Grimm Tidings: Grimm's Circle, Book 6

by Shiloh Walker

  She thought about telling her imagination to tone it down, but then she decided—no. He was just fine as he was.

  Kicking her legs over the side of the bed, she stood and moved away, staring out the window. It looked out over a lovely yard. There was a pool she probably would be here to use once the weather warmed up. Spring was moving along nicely and the bursts of flowers she could see cropping up here and there made her smile. She’d always loved flowers, loved to spend time in her garden, although it had never been as nice as this. “Do you know, I’ve been cold since I came over? But not lately. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You’d cut yourself off. Emotionally. Physically. Perhaps it was just a side effect.”

  In the window, she could barely make it out as he shrugged.

  Was it as simple as that? Some weird psycho-babble crap and now that she was letting go, she could feel again? Had she basically castrated herself in all ways?

  Yes. There was no secret to that.

  “May I ask you something?”

  Turning, she studied him. Hell, it was just a dream—her dream. So, in essence, he was just her subconscious. Why was she asking herself permission to ask a question. “Shoot.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  “Gavin…” Sighing, she looked down at her hands, frowning as she realized she was standing there in tap shorts and a skinny-strapped tank top. She started to blush. “A dream,” she whispered. “Just a dream.”

  Scrubbing her hands over her face, she said, “He was my husband for nine years. We were together for three years before that. He was there for more than half my life. How can I not love him?

  “Although…” She lowered her hands and shot him a narrow glance. “You say I don’t still love him, don’t you?”

  “I said…there was love, and there is in love.”

  Yes. That was what he’d said. Right before he’d kissed her. Swallowing, she turned away. “He was such a huge part of my life. Of that life.”

  “Yes. So you still love him.”

  “He’s part of the life I let go.” She rubbed the heel of her hand over her heart and then looked back at Jacob. “But yes…I still love him. I can’t let go as easy as that.”

  “Here we go again.”

  Celine pulled the bladed staff Jacob had given her a few months earlier out of her coat as she followed him into the warehouse. It was crowded in there—a rave. Another one.

  This was the third time they’d hit a rave in the months since they’d settled in Cincinnati and each time, they’d found a number of parasei working the crowd.

  Whispering their sly little whispers, they made their circuits, planting their seeds.

  Some of the people—older teens and young adults—brushed them off. Others seemed to stand there in a daze, like they weren’t quite sure what they were hearing, weren’t quite sure if they liked it or not.

  “Keep that out of sight,” Jacob reminded her.

  She rolled her eyes and muttered, “Yes, sir.” She frowned and watched as a young woman tried to get her boyfriend’s attention. The woman wanted to leave. The guy didn’t.

  “Just leave him,” Celine whispered, hoping the girl would do just that.

  She was startled when the girl abruptly did just that, dropping the guy’s arm and storming away.

  “At least she’s got a brain.” Celine looked away only to find herself the focus of Jacob’s attention. His eyes were narrowed speculatively on her face.

  “What?”

  “You did that,” he said quietly.

  “I did what?”

  “She heard you.”

  “Whatever.” The music in there was pulsing and loud, so loud that had they been human, they would have needed to shout to be heard. “She can’t even hear herself, much less me.”

  “Hmm. She did hear you.” He looked out over the crowd and then nodded toward the bar where the crush of demons was a little less. “Focus on another. Watch. Just don’t waste the energy on somebody who’s already been pulled in. They need…more.”

  “Yeah, they need you and your voodoo,” she muttered. Making a face at him, she eyed a big, heavily muscled young guy who looked like he should be a on a football field or something. He had a worried look on his face as he stared out on the dance floor, and it only took a few seconds to see why. He was staring at a girl, girlfriend probably, who was dancing with another girl—except that girl already had a demon in her.

  The girlfriend wasn’t gone. But the demon was whispering to her…

  Those seductive whispers, Celine could hear them. If it weren’t for the girlfriend, the guy would leave. But if he left…

  Shit. “I’m going to hate that you’re wrong about this, because I really want that girl out of here,” Celine said. Hell, she wanted everybody out of here. Focusing her mind, she stared at the girls moving together, swaying with sinuous, almost sexual grace. “Leave. Get away from her before it’s too late.”

  She focused hard.

  And watched as the woman stumbled.

  “Oh, hell.” A cold chill raced down Celine’s spine and she shot Jacob a nervous look.

  “Don’t let up now,” he said quietly, still watching the girl. “Focus.”

  Focus. Don’t fuck up. Focus.

  Celine silently told herself that over and over as she stared at the girl. A fluke. Just a fluke.

  She kept right on telling herself that even as the woman walked away from the demon at her back, even as she walked right up to her boyfriend, even as they left the crowded rave.

  She was still telling herself that three minutes later as Jacob guided her deeper and deeper into the mess of bodies, demon and otherwise.

  Terrible time for her gift to emerge, Jacob knew, but it happened that way. Their gifts were often connected to whatever abilities they’d use and Celine was a warrior, through and through. She’d be around the victims of demons a lot—only made sense for it to rouse in the presence of plenty who needed saving.

  He couldn’t push her any further tonight, though. Not if he wanted her focus on the reason they were here.

  A new gift was unpredictable and it could be exhausting. He couldn’t have her dropping in the middle of a fight.

  There were too many humans here for an all-out fight, anyway.

  They’d gather up stragglers, pick them off that way.

  They’d do that until he saw Celine tiring, then he’d take her home, tuck her up in bed.

  In bed…

  Stop it, old boy. Not where you need your thoughts to be going. It was already hard enough to rest without letting his dreams be pulled to hers—

  “Jacob.” Celine nudged him with her elbow and nodded toward the door.

  He followed her gaze, watched as a woman was led, none too happily, outside. Her “escort” was already taken. A few people saw, but if any of them cared enough to do anything, Jacob couldn’t tell.

  “Well, then. It looks like we have a job to do,” he said softly.

  Usually the parasei weren’t quite so bold as that when this many people were around. But perhaps their own numbers gave them arrogance.

  “Let’s start taking them down a notch or two, shall we?”

  Chapter Five

  “You have to focus.”

  It was more than a week since her stupid gift had emerged and Celine didn’t like it one bit.

  It snuck up on her at weird times. Earlier, some idiot had been weaving in and out of traffic, talking on the phone, applying makeup and smoking. Frustrated, Celine had snapped, “Would you either hang up the fucking phone or just stop the car?”

  If there had been a lot of traffic on the road, there would have been a mess. As it was, the driver ended up nose-down in a nearby ditch, dazed, confused. And still gripping the phone and talking to whomever on the other end of the line.

  Jacob had been driving. He’d said, “Perhaps we should keep you away from interstates until you have a handle on this.”

  Now he seemed determined to make
her get a handle on it.

  “I don’t think you can help me with this,” she snapped. “You don’t even know what I’m doing to them, damn it.”

  “Don’t I?” He leaned forward. “You’re hypnotizing them. It’s not terribly complicated. You’ve got the power of suggestion and it seems that you have to vocalize it for it to have power. So you must learn not to vocalize it until you isolate whatever part of your brain triggers the power. Once you can shut the trigger off and on, then you’ll have greater control. I suspect one particular trigger for you is anger.”

  “Hypnotizing them. By getting angry. Shit. You realize the whole world is screwed, if that’s the case.” She swallowed and swiped her hands down the front of her workout pants. When he’d told her to meet him in the basement, she’d thought they were going to have a workout session. Not this…mind voodoo crap.

  “You can’t hypnotize the whole world.” He paused, then added, “Not yet at least.”

  “Can’t I trade it in for something else?”

  With the ghost of a smile dancing on his hard mouth, Jacob shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way, sweet. Come on, now. Focus. You need to focus…empty your mind…”

  As his dark, velvety voice guided her, Celine tried to do just that.

  One thing was certain—she was finally breaking free from the chains of her past. She couldn’t let this freakish gift become another chain.

  “You’re doing well.”

  Rolling onto her side, she stared at Jacob and groaned. “Not here. If I’m dreaming, I don’t want to think about that stupid mind-control crap here.”

  Another dream.

  He reached up and stroked a finger down her cheek. “It isn’t true mind-control, Celine. Just…very strong powers of suggestion. You cannot bring them to do anything they don’t already have so much yearning to do.”

  “Even the ditz with the cellphone and the makeup kit?” She wondered if the touch of his hand would feel that good in real life. The pads of his fingers so rough, yet gentle, the strength there caged, all but vibrating under his skin.

  What she wouldn’t give to really have him in bed…

  The dreams were coming more often now. Of course, the last few dreams, they hadn’t spent quite so much time talking. Just…well. The thoughts of that were enough to make her belly all hot and loose.

  She already felt plenty hot, just lying there, only a few inches away from him, separated from his bare-chested, sexy self by a scant bit of mattress. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she watched as she laid a hand on his chest. It was bare this time. Bare…and warm.

  His chest was hard and smooth, covered with a smattering of dark hair, just a little, a fine line of it running down between his pecs to his navel. She very much liked that. Her imagination didn’t have to fill in the blanks—she’d been training and working with him for almost a year now. She’d seen him stripped down to just black workout pants, had been pressed to the floor under that hard, leanly muscled body more times than she could count.

  Never had it been sexual.

  Except in the dreams over the past few weeks.

  These dreams were definitely sexual. And more, somehow.

  Tracing the tip of her nail down the midline of his chest, she followed it until she came to the first of several scars. “How did this happen?” she asked, even as she wondered why she bothered. She might know how he looked without his shirt on, but whatever answer her imagination conjured wasn’t going to be the real answer.

  “Something from my misspent youth.” He spoke with his mouth pressed against her hair.

  “You had one of those?”

  “Very misspent.”

  “I find that hard to believe.” She tipped her head back, studying that hard face, so very often impassive, so very often impossible to read.

  A faint smile crooked his lips. “I spent it getting into as many fights as I could. And when I wasn’t fighting, I was finding a way to make money. My two loves.”

  “Fighting and money?”

  “Yes.” He caught a lock of her hair and wound it around his finger. “I love your hair.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s just hair.” The thick, curly mess had been a pain for most of her life. But she’d always wanted secretly to have somebody like it. Which explained what he’d just said, she supposed. “So you had a love affair with fighting and money?”

  “Yes. It was the love affair with fighting that led to this.” He released her hair enough to touch the medallion he wore. “I did the same thing you did…got involved in something I shouldn’t have. But my intentions had nothing to do with altruism. I just wanted my share of the brawling.”

  “So you were a troublemaker.” Celine paused, rolling that over in her head. “Okay, it’s a good thing I know this is just a dream, because there’s no way I’d believe that. You’re too controlled to run around jumping into a fight just for the hell of it. I might. You wouldn’t.”

  He ran his palm down her arm and shrugged. “I’ve had a number of years to work on that control. It will come.” Under hooded eyes, he stared at her. “Are you so certain you dream?”

  Celine snorted. “Yes.” Sitting up, she stared down at him, completely comfortable in the skimpy tank and tap shorts she’d worn to bed. It had to be dream, if for no other reason than that. But the room was cast in a surreal light, almost like it was forever caught in that moment of twilight, with a soft, hazy light stroking across them, warming the air. Jacob rolled onto his back, one arm stretched over his head, the other at his side, his hand resting on the hard muscles of his belly.

  He was…wow. So completely perfect to look at.

  So perfect, so amazing. And there was no way she could look at him like this if it wasn’t a dream. Shit, this was Jacob—her trainer. The one person who hadn’t given up on her. The one person who hadn’t walked away. The one person who’d figured out the impossible house of cards her dreams had been built on. Falling for him would be such a bad, bad idea.

  But sexy dreams were a different story. Especially since it had been a long, long time since she’d had sex. She could have sexy dreams without falling for a guy, right?

  “What are you thinking?” he asked, lifting the hand he’d laid on his belly and placing it on her thigh.

  “Wondering just what to do about the fact that you’re in my bed.”

  Black brows arched over his eyes. A smile slashed across his face and if she wasn’t mistaken, she would have sworn it was just a little wicked. “Just what do you want to do about the fact that I’m in your bed?”

  Her breath caught in her chest and her heart started to race. Well, there were all sorts of things she wanted to do. But whether or not she should do it… Rolling to her knees, she went to all fours next to him, peering down at him. “Since it’s a dream, I can do whatever I want, I guess, right?”

  “If it’s your dream, I’d say that would be how it works.”

  He shouldn’t be doing this.

  Jacob knew that.

  He wasn’t trying to mislead her or toy with her.

  He’d first used the dreams because he’d suspected she would talk more openly in a dream state…and she had. She’d talked. Then she’d cried. A week later, he’d found her with her heart a little less heavy and she’d simply sat there.

  The dream that followed a few days later had been…more. Although nothing like this.

  Tonight, he hadn’t expected to find her in bed. That wouldn’t have happened unless she’d invited him…subconsciously or otherwise. Some part of her mind knew this was more than just a dream. He could feel it. That part was swimming closer to the surface and he’d intended to explain the dream state to her—it was something connected to the other part of his damnable gift.

  But then she’d started to touch him.

  And he was a selfish, stupid bastard who would take what pitiful crumbs he could get.

  Except there was nothing pitiful about the feel of her hands on his chest, nothing pi
tiful about the feel of her mouth pressed against his or the way her tongue teased his lips until he opened for her. Groaning, he reached for her and pulled her on top of him.

  The dream would shatter soon.

  He couldn’t maintain the link with his focus shattered, but he could no more stop this than he could stop the sunrise.

  Soft breasts pressed against his chest. As she settled one knee on either side of his hips, he felt the soft, wet heat between her thighs, right against the rigid, burning ache of his cock. Perfect—too damn perfect.

  Celine started to rock and he tore his mouth away, biting back a curse as he felt the tension ratcheting through her, felt the tension mounting in the dream state. He also felt the edges of the dream’s fabric start to unravel. He couldn’t hold it for long. Pushing a hand between them, he sought out the hard little bud buried between her folds, slipping his hand under the brief hem of the silky scrap of the shorts she’d worn to bed.

  He wanted her naked. He wanted her naked and open before him, and he wanted her awake…and fully aware. He’d settle for feeling her climax, for hearing the gasping sounds of her cries.

  Seconds later, she started to shudder. And her breathing hitched, caught once more in her throat. As she whimpered his name, the threads of the dream became weaker still. Pressing his mouth to her neck, he whispered, “I’ll feel it in reality next time, Celine.”

  And then it was done—he lay in his own bed, staring at the ceiling, his body one long, burning ache.

  Across the hall, he could hear the ragged sound of Celine’s breath and he knew the exact moment she came completely awake.

  Her broken little, “Whoa…what a dream,” left him with a somewhat pained smile.

  But then it faded to guilt. He needed to let her know it was more than a dream.

  “Now what?”