Zinfandel put a paw on her shoulder, and she met his coaster-sized golden eyes. "I'm just saying that you must've suspected something. Why did you call for Damien instead of him when you were kidnapped?"
"Because Kyle's not involved in all this crazy supernatural stuff, and he wouldn't have followed a dream."
The dragon crossed his arms and fixed her with a skeptical look. "I bet he didn't even cross your mind."
Audrey's cheeks heated, and she had to look away. "Fine, you're right. I didn't think of him or my stepbrother, who might've been able to handle the weirdness, but who's been M.I.A. since yesterday morning. He would've just said 'I told you so,' anyway."
"He's not available, honey. He's stuck somewhere, but it's not my place to tell you where."
Audrey's breath caught. "Is he okay? He's the only family I have left."
"He's tougher than you think, darling, but it may be a while before you see him again. As for Kyle…"
"Look, Zin, I've been independent since my mother died five years ago. I make my own living, I make my own schedule, and I make my own decisions. If Kyle had rescued me—if he had the balls, which I doubt—I would owe him something."
"And now you owe the handsome Officer Lewis."
"I know." She put her head on her knees. "That's exactly the problem. I grant you, he's got potential, but…"
"Butt? A nice one at that."
"No, silly." She scowled at the dragon. "But I need to go into a relationship as an equal, not a debtor, and I never date cops. My father was one, and one night he didn't come home. My mother died of a broken heart after suffering for a decade. So it's safer to just keep him at a distance. Even if he is a good kisser."
"Oh. My. Gods." The voice was a woman's, and it seemed to come from the air itself. "What drama! I swear, why do I let my son waste his arrows on you idiots?"
The owner of the voice materialized. First, autumn blue eyes blinked at Audrey from the middle of the cave, then long, flowing blonde hair appeared and framed a face that most cosmetics models would die for. Her flawless body, rather than being super-thin, displayed womanly curves while still trim and toned. Her breasts peaked in perfect, ripe mounds over the bodice of her diaphanous gown made of mist and rainbows. It swirled around her and provided enticing glimpses here and there but never gave away the entire show. Audrey couldn't stop staring, and something made her scramble to her feet. She felt drab and frumpy next to the goddess, even though she wore a gown of green and white satin.
"Milady," she said and curtseyed.
"Human." The goddess inclined her head. "I felt the potential for heartbreak in the air and decided to investigate. I'd normally send one of my girls, but they appear to have run off. That's why I'm wearing this old thing." She gestured to her gown.
"All of them?" asked Audrey. Hadn't Nimue been one of Aphrodite's nymphs?
"Ahem," Zinfandel broke in. "Your Radiance, may I introduce Audrey Aurora Sonoma? She's one of the humans working with Margaret of Cornwall, the Truth Seeker who is trying to locate the missing nymphs. Audrey, this is Her Radiance, the Goddess Aphrodite."
Audrey curtseyed again. Even annoyed, Aphrodite lit up the cave like a sparkling diamond, and Audrey couldn't tear her eyes away from her.
"Ah, and have you seen any of my girls, um, Annie?"
"It's Audrey, and yes, I've met Nimue."
"In fact, Audrey was instrumental in securing Nimue's release from the vampires and were-bats who kidnapped them," Zin put in.
Aphrodite arched an eyebrow and looked around the cave. "And where is the silly girl? Cupid—I swear, one of these days I'm going to slap that boy—confessed to me he's been using my maids for target practice, and Nimue fell for some sailor, slipped away, and ran off down the beach."
Audrey tried to hide her smile. "She's still in the waking world."
"Well, bring her back."
"'Tis not that easy, I'm afraid, Your Radiance," Zinfandel said and proffered white wine in a crystal glass with pearls at the bottom.
"No diamonds?" she asked with a pout.
"Fresh out. But as I was saying, it's not easy to just zap them back once they've fallen through. It requires the direct intervention of a god or goddess. Even Demeter had to bring Persephone back herself."
"She's a silly girl anyway. Never was able to handle being away from Mummy's side." Aphrodite dismissed her fellow goddess with a wave of her hand. "So what you're saying is that I'll have to go there myself and gather them up?" Her cupid's bow lips frowned, but she schooled them into a neutral position. Audrey wondered if the perfect goddess was afraid of getting wrinkles.
"You, Amy, can you take me to her?"
"Um, Audrey. And my body is confined to a hospital bed right now, Your Radiance. I'm sure that when I wake up, there will be someone there who can help you find her."
"Hmmm." Aphrodite put a French-manicured nail to her lips, leaned down, and looked deep into Audrey's eyes. "Yes, I'm seeing some intriguing possibilities there. The dark-haired, gray-eyed one especially."
Audrey clenched her teeth and attempted to clear her mind, but of course it didn't work.
"Oh, not to worry, you can have him when I'm done with him."
Audrey's stomach flipped, and her face flushed as the words tripped off her tongue. "I don't want you to come with me."
"What? Afraid you'll lose him?" Aphrodite laughed, but it was not the delightful sound that should have come from such a physically flawless being. "Don't worry, little girl, once I'm done with him, he'll be schooled in ways that most women only dream about. Of course, there's the small problem of him always pining away for me after I leave him, but I'm sure you can overlook that."
"I would never overlook that. Tell your son to stay away from him, and you do the same, and I'll let you come with me." Audrey put as much conviction behind her words as she could.
"Very well then, Addie, I'll stay away from your policeman. But you're not so noble in your intentions, either. I see a lot of Artemis in you—you have the potential for breaking hearts as well. Once a man starts stepping on your precious independence, you're out of there emotionally, if not physically. What do you think happened with your poor Kyle?"
"I don't know. Why don't you tell me what happened to Kyle?"
"Oops, you don't know?" The goddess held a hand over her mouth in mock horror.
"Your Radiance," Zin broke in, "it is not for her to learn in this world." Even though he'd been hinting at it.
Audrey made a mental note to dump Kyle's cheating ass as soon as she woke up.
"Then she'll learn soon enough. And your precious Damien will tell you. But I can assure you of this, Allie. You're the one who drove him away."
Audrey said nothing, but she trembled inside. Could that be true? Am I chasing away my lovers because I don't want to depend on them?
"Your Radiance? Audrey?" Zinfandel headed off the questions Audrey wanted to ask. "If you're going, you should go now. Audrey, the drugs are about to wear off, and you're probably going to wake up."
"I can feel it." Indeed, her eyelids felt heavy, and everything turned foggy around the edges.
"I'll follow you there," Aphrodite told her. "Now, Zinfandel, what should I wear?"
"Oh, Your Radiance, I have just the thing…"
13
Damien sat on the rock by the river and pondered the rushing water. And the glowing eyes peering at him through the fog. In spite of the eeriness of the situation, he felt no threat. Arthur would say to allow things to happen in their own time. Arthur…
What the hell had happened? Voices murmured around him, but they sounded like they came from the other side of a wall, and he couldn't make out what they said. He didn't care. To his back was a long street that disappeared into the mist about ten feet behind him. The fog's cold wetness pressed in on him and swirled over the river, but a shimmering barrier prevented it from spreading to the landscape on the other shore. He looked over a meadow, beyond which small, rolling hills crested like
waves into snow-capped mountains. The tall grasses of the meadow undulated in a breeze he couldn't feel.
He looked up and down the path that paralleled the opposite riverbank and hoped he would see a familiar figure in a long wool robe appear, but no one came. He yearned to know whether Arthur would make it and whether they had any chance in hell of figuring this thing out. He knew he couldn't do it on his own and wished for Charlie's easy confidence. He'd never seen his friend get down, not even in the face of hopeless odds. Maybe that's why Charlie had been so much more successful than he had—he had a better attitude.
"Or luck," he said out loud, and the sound of his own voice startled him. Even the river hushed like it waited to hear what he would say next.
"Okay, fine." He took a deep breath. "This sucks. I don't want to be in the middle of this, and I want Arthur to be well. I want Audrey to be okay and to know that she's not going to be touched or crazy or changed permanently by all this."
"But haven't you been changed?"
The voice—more in his head than in his ears—startled him, and he nearly fell off the rock and into the water. He looked behind the boulder and saw the eyes had grown a face and large body covered in fur—a large black dog. No, he corrected himself, that's a wolf.
"Congratulations, genius. That's animal naming 101."
Anger at the creature's insolence flared in Damien's chest, but then he realized this must be his spirit guide. If it was truly a part of him, he shouldn't be surprised it had a penchant for sarcasm.
"Are you my spirit guide?" he asked.
"Correct again. No wonder you were picked for this journey."
This time, Damien couldn't tell whether the animal was being serious or facetious. He went for serious.
"What do you mean, picked for the journey?"
"Surely you don't think that you and the others are here by accident, do you? Everyone has a road they must walk, or several. Some are touched by the divine, others are stuck in the mundane."
"Wait a second, I'm not touched."
"Oh, aren't you? The wolf cocked its head, a doggy smile on its face. "If you're not now, then you will be soon."
"What do you mean?" He choked on the words.
The wolf's ears twitched. "The girl is waking. You should go to her before it's too late. She is playing with fire."
"Right. Like I need any advice from you on how to handle women. I'm good at getting myself into trouble with them on my own."
This time the wolf said nothing. Damien grew heavy like he would melt through the rock he sat on, and the scenery swirled together and solidified into a wooden door.
"Go to her…"
Audrey woke in a bed, but it wasn't a hospital room. The sheets under her fingertips had a soft, slippery feel, and they caressed her naked breasts and whispered around her.
"What in the world?" She struggled to her elbows before remembering she needed to be careful with her left arm, but it didn't hurt. "Oh, a regular dream, thank goodness. The drugs must still be working."
She looked around and found she lay in a bed with satin purple sheets—classy!—and velvet drapes edged with gold fringe.
"Lovely. I've dreamed myself into the boudoir of Henry the Eighth," she mumbled. She covered herself with as much of the top sheet as she could gather since it didn't want to become untucked from the bed and peeked out from between the bed curtains. A fire sent flickering light and shadow over the stone walls, and a bright moon shone in fragments through a diamond-pane window. A small table held a tray with a decanter of red wine and two glasses.
A red velvet robe appeared beside her, so she got out of bed, put it on, and stepped into thick burgundy-colored slippers. The fire beckoned her, and she moved toward it, holding out her hands for warmth.
"Now this is my kind of dream. Am I weaving this?"
As if in response, candles flickered to life on the mantelpiece, which was of rough-hewn wood, and in sconces on the walls. She got the sense this was someone's romantic hideaway, particularly when her ears picked up the sounds of the woods at night around her. An owl hooted in the distance, and a stream flowed nearby.
"The question is, who am I waiting for?"
A door opened on the opposite side of the bed from where she stood, and she turned and hugged the robe around her tightly.
Please don't be a fat king, please don't be a fat king…
Damien walked around the bed. His face showed the same emotions she was sure hers reflected: wonder, curiosity, and caution. He wore tan breeches and a flowing white shirt straight off a romance novel cover. It stood open to reveal his drool-worthy physique and a sprinkling of soft hair over hard pectoral and ab muscles. She recalled what Aphrodite had said, how she would always drive men away due to her independence.
Well, this is a dream. I might as well enjoy it while it lasts since we can never have anything in waking life. As handsome as he is, he's still too big a risk.
"Welcome," she said with a smile she hoped didn't appear nervous. Why would she be nervous? It wasn't really him. "Would you like a glass of wine?"
Damien shook his head like he was in a trance and then smiled at her.
"I would love one," he told her. She poured from the decanter, and the cut crystal goblet in her hand felt heavier than she would have expected. Typically dream objects were light.
"To us and our dreams," she said, raising her glass.
His eyes dropped to her chest. Her robe had opened more to reveal the edge of one areola, and she resisted the instinctive urge to close it.
"Perhaps we should take our wine to bed," he said, his voice low. It vibrated through her, making her want him to keep talking as they followed his suggestion.
"Why not?" she asked. "None of this is real, so there's no threat."
"And no chance of me passing along my flawed genes," he said and exhaled like he was getting a big secret off his chest.
She placed a warm hand on his cheek. "What flawed genes? If they gave you those stunning eyes, I can't complain about them." Her hand dropped from his face to his chest, and she tangled her fingers in his chest hair.
"They're my grandmother's eyes. I'm afraid that's not all I inherited from her."
"Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter here." She pressed herself to him, and he undid her sash. The fabric fell open, and she allowed her breasts to pillow against his chest. He slid a hand under the robe and cupped her bottom. The wine glass disappeared from his hand, and he ran his fingers through her hair and finally grasped her head so he could bring her mouth to his.
His kiss was even sweeter than it had been in the patrol car, all spice and wine, and the smell of the smoke of the fire on his skin gave him an otherworldly and manly scent. She ran her other hand—her wine glass had vanished, too—over his back and under his shirt. When they came up for air, they both panted.
"Bed," Damien growled. His erection pressed against the front of his pants.
"Yes," she replied and took him by the hand. He didn't resist as she led him.
Audrey tied the curtains back so the little room within a room would be lit by the fire. She wanted to be able to see Damien fully with every expression and every ripple of his muscles.
Damn, girl, you do know how to build a dream guy. He was definitely in much better shape than that other guy she'd been seeing—her mind tripped over his name like it didn't matter, and really, here it didn't—with harder, better defined muscles.
They tumbled on to the bed and kissed again. His kisses made her think of dark chocolate and coffee and port wine, all rich and indulgent. She ran her hands over his arms, his biceps defined beneath the soft material of his shirt. Meanwhile, her robe lay open, fully exposing her except her arms. He pulled away from her and knelt with his knees straddling hers and pinning the long tails of her sleeves to the bed. She tried but couldn't pull away, and fear flickered through her chest.
It must have shown on her face because his eyes widened, and he moved so she could free her arms.
"Is that better?" he asked.
"Yes." She smiled with her relief. Dumbass—he's not that kind of guy.
"I'll never trap you or force you to do something you're not comfortable with," he said. "Tell me what you want."
"More wine." She sat up against the headboard with a pillow behind her. The expression on his face when he looked at her was more open than she'd ever seen on him and showed his raw hunger for her. She caught her own desire reflected in his eyes, and the firelight flickered over both of them.
He held out a hand, and a goblet of wine appeared in it. He held it to her lips to drink, and then rather than sip it himself after she drank, he dipped his index finger in it and traced a line down her right breast and around her nipple. He followed it with his tongue, and she gasped and arched against him as the pleasure bolted through her to her core.
"More wine?" he asked.
"Yes, please," she gasped.
He did the same to her other breast, and she found herself with her fingers tangled in his hair holding his head to her chest.
"Now your turn." She rolled him over and tore his shirt open. He lifted his hips so she could remove his pants, which she did easily. Gods, he was beautiful from his tousled dark hair to his bedroom gaze to his long, lean muscles and his erection, which of course was dream-sized. She wanted to lick wine off every inch of him but didn't know when her dream would end, so she settled for dribbling a trail from the hollow at the base of his throat through the valley between his pecs and the line between his abs and ending at his cock.
"I like dream clothing, too," he told her in a husky voice and snapped his fingers. Her robe disappeared, as did the garments strewn over the bed. His hands roamed over her as she kissed the wine she'd dribbled away, and then he clutched her shoulders when she found that last little drop beaded at his head.
"I don't want to wake before this ends for either of us," he said and pulled her off him.
She smiled at the thought she was dreaming of him dreaming of her—how meta!—and said, "Me, neither." She leaned over him and kissed him with the salty-sweetness of him and the wine as she lowered herself on to him. The roar of the fire increased as they moved together, every time he thrust deep, pleasure moved through her. Each wave grew in intensity until they pushed her over the edge, and he moaned with the throbbing of his own release.
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