In the Midnight Hour (3 page)

“Take that, Guidry,” she said, smiling to herself as she finished penning her brilliant idea. She was busy jotting down some extra thoughts—better to have too much information when Guidry called for topics than too little—when her eyes started to droop.

Her fingers went limp, the pen sliding from her grasp as she snuggled back into the pillow.
Ahh
… This was much better than being hunched over her desk.
Mmm
… Her first night in her new bed. She smiled as her eyes drifted shut.

The bed was so soft, so warm, so … ticklish?

She forced one eye open to stare at her bare arm. There was nothing there, yet she felt a soft whisper across her skin, a feather-light stroke as soft and understated as the glide of silk over smooth marble.

Her skin prickled, goosebumps danced along her arm, and Ronnie had the sudden and inexplicable feeling that she wasn’t alone. The same feeling She’d had with the pizza box earlier. As if something, or someone, were there with her, beside her, touching the box, touching her …

Geez, she
was
sleep deprived.

She pulled the sheet up over her bare legs to her waist. The textbook She’d been perusing for possible topics was open, facedown on her chest, the weight oddly soothing.

Her eyes closed again. The softness of the mattress lulled her body into complete relaxation and her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm for the next fifteen minutes. Until her cuckoo clock struck midnight and the loud noise launched an all-out offensive against General Sandman.

She had to get up, she thought, vaguely aware of the textbook weighing down her chest, her notes scattered next to her. She had to at least put away her things and set her alarm. Packing lunch and picking out clothes could wait until morning. But there wouldn’t be a morning if she didn’t set the blasted alarm.

She knew that, yet for some reason it didn’t hold any urgency. Her entire life centered around a carefully planned schedule—the only way she had time for school and two jobs—but at that moment, nothing seemed as important as keeping her eyes closed and relaxing in the hazy bliss that surrounded her.

The last cuckoo grated on her nerves, then the room fell into blessed silence.

Peace enveloped her, soothing her aching muscles and weary mind. Blackness welcomed her like a long-lost friend, and then she was floating, drifting, sleeping.

The weight on her chest suddenly lifted, the release of pressure luring her back to the fringes of reality, the hum of the air conditioner, the tick-tock of the clock, the strange uneasiness, not as pronounced as before, that crawled through her. Something wasn’t right. She knew it even before she felt the strange movement.

Ronnie forced one eye open to see the sheet drift down to puddle around her ankles, exposing her bare legs. Then the edge of her T-shirt lifted, glided upward, baring a pair of silky white panties, several inches of pale skin, her navel, more skin, the underside of her breasts. Her nipples tightened. The material snagged on the stiff peaks.

Her breath caught, her chest rose, and her nipples strained against the fabric. It was a highly unsettling sensation. Erotic, forbidden.

Impossible!

Her other eye opened and she watched in stunned amazement as the material lifted, easing over her nipples, exposing the throbbing, rosy tips. The edge of the shirt bunched as if invisible fingers tugged at the thin covering—

She clamped her eyes shut.

The pizza
.

Her mother had always told her junk food would rot her brain—traditionalist families were sticklers for good, wholesome home cooking. That’s what was happening. Her brain was rotting, because this couldn’t—no way in hell, heaven, or the in between—be real! The sheet couldn’t move on its own, nor could her shirt. No way. Uh, uh. Forget it.

She chanced another peek and shock bolted through her. Her T-shirt was no longer moving at the will of invisible fingers. They were real fingers. Long, lean, tanned fingers attached to a strong hand and muscled forearm dusted with sand-colored hair—

Impossible
.

She clamped her eyes shut. This couldn’t be happening. There couldn’t be a man in her bed. She’d locked the door and checked the French doors, and there wasn’t any place to hide in her small apartment. Except under the bed, but she’d checked that herself, an old habit she’d developed since moving out on her own. She was completely, totally, indisputably alone.

Alone
.

After such a lengthy sermon of reassurance, she might have believed her assertion but for one thing. She could feel the pressure just above her left breast where the material tugged higher, higher, the motion caused by the strong male hand she’d glimpsed a moment ago.

But there couldn’t be a man in her bed. Other than the pressure on her skin, she didn’t feel a presence beside her. Surely the bed would dip beneath his weight? Most certainly she would be able to feel his body heat, the warmth of his legs next to hers, hear his breathing, the thump of his heart.
Something
.

“Impossible,” she muttered and the tug on her T-shirt stopped.

Her eyes flew open to see—

Nothing. Just the frantic heave of her bare chest, the empty sheets surrounding her, the dark shadows fingering just beyond the reach of lamplight. There was no one in bed with her, and no one had crawled out. She’d opened her eyes too fast for that. There’d been no squeak of bedsprings. No rustling of covers. No telltale indentation next to her. Nothing.

No one.

Yet …

An enticing scent wafted through her nostrils, teased her senses. A rich, musky fragrance tinged with the faint hint of leather and apples that made her want to drink in another deep draft.

Nah, she decided when she inhaled again and smelled only cheese and tomato sauce. No strange aroma. Just a hallucination warning her of potential brain rot if she didn’t start eating right.

No more junk food, she vowed, tugging her shirt down and yanking the sheet up. A hallucination. A junk food-induced dream.

A sort of pleasant dream, she admitted several minutes later, her body still buzzing from the sensation of fabric gliding, hands moving, nipples tightening.

Okay, so maybe there was something to be said for junk food late at night. No wonder her mother had warned her against it. Anything to keep Ronnie from having a little fun.

She took a deep breath; her body prickled and she marveled at the sensation. She’d never had such a “pleasant” dream before. Her nighttime fantasies usually involved a computer with a high-powered spreadsheet program that could calculate taxes faster than she could blink. Oh, and she also had the one where she pictured herself in a custom-tailored business suit in a posh office—the high-powered computer at her fingertips, of course—head of her very own CPA firm. Her dreams had never involved a man with tanned arms and strong hands, doing forbidden things to her. Men were distracting. She didn’t have time for sex, and especially not love, and so she kept her mind strictly tuned to school and work. Usually. Until now.

The junk food, she assured herself.

And Guidry’s class.

And, of course, this bed.

With all three corrupting her, it was no wonder her dreams had taken a turn for the worse.

Or the better.

She smiled to herself, pushing away the fear and panic. She was a grown woman and they were just dreams. It wasn’t as if she would have to face Mr. Dream Man the morning after, and spend precious hours worrying over a relationship, or over an “accident” that would chain her to a crib and a husband and rob her of her career.

She worked hard. She’d earned a few harmless dreams.

She would start by making pizza a mandatory late-night snack while she studied for Guidry’s class. And she’d buy a few six-packs of soda in case the extra sugar rush was needed for this particular fantasy. And she would do her snacking and studying in bed, of course.

Ah, pizza and cola. Imagine what a pint of Häagen-Dazs could do!

On that titillating thought, she drifted into a deep sleep, not the least bit alarmed when the sheet started to glide down again and her T-shirt to inch its way up. Her body responded, arching against the seeking hands, straining into the moist heat of a firm mouth.

Just a dream, of course, her conscience reassured her time and time again. Just a dream.

This is more like it
, Val thought, feeling the woman respond beneath his expert hands.
Mon Dieu
, she was hotblooded. He licked a blazing trail up her stomach, up the slope of her breast until his mouth closed over one puckered tip.

She was so sweet and warm, her nipple hard and greedy against his tongue. He suckled her long and deep, tasting her, relishing the feel of a woman’s response to him. It had been so long. Too long.

Her moan sent an echoing thrum through him, making him harder, more eager to bury himself deep inside the blissful warmth of her body. She was the culmination of endless nights spent dreaming and now she was real. Here with him, under him, begging him.

And she was a
virgin
.

The realization hit him with the same force as the bullet that had robbed him of his mortal life.

Shocked, he stared down at the ripe, soft woman. His fingertips teased her nipple and, sure enough, he felt the surge of emotion that swelled inside her. Desire. Anticipation.
Wonder
.

Merde!
A virgin.

He stared at her face and willed her to meet his gaze.

Her lids lifted and amber eyes the color of fine whiskey glittered back at him. They widened as if shocked at the sight of him, the expression quickly fading into that of pure pleasure.

“A dream,” she mumbled to herself, her eyelids fluttering closed.

He trailed a hand up the inside of her thigh, peeling back the scrap of lace that served as the twentieth century’s version of bloomers. There was certainly something to be said for modern times, but Val had no energy to rejoice over the changes. He was intent on a higher purpose, a soft, warm, wet purpose, and the truth.

His hands returned to her thighs, urging them apart to give him full view of her femininity. With a trembling hand, he touched the soft, slick folds and a rush of warmth spilled over his knuckles. She arched into him. He touched her again, stroking, probing until she came up off the bed, a breathy moan sailing past her lips as a wave of ecstasy crashed over her and she came completely undone.
And at nothing more than the brief touch of his hand!

Nom de Dieu!
A
virgin
.

He jerked away from her, stumbling from the bed to the French doors. He needed some air. Cool, relaxing air. He threw open one door. A wave of summer heat washed over him, through him, and he burned all the hotter.

There was no relief, he realized, anguish driving him to his knees. No relief at all, because Valentine Tremaine didn’t touch virgins.

He left the spoiling of innocence, the breeching of maiden-heads up to those men interested in more than a night’s pleasure. Val had no use for clingy, naïve, inexperienced women who expected the world. He sought an equal in his bed. A woman who revered freedom and relished independence as much as he did. Virgins robbed a man of both, not to mention his livelihood. His life, too, as Val well knew.

Never again, he vowed to himself, even with one as comely, as sensuous as this woman.
Never again.

Crossing the room, he stood next to her. She lay on the bed, her eyes closed, her head thrown back into the pillow. Flame-colored hair spilled around her head, across the white pillowcase. Her T-shirt was bunched beneath her arms. Her chest rose and fell to a frantic rhythm, her breasts soft and creamy and swollen, her turgid nipples the color of fine wine. A fiery thatch of red curls formed a triangle at the base of her thighs, hiding the most intimate delights of her body.

By all that was holy, she was a sight! Every inch of her made for a man’s hands, mouth, body.

Not his, of course. But then, Valentine Tremaine wasn’t a man anymore.

Not that he didn’t ache as badly as one with a near-naked woman in front of him. He did. Worse, even, because now in his present state, his feelings were magnified. That’s what she’d felt—the presence of his energy rather than a body, though that energy still maintained the same shape and form, the spirit a shadow of the physical self, and much more potent to the senses.

Val had stirred her from the inside out. He’d stroked her feelings with his own, caressed her body with the sheer force of his will disguised as his hands and lips. Most certainly she would see a man if she looked at him now, since the night was at its darkest, the veil between the worlds its thinnest. But he was more. And he burned more fiercely, craved more desperately.

Ah, but not for her. Never for her.

Her eyelids fluttered and she gazed at him through passion-glazed eyes. There was an instant of confusion, panic, then the feelings eased as she smiled and mumbled, “Just a dream.”

Her heavy gaze drank in his face, burning a path over his shoulders, his chest, down to the prominent erection waging war on his tenuous control.