me, thank you. The silly thought occurred to me as he padded down the stairs, hunched like an old man. I smiled at the sight of him. I was feeling pretty giddy—pretty high on womanly sexual power. I wonder how many men realized that we got off on arousing them just as much as they seemed to like turning us on? I know there are a lot of men out there only concerned about their own pleasure, just as there women like that, too, but Noah and I obviously weren’t amongst them.

Oh, I was in such danger where he was concerned. I had to slow down, or I’d be in love before I knew what hit me. If I wasn’t in love already.

That was a sobering thought. I polished off the rest of my wine in an attempt to forget it. When he came back upstairs, Noah took one look at my empty glass and shook his head in amusement. He brought the bottle in, and we sat on the couch, each with our own carton of noodles, chicken, and vegetables. We split the order of crispy spring rolls, and I was tickled to learn that Noah didn’t like fish sauce either. We used a mix of hoisin and hot sauce as dip. We listened to music and talked as we ate.

We finished dinner and the wine while snuggled on the couch watching TV. You would think I would be satisfied with that, but I wasn’t. I didn’t like not being satisfied either. Everything was great—better than I even dreamed it could be. I was comfortable enough with Noah to be confident, but just on edge enough to enjoy the sexual tension. The problem, though, wasn’t with us. It was with Noah.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something wasn’t right with him. It was like something was missing. Maybe it was my paranoia, or maybe some kind of residual hangover from the injury he’d received from Karatos, but there was something. Both Verek and my father said they couldn’t find anything wrong with Noah, but had they looked past the physical? What if Karatos had done something to him?