Dreamwalker (8 page)

As he stood up, he scanned the beach, searching for his dusky master thief or anyone else who might be acting as a look-out. The sand dunes leading to his hotel were devoid of anything larger than a seagull.

The water was blood warm, gently slipping up his legs with a salty caress. Its near-tropical clarity revealed rippling sand at his feet, marked by tide and countless swimmers. Further out, he dove beneath the waves and struck out for deeper waters. The seabed fell away gradually.

Taking advantage of necessity, he swam for several minutes, working out the tension in his body by staying underwater for long stretches to study the marine life around him. The exercise was exactly what he needed. By the time he returned to the beach, he’d regained his equanimity and was once more focused on his objective.

Everything was a means to an end, even this swim. Nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of the mission.

A half hour later, Damon was less confident. Enough time had passed without contact that doubt began to niggle at him. Had his master thief changed her mind? Or had he misunderstood her message? This was the first time anyone had deliberately communicated with him through a dream. Who knew what she’d actually meant to tell him?

At the next umbrella, the blonde got to her feet with sensuous fluidity and entered the water. Feminine grace incarnate in one sexy package.

Despite his concerns of a no-show, Damon was hard-pressed to ignore the way the sun gilded her body. Even when her hair got soaked and darkened to pale gold, it didn’t diminish her distracting appeal. He fought to remain unmoved, not wanting to embarrass himself with a very visible hard-on barely restrained by the abbreviated trunks that had been all that was available at the hotel’s gift shop. But not looking didn’t mean oblivious.

She remained in the shallows, splashing with childlike delight, the sounds of her enjoyment unconscionably loud to his pricked ears. Her gurgles of laughter were like velvet caresses across his skin. Did she take the same pleasure in bed, equally sensual in lovemaking as in her play?

He practiced deep breathing to quell his swelling cock, tried to derail the stirrings of desire by reviewing the project that had been interrupted by this assignment. When that didn’t work, he was forced to resort to draping his towel across his lap to hide the visible evidence of his defeat.

And not a moment too soon.

Unable to help himself, he stole a glance at the sea just as the blonde walked out of the surf, a living Venus rising from the waves, her wet bikini clinging to her skin and leaving little to the imagination. The sunlight sparkling on the water didn’t help, highlighting as it did her damp curves.

Heat scorched him at the sight, an unexpectedly strong response after his stroll through the pool area. He forced himself to swallow against the sudden tightness of his throat.
Damn it, Venizélos, get your mind out of your pants!
The problem was, it wasn’t his mind that was coming out of his trunks. It seemed that all the seduction dreams he’d sent his master thief, and last night’s explosive sex on the museum’s rooftop, had only whetted his appetite.

Torn between duty and salacity, Damon cursed beneath his breath, silently, prayerfully, unsure whether he hoped she would walk in his direction or not. This was one of the most fucked-up assignments he’d ever been given!

He was so focused on the shapely spectacle before him that he nearly didn’t notice the footsteps crunching on the sand behind him.

A uniformed waiter came up, bearing a plate in one hand and napkins in the other. “Your order, sir.” He presented the dish and two dessert forks with a flourish, set them on the napkins, then took his leave with the discretion of excellent training.

Upon seeing the decorative strips of snowy white fruit, Damon bit back his protest. Now that he thought about it, the dream had had something about coconut. Was this finally the prelude to contact?

He cast his mental sense out, fishing for a hint of what to expect. The nearest emissions he picked up were the blonde’s in front of him and the waiter’s vanishing into the incoherent buzz around the poolside. There was no one else.

But, still, the dessert had been in the dream.

Damon eyed the plate and forks dubiously. Now what was he supposed to do?

Just then, the blonde walked up to him. Her breasts bounced jauntily, the full slopes tanned a golden pink, the minimal cover of her wet bikini top stretched taut over perky nipples aimed right at him.

He swore in an undertone. Normally, he’d have been more appreciative of the bountiful display of female flesh before him, but right now he couldn’t afford the distraction.

“You look lonely.” Her husky delivery was pure bedroom voice—making him extremely grateful for the towel over his groin.

“I’m waiting for someone,” Damon forced out through the tightness of his throat.

“Not anymore.” She dimpled at him, looking entirely too certain of her welcome as she settled on the sand beside him. “Mmm . . . coconut custard. Exactly what I ordered.” She picked up a fork and sliced a corner off. Meeting his gaze with unnerving directness, she offered him the morsel balanced on silver tines. “Have a bite.”

Shock had him accepting the tidbit and chewing, not tasting what he ate. This was it, he realized. She was his contact. He stared at her creamy skin, which, despite its sun-kissed flush, was hardly the dusky complexion of the slippery master thief who’d screwed him senseless. The shape of her eyes and the length of her nose were also different; not even plastic surgery could account for the situation.

Damon swallowed absently, his mind going into overdrive as he tried to make sense of the disparity. A thieving ring? That was the only possibility except . . .

She’d
ordered the coconut custard? But his master thief had been the one who’d sent him that message. He knew her touch. She’d recognized him in the dream!

He stared at her, this time deliberately probing with his mental sense. Now that she was focused on him, he recognized the cool determination he’d picked up when his master thief had climbed the museum’s wall. Her aura was one and the same— there was no mistaking it.

Despite appearances to the contrary, she had to be the master thief who’d eluded him. He continued to stare, stunned by his discovery. The difference was as jarring as . . . that Asian woman and the bleached blonde who’d replaced her. How had she pulled it off? She’d actually made him doubt his mental sense.

She took a bite of custard. “This is really good. You should have some more.”

He ignored the meaningless remark, still grappling with her disguises. “You’re the one?”

“You tell me.” She sucked on the tines of her fork, her full lips puckered suggestively. “You’ve been entering my dreams. Traipsing around in my head. Manipulating me.” Despite the blunt accusation, her delivery was calm and unemotional, her aura only tinged with wariness and curiosity. “What are you?” Her level stare demanded equal candor.

“An incubus, of course,” Damon heard himself answer flippantly, with enough amusement in his voice to make a joke out of honesty. He could only hope she’d find it too ridiculous to give credence.

“An incubus?” Her brows winged up before knitting over her nose as her gaze sharpened, the jade hue of her irises darkening to bottle green with flecks of blue along the outer edges—no way that color came from tinted contact lenses. “Of course,” she added, her voice soft with apperception.

Fuck, she’d taken him seriously. He shifted the discussion to safer waters. “So, how did you get to the other building so quickly?”

Still playing with her fork, she smiled, sphinxlike in her self-possession. “If I did, it’s a secret.”

Fair enough. He was here to acquire her services, nothing else. So long as they didn’t impact the mission, she could keep her professional secrets.

“Have some more,” she insisted, gesturing at the plate.

Wondering if she’d had the custard drugged—with truth serum, maybe; how else to explain his inadvertent honesty?— Damon took a bite, this time paying attention to what he ate. Sweet and creamy, but nothing out of the ordinary—unlike his companion. His incorrigible libido leaped at the unfortunate description, his cock twitching in response beneath its plush terry-cloth camouflage. “It is good, but that’s not the point.”

She shrugged, the movement flexing her bountiful assets admirably. “You’re the one who asked for this meeting. To discuss something, you said.” Her excitement and attraction lapped at his senses, belying the cool smile she gave him. Though she hid it well, she was intrigued. “Well, what is it?”

He set his fork down, determined to get down to business. “It’s come to our attention that you excel in . . . clandestine acquisitions.”

“Whose attention? You’re a Fed.”

Nodding, Damon cautiously fished out his official ID from his trunks—to keep from flashing her—and handed it over. “You probably haven’t heard of us. Leastwise you shouldn’t have.”

Holding the plastic card by the edges, she studied his picture and data, then flipped the ID over to read the back. “Could be a fake. Though Venizélos is a mouthful, so that part might be real enough.”

But that wasn’t the mouthful he wanted to give her.

Damon’s belly clenched as desire flared against his will, hot and urgent, so strong he felt it deep in his bones. Damn it, he refused to let her get the upper hand in this. Sex was how she’d escaped him last time. He couldn’t let himself be distracted by his libido again.

Not on a mission this important.

“That’s as real as it gets,” he snapped out, his jaw aching from the effort to keep the conversation professional. He extended his hand, silently demanding the return of his ID.

“Which doesn’t tell me much. Like why you wanted to meet.” She gave the card back, still holding it by the edges. Her care meant she didn’t leave any fingerprints, but it also spoke well of her competence. “Well?”

He turned his gaze to the gentle surf, hoping to scale back his innate aggression, so his next statement would be less confrontational. The outcome of this negotiation was too important for ego. “We need you to steal something.”

She gave a soft grunt of skepticism. “Why should I even listen to you?”

Damon considered what his mental sense was telling him before answering. “Because you’re bored.”

Rory blinked at his perceptive retort, further proof of his inexplicable knowledge. Wondering if he really thought she’d be that easy to catch, she arched a brow and widened her eyes, putting on what she considered to be an award-winning show of disbelief. Too bad he continued to watch the waves and didn’t get the benefit of her acting. “Assuming I’m actually in the acquisitions business, you mind telling me what you’re after?”

Her Adonis kept his eyes trained at the horizon, his clean profile almost heroic. “A nuke.”

To give herself time to think, Rory laughed. Had she been mistaken and he wasn’t a Fed after all? “You’re kidding me!”

“I’m dead serious.”

“You want me to stroll into some military base, load one of those big suckers on a truck, and drive off with it?” The mere thought was ridiculous.

He turned his head to give her a warm smile that made her insides jitter in a most unfair manner. “It’s a baby nuke, just about the size of carry-on luggage”—his expression blanked so completely it was as though he’d been born grim—“in the hands of terrorists.”

Conscious of the gritty sand heating up her backside, Rory sat there, her lips stretched wide, waiting for the punch line to his joke. Surely he didn’t think she had anything to do with that violent lot.

“We need you to liberate it.”

She stared at him in horrified fascination, losing her smile as he continued to meet her eyes with a level gaze that brooked no nonsense. He was
serious
. Cold dread swept up her spine. “And how did terrorists get their hands on a nuke?”

“The Russians lost it. While its payload can be measured in kilotons, it can still mean hundreds—if not thousands—of lives.” His gorgeous features hardened into a mask of bleak anger. “New York, Chicago, Washington.” He named the cities deliberately, as though knowing she’d spent time in all three, his deep voice like a death knell. “The consequences don’t bear thinking of.”

The Fed’s unswerving gaze made it difficult to maintain her incredulity. He told his story quite well—so well that she had to suppress an instinctive shiver of horror. Still, she wasn’t born yesterday.

“And you want me to steal it for you.” She raised a brow that wanted to tremble, forcing it to arch steadily. “From terrorists.”

He shook his head curtly. “From an arms dealer who’s auctioning it off to terrorists.”

That was scarcely an improvement. “Where?”

“Kosovo.”

Rory heard his answer through a roaring in her ears, a sense of unreality enfolding her. Of course Kosovo. If he’d said China or Korea or one of the Stans, she could have protested that her grasp of the local dialects wasn’t good enough to pass. But it hadn’t been that long since her jaunt to Peć, a town in the UN protectorate. Language wouldn’t be a problem.

“Yes,” he continued, as if she’d spoken aloud, “the Ipek Crucifix. It’s why we chose you—someone who can operate in the Balkans without drawing attention.” An admiring smile lifted the corners of his chiseled mouth. “The theft was flawless. Not a trace left behind. No one had a clue who could’ve done it.”

“Except you.”

Her Adonis shook his head. “This isn’t my usual gig. I was brought in much later. But from what I’d heard, the team was chasing ghosts, building a file full of negative results.”

With his talent for tripping through a person’s dreams, Rory had to wonder what his “usual gig” was, but that was irrelevant to the discussion. Needing to shield her thoughts from his scrutiny, she broke eye contact, dropping her gaze to the pale dessert between them. One thing was for certain: it didn’t sound boring. “Okay, from an arms dealer in Kosovo. Why should I?”