Dream Bound (26 page)

Zianne hadn’t changed, though he’d lived a lifetime since they’d last made love. But as she reached her peak, as she cried out and her muscles tightened around his cock, it was as if the years melted away. He groaned when his balls pulled up tight between his legs, when the surge of pressure told him he’d lost the battle to hang on.

“Mac! Mac, I love you. I love you.” Her cry and her sighs blended with his deep, guttural groan. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, held her against his heart while the damned organ thundered in his chest. This time Zianne’s tears dampened his throat and her fingers clutched his shoulders, hanging on as if she’d never let him go.

But he knew she would. He was well aware she had to return to the form of the tiny squirrel in order to conserve energy.

“How long can you stay with me? Like this.”

She shook her head and sniffed. “Not much longer. If I go back now and become the small creature, I’ll retain enough energy to communicate. If I wait, I will have to remain mute until I can take more energy from one of my kind.”

“I see.” He brushed his hand over her hair, inhaled her scent, and wondered if he’d ever hold her again. He had no idea what the future would bring. Zianne could travel to the past, but she was unable to move forward in time.

It didn’t exist. Everything they would do, every action, every word they might say, had yet to be written. “Sweetheart, I don’t want to let you go, but we’re going to have to talk, to plan. You’d better return to your other form.” He glanced at the tote bag. Saw the squirrel sleeping and looked at Zianne. “I don’t get it? How can you be both places?”

Smiling, she kissed his nose. “Because that’s a real squirrel who is lending me her body. She’s really quite friendly and doesn’t seem to mind when I’m inside her. She has enough of her own natural life force that she helps me to preserve mine.”

She kissed his lips this time. “I’ll need to go back to that little room.”

“The dream shack?” He chuckled. Then, without warning, he rolled over so that she was beneath him, but he held his weight off her body, propped on his elbows with his legs encasing hers. His cock was between her thighs, and he was still aroused and growing hard again.

He knew he’d never have enough of her. Not if they lived a thousand years. This one night couldn’t come close to sating a need that had grown since the day he’d met her.

Had only grown stronger since she’d disappeared.

She arched, raising her hips against him. Brushed his tangled hair back from his face and kissed him. Then she smiled. “Is that what they call it? The dream shack? Then yes. I need to go back there before the night is over. It’s easier for my people to share energy with me at night. It doesn’t take as much from them to travel here at night as it does in the daytime.”

“I don’t want to let you go. I’m afraid you won’t come back.”

“Mac, I will return. And we’ll figure out how to retrieve the soulstones and save my people. Cameron is working on that.”

“Cam? How do you know?”

“Trust me. And trust the amazing team you’ve brought here to help us. They’re good, sincere men and women. They’ll do whatever they can to make this work.”

He shook his head. “I know. I need to quit thinking of them as kids. They’re absolutely amazing.”

“Not as amazing as you.” She kissed him again, but this time her arms went around him, her legs locked at the small of his back, and she held him like that, kissing him, taking his kisses in return, unable to stop this physical connection long enough to speak aloud the words they wanted to say. Yet Mac knew her thoughts as Zianne knew his. Hearts and minds open, they shared the sense of loss he’d known, the fears she’d felt. Shared and absorbed the amazing love they’d so quickly rediscovered.

As Mac kissed her, Zianne moved against him. He tilted his hips forward and slipped inside her warm sheath. This time their loving was slow and sweet without that desperate rush, that frantic need to couple. Orgasm rippled over and through the two of them, pulling them together in a warm wave of passion that mentally and emotionally satisfied something deep inside Mac.

He felt Zianne’s rhythmic contractions holding him close and linked to feel the surge of his seed spilling deep inside her body. Their connection was soul deep, heartfelt. Life affirming.

God, how he loved her. He’d dreamed of this night for so many years, yet his dreams hadn’t come close to the reality of finally holding Zianne against him. She was so much a part of him, Mac realized he’d lived as an amputee for the past twenty years, suffering the pain of a lost part of his heart and soul. Right now, with Zianne in his arms, he was complete once again.

But she needed to return to her other form. He sensed it even as her body rippled around him, as her climax carried her over the edge and away. He felt a tingle of energy wherever they touched, a sense of current passing between them.

Between one breath and the next, Zianne was gone. Mac let out a deep breath and his head fell forward, heavy with despair. The beautiful woman beneath him was no more now than tangled sheets and a warm bed. He let out a long, soft sigh and closed his eyes against the burn of tears.

There was no time for that. No time at all now. He managed to roll to his side, swing his legs over the edge of the bed, and sit up. The squirrel sat in the tote bag, sparkling dark eyes staring at him.

But it was Zianne’s sweet voice that rippled through his mind.
Good night, Mac. Sleep well, my love. Try not to worry.

I promise. I love you. Good night, Zianne. Sleep well.

She watched him, dark eyes twinkling as he crawled slowly out of bed and pulled on his sweats and a warm shirt. He slipped his feet into a pair of old clogs, gathered up Rodie’s tote, and carried Zianne back to the dream shack.

Try not to worry, she says. Now that’s almost funny.

Finn glanced at the clock. Two more hours before his shift started. His brain wouldn’t stop buzzing, so he knew he wasn’t going to get any more sleep, but there was just too much going on. For a guy who never had enough to keep him busy, life here at the array was never dull.

He stared at his bed a minute, then turned away and went back to the front room, dragged his laptop out of the case, and booted up. First thing he did was check mail. Nothing but spam, so obviously no one missed him all that much. Then he hit the social networking pages. He’d given up on Twitter—it felt like too much of a commitment to stay on top of stuff—but Facebook was fun. He scrolled through the posts on his wall and chuckled.

All from women. Beautiful women, every last one of them. He stared at their pictures a moment and realized every single one on the page had been in his bed.

There were an awful lot of them.

So why did that make him feel depressed? Normally, he’d get a charge out of all those thumbnail photos of gorgeous women, knowing he’d fucked each of them at least a couple of times, and in a few rare cases, maybe more.

Not tonight. What really pissed him off was knowing why he felt so crappy. So much like a total loser.

It was all Mac’s fault. He couldn’t get the dude’s story out of his head, the fact that he’d loved one woman for twenty years without even knowing if she was still alive. Mac had devoted his personal and professional life—and a fucking fortune—to the single-minded purpose of getting her back.

What would it be like, to feel that way about someone? To love that much? “Fucking terrifying, that’s what it is. And stupid. Really stupid.”

Angry for no particular reason, he slammed the laptop shut, stalked into his dark bedroom, and flopped down on the bed. His alarm was already set for three-thirty, which was a good thing. He didn’t want to be late for his four o’clock shift. He punched the pillow. Flopped back down. Sat up and threw the pillow against the wall.

Then he stared at it lying on the floor across the room and cursed again. Fuck. Why was he feeling so pissed at everything? Finn O’Toole was a good-time guy. He didn’t do angst.

He got out of bed and retrieved his pillow. Then he sat on the edge of the bed hugging the thing against his belly, wondering about his piss-poor mood.

It was his third night without getting laid, which had to be a record, though when he thought of sex, he couldn’t think of a single woman in particular he wanted all that badly.

Which meant he had to be coming down with something. There was never a time when Finnegan O’Toole didn’t want to have sex.

Except when he thought of all those women on his Facebook page, he realized he couldn’t remember anything special about a single one of them.

Not even their names.

None of them mattered enough to recall the details.

Wait ... what about Mary or Macy or whatever the fuck her name was? They’d actually dated for almost a week. She’d even stayed overnight once.

He tried to picture her and couldn’t remember which one she was. He did remember that she got pissed because he wouldn’t agree to take her to her sister’s wedding. No way was he taking a woman to a wedding. Didn’t they know that’s how guys got trapped into relationships of their own? Shit.

That was the last thing he wanted—a relationship.

Just saying the word made him nauseous. Relationships led to marriage, which meant kids and responsibilities and a fucking house in the suburbs, and that entire scene was definitely out of the question. Maybe, when he was too old to screw around. Not now. He didn’t want any part of a relationship.

What the hell did he want?

He rolled back and stretched out on the bed, still hugging the pillow to his chest. Did he really know what he wanted? He’d tried so many things, changing jobs as easily as he’d changed girlfriends. He’d had so many different positions, had studied in so many different fields over the years, he figured he could do just about anything short of brain surgery.

He’d actually completed all the required courses for premed, but that was as far as he’d gone, and then that really cool job on an oil platform in the Gulf opened up and ...

Yeah. That was sort of how he rolled.

Why couldn’t anything hold his attention? It seemed that once the thrill of discovery has passed, there was nothing left to hang on to. Was he destined to a life of one woman after the next, of one short-term job following another? When would something not only catch his interest but hold it?

The image of the woman who’d come to him in the dream shack popped into his head. Why would he think of her now? And where the hell was she? When she and her buddy showed up in his dreams last night, they’d promised to come to him during the night, before his next shift.

Well, fuck. It was officially before his next shift. It was still night. Was she just a dream? And what about the guy with her? He’d been quiet, but watching everything she and Finn had said—if they’d really said anything at all.

The guy was interesting. If it was supposed to be sexual fantasy that gave the Nyrians corporeal form, why the fuck had he gotten a guy? And why did he find himself thinking about the guy as much as he had the woman? Both of them were beautiful. Both sexy as hell, and he remembered seeing the two of them standing there in the shack and thinking they were equally hot. Which was weird, but in a good way. Maybe that’s what he was missing—a fresh perspective. Something new and exciting.

He shoved the pillow under his head and thought of the things that three people could do in the sack. He’d actually been with two women on more than one occasion. That was cool except there was a lot of pressure to perform, which wasn’t easy with one broad sucking your dick and the other offering her breasts or whatever else was close. He knew the right things to do, and he knew they’d talked because the gossip had come back to him.

His reputation as a stud had definitely been enhanced.

But with a guy in the mix ... He closed his eyes, picturing the dark-haired man with the redhead. Tall, well built, and quietly attentive, but it appeared it was merely a fantasy, or they’d have shown up by now.

They’d promised to come to him tonight, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. Of course, if they were real, they probably didn’t want to deal with his crappy mood.

He couldn’t blame them.

“Actually, Finn, we’re here.”

His eyes flashed open. He spun around and sat up. “Shit.” He took a deep breath. Swallowed back another curse. They were here.

The redhead stood not two feet away, wearing nothing but a short, pale green tunic that matched her eyes. Her long legs seemed to go forever. Finn shoved his hair back from his face, blinking. Crap. Was it really her? Here. In his room. “How?”

She smiled and held out her hand. “Feel. I am quite real.”

He took hold of her hand, squeezing lightly. She felt warm and very much alive. Smiling, she wrapped her fingers around his and then sat beside him on the edge of the bed.

“You had to think about us first. We weren’t sure which cabin was yours. The little building is directly wired to the big antennae that pull us here so quickly, but once we’re here, we need to lock in on the person we want to find.”

“And we wanted to find you.”

Finn turned at the sound of a man’s voice. It was the same guy who’d shown up during his first shift. He had on a pair of soft pants like silky sweats, the same color green as the woman’s dress. He was every bit as handsome as Finn had remembered.

Dark hair, fair skin, blue eyes, ripped body.
Black Irish? Could be.

“Why me?” he asked.

The woman shrugged. Such a typical human response it made his head swim. “You were the one strong enough to give us a conduit. Zianne has told us about humans, about your fascinating minds, your amazingly powerful thoughts, but each of us has to find someone to connect with. Duran and I—I’m called Tara—wanted to come together, and that meant we needed a very strong mind.”

“Are you a couple? I mean, like married?” So many questions, but were these really the most important?
C’mon, Finn. Focus.

Duran shook his head. “Nyrians don’t marry, though when our world was still in existence, we took a mate when we wanted to extend our energy into offspring. Now, though, with Nyria destroyed and our freedom forfeit, we have those who are friends, special ones we enjoy. Tara is mine. I am hers.”