Dream Nights With the CEO (3 page)

Megan froze, and then her expression shifted into something he’d never seen before. Part wistful, part embarrassed, and wholly bizarre. He’d never seen it on her face and he wasn’t at all sure he’d interpreted it correctly.

“It was horrible,” Megan finally choked out. “But I needed to hear it.” Then she abruptly straightened. “Give it some time. Then, when you’re ready, call him.”

Bethany didn’t respond. Instead, she pulled out her waitress pad and slapped down their bill. Then she walked away. So…not a “yes,” but not a “no,” either.

Meanwhile, Megan slumped back in her seat as she toyed absently with the wrapping on her muffin. She didn’t look at him.

What the hell had he ever said to her?

…

Megan stared out the window of her bland room in the Effingham B&B. Her fingers itched for some quiet busywork. Anything that would keep her away from the internet. At home she had a corner for her beading hobby, but none of that could be brought along on these business trips. Which was a shame, especially as she’d just had three more emails from her mother. The first had been an article about career women who delayed starting families then ended up regretting their choice. The other two had been insulted diatribes questioning why Megan hadn’t answered her phone calls throughout the day.

Apparently, her mother didn’t understand the words “business trip.” Megan spent nearly every second with Wyatt on these jaunts, and she’d be damned if she let him hear her get raked over the coals by her mother while they drove from Cherry Moon to Effingham. And she certainly had no interest in talking about her mother’s bunions while sitting less than two feet away from her boss.

So she’d ignored her mother and now she guiltily deleted the emails. Then, rising from the desk, she dropped backward onto the bed of her sterile room. On paper, this B&B was probably a great buy, but the place simply had nothing interesting about it. Beige walls, pastel sheets, neutral abstract painting on the wall. It even smelled boring, and she hadn’t thought that was possible.

Still, she’d set up the spreadsheets that Wyatt had requested. Interestingly, he’d had her work on Miranda’s B&B, not this beige place. Even though they’d left the St. Louis area with no apparent hope of ever setting foot in Cherry Moon again, his mind must have still been churning away on that place.

Good. She hoped he could figure something out.

Not so good was the way he’d kept looking at her throughout the day. At least a dozen times or more she’d found him staring at her with a pinch between his brows and a tightness to his mouth. He was thinking about her, worrying about something in that massive brain of his. But what? And why?

All sorts of panicked thoughts had run through her mind. Was he thinking of firing her? Promoting her?
Sleeping with her?

She dismissed that one immediately. Just because she’d had erotic fantasies about him almost from the first moment they’d met didn’t mean he had any similar inclinations. He’d always treated her with the utmost courtesy. Something that made him infinitely more attractive even as it quashed the idea that there would ever be anything between them. She was his personal assistant, plain and simple. A damn good one, that’s for sure. But at the end of the day, he was boss, she was employee.

She stripped out of her clothes, carefully packing them away before laying out tomorrow’s outfit. The plan was for one day in Effingham before traveling to Terre Haute, then Valparaiso, then—hallelujah—back home to Chicago. After that…well, she didn’t want to think about it, because her mother was there, living a bare ten minutes’ drive away. It had been a mistake to find an apartment so close, but that was a problem for later. Right now, blessed sleep.

And a dream…

She was walking through a park at night. She hadn’t a clue where she was going and why it was so urgent, but she was looking for something, she thought, and it was really important. Unfortunately, the park was creepy dark and the trees made all those menacing sounds that screamed “slasher flick.”

She shivered, clutching her purse tight. In it, she had her rent money—in cash, of course, because this was clearly a horror film and… She looked down at a lock of hair curling over her too-massive boobs. It was a glowing kind of blond and… Oh hell. She was the dumb blonde in a horror movie. Lord, she’d rather go back to her train dream, but no such luck. She was stuck in a park about to be sliced by a maniac.

She tried to call out. She tried to scream at Freddie or Chuckie or whomever the monster was to hurry up and get this over with. But she couldn’t. She was too busy scanning beneath the bushes for whatever it was that she’d lost. Moron. Really, what could be that important? She was about to get eaten by the Zombie Apocalypse.

She heard something—a whimper or a groan—and she immediately dropped down to her knees. Great, a non-defensible position.

There it was! A shiver of dark chestnut amid the shadows. A flash of white. Teeth? But it was exactly what she’d been looking for. She started to wiggle lower, reaching under the brush to get it.

Hurry! Hurry!
Her heart started beating hard, sweat made her hands slick, and she felt the prick of the thorn bush as it ripped into her skin.

Then she heard it. Or rather not
it
, but a lack of sound, a muffling of the wind and the trees and the crackle of dead branches. Dream Megan didn’t hear it. Of course not. But Real Megan was an expert on horror movies, and she knew that any
lack
of sound was deadly.

Wake up! Wake up!

No such luck. She was too busy shaking her butt as she wriggled her way half underneath the bush. What the hell was so important that she had to climb under a bush in the middle of a horror film? And what was worse, whatever it was had no interest in being found!

Finally, she gave up. She just huffed out a breath and slithered backward out from under the bush. Her clothing tore, of course, and her crop top now hung by bare threads as she sat back on her heels and glared at the shrubbery.

That’s when Dream Megan knew something was off. Her back prickled and she abruptly noticed how quiet it had gotten. She wanted to turn around but was too afraid.

Finally, a smart move. The dumb blonde never died until she turned and looked at the horror that was behind her. Except, of course, she couldn’t
not
look. She had to know what was creeping up so stealthily.

With her lower lip caught sexily in her teeth, she slowly twisted. She saw dead leaves, a shadowed walkway, and…

Jell-O?

OMG, not just a slasher flick, but a
classic
slasher flick of hugely stupid proportions. She was going to die by the Blob.

It rose up before her, all black oil, slick and smelly. Megan gagged and stumbled sideways, and the Blob matched her movements, oozing ever closer as she did. She backed away, and it came at her, surprisingly fast and in vaguely human proportions. Dream Megan was terrified now. She looked at the slowly dissolving bits of debris inside the dark mass. Sticks, leaves, and…and was that a skeleton of a squirrel?
Ew!

She dashed sideways, but the thing followed, again too fast to be real. And then she was trapped, caught against a wall and a stand of thick bushes. She was breathing hard, staring at her doom. She hadn’t even had the presence of mind to scream yet. But weirdly, Megan understood that. The terror had frozen her throat closed, and she found it hard to breathe much less scream.

Then it happened. She was engulfed in the suffocating ooze of the Blob. She screamed, loud and long, but no one was there. Tiny needles of pain ate into her skin. Death by a zillion little bites.

Then suddenly a wash of cold cut through the agony. Water. Sprayed from a hose, hard enough to wash away the filth.

She looked up, both turning her whole body to the cleansing spray and scrunching her face up against the hit of it.

“Stay still!” a male voice bellowed.

“Nowhere to go!” she shot back, though it came out more as
garble, blurble, gah.

Then it was done. The horrible stuff was gone, though the memory of it was still thick and disgusting in her mind. She was standing there dripping wet as the last threads of her clothes trembled and fell away.

She was naked? The Blob had eaten her clothes?

She gasped and wrapped her arms around herself, but her hero was there before her. He whipped his cape protectively about her shoulders. “Are you in pain?” he asked, his voice a soothing murmur of masculine strength.

“J-j-just cold,” she stammered.

“Of course,” he said as he rubbed her arms on top of his cloak. “You’re soaking wet.”

“W-what was that stuff?”

“Armus?”

“What?”

“It’s an alien thing on a deserted planet that was a really dumb villain in the early lame days of
ST: The Next Generation
. Episode title…um…
Skin of Evil
, I think.”

“Uh…what?”

She saw him smile, his chiseled jaw softening beneath his mask. “Isn’t important. The fact is, you’re safe now. What was so important that you had to risk your life to get?”

“I—I don’t…” She was about to say she didn’t know, but at that very moment, she felt a wet nose and a pink tongue rasp licks up her calf. “Elmo!” she cried as she suddenly knelt down.

“Elmo?”

She nodded as she scooped up the puppy she’d never had. It was all wriggling tail and happy puppy kisses as she held it protectively in her arms. But of course, she couldn’t both hold the dog and the cape, so the fabric slipped open.

Her masked man looked at her. His jaw tightened and his bare chest rippled above the band of his tights. She frowned at him. “What are you wearing?” she asked. Then she cursed herself. “I mean, who are you?”

He glanced down at himself, apparently startled by his own super-hero attire. Of course, that gave her a nice moment to look at his sculpted body. Not an inch of fat over his ripped abs and corded thighs.

“I—I need to get home,” she said.

He nodded as he stepped protectively close. “I’ll shield you from harm.”

She tried not to grin. The thing was, even though Real Megan was rolling her eyes at how campy ridiculous this dream was, the blond her was soaking in every luscious moment. She could feel the happy wriggling puppy against her skin, knew the heavy warmth of his cape, and most of all, sensed his big hands so close, so protective as they walked through the still creepy park.

They made it to her apartment quickly. Things attacked them, of course.
All
the things she’d mentioned before: Freddie, Chuckie, and a horde of zombies. He fought them off with quick, efficient movements. Each defense was unusual and damned smart. Monsters dissolved as quickly as they appeared.

Then they were in her apartment. Elmo wriggled out of her arms to curl up onto the couch near a baby blanket. No child as far as she could tell, just the soft fabric mound and a snoozing puppy. Which meant suddenly it was just the two of them.

“Thank you,” she whispered, turning to look at him. Would he kiss her again? God, she hoped so.

“My pleasure,” he answered. Then he just stood there looking at her.

She waited, hoping. Would he? She was just about to take matters into her own hands when he released an embarrassed cough.

“Um, sorry,” he mumbled. “But I, uh, I need my cape back.”

“What? Oh.” Of course. She slowly opened her hands, letting the cloak slip off her shoulders. Then she swung it wide, offering it to him even as her body was revealed in all its blond, perky glory. No sense in wasting all that boobalishiousness. Except, she suddenly wasn’t Ms. Perky Blonde. Nope, it was just her. Brunette Megan in all her normal sized glory.

Oddly, that seemed to make him suddenly into her. With a groan of hunger, he closed the distance between them. Those great big hands of his slipped onto her body, one wrapping around her lower back to pull her tight. The other slipped into her hair, angling her head to the perfect degree.

A kiss. Finally!

Deep. Penetrating. Masterful. She melted into his possession, loving the way his tongue plunged into her mouth. Her body was pressed against every hot inch of his sculpted form. God, she loved that Spandex because his thick, hot bulge was exquisitely outlined and pressing hard against her hip.

“Yes,” she said, the word vibrating in the air around them.

His hands found her breasts and her head dropped back. Big hands shaping her. He tweaked her nipples, and her knees went weak. No problem there, as he scooped her up in his arms and nestled her against his chest. But he didn’t keep her there. Instead, he lifted her higher against him. Up and up, until she felt his mouth claiming her right nipple.

She cried out as he sucked her. Each pull seemed to draw a total body response from deep inside her. Each swirl of his tongue set her blood on fire. God, he was good. And oh yes, she loved what he was doing.

“My bed,” she gasped. “Right over there!”

Or right here, she realized as her dream had pulled them right beside a huge, ruffly expanse of mattress. Ruffly? She’d never had ruffles in her life. It didn’t matter, though, as his mouth continued to draw rhythmically on her breasts.
Oh, wow.

“The bed—” she began again, but his answer rumbled through the air.

“I can’t. We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m —” His voice was abruptly cut off, the word lost beneath a burst of static noise.

“What?” she cried. He’d gone to work on her other breast, and it was hard to think around all the feeling. “Oh,” she said, her mind finally clicking thoughts into place. “Your secret identity. You don’t want to reveal who you are.”

“Yes,” he said, though there were layers of meaning beneath the word. She had no idea what, but that was the beauty of a masked superhero. He had layers. He had depth. And she didn’t have to understand any of it. She just had to kiss him.

“I’ll close my eyes,” she said.

He dropped his head to her belly, then slowly, gently set her on the bed. He was going to walk away, she realized. He was going to set her on the bed and leave her unfulfilled.