Justifying the situation as an emergency—the saving of his sanity—he used his telepathic abilities to probe lightly at her surface thoughts. She was worried about him. But his mist form did not seem to have made any deep impression. Or, maybe she was good at fooling herself?
He probed deeper. Her brows creased at his action, then she gazed at him with something akin to awe.
“You can read my mind, too?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you just ask me what you want to know?”
“I’m afraid.” He closed his eyes.
“Of what?”
“Of your rejection.”
“Rejection? What you did ... what you are...is amazing. And your abilities don’t change the fact that you are the man I love.”
Sian stood up and wrapped her arms around his waist. He clasped her to him and buried his face in her hair.
“God, how can you?” He couldn’t voice another word. Tears clogged his throat at her genuine acceptance of him.
“Kai.” Sian released his waist to look up at him. His gaze was drawn to her beautiful face. It glowed with the truth of her feelings. “Look at me. See me. Read me if you must. But know this, I love you—man and mist. You are my life. My soul mate.”
Kai looked up at the sky. “Thank you, Lord.”
He swept Sian up into his arms, held her against the very heart she’d melted with her unconditional love, and returned her love tenfold with his kiss.
The End
About the Author:
Rae Morgan is the pen name for a multi-published author of suspense/thrillers. She's been married to the love of her life for far longer than she cares to remember. Her home is in Central Indiana.
Visit Rae's website at: http://www.raemorgan.com
Email Rae at: [email protected]
Welcome to the Darkness
Emma Sinclair
Prologue
Darkness enshrouded Gwen’s consciousness. The night closed in around her.
She felt a shiver of unease course down her spine. She was in a dark alleyway, and two men stood at the end. They were still too far way to make out anything specific about either of them. But both men had a magnetism that drew her toward the end of the alley.
Her footsteps echoed in the silent night. It was odd that there were no other sounds, no people, no traffic, nothing except the click of her heels on concrete and ice and her nervous breath.
Snow flurries swirled around her. She knew her skin would be cold to the touch, but she felt warm, almost overheated.
“Hello, Gwen.”
The voice echoed off the walls around her, and she couldn’t tell which man had spoken. And while she was scared there was something about the voice that soothed her.
“How do you know my name?” she asked.
“We know a lot about you.” This voice was scarier. It made her want to turn and run. Unfortunately she still didn’t know which voice belonged to which man.
“One of us will be your salvation and the other will be your death.”
She shivered and it had nothing to do with the temperature.
“It’s up to you to discover which one is which.”
It was as if they followed a script. The voice changed with each sentence.
As she reached the end of the alley, both men came into focus. One was as light as the other was dark.
The man to her right was dressed in black. His leather pants glistened in the moonlight. His tee shirt was black with a red slash across the front. Black hair was cropped closely to his head, and he had a black goatee surrounding a frown.
He was the perfect image of a bad boy. He’d be so obvious as the one that would bring her death.
The other man was his exact opposite. He had curly blonde hair and dimples. Good God, dimples. He smiled broadly at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back.
The other man growled. Or was that just a sound of the night? She couldn’t be sure.
The blond man wore a light blue shirt and khaki pants. His stance was much more casual. Somehow, the blackness of the night didn’t seem to touch him. There were no shadows, no mystery around him.
Her salvation?
The shiver that coursed up her spine made her think otherwise. She’d prefer to have no further dealings with either man.
“Why am I here?”
“Because you’re the key,” the blond man said, his eyes blazing.
“Key?”
“You’re the key to everlasting night. Or everlasting day.”
As soon as the words were out of the darker man’s mouth, lightning flashed and the wind picked up. She was battered by flying debris. Blowing snow stung her skin. Colors swirled in front of her eyes.
“You will die, Gwen. You’re the key, and you will die.”
The evil voice screeched in her ears. Whether it came from one of the men or someone else entirely, she wasn’t sure. She turned and ran back down the alley. It was pure luck she didn’t slip on the ice and break her neck. She had no idea where she was going except away. Away from the evil behind her.
The voice continued to echo in her ear.
“You will die. Light will rule.”
The cold wind continued to batter her. Tears streamed down on her face.
She wasn’t going to get away. She couldn’t. The wind was too strong, the voice too determined. Too evil.
Her lungs burned, and she couldn’t run anymore. This was it. It was going to be the end.
Greasy tendrils lashed against her skin. The evil was almost upon her. This was her death, but where was her salvation?
“Wake up, Gwen.”
Her eyes popped open, and she bolted upright in her bed to see the blazing overhead light of her bedroom. She had no idea who belonged to the voice that woke her, but she would be forever grateful. The nightmares were getting worse. She wiped the sweat from her brow and fell back on her pillow.
It was going to take a while for her pulse rate to slow and her breathing to return to normal.
Chapter One
Derek sat back in his chair, staring at the monitors that surrounded him. The night was going as it should. Vampires and werewolves prowled the street, fitting in more than they stood out, despite what mythology would have people think.
People were sleeping, partying, loving and leaving. All under the cover of night. Some were having peaceful dreams, others horrid nightmares. They both made him smile.
Night was his domain, and he took his position very seriously.
Still, no matter how many times he changed the images on the computer screen, nowhere could he see her.
She’d had nightmares all of her life. He thought back to the first time he’d seen her having a nightmare. She couldn’t have been more than five years old. Back then, just as it was now, her sapphire blue eyes and white blonde hair were impossible to miss. She’d been just another job, another something to keep an eye on.
But seeing her in person, or at least in a real dream, not just on a computer screen, had been more powerful than he could ever imagine.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
He hadn’t seen her since that night two weeks ago. And he hadn’t stopped thinking about her, either.
He wished he could convince himself that the only reason he was interested in her was because she was the key, but he knew he was kidding himself. He’d never been so aware of a woman before.
Well, that wasn’t true, he had been once, but that was a long time ago.
He pushed a few more buttons, and there she was. Finally. He’d found her.
He zoomed in to see her more closely. She was asleep on a bright red sofa. Her chest rose and fell in an even rhythm. She had finally let her guard down and fallen asleep.
He smiled, a rusty motion that had been called lethal a time or two in the past.
He snapped his fingers, and, quicker than a blink of an eye, he was standing in the room with her, looking down at her. Instantly, his cock stirred in his leath
er pants. Her long white blonde hair was spread around her. She wore a Black Sabbath tee shirt and super short black shorts—really, they were nothing more than panties. Her long pale legs were left bare, except for her toenails, which were painted a bright blue.
Perhaps it was the fact that such an angelic looking creature was dressed all in black—and wearing the tee shirt of one of his favorite bands to boot—that drew him to her. For half a second, he would have given anything to be more than a nightmare to her.
But he knew it could never be. They were both too intimately entwined in the mess that was the never-ending battle between light and darkness to be anything but problems for one another.
And he’d just come here to look.
He’d wanted to convince himself that she wasn’t as incredible as she looked. That he hadn’t felt something. That she wasn’t worth all the suffering—the cold showers, the exotic dreams, the almost perpetual hard-on—he’d gone through in the last two weeks at the mere thought of her.
He reached out to touch her and she moaned. He’d give anything to be with her, just one time. She was so...light. Perhaps that was why she intrigued him so much.
She rolled over and grabbed his hand. In her sleep, she slowly pushed his hand down her tight body.
He froze for a moment, unsure of what to do. But the uncertainty faded quickly. He’d be a fool to pass up this opportunity. And even though a small part in the back of his brain told him this was wrong, no one had ever called him a saint.
He knew she wouldn’t wake, he could see to that with his presence alone. He ran his calloused hand up and down her creamy thigh. It was smoother than the softest silk he’d ever touched. He felt unworthy even to be touching her. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to stop.
She shivered slightly, mumbled something incoherent and then shifted in her sleep. If he was a kind man he would have made her wake and move to the bedroom, because sleeping out here she was going to have an awful crick in her neck.
But he wasn’t a good man. And when she moved, her shirt lifted slightly so he could see the black crystal nestled in her belly button.
As intriguing as she’d been before, his cock throbbed to know her better now. He moved his hand from her thigh to her stomach. It was just as soft. As he brushed his knuckles over the silken skin, the muscles contracted. She smiled and giggled a bit, though she remained deeply asleep.
Derek was well in tune with the images that were drifting through her mind. Though he wasn’t putting them there, he couldn’t deny he liked what he saw.
She was having quite a dream.
In her dream, a man’s hand slid over her stomach and moved lower to slide around the waistband of her panties. In real life, Derek’s hand followed the same path. When his hand slid under the waistband of her panties, she sucked in a deep breath.
He sucked in a breath too, as his cock throbbed.
He was desperate to touch more of her, feel more of her smooth skin. As his fingers moved down farther, he could feel just a slight dusting of hair and, if he wasn’t mistaken, it was in the shape of a heart. And the bottom point of that heart was pointing directly south to ecstasy.
“More,” she muttered in her sleep, arching up against his hand. Warmth emanated from her core. His hand slid further into her panties, into her slit. Instantly, her cream coated his fingers.
He slid his fingers up and down until they were thoroughly coated with her wetness. Her essence filled the air and he breathed in her intoxicating aroma.
She moaned again, louder this time, and Derek’s eyes were drawn from where he was watching the play of his hand under her panties, back up to her face.
She was so damn beautiful.
Her skin was like porcelain, though her cheeks were flushed pink. Her mouth was a perfect cherry-red bow, only marred by the teeth that were biting her lips, keeping her from crying out.
He was the one causing her to mar her beauty in her own pleasure. Power surged through him at the realization that he was doing that to her.
He desperately wanted to know if the color of her nipples matched the color of her lips. A part of him was desperate to wake her, to make her see who was pleasuring her, but he knew he couldn’t. He shouldn’t be here. Meeting her in person would cause too many problems. It would be best if he forgot she ever existed. And best that she never know that he was more than a nightmare.
She arched against his hand, and one of his fingers slid inside her tight channel. He couldn’t hold back his own moan then. Her hands, tipped with cherry red nails, went to her breasts, kneading them through her tee shirt.
“Please take it off,” he softly begged.
But she didn’t listen. Instead, she continued to palm her breasts, pluck at her nipples through her shirt.
“Lucky shirt,” he whispered.
While one of his fingers continued to slide in and out of her, he moved his thumb to her clitoris. The bud pulsed under his fingers as it filled with blood. He could tell she was close to coming and it wasn’t because of his preternatural abilities.
It was pure male instinct.
He increased the tempo of his finger thrusting in and out of her. Her moans increased. He was desperate to silence her with his mouth on hers, but couldn’t. That wasn’t something he did. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d actually kissed a woman on the mouth. Had he ever done that?
He couldn’t pause to ruminate, because at that exact moment her pussy started to contract around his finger. He paused long enough to add a second finger as his thumb increased pressure on her clit.
She came apart under his hands. She thrust against his palm and clamped her thighs together with his fingers still buried deep inside of her. Finally, she collapsed onto the couch, her breathing heavy, a slight smile playing on her lips.
And then a face appeared in her head. But it wasn’t his face he saw in her mind. No, the man she was imagining was blond with dimples.
“God damn it, Gwen, that’s fucking dangerous.”
He pulled his fingers out of her, snapped them and appeared back in his office. But he was too wound up to concentrate.
He checked his monitor. Gwen was still sound asleep.
* * * *
Gwen couldn’t even tell up from down anymore, she was so exhausted. She hadn’t slept well in weeks, ever since she’d had that awful nightmare.
And the fact that she could actually remember this nightmare from all the others she’d had in her life really said something. But last night was her breaking point. She’d never had an erotic nightmare before. It had been amazing. A man had been touching her in ways she’d never been touched before. She didn’t know why, but she’d assumed it was the man with the goatee from the earlier dream.
Then, just when she’d been completely relaxed, the other man appeared. His dimples had been blazing, but she just felt uncomfortable. And when he’d asked her if she liked it, she woke up in a cold sweat. And alone.
And really, she couldn’t do with any less sleep than she was already getting. Catnaps here and there had kept her functioning, but not well.
Heaps of coffee had helped, too. Although she was getting jittery.
But her art was thriving. She studied the painting in front of her. She’d drawn the man several times over the last two weeks, but this was the first time she’d actually put him on canvas.
“I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but you sure make a good muse.”
As much as she loved this painting, it made her uncomfortable to look at. It was as if his eyes were staring through her.
The painting was in abstract, but if she closed her eyes, she could see the man clearly.
His hair was jet black, his skin tanned, a goatee around lips that she was desperate to taste. He wasn’t classically handsome, but his face was breathtaking, all angles and lines. It appealed to both the artist and the woman in her.
She pictured him dressed all in black. She knew his hands would be big, calloused but
gentle. If she concentrated hard enough she could almost feel them sliding over her body, down into her panties.
“Snap out of it, Gwen,” she berated herself.
It wasn’t bad enough that this guy had a part in the nightmare that scared her so much she was afraid to sleep. Now he had to be haunting her waking hours, too.
And why couldn’t she have picked the less scary guy from her dreams to lust over. But even as she thought of his charming blond locks and killer dimples, a shiver of unease ran up and down her spine.
So she turned her attention back to the painting of the dark man.
“Who are you?”
She reached out and ran a paint-splattered finger down a red slash on the canvas. It didn’t surprise her that she didn’t get an answer, but another shiver skittered down her spine. She was getting really tired of being so jumpy.
She jerked her hand back and cradled it with her other hand. After a few more seconds of standing before the painting, she picked up an old paint spattered cloth and covered the image. Unfortunately for her, even with the painting covered, she could still feel his eyes on her.
She looked outside, and then at the clock.
Four-thirty.
It was already starting to get dark. She headed downstairs and into the bedroom area of her apartment. If she was going to get any sleep at all today, she'd better hit the sack. Once it was the depth of night, there would be no sleeping for her.
* * * *
Derek was having a hard time keeping his attention where it was supposed to be. “Brad, will you watch over things for me tonight?”
The young man who usually served as his assistant, the closest thing he’d ever had to a friend, looked surprised, but was smart enough not to question his boss. Both of them knew what a coup it was going to be for him to be in charge for the night.
“Sure. Everything all right?”
“Yeah,” Derek lied. “It’s just looking like it’s going to be a slow night. I thought I’d head over to Club Insomnia and see if I can have some fun.” It wasn’t like him to give up work for fun, even if it was looking to be a slow night. Still, Brad remained quiet. “I’ll have my cell with me if you need anything.”
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