Tangible (Dreamwalker) (3 page)

She froze a moment before snatching her phone off the ground. He hoped it had broken so he wouldn’t have to confiscate it. The cops wouldn’t believe her, it was true, but the paperwork he’d have to file with HQ to eradicate police records was a pain in the ass.

“How do you know about my dreams?” Her eyes were wide beneath long lashes, but her expression was more suspicious than grateful to have been rescued from—literally—her worst nightmare. “Did you steal my files from my therapist?”

“No.” He lowered his chin and stared at her hard. “This is what we do. If you’d take us to your house, we can do the rest of what we do.”

“Not until you explain what’s going on.” She shoved her pepper spray into her handbag and inspected her phone. “If this is broken, you’re buying me a new one.”

“Your phone is the least of your worries. Do you live alone? Married? Kids?”

A shadow crossed her expression, but it wasn’t the shadow of a panicky parent. “That’s none of your business.”

She was going to be a hassle. She was already a hassle. He felt sorry for whoever ended up with her.

“Now that your dreams have materialized, it is our business, sweetheart.” As he’d intended, she bristled at the endearment. “You foresaw those vamps last night. We know it and you know it, so quit pussyfooting around. You have a lot of nightmares, and if you ask me, you watch too much TV.”

“I didn’t ask you.” But her face crumpled as she grasped the fact he was right about the vampires, and probably the other things.

“It’s going to be okay,” Rhys added, hopping in with an assist. His deep voice could soothe a crying infant despite his intimidating appearance—from his huge feet to his shiny brown skull. “We can explain everything and we can make it go away.”

Of course, it would go away at the expense of her naive beliefs that nightmares were imaginary. Nightmares were real. An untutored dreamer’s sleeping mind dragged wraiths out of the dreamsphere and loosed them in the physical realm to wreak havoc. That was why the Somnium existed, and had since ancient times.

They prevented the wraiths from overrunning the world. No matter how they had to do it.

“Maybe names would help. I’m Rhys Carr.” Rhys offered her a hand, which she shook. “The cranky one is Ezekiel Garrett. We call him Zeke.”

“Margaret. Maggie.” She didn’t offer a surname. Didn’t offer Zeke her hand, either.

“Now that we’ve gotten the introductions out of the way, can we go?” Zeke asked.

No amount of counselor training had drummed patience into Zeke, and right now he was torpedoing whatever manners he did possess. This woman had been attacked by the exact monsters she’d dreamed about and she couldn’t trust the people who’d saved her?

He gestured at the backs of the colorful old townhouses that lined the alley in this part of Richmond’s Fan district. “Which one is yours?”

Her hands shook as she flipped open her phone. Again. “We have to call the cops.”

The rest of the seven-member team returned, each one tough, athletic and bristling with weapons. They had to be in order to tackle the various forms wraiths assumed on terra firma.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” he asked harshly. “It’s your fault the monsters are here.” Not that a neo could have prevented it, but he had to jolt her out of her defensive cocoon.

The hand clutching her phone fell to her side. “My...my fault?”

“It’ll also be your fault when they come back. The next time you dream about monsters? They’ll be as real as these. But instead of having hours between dream and reality, they’ll be here as soon as you imagine them. Hey, if we let ’em eat you it would solve our problems.”

“Zeke’s giving you a hard time,” Lillian told a horrified Maggie. “We won’t let them eat you.”

When Lillian punctuated her statement by scraping wraith dust under her nails with a dagger, Maggie went from pale to pasty white. She snapped her phone shut and pressed her hand to her injured throat. “Oh God. It’s not going to stop, is it?”

To Zeke’s annoyance, her stunned expression woke his reluctant sympathies.

Yes, she’d been mouthy, ungrateful and uncooperative. He’d been right hateful, himself. But whatever had led her to this, whatever horrors she’d been experiencing on a nightly basis, would have twisted her existence into a living hell for weeks. Months. Living hells didn’t exactly inspire a person to behave with kindness and grace.

Nor did having one’s worldview shattered into a thousand unfixable shards.

“I did dream about this last night. Only I...I died.” Her volume increased as she stumbled unwillingly into the truth. “Vampires don’t exist. People in vampire masks don’t disintegrate into dust. This can’t be real. I’m asleep and this is another nightmare. I’m so tired of these nightmares.”

Hysteria colored her voice. Zeke didn’t like where this was headed. “You’re not asleep. Want me to pinch you?”

“I am asleep. I must be.” Panicked, she took off down the alley. His teammates looked to him expectantly.

“A runner. Fabulous. Guess I’ll handle it since you’re standing around like stumps.”

“She’s your neo, cowboy,” Lillian said. “Go fetch.”

With a grumble, Zeke went after Maggie. Because he’d endured rigorous physical conditioning and she presumably hadn’t, he reached her quickly. He grabbed her shoulder, yanked her around and kept her from falling when her momentum shifted.

“No.” She punched at him with the handbag, and something large and bulky inside whacked him in the nuts.

“Dammit.” Struggling to breathe through the pain, he held on tight. “Would you settle down? We ain’t the bad guys.”

“Let go of me.” Smacking, clawing, she landed several blows before he got her arms under control. Her knee flew toward his crotch and he blocked it with a thigh. The rest of the team wouldn’t interfere unless he asked them to.

He didn’t want to hurt her but he could use her reaction to his advantage.

Neo panic was tricky. Most mentors could calm them down with words, but not him. Once he’d pushed a neo into a lake to chill the guy’s hysteria. There was no lake in the alley and it was winter. Another time he’d shot a guy with a stun gun. Yeah, that wouldn’t play here. A third time he’d splatted a woman, Lillian, actually, in the face with a pie. She’d been working in a bakery; it had been handy.

So what about Maggie? What would get through to her while making her hate him more?

Something unexpected, something offensive, something that didn’t require any verbal prowess on his part.

He had the perfect solution.

He crowded her until their bodies bumped. He slid his hands to her bare neck, seeking skin contact to awaken the tie she wouldn’t understand yet. Slight pulsations from the tangible tickled his palms.

To her credit she didn’t scream or try to hit him, though her breathing accelerated. “What are you doing?”

“You’re under a shitload of stress,” he guessed. The tangible looped between them—back and forth, drawing them together like opposite poles of a magnet. “Bad dreams every night. Horrible things chasing you and everyone you know, with no way to escape. That right?”

“Yes,” she breathed. Her weight shifted out of attack mode.

“You’re low on sleep. You’re scared. I get it.” He licked his lips and her gaze dropped to his mouth. “If this was one of your nightmares, would this happen?”

He kissed her.

He wasn’t tentative and he wasn’t courteous. He immobilized her head, captured her lips, and swept his tongue into her mouth.

He’d expected resistance. He’d expected to go through the motions mechanically until her indignation overrode her panic.

What he got was heat.

Sexual awareness rose inside him like a flood. Part mystical bond, part untimely attraction—it reminded him how he’d already been inside her body, inside her mind. He tasted her sweetness and the bitter edge of her fear. When she didn’t kick or bite, he deepened the kiss.

She responded with a tiny whimper, leaning into him. She sensed the connection too. How could she not? Its pull was hypnotic. She was high-level like he was. She had immense potential, which meant training her was critical. Dangerous.

As for him, this was the last time he’d ever touch her, so he made it worth his while.

Her body pressed against him and he grabbed her ass. Cold but cushy. God, she felt good. The tangible heightened everything. She’d notice his protective vest and the weapons stashed on his person through their coats.

He pulled her tighter, hoping she’d notice his growing erection too. That should really put her off.

Instead, she flicked his bottom lip with her tongue. Invited him to do more. Her hands crept up his shoulders to his neck. Her fingers were like ice but her mouth was hot and silky. He caressed the velvet of her cheeks and kissed her until she was limp and he was hard, and if he didn’t stop he wouldn’t be able to.

He wouldn’t be able to step away from the assignment.

He parted from her abruptly, leaving her lips swollen and her skin passion-flushed, visible even in the gloomy alley. The voltage of their contact ebbed.

His lust didn’t.

Shit.

None of his teammates commented. After the catastrophe in Harrisburg, Zeke hadn’t maintained his rank as sentry because he had great hair and uncanny aim. He was good. Lives depended on his experience. His instincts. Right now, lives depended on his convincing Maggie to cooperate.

Had he done it? Why hadn’t she smacked him? Good God, he ought to be smacked for groping her that way.

She raised a shaky hand to her mouth, touched her lips, and exhaled slowly. “That was rude. Zeke.”

The way she said his name did nothing to soften his cock. His erection chafed his jeans.

“Does that happen in your nightmares?” he repeated. It sure didn’t happen in his.

“No.” She couldn’t meet his stare. “Is everything I dream real?”

“Just the dreams that feel different.” A neo would understand that. “Like last night.”

“I can’t believe this is happening.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “Why does nobody know about these monsters?”

“People do know,” he said. “We know. Our organization knows. Now you know.”

Tears gathered in her eyes. “I don’t want this.”

Zeke fought the urge to embrace her again. Instead, he said gruffly, “None of us do, but somebody’s gotta deal with it. Now quit bitchin’ that life’s not fair and move your ass.”

Maggie jerked as if he’d slapped her. Oh, she hated him all right. He kind of hated himself.

Rhys stepped in, his voice a soft rumble. “We understand what you’re going through, Maggie. We all suffered through it ourselves at one point or another.” He placed his huge hand on her arm and guided her toward the street. “Consider us your support group and Zeke your go-to guy.”

“Your go-to-hell guy,” Zeke muttered. He stifled the urge to shove Rhys away from her. He didn’t want to mentor this woman. Didn’t want to open himself up to anyone like that ever again and put the world in danger because he couldn’t maintain his professionalism.

But he didn’t like Rhys touching her. He didn’t want anyone touching her, mentoring her, sharing her dreams and her bed.

Possessiveness and lust had tagged along with the tangible. Just what he needed. She was shaping up to be a Harrisburg retread and he didn’t think it was fate giving him a chance to make it right.

Fucking odds.

“Don’t mind Zeke.” Rhys shot him a searching glance, as if he suspected what was going through Zeke’s head. His teammates didn’t usually have to apologize for him this much. More like half this much. “He had a rough night last night.”

He’d had a rough night, all right—locating this woman in the dreamsphere so his team could slay her nightmares. Now he was expected to tutor her without getting attached, or her nightmares would become his own.

This was not going to happen again.

Chapter Three

Maggie shivered as Zeke, emanating frustration, caught up to her and her escort. Zeke’s spicy taste still on her lips, she tried to concentrate on the important thing—the vampires. The cut on her neck where one had bitten her. Were there more at the house? Her brother hadn’t been home this early in weeks, but if he was now, if the monsters found him...

“Does the rule about vampires requiring an invitation to enter a house apply?” she asked. If so, no problem. Hayden wouldn’t welcome anyone into the house. He wouldn’t even answer the door.

“Told you. They’re not vampires. They’re wraiths.” Zeke’s coat sleeve brushed hers, and she clung more tightly to Rhys. The added support increased her chances of staying upright considering how Zeke’s touch melted her knees. And other parts.

This was a dumb time to dwell on melting parts, despite the fact she’d never met a man who exuded so much raw sex appeal she could feel it in her bones like the throb of a giant motor. Zeke’s touch made her warmer—literally. He had a fever and she was catching it.

Yet everyone behaved as if their steamy kiss had never happened. Maybe they didn’t dare mention it. Zeke, though one of the shortest in the group, was clearly their leader—from the way they responded to him to the way he carried himself. He radiated as much authority as he did sex appeal.