Edge of Danger (4 page)

 
Her Grandma Rose’s old chair squeaked. “You’re dreaming,” he murmured, settling into the cane back. His voice, a whisper of smoke, curled around her.

 
She remembered a poem her father used to quote.
The other day upon the stair, I saw a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish that man would go away.

 
It didn’t feel anything like a dream. His voice was real.
He
was real. She might not be able to see him, but he was
there.
She knew he was there.

 
She moved another inch across the bed. Closer to the door. This was pretty freaking bizarre. “Are you my subconscious trying to make sense of why Theo was killed?” She demanded an answer, caught between the hope that this was indeed a dream, and the fear that it wasn’t.

 
Dr. Kirchner’s murder had shaken her to the core. Clearly she was under considerable stress to be hallucinating this vividly. But could a hallucination take her gun from her?

 
The mind was a powerful thing.

 
“Leave the killer to the authorities.”

 
She would. Of course she would. But she had plenty of questions of her own. And Theo’s cryptic warning to process. Not to mention a major case of guilt for her inability to save him.

 
“Who are you, and what do you want?” Eden demanded with more heat. She didn’t understand her body’s behavior. Her skin felt hot and tight, her lips swollen. Her heart was thudding arrhythmically. She was conscious of the smooth fabric of the sheet rubbing maddeningly over her nipples as she shifted, and the unrelieved throbbing between her thighs.

 
She ached with a nameless longing—No, she thought, appalled and half embarrassed. Not nameless.

 
She was turned on.

 
Sexually aroused by a man who wasn’t touching her. A man who wasn’t there.

 
“Who would you like me to be?”

 
Her heart was galloping uncomfortably, and it was hard to keep her tone even. “Not the invisible man, that’s for sure.”

 
“I told you, this is a dream.”

 
“If this is a dream I get to ask you questions.” She realized she still felt antsy—not very scientific, but—antsy. Respiration up. Heart racing, skin tingling, body parts that had no business making themselves known, on high alert.

 
Sexually
aware. And becoming more so by the minute.

 
Freaking bizarre all right. Telling herself not to be ridiculous didn’t help.

 
“What kind of questions?” he asked impatiently. The chair creaked as he shifted.

 
“That depends on who you are,” she pointed out, licking her dry lips. “Since this is my dream I suppose I can make you anyone. How about Albert Einstein?”
How about…
Her mind went blank as she tried to come up with some fantasy man to ease the flutter of arousal she was feeling. Nobody came to mind. How sad was that?

 
“How about not?”

 
“Well, that’s unreasonable since it’s my—” she broke off as she suddenly noticed the drag of the sheet sliding down her body toward her feet. The cool silkiness of the fabric skimming her skin made her shiver, and her respiration and heart rate jumped alarmingly as her breath snagged in her throat.

 
“Hey! Dream or no dream.
No touching.
” She made a useless grab for the rapidly retreating material. It, like her gun, disappeared.

 
Look Ma, no hands.

 
The chair hadn’t creaked. He hadn’t moved. Either the guy was a magician, or it really was a bona fide, stress-induced, break-with-reality kind of dream. And if it
was
a dream, she had no reason to be scared.

 
Like hell she wasn’t scared.

 
She knew her own body like…the back of her hand, she thought wryly. And this was turned on. Big time turned on. Hot to trot turned on. Ready for hard fast sex turned on. Moisture pooled between her legs and her nipples ached to be touched turned on.

 
Dream or no dream, it
felt
real.

 
Moving made it worse, and she forced herself to lie still, hoping to God the sensation would pass so she could leap out of bed and make a run for it. She lay back against the pillows, forcing herself to breathe slowly and deeply. In. Out. In. Out.

 
“How about—” Intimate pulse points started to throb maddeningly, joining all her other symptoms. “Ah…Dr. Betsy Ancker-Johnson?”

 
Lying still wasn’t helping. Not at all. There wasn’t a breath of air in the room, yet her nipples peaked, hard and painfully, and goosebumps roughened her skin. Goosebumps she always got when she was sexually aroused. “Yes. Ancker-Johnson.” Her voice was thick, husky.

 
She cleared her throat. “I’d love to ask her about her observations of microwave emission without the presence of an external field. Or Steven Spielberg? He’d be fascinating to talk to.”

 
“I’m going to make love to you now, Eden,” he cut off her nervous ramblings.

 
That
spiked her heart rate even more, and made the nerves under her skin jump.
“Jason?!”
The dream suddenly made some sort of crazy sense. There were many empirical findings about dreams that didn’t fit with any problem-solving theory that she knew of. Still—

 
“Ja—? Yes.
Jason.
” He didn’t sound particularly pleased. “Close your eyes.”

 
She closed them. It was a strain trying to peer through the darkness anyway. “That doesn’t sound very lover-like,” she told him crossly. Really, if she wasn’t ready to have sex with Jason Verdine in real time, she highly doubted she’d be ready in a dream.

 
“Listen to the music, Eden.”

 
“There isn’t any mus—Oh. That’s pretty.” Something with flutes that made her think of splashing water and soaring birds. Instead of relaxing, she found herself tensing, feeling a crazy—make that
insane
—urge to invite him into her bed. That, if nothing else, convinced her this was a dream.

 
Captivated by the way her body was behaving, Eden tried to look at this scientifically. But, oh, God. She was on fire. Her skin felt sensitized.
Fascinating.
But how could this be? It took more than a suggestion of intimacy to make her hot. She was a girl who needed foreplay. Clearly her brain was her largest erogenous zone.

 
She relaxed into the overwhelming sensation. The anticipation of his touch, the breathless, knife-edge of expectation had her lifting her hips.

 
“I know this is just my subconscious trying to help me sort out the violence, or what to do about Jason, or…some—Oh, God what are you doing to m-me…But I don’t think it’s w-working.”

 
It wasn’t working because she was suddenly consumed with the need for sex. Hard and fast and
now.
Her skin burned. Hell, she felt hot all over, and it had nothing to do with the warm Arizona night. She shifted restively on the sheet, her breasts, her thighs, her belly, every throbbing, needy part of her demanding physical contact.

 
Relief was in the bedside drawer. But dream or no dream, she wasn’t masturbating with some strange, disembodied invisible guy in the room watching her. No matter how much her body begged for release, or how sexy he sounded. She moistened suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue. Wanting—Needing—

 
“I am not touching you.” He said it, not as though he was assuring her, but as though he refused to do so.

 
“You can’t, Sparky. You’re a dream. An illusion.” The smooth bluesy music filled the room, but did nothing to slow the thud of her heart as adrenaline raced through her veins in a white-hot tide of desire.

 
Eden’s body felt like a gathering storm, drawing tighter and tighter. Her knees moved apart without her conscious thought.

 
He might be sitting ten feet away from her in her granny’s boudoir chair, but Eden’s nipples suddenly responded as if they
were
being stroked. The sensation was nothing short of electrifying, and her stomach seemed to drop as though she were freefalling. She gritted her teeth, trying to shut off the sensations spiraling through her.

 
She waved a hand over her breasts, sure that someone was physically touching her. Her hand passed through air before dropping back to clutch at the sheet beneath her hips.

 
Holy cow! When I have a break with reality, I do a really, really good job.

 
This is one hell of an adept apparition.

 
She swore she felt the heat of his skin. But he wasn’t anywhere near her. Good Lord. The scientist in her didn’t believe in ghosts. On the other hand, she didn’t believe in telekinesis either and he’d made both gun and sheet vanish into thin air.

 
“Don’t fight it,” he said, clearly exasperated. “Just feel.”

 
“I’m feeling plenty,” she muttered, still not sure why she was feeling
anything.
She shivered as the hair on her neck was brushed aside. The tightness in her stomach grew stronger as she imagined cool lips moving over the hot, damp skin of her nape. A shiver went through her, and she couldn’t help the little moan that escaped her parted lips as warm air fanned her skin.

 
“Ah. You like that.” Her hair seemed to fall, sifting to tickle her neck. Eden squeezed her eyes tightly closed, knowing only pure sensation. She wanted to crawl completely into the dark, sweet fantasy that was wiping everything out of her mind but what he was doing to her. The heat and scent of the man’s skin—a man who wasn’t there—became etched on her memory.

 
Not satisfied with this ethereal phantom lover, Eden craved the physical touch of his body like a drug. The pulse in her throat beat wildly as a trail of moist heat seemed to move from the base of her neck to her right breast.

 
Her pulse went into overdrive as an inextricable pressure around her nipple drew it into a tight, almost painful nub. Her nipple was manipulated into an aching peak, but she had no idea how. She didn’t care. Ultrasensitive, her skin burned, and a deep pulse of expectation made her hips arch up off the mattress.

 
She moaned. Instinctively she reached out her arms to hold him. There was nothing there. She dug her fingers into the sheet on either side of her hips to anchor herself again.

 
“Let yourself go,” he whispered, that voice as deep and arousing as the whisper of sensation on her skin. “Just…let…yourself…go.”

 
The cunning stroke of an invisible hand trailed a fiery path from her breasts across her tummy. Eden bit her lip as need ratcheted up and up unbearably. She couldn’t quite catch her breath. She wanted—she needed—

 
She opened herself, yielding to the craving, desperate for sweet relief, her body as tightly coiled as a spring.

 
But there was something—something on the periphery of her consciousness that kept that final release at bay.

 
“Come for me, Doctor,” he said urgently.

 
“No,” she told him with spurious calm, breath coming in short choppy bursts as she tried to regulate it. By crossing her legs tightly she could send herself into orbit in about three seconds if she wanted to.