by Megan Hart
Stephanie got up, too, to follow her friend to the front door. “No fair. What’s the secret?”
Denise shrugged into her coat and tied her scarf around her neck, then gave Stephanie an arched brow. “Sex.”
“Yikes. Well, I guess I’m out of luck on that front,” Stephanie said. “Seeing as how it’s been a long dry spell for me.”
“Orgasm,” Denise clarified. “Surely you can have one or four of those all on your own.”
Shit, she was blushing. Actually blushing. Stephanie cleared her throat. “Um...well, sure, I guess I could...”
“Don’t tell me you don’t...” Denise paused, clearly surprised. “Stephanie! Really?”
Awkwardly, Stephanie shrugged. “I do. Sure. Sometimes. I just...haven’t. In a while.”
“Shew, if I don’t get off every other day or so, I’m a raging bitch. I have to keep my portable boyfriend charged at all times.” Denise shook her head.
“I like sex,” Stephanie said. “I’ve just been...busy.”
“Never too busy for a little self-maintenance,” Denise declared and pulled her scarf tighter around her throat as she dug for her gloves. “And I bet it will help you fall asleep for sure.”
It was an idea, Stephanie thought as she put the few dishes they’d used in the dishwasher and went around checking the locks and turning out the lights. She’d had some of her best sleep after sex, that was true, even though it had been too long since she’d actually had any. As for self-maintenance, she thought as she went into her bedroom to put on her pajamas, well...it had just started to seem hollow after a while. The seduction of her hand or even the vibrator she kept in her bedside drawer was fine, but it couldn’t beat kissing and being kissed. It couldn’t replace lovemaking.
Still, the more she thought about it, the better the idea became. Except, just as she wasn’t particularly sleepy, she also wasn’t particularly turned on. Maybe she should just try to do some non-dream-world work, she thought as she settled against her headboard with her laptop on her knees. That boring stuff would surely help her into sleep, wouldn’t it?
In minutes she’d pulled up the data files on her current job. The dates, times and amounts of withdrawals from the accounts, along with the interviews she’d done with the victims. All of them had admitted to sharing their personal financial information with someone in a dream and had been hit a day or so after.
This was about the least sexy thing she could think of doing. At least until she scrolled through her files and pulled up one more. This one had a photo included. His pertinent information, including his contact numbers and his Connex account. She hadn’t connexed with Kent Gordon, only because she didn’t bother much with social media sites, but she could stalk him a little bit there on what he’d made public.
She did.
It was harmless, Stephanie told herself as she clicked on his profile-picture photo album. It wasn’t as if she were showing up beneath his window blasting a song from a boom box. She wasn’t hurting anyone or anything by taking a casual peek at... Oh, shit.
“Shit,” she breathed.
The photo was nothing anyone would notice as special. In it, Kent stood with his hands on his hips, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow—those forearms, God. Stephanie let her cursor drift over the photo as she let out a long, hard sigh. She had such a thing for forearms. And big hands. And steel-rimmed glasses. And hair going just the tiniest bit gray at the temples...
Damn it, she had a thing for Kent Gordon, that was just the sad truth, and had for months. Since the first time she’d seen him, as a matter of fact, though the fact he’d had a live-in girlfriend had made him off-limits. Her name was Carol. She was blond and blandly pretty, and she posted inane memes and pictures of her lunch, which Stephanie knew because she’d also creeped a few times on Carol’s Connex account.
Except now Carol and Kent had broken up.
It was still harmless, Stephanie told herself, logging out and putting the computer on the nightstand. She turned out the light and sank into the pillows, her hands flat on her belly. Everyone did it. Creeped around on social media sites, looking at pictures. That was why she didn’t have any accounts.
Her internal clock ticked, loud as any she could’ve hung on the wall, and the passing minutes began to annoy her. The harder she tried, the less likely it was going to be that she could fall asleep. She should get up. Clean something. Pay some bills. Hell, she could do a little workout.
Or, she thought as her fingertips ran lightly across her belly, then lower, over the thin fabric of her boxers, she could try something else.
Oh, it had been too long, she thought with a sigh as her fingers slipped into her bottoms and she found her soft curls. A little lower, deeper, she delved inside. With a small gasp, she slid another finger in. Her thumb pressed her clit. She stayed that way for a moment, listening to her body. Gauging her response.
Her nipples had hardened, and she tugged her shirt up to free her breasts to the chilly night air. She kept her bedroom cooler than the rest of the house out of habit from California’s much warmer temperatures, but in Pennsylvania, February meant it could be downright cold. It wasn’t the temperature that had tightened them, though. It was the thought of strong male forearms sprinkled with dark hair, exposed by rolled-up shirtsleeves.
She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t get off to a real person, a guy she was working with. A guy with a super-recent breakup, Stephanie scolded herself, even as her fingers moved a little faster.
Okay, so she wouldn’t think about Kent. She would imagine someone else, another lover with long legs and broad shoulders, dark hair. Lean features. Glasses.
God, how could she have passed up this pleasure for so long? She was wet now, fingers easing in deeper before slipping out to circle her clit. Her hips bumped upward when she stroked herself.
One hand on her breast, squeezing her nipple. Eyes closed. Hips rocking. Fingers stroking. The pleasure built, higher, stronger. Fierce. She slowed the pace, wanting to make this last.
Unbidden, she drifted into fantasy. Not a dream—she was still awake—and though she tried a tentative push to see if she’d perhaps fallen asleep without realizing it, no handsome man appeared at the foot of her bed with his cock in his hand. She opened her eyes to peek again, to be sure, but nope. Nada.
He would, though, she thought. He would crawl up the bed and cover her with his body. He’d kiss her. Slowly at first. Then harder. His hand would slide beneath the back of her head to twist in her hair. His other would slide between them to stroke her clit, the way she was doing now.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, fuck. Yes.”
A little faster now. A little harder, deeper, her fingers curling. Oh, she wished she had thought to invest in some penetration toys, something that would fill her better than her hand. It felt so good, though, she didn’t want to stop. Couldn’t stop. Not when each wave of pleasure was cresting. Pushing her to the edge.
She thought of him again, though she refused to let her mouth shape the sound of his name. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining his lips on her. Those big hands. He would cover her entirely. He would fill her.
Fuck her.
Hard.
Fast.
With a small gasp, she came, writhing in the tangling sheets. Her back arched. A low, stuttering groan hitched out of her. It felt so damned good she didn’t stop stroking, feeling the pleasure build again. Sending her over the edge one more time while she muttered a long, mumbled string of fucktalk that would’ve been embarrassing except she was alone.
At the end of it, breathing hard and sweating, blinking away the final remnants of her fantasy, she was all by herself.
She did, however, fall asleep.
Languid, relaxed, Stephanie felt soft warmth under her fingertips and smiled before she opened her eyes. She was in
the Ephemeros. Still on her own bed and in her own room, but where the walls of her bedroom should have been, there was only empty space.
She sat up and swung her legs over the edge, shaping the forest. Birds chirped, far off, just the sound of them. She didn’t put much effort into creating the birds themselves, which was the only way there’d be any. Animals dreamed, but they had their own Ephemeros to play in, so far as Stephanie could tell.
She drew in the scent of pine. Sun dappled its way through the branches and speckled the fallen needles. This was her favorite entry point, built from a childhood memory of the smallish patch of woods behind her grandmother’s house, and she worked on it a little bit more each time she entered the dream world so she could keep it as her anchor.
She didn’t have a lot of time now that she was on a case, so she quickly focused on shaping a bit more of the curving path. A few more trees. She took another lingering breath and stepped onto the path.
Naked?
With a startled laugh, Stephanie looked at herself. She almost always represented in the same outfit when she was working a case. Slim-fit black leather trousers, black silky T-shirt that clung to her like a second skin, a black corset-vest. Sure, it made her look like a Goth girl, but it was practical, served as armor and didn’t impede her movements if she ever had to run—and she often did. The last thing she wanted to worry about when she was hunting down a perp was having to change her clothes.
But now, naked, she stepped with bare toes on the springy needles of the curving path. She lifted her face to the pine-scented breeze and closed her eyes for a second. It felt good to be naked here. Free. And, in the aftermath of the dual orgasms, she still felt sexy.
She was pushing it, too, she realized after a moment or so when the birdsong trilled and yet the forest began to fade. Someone was coming, beckoned by the unsubtle throb of her fading arousal. She was broadcasting sex, and it was going to pull in some unwanted attention if she wasn’t careful.
Unless that was the way to catch this thief, she thought for a second as she concentrated just hard enough to shape herself into her regular outfit. Lure him in with sex? He’d been targeting the elderly, both genders, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be immune to a little good old-fashioned catfishing, right?
Maybe she needed to make herself seem a little more...vulnerable.
Gone in a second was the leather, the kick-ass attitude. Replaced by a soft gown with frilly lace at the throat and sleeves. Stephanie shaped her hair longer, to her waist. She kept the bare feet, thickening her soles should she step on anything sharp but keeping the look of innocent damsel.
“Where’s your candy house?” she murmured, opening herself to the Ephemeros’s shifting, pulsing will. “Let me take a taste.”
It was hard to resist the impulse to shape the space around her, but Stephanie kept herself still, curious to see what the collective unconscious was going to build tonight. It turned out to be a Victorian mansion, complete with gardens and a hedge maze and rooms full of people dancing and drinking...and fucking.
So it was going to be that kind of night, she thought as she moved through a room decorated all in red. An orgy. She wasn’t shaping any of this, but how much of it had she contributed to, Stephanie wondered as she eased around a naked trio writhing on a velvet couch.
It was tempting to give in to this. The sensuality. The outright sexuality. The steady thrum and throb of music beat through the house. People moved to it. She moved to it.
And there, through the crowd, she caught a glimpse of a lean silhouette in black leather, whispering in a woman’s ear. The woman wore a Regency-era gown, though her hair was totally ’80s punk rock. She nodded, listening with a rapt expression to whatever the guy in black was saying to her. When he turned his face a bit, the gleam of fangs was the proof Stephanie was waiting for. That was her guy.
She moved forward, ducking around a bunch of people using toys and tools she’d only ever seen on the internet, and although the pull of their will was strong, she managed to resist it. Right before she got to her goal, though, she bumped into someone, hard enough to send them both back a couple steps. Intent on getting to the perp, Stephanie stepped to the side. So did the man in front of her.
She looked up, intending to push a little to get him out of the way and send his attention in another direction, but what she saw stopped her. “Kent?”
Of course, it wasn’t impossible for them to meet here. If he was asleep at the same time, as he probably was, and with the strength of what was rippling through the Ephemeros tonight, it was no wonder he’d gravitated toward the orgy. And boy, did he look good.
“I can’t,” she said by way of apology when he took her hand. “I have...work...”
“You could dance with me,” Kent said with a glance around them at the people who were dancing...or naked variations of dancing. “That would be all right, wouldn’t it?”
She wanted to. Opening herself to the Ephemeros had left her vulnerable, but it was more than that. It was him.
“I can’t,” she repeated, threading together a little shield to keep herself from jumping him right there. Over his shoulder she could see the man in black leather bending closer to the woman in the Regency gown. “I want to, but I’m working.”
Kent nodded but tugged her hand to pull her a step closer. “Right. Working.”
She was pushing up on her tiptoes to kiss him. She wanted it. Wanted him. Her arms went around his neck. His lips, so close she could feel the gust of his breath on her face. Her mouth opened.
“This isn’t real,” she warned.
“It’s as real as we want it to be,” Kent said. “Isn’t it?”
At the last second, she turned. It wouldn’t have been the first time she indulged in a little hanky-panky in the dream world, but doing it with him felt wrong. He wouldn’t know what they’d shared, and she’d have to face him across a desk with the memory of his mouth on hers and pretend she didn’t know how he tasted.
His hands moved to her hips, nudging her against him, and oh, he was hard against her, and she was going to kiss him, she was going to open for him and let him inside her, and they were going to dance and dance and...
She said his name.
With a gasp, Stephanie forced herself awake. Shit, she’d lost herself. Worse, she’d lost the perp. Heart pounding, sweating, she fell back onto her pillows and licked away the taste of salt on her lips.
She’d been pushed again. Mr. Slick was clever, she gave him that. He’d seen her coming and used what she wanted against her, only this time, instead of chocolate cake, it had been Kent Gordon.
CHAPTER 5
Kent hated coconut.
He hated the scent of it, the taste of it. He hated the hairy round shape of coconuts and how they sometimes fell out of trees and hit people on the head. There wasn’t much in this world that was guaranteed to send Kent over the edge, but coconut would be it. And there it was, tons of it shredded all over the top of his birthday cake.
“Mom,” he began, then stopped, because how could he tell her that he wasn’t going to eat one slice of that monstrosity, much less take the rest home, as she’d already planned for him to do?
“It’s a new recipe.” She beamed, all four feet ten inches of her.
Kent didn’t have the heart to remind her of his coconut aversion. It would hurt her feelings, first of all, but more than that, would remind her of how precarious her memory had become. Most days they could both pretend that she was simply a little scatterbrained, the way she’d always been. There was going to come a day, he thought, when it wouldn’t matter if she was reminded about what she’d forgotten, because she wouldn’t be able to remember that she’d ever known what it was in the first place. He didn’t want to think of that.
Instead, he patted his stomach. “I’m so full from dinner, Mom. I�
�ll take it home and have a piece later, okay?”
“Make sure to give Carol a piece. It’s really too bad she couldn’t make it tonight.” A shadow passed over his mom’s face, and she shook her head. “Oh. No. I’m sorry, honey, I forgot. You two broke up.”
Since it had happened only a couple weeks ago, he couldn’t really fault her for not remembering. He still sometimes forgot himself, at least until he came home to the empty, silent house and found nobody waiting for him, not even the dog. Carol had taken Lucky with her when she left.
“She wasn’t good enough for you anyway,” Mom said before Kent could answer.
He shrugged. “Things happen. That’s all. I don’t hold a grudge.”
“No, you never did that. That’s a good thing.” She smiled again and put the lid on the cake box, which was a relief because now at least he no longer had to smell it. “I’ll just put it away for you to take home anyway.”
Mom protested when Kent insisted she sit to catch up on her programs while he cleaned the kitchen. It didn’t take long. Mom kept a spotless house, even with the enormous meal she’d prepared for his birthday feast. Enough food for ten people. She’d make sure he was sent home with plenty of single-portioned meals to last him for the rest of the month, and he’d take them, because hell if being an unexpected bachelor didn’t mean he’d been more apt to indulge in Chinese takeout eaten on paper plates than any kind of healthy food.
Kent put the paper grocery sack of plastic containers on the kitchen table and peeked into the living room to check on his mother. She’d dozed off in front of the television, as he’d expected. It was getting close to 10:00 p.m., well past her normal bedtime, but he’d been late from work and so dinner had been delayed.
“Mom,” he said gently with a touch on her arm, trying not to startle her.
“I only have my pension,” she said drowsily. “But of course you can have it, if you need it.”
Kent paused. “Mom?”
“It’s not much, lovey, but I want you to have it. No, really. Yes.” Mom reached a hand as though to touch someone. Her fingertips brushed the front of his shirt.