Brighter Than the Sun (12 page)

I can’t let it end too soon. I need the guards on the absolute edge. The razor-sharp one where their trigger fingers flinch in reflex.

A guard is yelling through a loudspeaker, ordering the men to get on the ground. Most listen. Some do not.

Jerry Lee reacts in the exact fashion I expect him to: He freezes. His eyes round in utter panic. He can’t understand what they’re saying, and when the tower guard fires a warning shot into the yard, he is paralyzed.

Two shots are all it takes for the men to stop. Several are already bloody, but even those men get down. I’m already down. Have been since the whole thing began. But Jerry Lee is not.

I almost feel bad for using him as bait, but I know procedure. I also know the guard in the tower. I chose him quite purposefully. A former marine sniper, he’s an excellent shot.

When he aims closer to the ground by Jerry Lee, the only one left standing, I spring into action. My plan is tricky, but not impossible, because one of the things I’ve learned to do with the hours upon hours I have to think is stop time. I can’t do it for long, and I’m not really sure if time actually stops or if I go into another dimension for a short period. Another time zone.

Either way, just as the guard aims and pulls the trigger, I slow time. I don’t actually stop it until I see the bullet slicing through the air. It’s going to hit about two feet from Jerry Lee’s feet. I dive for Jerry Lee, cringing at how much that tackle’s going to hurt him when time bounces back.

“Sorry about this,” I say before knocking him to the ground. Then I position myself perfectly, hold my breath, and release time.

It bounces back with a vengeance, but I’m too busy letting a bullet rip into my skull to notice. Even for me, it’s a lot to take. I strain against my natural inclination to grab my head and curl into a fetal position as it presses about half an inch into my gray matter and exits the other side. I also fight the inclination to mutter
holy shit
and
son of a bitch
and
what the fuck was I thinking?

It shatters my skull. Sends fragments onto the grass.

The alarms continue to blare. The inmates are ushered inside, and the entire place is put on lockdown as they call an ambulance.

O’Connell, the guard I helped out during the mini-riot a few years back, the sniper with one of the longest recorded shots in marine history, is the first to get to me. Deputy Warden Neil Gossett is next. He’s in a suit and tie. I laud him for coming onto the yard with no protective gear. O’Connell holds a towel to my head. I can only hope it’s clean.

I stay put, feigning unconsciousness. Wishing I wasn’t having to feign it, because my head is pounding. Probably because half my brain is lying on the grass.

When the ambulance comes, I leave my body and watch as they load me up and drive me to the hospital. And since I’m supposedly comatose, I stay out of my body so that I pass all the coma tests they do. I check on Kim. Amador, Bianca, and the kids.

But I watch Dutch. I watch her work. I watch how she is with people, both alive and dead. She is incredible. Her energy infectious.

I’m in Las Cruces, searching every dive they have when she summons me a few days later. I appear by her side instantly. Only she’s asleep when I get there. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She’s probably never known she was doing it. Summoning me.

And something happens. Something exciting and new. She pulls me into her dream. It’s strange at first. Disorienting. It’s like walking on Jell-O through fog, and then the veil is pushed aside and she’s there.

She’s in bed even in her dream. She’s kicked off her sheets. They’re wrapped around her calves. Her hair is in tangles over her face. Her head thrown back. Her spine arched. Both hands are clutching the sheet beside her, her fists locked tight, her knuckles white.

I step forward. Push a strand of hair out of her face.

She shudders when I touch her. When an electric current passes between us. As far as dreams go, this one is killer. Her breasts strain against the T-shirt she wears. Below that is bare skin and a succulent patch of dark hair. She arches again and I look back at the T-shirt. It reads
REMOVE PACKAGE BEFORE CONSUMING
.

An appreciative grin widens my mouth. I have every intention of doing just that. Easing onto the bed, I plan to take my time. To get to know every inch of her. To memorize every curve. But this is her world, and in it, she rules.

Before I know what’s happening, I’m pinned against the wall several feet away. She has a hand around my throat, our roles reversed, and her heavy-lidded eyes shimmer dangerously. I can only pray she plans to eat me alive.

She presses into me, her movements slow one moment—then so fast, I can hardly see her the next. Her teeth sink into a shoulder. Her nails scrape along my ribs. The sensual pain wrenches a growl from me and she stops. Stares. Like an animal. She is no longer Charlotte Davidson. She is a beast from another dimension, and I’m hypnotized. Not subdued enough, however, to let her win.

I reverse our positions. Shove her against the wall. Clamp my hand around her throat and my mouth over hers.

This time she growls. She kicks and bites and claws, but I lower her to the floor, clasp her hands over her head, and explore. Her skin is salty when I run my tongue along the length of her stomach. When I nip at the peaks protruding from her T-shirt. She tosses her head back. Squirms under my hold. Rubs her crotch against my erection.

A part of me can’t believe this is happening. After all this time. After everything we’ve been through, to have her here. Now. It’s surreal and hypnotic and disarming.

Something is happening deep inside, but I ignore it. I grab hold of her hips. It’s been a long, long time for me, and this is a dream come true. Literally. I would hate for the evening to end too soon. I draw in a long draft of air before peeling off her shirt and cupping her breasts. A soft moan escapes her when my mouth tastes each one in turn. When it nibbles and sucks and grazes.

But she is impatient. She wants more and she wants it now. She reaches down and caresses my cock. Blood floods the length of it when she twists onto her knees and dips her head.

I grab a handful of hair to postpone her descent, but she looks delicious with her bare ass up in the air and her gold eyes gazing into mine and I am momentarily distracted. Her mouth, hot and wet, slides down the length of me in one quick thrust, and the heat that has gathered in the pit of my belly and at the base of my cock reaches critical mass. I almost come. Again.

I hold her head. Force her to slow. But even that is proving too risky. So I raise her up and flatten her against the wall—only this time she’s facing it. That’ll chill her little ass out. She rages when I crush into her. Fights. Pushes. Snarls. I curl a hand around her throat and pull her against me. But she is doing more to me than just getting me hot. She is penetrating layers of my psyche. Weakening my armor. Storming the gates of my soul. I need to bring it back to the physical. Back to the things I know.

“Dutch,” I whisper into her ear, and she stills herself instantly. “I’m going to fuck you now.”

She lays her head back against my shoulder. Looks up at me. Frowns. “Where have you been?” she asks, and I wonder whom she’s talking to. Surely not me. She can’t know who I am.

“Waiting for you.”

A gentle smile spreads across her face. It pierces the armor and I fight. I cover her mouth with mine. Her skin is so soft, it doesn’t feel real when I push a hand between the wall and her abdomen and dip my fingers between her legs.

She sucks in a soft breath. It’s cool against my teeth.

I push her knees apart with my own, and my fingers open the folds of her delicious cunt before I take advantage of her sensual mouth by dipping my tongue.

She arches against me and I can’t take it any longer. I push her legs apart and my erection inside. She gasps aloud. Digs her fingernails into the wall. Writhes with each thrust of my hips. I use my arms like a clamp to keep her locked to me as I pump inside her. This is better, I think. This I can control.

She begins to make small, desperate sounds, and I can feel the pressure building in her abdomen. Cutting to her core. Burning her bones. I drive into her faster and harder, each thrust pulling her climax closer to the surface. At the same time, I fight my own. I fight the destruction of my defenses. The fracturing of my shield. When her light envelops me, I try to shake it off. I bite. I battle. I broil.

“Come for me,” I say through gritted teeth.

And in that instant, her muscles contract around my cock. Her need stings and pushes and floods until it explodes, delicious and bittersweet.

And I realize it’s not just her need that has risen like a tidal wave. I’m coming, too. The initial burst of pleasure is followed by a pulsating high that throbs inside me for several long moments. Each surge chips away my resistance a little more. Each rush of blood shatters the carefully constructed barricade a little more. Until her light seeps between the spider-web cracks. Until the tension builds. Until it ruptures, and she pours into me like a floodtide.

Until I have drowned in her light.

I am shaking. Trembling so hard my knees give, and we collapse into a heap the floor. A soft sigh slips through her lips, and I wonder if she’ll remember this in the morning. If she’ll remember me. If she’ll understand what she’s done.

23

The dreams continue for over a month. Each one reveals a new facet of her personality. One night, she is wild and unpredictable. The next, she is shy or giggly or coy. She laughs and growls and bites and sucks. She brings me to the brink of orgasm, then pulls back. Forces me to wait. Revels in my agony.

I continue my quest to no avail, and I grow more frustrated every day. But at night, I know what’s coming. Who’s coming.

Part of me, a very small part, wonders why this is happening now when she’s never pulled me into one of her dreams before. When we’ve never even come close to have sex. Most of me doesn’t give a shit and just enjoys the ride. But there’s another part, an obstinate part, that wants more. That wants Dutch live and in the flesh. That wants her hand. Her mouth. Her hips under mine. It wants all of her. Every last ounce. Body and soul. That part is just going to have to settle for what it has. There’s no getting Dutch. There’s no having her. Even if it did come to that, even if it could, the minute she sees the truth about me, the dirty little secrets I carry around, she’ll run for the hills.

So for now, I savor what I have. I relish the intimacy.

When I’m not scouring through the backstreets of every city in the state, I keep an eye on the girl. My girl. She’s working a case with Angel, a departed kid she picked up off the streets, and Cookie, her receptionist and best friend. It’s dangerous. Three lawyers are dead already, so I stay close for a few days.

She’s also working a case on the side. Mine. She’s beginning to put two and two together. To suspect that the man she pulls into her dreams every night and the cloaked figure who’s followed her since the day she was born are one and the same. But that still won’t lead her to me.

I head back to the long-term care facility the state has moved me to. Something is wrong. When I get there, the doctors are speaking with the warden. Neil Gossett is there as well. He’s upset. Wants to give it more time.

Basically, since I have no next of kin and no one to protest, to petition the courts to keep me on the machine, the state is going to take me off life support in a few days. The doctors say there is no hope of recovery. My brain is dead.

They got that right. I may have faked my condition a little
too
well. I have three days before they pull the plug. Three days to figure out how I’m going to fake my own death without actually being buried alive. Or cremated.

Maybe I could have Amador steal my body. How hard could that be? But Amador doesn’t know the truth. I didn’t have time to get him word. It’s not like I could go to him and explain the situation incorporeally. Well, I could, but since he can’t see into the supernatural realm, it would do me little good. And when he came to the facility to see me, the nurse never left his side. I couldn’t just magically wake up. Not yet. I had places to be and people to see.

I am about to check out another lead when I’m pulled back to Dutch. This time she’s not asleep. She’s in the shower and I’m standing behind her, naked as the day I was born. Steam rises around her and I step to her. Mold myself against her backside. Slide my hands up her thighs and rest them on her hips.

She lets a soft sigh slip through her lips, and blood rushes to my cock. I pull her closer as she reaches around and runs her fingertips over my ass. Dutch is slick and hot and I want to melt inside her. I’m not above begging, but we seem to be on the same page when she forces a hand between us, slides it down my abdomen, and wraps her fingers around my rock-hard erection. I suck in a sharp breath and almost come.

Too soon. Much too soon.

I lock my arms around her, hold her tight against me to keep her from moving. To keep her from creating friction. Once I have control over my body’s response again, I lean close and brush my mouth over her ear. Then I whisper her name.

She goes still a microsecond before her lids fly open and she whirls around to face me. But I am gone. Like a douche, I’ve broken the spell.

I jump back into her bathroom to make sure she’s okay. Shaken, she opens her shower curtain and wraps a towel around that delicious body. I’ve learned over the years to hide my form. Only a handful of people can see me when I’m incorporeal, but now I can hide even from them. Even from Dutch when I have to, though she seems to be able to feel when I’m near.

I don’t want to upset her, so I leave her a message on her mirror. In the steam, I write the letters
DUTCH
. Then I leave. I watch over her. I don’t spy. I don’t invade her space unless she summons me. But I stay close by.

The lead ends up just like all the others. Taking me on a wild goose chase. I’m beginning to wonder if I was wrong.