Up in a Blaze (5 page)

He groaned when her tongue peeked out and swiped her bottom lip. His mind had conjured up an image of those lips wrapped around his cock, sliding up and down, her mouth a warm, wet cavern that had his dick engorged to painful levels.

In her dream state, he brought their bodies closer together, so they both were leaning on a hand, facing each other in a reclining position on the soft grass. His hand came up again to stroke the soft, smooth skin of her face with his fingertips.
“May I kiss you?”

Her heart rate picked up in speed until it was near galloping, but he waited patiently for her answer. He had to win her trust. She finally gave a small nod of her head and sucked in a lung full of air. He gave her a smile meant to say, “It’s okay, you can trust me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

He leaned forward and slowly sipped her lips as if she was the sweetest of nectars. He loved her taste, and forced himself to go slow, when all he really wanted to do was plunge into her mouth, devouring her as if his life depended on it.

It was while he was swiping her bottom lip, asking for entrance, that her nightmare raised its ugly head. While Donte didn’t understand everything, he understood enough to know that something was very, very wrong. He was inside her thoughts, controlling things himself. There should have been no way for her nightmare to break through, but break through it did, the results hitting him as if he’d been body slammed into a boulder.

“
You won’t live long enough to enjoy life, slut
.” An unknown voice broke through the pleasantness of the shared kiss.

Her reaction was swift and made simply out of pure fear. She pulled back, the look of horror filling eyes that had been so full of trust just a couple of minutes ago. “
What did you say?
” she asked in bewilderment as she scooted a safe distance from him.

“
Babe, I didn’t say anything. What did you hear?”
He knew exactly what she had heard, having heard it loud and clear himself, but there was no way of admitting that to her.

He watched as she shook her head, trying to dispel the ugly image that had appeared quite literally out of nowhere in the middle of their kiss. The image was that of an un-kept, grubby, dirty middle-aged man, and he didn’t doubt for a second that he was staring at the likeness of Gregory, Betty’s ex. How in the world had the man managed to penetrate her thought process like that?

Donte made the decision to end their shared dream and just remain in the background of her mind while she slept, hoping to learn something, anything he could use to bring an end to this criminal who had somehow figured out a way to access her mind without being anywhere near her.

*****

Cassandra slowly started to wake, knowing immediately that the nap she had taken hadn’t helped her feel any better. With the help of Donte, she carefully sat up, her ribs protesting every inch she moved.

The plane landed smoothly, and they were making their way to the door before she knew it. She wondered how many people they were going to run into and just how bad she looked. She felt as if a mac truck had hit her, and imagined she looked just as bad as she felt.

She heard her friend’s voice as soon as they reached the door of the plane. “Cassie, oh Cassie! Over here, hon!” Her friend was standing between a nice looking, well-dressed man and woman, and she wondered if this was Betty’s sister and husband. She looked down at the steps ahead of them in order to exit the plane and winced. Yeah, her ribs so didn’t want to go there.

Donte stayed with her the entire time, taking the steps at a snail’s pace right along with her. Her mind went back to the dream she’d had of him while she slept, and she hoped she hadn’t talked or moaned in her sleep.
Gawd, now that would be embarrassing
! She cast a quick glance over to him, but he revealed nothing, creeping along next to her, allowing her to use him to lean on.

By the time they had made it to the bottom of the stairs, Betty and her two escorts were waiting at the bottom. “Oh, hon, look at you! Are you okay?” Her friend wrapped a gentle arm around her shoulders to give her a warm hug. “I am so sorry he did this to you! If I had thought for a second he would go after you to get to me…” Betty trailed off, just holding one of the nicest people she’d had ever met. When she and Timmy were living in California with Gregory, Cassie had been her one and only true friend.

Cassie stood for a moment, just absorbing the warmth and love radiating from her friend. She couldn’t help but be a little bit jealous of Betty. She’d been beaten so badly just three short months ago that they weren’t even sure she was going to live. Once her family had arrived, she’d been moved to a private facility, but Cassie hadn’t seen her friend since the incident. Betty had called her once, to tell her she was moving to Texas, and that she was feeling much better, but she hadn’t heard from her friend since until a few days ago.

To look at Betty now you would never guess the young woman’s life had been in peril just a short time ago. She practically glowed with good health these days.
Must be something in the Texas sunshine. Or maybe the water
, Cassie thought.

Cassie glanced down at herself. “I guess I look like something the cat dragged in, but you…” she stopped for a second as she studied her friend. She couldn’t remember her friend ever looking this good. “You look like a million bucks! Something must be agreeing with you out here in the Lone Star State.” She really was happy for Betty. She’d never seen her friend so radiant, so happy.
Life in Texas must be pretty good for her
, she thought a bit gloomily.

What would it be like to be that happy
? Cassie wondered. She couldn’t help but remember the dream she’d had starring her gorgeous escort. In her dream, he’d had feelings for her. What would it be like to have the attention of a man such as Donte Chaverez? What would it be like to be on the receiving end of a love as she had experienced in her dream? His lips were so tender when they had finally touched, as if he knew she was scared, and was doing everything in his power to put her at ease. But just when things started getting good, poof! Out came her nightmare demons and chased away all the good. Hell, she couldn’t even dream about being happy, how in the world was she supposed to try to ‘act’ happy?

She half paid attention as Betty introduced her sister, Sissy, and the three women started walking toward the car that waited for them. Donte and Walter held back a bit.

“Did you run into any problems? Anything I need to know about?” Walter asked as the two of them started slowly making their way to the car.

“Yes, something I don’t understand. Her mind is being manipulated by Betty’s ex.”

“What? How is this possible?” Walter stopped and turned to his friend. “Tell me everything.”

“Well, you already know she’s my mate. I jumped into her mind after she fell asleep, just to slightly manipulate some top thoughts into a dream. Which was going wonderfully, but just as she let her guard down to begin to feel anything for me, Gregory showed up in the dream.” Donte ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I don’t know how in the hell he managed it, but the image of him threatening to kill her, as you might guess, stopped her in her tracks. The image of him didn’t last, he was only there for a short time, but it was enough.”

“Where were you when this happened? Could he have been close enough to be doing this?” Walter asked in concern.

“No, we were on the plane. This just happened a few hours ago. We were in the air, and had been for about an hour when all of this happened.”

“Damn. Okay, we need to start covering some bases. This could be the work of black magic, or a number of other things, none of which we see very often anymore.”

“What’s the chance he’s trying to track her to discover where Betty is?” Donte asked, as they started walking again.

Walter stopped again abruptly. “Shit! Didn’t think of that one!” He reached over and placed his hand on Donte’s shoulder. “Good call. At this point, we need to assume the worst. If he is using black magic or something similar to find Betty, our best bet would be not to have her stay at my house.” He looked ahead at the women. “But damn, she needs someplace safe to rest and finish healing. It looks like that bastard really did a number on her.”

“You know she is more than welcome to stay at my house, just not sure how easily she is going to agree with the suggestion. She’s not very trusting at the moment, but considering what she just went through, can’t say I blame her.”

“Hmm, well, we’re going to need to do something, because if she goes to my house and he is tracking her, all we’re doing is leading him straight to Betty. Although a small part of me would love to see that monster’s face when he realizes his ex is now a vampire!” Walter grinned at the picture his mind conjured up, Betty holding her ex by the throat, choking the air out of him until he turned blue.

“Yes, which leads me to wonder why he is dealing in the black arts, or whatever he is in. You don’t think he already knows she’s one of us, do you?” Donte asked as they made their way once again to the car.

“I don’t know, Donte. But I think we need to bring all of this up at a staff meeting and get as many viewpoints on this as possible. I don’t like the feel of this. I think we’re missing something, and we need to figure it out quickly.”

The two men got into the car where the women were talking non-stop, oblivious to the danger that seemed to be lurking. Walter put the car in drive, and headed out of the small airstrip.

“Betty, I’ve been thinking. It might be best if you and Cassandra were not staying together on a full time basis. We don’t know what tracking means Gregory has at his disposal, and if he’s able to track her down, it would lead him straight to my house. Unfortunately, with my heavy work schedule, that could prove disastrous if I’m not around.

“Cassandra, I’ve asked Donte if you could stay in his spare room and he has agreed if you’re comfortable with that. You have my word he’s a gentleman, but if you prefer, the rangers have several safe houses available. I can make arrangements for you to stay at one of those, but you’ll need to have a ranger staying with you for protection there as well. It’s your call.”

Donte glanced over to Cassandra. Shock was clearly on her face. He hated the way everything was going. She had been under the impression that she was going to Walter’s house to stay with her friend Betty until a moment ago. Now, so she didn’t endanger her friend any further, she was being asked to stay with a man she had only met twenty-four hours ago.

He waited until she noticed him looking her way. “I promise to be a perfect gentleman and you will be safe. I give you my word.”

“Wh-what am I to do when Donte is at work?” her voice quivered as she asked the question. She felt so out of the normal realm of things. Someone tracking her just to find someone she knew? Beating her when she couldn’t tell him where her friend was. Things like this just didn’t happen to her. Up until a few days ago, her biggest problems were trying to keep her car running long enough to make it back and forth to work, and how to stretch her money to pay rent, electric, gas, and food.

She glanced over to her friend. She would never knowingly put her friend in danger. Even when Betty’s ex showed up and beat the daylights out of her, she never gave him a hint as to where her friend was. The only thing she could have told him at that time was Texas, somewhere in Texas, but she didn’t even tell him that. She had lied and said she hadn’t heard from Betty since she had been hospitalized, and had no idea where she was.

She reached over to take Betty’s hand. “It’s fine. I can stay with Mr. Chaverez. He stayed with me last night and was a gentleman.” She squeezed Betty’s hand. “Maybe we can figure out a safe place to meet?”

Betty gave her a bright smile, before her brother-in-law, Walter, jumped back in. “You know, while Donte is working, the safest place for you to be is at headquarters.” He glanced in the rearview mirror, his sight going to Betty. “Same for you, Betty. We need to start taking his threats a bit more seriously, especially since he’s out of jail and has already attacked one person. We need to go ahead and brace ourselves for the fact he may very well show up here. He does know you have family out here. It wouldn’t take much for him to look us up.”

Sissy, Walter’s wife, reached over to place her hand on top of Cassandra’s. “Walter’s right. I’ve known Donte for many years now, you will be in good hands, hon.”

Cassandra nodded her head at Sissy, and glanced over to Betty. She didn’t want her friend to worry. She’d been through enough. “It will be fine, Betty. The men are right, it’s always better to be safe. Speaking of which, where’s the little pipsqueak?” she asked, referring to Betty’s young son, Timmy.

“He’s still with his grandfather. He was due to come home about a week ago, but when we got word that Gregory was out of jail, we decided it may be safer for him to stay where he is right now.”

Cassandra nodded, glad to hear the young boy wasn’t in the line of danger. It had made her sick to her stomach to hear how Gregory had turned his drunken temper on the little boy the night he attacked Betty.

As the car turned into a nice, quiet neighborhood, Cassandra wondered what kind of house her host kept. He showed up very well dressed yesterday, wearing a dress shirt and slacks, but she got the impression he was much more comfortable in jeans and t-shirts, similar to what he had on today. She hoped she wasn’t going to be walking into a bachelor pad, complete with dirty beer cans flung everywhere, and pizza boxes stacked in the corner.