Dying Dreams (Book 1 of Dying Dreams Trilogy) (34 page)

Liza tensed as the sounds of the intro flowed into the room, but then she relaxed and leaned more deeply into him. He watched the show with her leaning against him, half his attention on her, the other half on the laptop, sensitive to any sign she might be coming around. She gave none, so he loaded another show and another, until the solar outlet ran out of juice and the computer went dark.

*LIZA*

Liza felt Sloane against her back and his touch was almost more than she could take. She tensed, waiting for a vision or a nightmare, but when none came she relaxed. She knew she should push him away, but that would mean moving, that would risk a confrontation, and she had the strength for neither. So she lay there stiff, feeling him and smelling him and glad of his presence, even as she feared it. She let him stay and sunk back down into herself, away from reality.

The sound of music startled her and she feared a vision, but then she recognized the music for what it was. The intro to one of those house-hunting shows from fifty-years ago. She’d always loved those old shows. Ellington had made fun of the people, when he’d watched with her, but she’d loved and envied their anticipation and hope for a happy home.

She almost rolled over to watch it with him. She almost laughed when the husband of the newly married couple explained why they needed four bedrooms for two of them. She almost stayed with him. But she couldn’t. It hurt too much and she was too tired. She fell asleep listening to the closing credits and smelling him and feeling his warmth.

Someone rolled Liza onto her back and put a cool hand on her head. She didn’t resist, sure that Sloane was moving her for some reason. But she didn’t smell Sloane, she smelled a masculine cologne that had been laid on too thick and she knew he’d never wear something like that. He hadn’t left her for hours and hours, and if he’d gone, it must be because… No, she’d die before she let Arty use her again. She forced her eyes open and saw a flutter of wings and a concerned face staring down at her. Arty’s pixy butler. He’d found her. She flailed against him and whimpered, trying to find the strength to scream, but her throat was still raw and she was so very tired.

“I need you to touch her,” the pixy said. “She needs to know you’re here.” He spoke calmly, but his hands held her down firmly, one on her forehead and the other on her waist.

“I’m here, Baby.” Sloane sounded calm. “It’s okay. Leo’s going to help you.”

She tried to turn her head, but the pixy wouldn’t let her. She growled at him and he smiled and released her. She rolled her head on the pillow and saw Sloane, and something inside her melted and re-formed into a new shape. His face, looking so concerned and serious, made her feel safe. She wanted to stay there with him and not retreat back into herself. Then Leo moved her head to face him and placed a hand on her forehead.

“In a perfect world,” Leo said. “I’d heal your body and you’d go through years of therapy, but we don’t have time for that. I can heal your body, your exhaustion and your throat. I can heal your gift and I can even heal the worst of the damage that’s been done to your mind, but it’s going to hurt like hell, and you’re going to have to choose to do the rest. You have to choose to come back to us. You will have to decide why to come back, but I’ll give you a few reasons. Rice misses you and he wants you back. If you don’t come back, you’ll die and most bonded mates don’t fare well when their mate dies. So come back for him. Arty is going after your mother. He liked having a banshee on staff and figures a full-blood will be less fragile. Come back to save your mother and destroy Arty. Curtis can’t hide you here forever and there’s a whole army of folks looking for you to make you their guinea pig. Finding you here would bring Curtis more attention than he likes. So come back for Curtis. You saved my life and I owe you a debt for that. If you die, I will never be able to re-pay you and I don’t want to carry such a heavy debt for the rest of my life, so come back for me.”

While Leo spoke, Liza felt him digging around in her mind and in her body, probing with the feather-light touch of his mind. It didn’t hurt exactly, but it didn’t feel comfortable either. When he finished speaking, that light touch became fingers grasping and pulling and twisting, putting things right in her body and her head. The pain blasted through her and she felt as though she was being ripped in two. Surely, no one could endure so much pain and survive. She opened her mouth to scream, to achieve a release of that kind, but it was like something had been stuffed over her mouth and she couldn’t scream, couldn’t even move her lips. She twisted, her body instinctively trying to find a position of comfort, but her body was tethered to the bed by invisible threads. She tried to retreat back inside herself, but that avenue had been closed off to her, too. She looked into Leo’s eyes and let his words play over and over in her mind, reminding herself of why she was undergoing the pain, of what she had to go back to do. The pain changed, from something she wanted to get away from, to something she took a perverse pleasure in, because the pain had to happen for her to heal and take her life back. To reclaim what Arty had taken from her and to make him feel pain every bit as excruciating as her own.

Despite her fierce thoughts, the pain must have overwhelmed her at some point, because the next thing she knew, she was waking up to birds chirping and early morning sunlight. She had so much energy, she felt like she could get up and run a marathon. She opened her eyes and the world exploded into Technicolor and she felt an incredible joy to be alive and whole. She felt Sloane’s arms around her and she rolled over and pressed herself against him. Against the most beautiful, kindest man she’d ever known. She ran a hand down his bare arm and reveled in the tingles that sizzled and popped through her at just touching him. She still felt afraid and a part of her wanted to curl back up and hide, but Leo had made sure she felt good enough to stand on her own two feet and she wasn’t going to turn away from that gift. She wouldn’t turn away from Sloane. Not ever again.

She put her mouth to his neck and breathed him in, laying small kisses up the side of his neck, and he groaned and opened his eyes. The smile that spread across his face warmed her and did as much to chase away the shadows as Leo had done.

“You’re back,” he whispered.

She nodded, unable to speak. After everything she’d been through, all the pain and the death, she wanted to feel something good, and Sloane looked and felt so, so good. She ran a hand under his shirt and felt his warm skin stretched over hard muscles, and a thrill of raw lust streaked through her. She looked into his sea-colored eyes and she wanted nothing more than to be closer to him. He slid a hand under her shirt and pressed her tight against him, as though he could read her thoughts.

A little voice in the back of her mind reminded her of her reservations, of all the reasons she should hold back with him, should deny the warm feeling of love that swelled along with the lust, but she ignored it. She had turned away from Sloane out of fear, and she was done being afraid. If she had died in Arty’s house, she’d never have known how it felt to give herself over, body and soul, to Sloane and, after tasting death in ten different flavors, she didn’t want to ignore any experience life had to offer. After she’d shot him and believed him dead, she’d realized how easily she could lose him. Sloane belonged to her and she wouldn’t lose him again.

She wrapped her arms around him and cupped his ass, rolling her hips against him, and feeling that he was ready for whatever she wanted to do. There was so much she wanted to do.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” He asked, his body tense with restraint.

She looked into his eyes, those blue-grey eyes that seemed to sparkle and shimmer like the sea in sunlight. “I’m sorry I held back before. I was scared, but I’m done being scared.”

She pressed her lips to his and kissed him, tasting him, caressing him with her mouth, to show him how she felt. This would be no frantic, need-driven act. She broke away from him and pulled his shirt over his head. He still held back, letting her do what she wanted, not touching her. The pink, puckered scar on his chest reminded her of what she’d done and her heart clenched painfully in her chest. “Oh, god. I’m so sorry, I had no idea… I didn’t mean to get so close to… My hand was shaking, and I almost…” she couldn’t say the words. The wound sat on his otherwise perfect chest just inches from his heart. If she’d had to make an x on his chest to show where his heart lay, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have chosen the spot of the scar. “I could have… And you’re here. How are you here?”

He reached for her then and ran one finger gently down her face from temple to chin. That small motion brought the tears. How could he be so kind, so affectionate after what she’d done?

His expression twisted. “Don’t cry, Liza. I know you didn’t want to hurt me. You told me how to find you before you shot me. You couldn’t have meant to kill me.”

She choked as another sob racked her body. She swallowed hard, and forced herself to calm down. “Arty said he would kill us both unless I worked for him. I had to prove my loyalty to him by killing you, or he would torture and kill you slowly while I watched and then kill me. When I ran into you on the street, he had a sniper with a rifle on you. He was going to shoot you if I didn’t do it, and they would have taken you back to Arty’s and hurt you. I didn’t have any way out and I had to make it look good. I had to make him believe I’d killed you. He wanted you dead because of what you knew about him and I had to make it look like…” Her explanation sounded pathetic to her own ears. Nothing could justify or excuse what she’d done.

“So you had to make it look like you’d really killed me,” Sloane said, his tone matter-of-fact. “And you went back to him and allowed him to torture you the way he did. Why?”

Liza laughed, but she felt no humor or joy, only a fierce regret and anger. “I thought I might be able to get information about his plans, proof of what he was up to. I figured he would kill me no matter what I did, but if I could get information from him first it would make it worth it. It was him, you know. He was behind the serial killings of the college women.”

He leaned back, his eyes wide. “Do you have proof of that?”

She shook her head. “I don’t have proof of anything. He said he killed them because they have dragon blood and the dragons were the protectors of that rock he wants. He doesn’t care who’s killed as long as he gets what he wants.”

“Did he tell you what he wants?”

“No, nothing other than the rock. He wanted me to find out why some people in his group were killed. He actually has a group of people he’s convinced to follow him.” Liza shuddered and Sloane reached out and pulled her into his chest.

She released a breath she didn’t even realize she’d been holding. He stroked her back and kissed her temple. “Curtis thinks he wants to use the rock to control who can use technology and who can’t and make himself more powerful. I would guess that the majority of his people don’t know what he’s been doing to achieve that goal.”

“You didn’t see,” Liza said, finding it harder to breathe. “The people who work for him, the dead ones I touched, they’ve done horrible, horrible things.”

He kissed the top of her head, and she let him comfort her. “What are we going to do now?” she said into his chest.

He chuckled. “Well, we can’t go back to SPA, because we’ve both gone off the reservation as far as they’re concerned.”

Just when Liza thought she couldn’t feel any guiltier. “You’ve lost your job because of me?”

He sighed. “I lost my job because of me.”

“If I hadn’t shot you…” She wasn’t really sure how that would have changed things, but she felt certain it would have.

He pulled away and looked at her. “You did what you had to do, and I did what I had to do. Now, we’re going to find Arty and we’re going to end this. If we find some proof along the way that might get us our jobs back, all the better, but I don’t regret anything that’s happened and I never will. I have you back safe and that’s all that matters.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She sighed when he opened his mouth to argue. “I mean I’m very happy to be with you, but we need to eat, we need to work, and we need to not have people trying to kill us.”

He smiled. “Your friend Curtis has some ideas about that, actually. But first, we need to finish what we started. Arty’s minions killed my friends and they hurt you and he’s going to pay.”

“You have a plan how we’re going to accomplish this?”

“Baby, I’ve always got a plan.” He leaned in and kissed her. She thought she might just drown in that kiss and die happily.

*SLOANE*

“Who are these people?” Liza asked looking around the small sloop at the six redcaps, two of them male and four of them female, who were happily arguing about which explosives would create the biggest waves and whether or not they’d be able to surf them. They’d already established which of them would be in charge of getting photographic evidence of the drill, and that guy was pouting. They’d borrowed the sloop from one of Curtis’s friends and the way the redcaps wrestled and goofed around, even Sloane was worried they would break something and he’d have to explain it to Curtis.

Sloane knew he should be more apprehensive about redcaps and explosives and the pirates they were about to face, but he couldn’t stop smiling. He had Liza back and she’d stopped questioning the bond. The night before, she’d cuddled with him on the couch as they chatted with Curtis about the best way to get Arty’s attention. Even now, she had her hand in his, unable to stop touching him. “They might seem a little crazy, but they’ll get the job done.”

Liza nodded and scanned the horizon. He followed her gaze. The sea rolled calmly beneath their boat, the sun shone almost too brightly off the blue waves, and Sloane breathed in the calm and peace the sea always brought him.