by Megan Hart
Mariella sprawled on her hands and knees. Grit scraped her palms. She’d taken a double dose of over-the-counter sleep meds and fallen, literally, into sleep.
She didn’t call for him. There was no point in it. He didn’t want her, and she couldn’t blame him. If there was one bright light, it was that he hadn’t seemed to think she was insane. It might’ve been better if he had. Now instead of thinking she was crazy, he just thought she was a manipulative bitch.
The Ephemeros, once Mariella had learned how to use it, had always been a refuge. An escape. That’s what she was looking for now, but it felt more like punishment.
She forced herself to her feet. She ran. She tried to fly, but couldn’t seem to leave the ground. The landscape shifted around her, but it took her a while to figure out that it wasn’t her lack of will holding the shape of things together, but the tears that had made everything blur.
Mariella stopped running.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, sending it out into the Ephemeros. The push of her will, her sorrow, her grief, her apology. She could only hope it would reach him, if he were even asleep. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he’d stayed up late, pacing or tossing and turning, unwilling to dream because of what she’d done.
“Cry all you want,” came a voice dripping with satisfaction from behind her. “It won’t change anything. He dumped you, didn’t he?”
“Kacey.” Mariella turned. “You bitch.”
The other woman hadn’t represented as anything but herself this time. Oh, a little taller, thinner, bigger tits. Longer hair. More symmetrical features. Clearly representing as the self she wanted to be rather than exactly as she was.
“Or did you dump him when he lost his job? I figure you for someone more concerned with stuff like that.” Kacey smirked.
Mariella kept herself from launching toward the other woman, but only barely. “He didn’t lose his job. He got fired. Because of you.”
“He should’ve listened to me. I told him Lasenby had it out for him, but did he bother? No. Butler never bothered with me.” Kacey frowned.
For the briefest of seconds, Mariella felt sympathy for her. She understood completely why the girl would be crazy about Butler. “Why would you want to hurt him, though?”
“Because I love him! And he didn’t love me! He showed up with you! I was working so hard to get my chance with him, and then you had to go and ruin it!” Kacey’s face twisted, a hint of the angel-thing showing through.
“If you love someone, really love someone,” Mariella said, “you want them to be happy. Even if it’s not with you.”
“Now he’s not with you, is he?” Kacey taunted.
Mariella sneered. “Well, he’s not with you, either, is he? He told me he turned you down, even in a dream. And now because of what you did, he won’t even be at work, either. You’ll never see him again, ever. Plus, he hates you.”
“He...oh...” Kacey blanched. “Oh. Shit. Oh, no, yeah, that’s...”
Mariella laughed. No sense of humor in it. Cold, cruel, designed to dig at the other women as deeply as any knife. The laughter grew and grew, bursting out of her like a parasite ready to be born. She laughed and laughed until it cut her own throat and she had to turn her head to spit blood onto the black sand.
“I could get him to come back...get him rehired.” Kacey shook her head. From her back, the first hint of wings appeared. Dusky shadows, an afterthought, but there. “I have all the original files in a server, I have the access...but shit, that would get me fired. And I still wouldn’t be able to see him.”
“Like he’d ever forgive you anyway. You were so caught up in being clever, you didn’t think about how stupid you were being.” Mariella’s horrible laughter had been worse than the tears. Now her throat was raw. Her eyes burned.
“He figured out that you used what he told you in here to get him to want you out there, didn’t he? He had to. That’s he broke up with you. Why you’re wailing and beating your breast in here. And why he’s not around. Right?” Kacey gave a triumphant snarl. “He won’t forgive you, either!”
“But at least, even if it was only for a little while, he wanted me.” Mariella spat onto the sand. The moisture sizzled and disappeared. Her smile stretched like a wound. “Which is more than he ever did with you.”
Kacey transformed, growing taller. The wings turned from shadow to real. She became the angel-thing in a heartbeat, and her talons scraped at the air between them as Mariella jumped out of the way.
It was on.
Mariella had never fought over a guy before, not with words or fists, but this time she was going full-out. Kacey came at her and Mariella didn’t waste a second before diving in. They met in midair, clashing and knocking each other back. Mariella was on her feet at once, fists ready. A cut from Kacey’s claw stung on the back of her hand. The temptation to transform herself into something big and badass was great, but she pushed it back. She didn’t need gimmicks. She had anger.
Mariella pinned the angel-thing to the ground with spikes that shot out of her hands. “Give me the access to those files.”
Kacey bucked her off, changed it up. Reversed. The battle went on. Blood and pain took over everything. Mariella hadn’t met another shaper as strong as Kacey. When the wings crashed into the sides of her head, Mariella tried desperately to wake up and could not, because she’d taken too much medicine.
With Kacey’s taloned hands gripping her throat, Mariella fought but couldn’t get free. She was choking. Suffocating. Kacey took one long claw and shredded the front of Mariella’s shirt, baring her stomach.
“You want the access? It won’t do you any good in here, bitch.” Kacey slashed at Mariella’s skin. “How about I write it here. How’s that feel?”
It was agonizing. Every cut was fire. Mariella writhed, but couldn’t get free.
Shit. She was bleeding out. She pushed away the pain and the wounds, but Kacey’s will was stronger. She was winning.
Mariella really might die in here, unable to wake up. And then what? Would she go into a coma? Stay asleep forever?
Kacey slashed again and again, a pattern of words and numbers. “There it is! The access to everything that could save your precious Butler and incriminate me. Too bad you can’t—”
“Mariella!”
Both of them turned toward the disembodied voice—Butler’s—that came from the dark. They’d both been focusing so much attention on their battle that the landscape had fallen into darkness and haze. He shouted again.
“Mariella, you have to wake up!”
Distant pain, like a slap, turned her head. Kacey growled, bending back to throttle her again. Mariella fought, but weakly.
Cold.
She was cold.
So cold.
And wet, too. Sputtering, Mariella looked up into the harsh spray of frigid water coming from the showerhead. She wasn’t naked. And there was Butler, kneeling by the side of the tub.
He gasped when she opened her eyes. “Thank God! I thought you’d overdosed or something!”
Mariella gasped at the sudden sting of pain in her stomach as she moved. “No. I took sleeping pills, they knocked me out, but...what are you doing here?”
“I had to see you. Talk this through. I needed to find out why you did what you did, and what it meant. I got here and you wouldn’t wake up, so I put you in the shower,” Butler said, then looked down at her with horror. “Shit, Mariella. You’re bleeding.”
She pulled up her shirt and started to laugh and cry at the same time as the shower washed away the blood and left behind the sliced numbers and letters of the access codes. Through chattering teeth, she said, “I just got you your job back.”
“What?” Butler twisted the faucet to turn off the water and gathered her into his lap to cover her with a towel.
Mariella burrowed against him, grateful for his body heat. Grateful he’d come for her. The wounds on her stomach stung, still oozing pink. “Kacey carved the access codes into my stomach in the Ephemeros as she was trying to kill me.”
Butler said nothing, just held her tighter. Mariella clung to him. Gradually, her shivering ceased. Their breathing aligned. So did the beating of their hearts.
“I know you think I used the dream world to manipulate you, and it’s true, I did try to make myself as perfect for you as I could. Because I’d met you in there, Butler, and I wanted to meet you out here. Where it could be real.” She looked at him, not daring to hope he’d believe her. “And...it was real. For me, it was.”
“For me, too.” He frowned and pushed wet hair off her face.
She kissed him.
He kissed her back.
They clung together on the bathroom floor, arms and legs tangled and cramping from the awkward position. Her stomach aching. Soaking wet. It was uncomfortable, but it was real, too.
“I want to be with you. See what happens, if we can make it work,” she whispered. “That is not a dream. That’s the truth. And it has nothing to do with anything but here, right now. Us.”
He held her silently for a second or so, long enough for her to think he didn’t intend to answer her. Then he said, “Dreams can come true. Can’t they?”
Mariella nodded. Butler smiled. He kissed her softly, as though it were the first time.
“I want to be with you, too,” he said.
And that was better than any dream had ever been.
* * * * *
About the Author
Megan Hart is the award-winning and multipublished author of more than thirty novels, novellas and short stories. Her work has been published in almost every genre, including contemporary women’s fiction, historical romance, romantic suspense and erotica. Megan lives in the deep, dark woods of Pennsylvania with her husband and children, and is currently working on her next novel for Harlequin MIRA. You can contact Megan through her website at www.meganhart.com.
ISBN-13: 9781460329702
DREAM A LITTLE DREAM
Copyright © 2014 by Megan Hart
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com