by Linda Howard
No—wait. She didn’t trust anyone, not anymore.
Lizette wanted to tell X that she’d missed him, but her voice wouldn’t work. Crap. It was her dream, she should be able to say whatever she wanted, but for some reason she was mute. All she could do was look at him and wonder how he’d look naked.
She hadn’t had a sex life in the past three years. Maybe longer. Okay, that was real life. Beyond that … she knew she wasn’t a virgin, but she couldn’t remember ever wanting anyone the way she wanted X. There was an aching emptiness between her legs, a clawing, almost desperate need to have him inside her.
It wasn’t love, wasn’t a niggling need for a little sexual release. She needed him the way she needed air, inside her, over her, under her…
He laughed a little, the way he had in Walgreens, and walked toward her. He didn’t speak either, but she knew that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. He reached out and touched her cheek, and she closed her eyes, nestled her face in his big, rough hand. That touch felt right, and warm, and … not enough.
Because this was a dream, one second they were face-to-face and fully clothed, then the scene changed and they were naked, lying in a bed in the room of color. The bed hadn’t been there before, but whatever; it was there now, deep and wide, just what they needed. Good dream, she cooed approvingly in her thoughts.
She wanted him right now. They were naked, they both wanted it, she was wet and he was hard—there was no reason she shouldn’t be able to have him. Instead he laughed as he pinned her wrists to the bed and lowered his head to kiss her neck … simply kissed. She couldn’t believe it. He was hard, so how could he kiss her so softly and with such aggravating and unnecessary patience? She squirmed impatiently and he moved on top of her, his heavy weight pressing her down as he held her still.
Skin to skin, his scent filling her, his mouth on her, everything stopped. Time stopped. There was just his body and hers, this big bed that stretched forever, this room of color. This felt so real she forgot it was a dream, lost herself in the sensation.
She found her voice, just enough for one word. “Now.”
Finally he spoke, too, in that deep, rough voice of his, a voice that matched the dark eyes and hardness of him. It was a voice she almost knew. “Relax, Lizzy. We have all night.”
That sounded all well and good, but what if they didn’t have all night? Oh, right—she remembered again that this was just a dream. Not real, no matter how real it felt. But dreams didn’t last forever; what if she woke up before they were finished? That had happened before, dreaming that she was falling off a cliff and waking up just before she hit the ground, or coming face-to-face with a tiger and waking with a gasp just as it lunged. In this case she wanted to hit the ground; she wanted to be eaten alive. She wanted the dream to last.
She knew how to make X hurry, how to make sure he didn’t drag this out too long. She reached down, their bodies so tightly pressed together she had difficulty working her arm between them, but she managed to get her fingers around the thickness of his erection and began stroking. He growled in her ear and caught her earlobe between his white teeth, biting down just enough for her to feel the sharp pinch, but he didn’t roll on top of her and push between her legs where she ached. Frustrated, annoyed even in sleep, she stroked harder, longer, and after another low growl in his throat he whispered, “Keep it up and I’ll come in your hand.”
Crap! That would definitely defeat the purpose. She snatched her hand away, scowling at him, and he laughed.
He kept on kissing her, his mouth moving from her ear to her throat, throat to chest, chest to nipple. His tongue circled the tight point, then suddenly he clamped his mouth on her and sucked hard, strong, pulling at her until he wrung a sharp cry from her. Her back arched and she wrapped her legs around him, straining, trying to lift herself to his engorged penis so she could take him in.
Diabolically, he moved back just enough that she couldn’t get into position, and she made a feral sound deep in her throat that earned her another of those wicked, gloating laughs.
Thinking furiously, calculating grip and balance and momentum, she worked out how she might toss X onto his back and straddle him, taking him in before he could stop her and ending this painful wanting. Damn him, he was always like this, pushing her out of her comfort zone of control. He was big, but not so big that she couldn’t handle him, if she took him by surprise. Fuck foreplay.
Even in her dream, that sentence startled her into laughing.
Somehow, he knew. This was her dream but he was in control, and instantly he whipped out a pair of handcuffs and shackled her to the headboard, both wrists. The handcuffs must have come out of the ether, because being naked, he didn’t have a pocket to hide them in. Dreams were such a hoot.
X grinned at her. It was a predator’s smile, all teeth, very much like the lunging tiger.
She tugged on the handcuffs, torn between excitement and fury. “That’s not very nice.” She’d have pouted if things like that ever worked on him, but they never did. Still, she wasn’t afraid, not of him. Never of him.
“You want nice?” His eyes narrowed. “Since when?” He ran big, rough hands over her body, from neck to waist, from waist to thighs and downward, as if he were tracing her outline so slowly the complete study would take hours … days. She shook with wanting him. She trembled, when he lowered his head and kissed her on the neck again while his hands … played. His skin was burning hot, but his touch was so gentle and hard and demanding and patient, all at the same time, despite the steely hardness of his erection that betrayed how turned on he was. He’d be the perfect lover … if she could just get him in the right position. Didn’t he want her as much as she wanted him? Wasn’t he as hungry?
Hungry like a tiger whose dinner had been handcuffed to the dinner table.
She wanted to touch him, but with her hands above her head she couldn’t. She was restrained, he was in complete control, but if he thought she was helpless he was about to learn otherwise. She closed her eyes and turned her head away, concentrating on his position, calculating the distance. She’d already tried this, but he might not be expecting the same move twice. The thick, bulbous head of his penis brushed between her legs, teasing, and like lightning she scissored her strong legs around him and pulled him in to the very point of entry.
Time froze. Everything in her waited, caught on the cusp of orgasm. He was right there, touching her, almost inside her. Almost, almost.
Then she heard something, a faint noise intruding on the intimate battle between them. She was suddenly aware that they weren’t alone in the big, rambling house. Someone was searching through all the white rooms for her. Maybe they didn’t know she’d found this room of color. Maybe they didn’t know that she’d found him. X. Her lover.
He was right there, and she needed him more than ever, but they were running out of time. She wanted to hold him, but she couldn’t. She wanted to scream, but if she did they would hear. The searchers would find them any minute and she didn’t want to be caught naked, didn’t want to be caught, period, yet she couldn’t make herself let him go. So she lifted her head up and whispered in his ear.
Desperately she pressed her mouth against his ear, whispered, demanded, “Fuck me!”
He gave another of those growling laughs that she could feel as well as hear, and pushed inside, filling her deep and hard.
Lizette woke with a lurch of her body, a moan tearing from her throat as the dream orgasm faded away. Her covers had been tossed aside; her pillows were on the floor. In spite of the overhead fan and the air conditioning, she was sweating.
Oh, God, that had been good.
How long had it been since she’d had a really hot dream? She couldn’t remember, and she didn’t miss the irony that the dream had been about a stranger who’d frightened the crap out of her in a pharmacy aisle.
One thing for certain: dreaming about sex was way better than dreaming that unknown strangers were watching her.
She glanced at the clock as she grabbed the pillows from the floor. Three sixteen in the morning, which was way too early to get up, especially considering what a tough time she’d had going to sleep last night. She was thoroughly relaxed now, so maybe the hot dream had been her mind’s way of dealing with the stress of the day.
Good deal.
She thought of the name she’d given him in the dream. Mr. X. It fit him. It felt right. She drifted back to sleep thinking of how he’d tasted in her dream.
Chapter Nine
Lizette warily approached Saturday; Friday had been such a day of upheaval that she was almost afraid of what the new day would bring. The wrong face still stared at her from the mirror, she still had at least two years missing from her memory, but at least she wasn’t spending the morning either curled up in pain or hanging over the toilet puking her guts out. She’d take any improvement she could get.
But the day felt odd, as if she were just waiting for something else to happen. Briefly—very briefly—she entertained the idea of going back to Walgreens to see if by chance Mr. X would be there, but she had to roll her eyes at herself on that one. Not going to happen. He’d bought his shampoo yesterday; he wouldn’t be back for more.
Saturday was her day for errands, one of which was grocery shopping. Normally she shopped at Walmart for the majority of her groceries, and at the small neighborhood store closer to the house when she needed only a few things. Today she went to neither, and she couldn’t have said why, other than breaking out of her routine seemed like a good idea.
Instead she stopped at a store she passed on the way to and from work every day but had never entered. It was a nice store, large, clean, just a bit fancy, so she took her time. The prices were a bit higher than at Walmart, but she was actually having fun finding different foods.
Leisurely shopping was a decent enough way to spend a Saturday afternoon when it seemed as if her body and mind were turning against her and nothing about her life made sense anymore. It was nice to get away from her worries for a while, to deal with nothing more dramatic than what this store had or didn’t have, to study labels, plan a meal or two, and think about … nothing.
Except—suddenly, the damnedest things were perplexing. She stopped, staring into the case of frozen foods. Blueberry pomegranate frozen yogurt. Something about it resonated, though she couldn’t remember ever trying it before. Did she like it? Would she like it? She tended to stick with vanilla, and she was damn tired of vanilla. So … maybe. Opening the door, she took out a carton of blueberry pomegranate and placed it in her grocery cart, next to the cinnamon raisin bagels and the oatmeal raisin cookies. Carbs, much? She usually made certain her diet was more healthy than not, but today she was having problems with her selections. What if all this time she’d been eating foods she really didn’t like? After everything she’d gone through the day before, that didn’t feel as ridiculous as it sounded.
She couldn’t live on carbs alone, so she made herself go back through the produce aisle, adding fruits and vegetables to the cart. Normally she ate turkey: turkey breast, ground turkey, turkey bacon, turkey sausage … she was so sick of turkey, she never wanted to see it again. She bought some real bacon, though a package of chicken breasts probably balanced that out. Before she totally flipped out and added something like sardines to the growing pile, she wheeled the cart to one of the checkout lanes.
As the cashier efficiently scanned the items, Lizette looked out the wide front windows, studying the parking lot. Her car was parked to the right and several spaces down, facing out—again—so she could drive straight out of the space and into the lane that led to the side exit of the parking lot. She didn’t even remember purposely choosing that space, but looking at it now, from this distance, it was plain to see. She was poised for a quick getaway.
And, huh, no headache or nausea, just a clear observation of her surroundings.
She paid with a swipe of her credit card and plucked the keys from her purse so they were in her hand and ready. She grabbed her bags—plastic, not paper—and placed them so they hung over her forearms but didn’t restrict her hands. The plastic straps of the heaviest bag bit into her flesh and pinched a bit, but she wanted both of her hands free. She couldn’t remember ever worrying about that before, but she had a new reality now.
She stepped off the curb and headed toward her car, her gaze automatically scanning the area. She was alert, in a way she hadn’t ever been. No, that wasn’t quite right: she hadn’t been this aware in a long time. So what if she couldn’t remember exactly when she had been this aware? What was fascinating was how oblivious most people were.
The woman who had checked out beside and just before Lizette was loading her groceries into the back of her Highlander, while two children—one boy, one girl—argued about who was going to sit where. Most of the other cars were empty, though a man sat in the driver’s seat of a gray sedan, probably waiting for his wife or girlfriend. He was looking down, as if texting or playing a game on his phone, but she couldn’t see what was in his hands. A store employee, a young and bored guy probably working a summer job, was collecting grocery carts. One young couple was headed into the store; she held a piece of paper, most likely a list, in her right hand. Lizette could tell they’d probably been arguing. Neither spoke or looked directly at one another at any time, and there was a good three feet between them, a distance neither felt compelled to narrow. His shoulders were tight; her mouth was pursed.
Lizette used the remote to pop the trunk open. After storing her groceries there she closed the trunk, and once again looked around. A car was just pulling into the parking lot—a female driver, alone. The woman circled the parking lot, looking for a slot as close to the store as she could get.
Lizette unlocked her door, got inside, and immediately relocked the door.
She sat there for a long moment before starting the engine. A long chill ran down her spine. Someone was watching her. Damn it, she felt eyes on her, though she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.
But maybe not. Maybe being hyper-alert was just putting herself in the mindset that she could be watched, and her imagination was taking over from there. Half convinced she was being watched, half certain she wasn’t, Lizette pulled out of the parking slot and turned toward the traffic light.
The gray sedan, the one with the man who’d been texting, or whatever, in the driver’s seat, was just leaving the parking lot as well and he fell in behind her. Frowning, she glanced into the rearview mirror. He was still alone.
What were the possibilities? Rapidly she ran through a few scenarios. Maybe he’d run into the store, picked up a few things, checked out ahead of her and then sat in his car for a few minutes to send a text. She hadn’t seen him in the store, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe he had planned to shop, but something or someone had called him away before he could take care of that chore. That was plausible. Unlikely, but still plausible.
Then again, maybe he was following her. Had he picked her out of all the women who’d walked in that parking lot and chosen her as his victim? She had been careful, she’d been alert, so what had marked her as an easy target? Or had he been behind her on the drive from her house to the store where she had never shopped before? Would she have noticed?
No, an inner voice said, you wouldn’t have. You were thinking about Mr. X, and doing normal things, like getting on with your life as if nothing had changed in the past day and a half. Her big thing today had been shopping at a grocery store she hadn’t been in before.
Her heart jumped up in her throat. What should she do?
A left turn would take her toward home. She didn’t dare lead this guy to her house, though if he’d followed her from there he already knew where she lived. She tried to think through the ramifications of that, but things were happening too fast for her right now and she needed to concentrate on what she was doing. When the traffic light changed to green, Lizette turned right.
So did the car behind her.<
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She drove down the main street that would, eventually, take her past the office building where she worked. This was a part of town she knew well. She’d driven these streets enough. For the past three years—maybe three—she’d driven this route to work five days a week. She had rarely deviated from the route, though every day she’d gone out for lunch and gotten to know the area that way. Once, for a five-week period, a detour had taken her by another route while this one was being repaired and repaved.
Now, as she kept her speed at precisely the speed limit, she realized that while she’d never consciously paid much attention, she really did know a lot about this area. It was as if a part of her subconscious had been operating on a different level all along.
The road coming up led to an apartment complex: dead end. The next three streets to the left would take her into a middle-class neighborhood. She wasn’t sure what was back there besides houses: cross streets, maybe a park. Farther down this street there were a number of restaurants, an office building much larger than her own, and a couple of nice strip malls.
The gray car was still behind her, but it wasn’t right on her tail. A Highlander—maybe the one with the woman and two kids and their groceries—had passed the gray car and then pulled between them. Lizette flipped her turn signal and moved into the left lane. So did the Highlander. Her heart pounded; her palms began to sweat. Surely she wasn’t being followed by two vehicles, especially since the one behind her had kids in it. On the other hand, what great camouflage! And multiple cars doing a tail were always better than one—
Not now, not now! she thought frantically as pain stabbed through her head. She couldn’t afford to be blinded by a headache. The only song she could think of at the moment was “Oscar Mayer Wiener,” so she hummed it and concentrated on the words until the pain dimmed and she could see clearly again.