by Sarah Noffke
“Oh, come on,” she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me deeper into the tiny shop. “I’m amazing and soon you’ll admit it.”
“Don’t hold your breath.” I covered my giddy smile. This girl had the effect on me to make me giddy. I had a simultaneous urge to kiss her and strangle her. Ren Lewis didn’t do giddy.
We exited the shop two minutes later. I had a bowler hat pulled down low over my hair and dark shades covering my emerald green eyes. Dahlia had tied her long brown hair into a bun and tucked it in a cap. She also had on a Hyde Park sweatshirt and a pair of flip-flops.
“Where to?” I said, peering out of the shop. Without abandonment she grabbed my hand and pulled me down the pavement. She didn’t release me after she chose a direction, just kept my hand in hers. Several kids from the mob were searching the streets inspecting the various people passing by. To my relief they didn’t give us a second glance.
“Let’s go take a ride on the Underground. I’ve always wanted to,” she said.
I regarded her with a long annoyed stare. Too bad she probably couldn’t see it under my dark glasses. “Firstly, how have you not been on the Tube? And secondly, I didn’t realize you wanted to get a staph infection.”
She laughed easily. “My guards would never allow me on the Underground. Too many security risks. They’re going to kill me when they find me after all this,” she said.
I flashed her a smile. “That would make them the worst bodyguards ever.”
I led her to the nearest station, her hand still in mine. “After we ride on the Tube, do you want to go to a hostel? I’m sure we can find one with fleas and then you’ll feel like a real rebel.”
She nodded. “Yes to a dirty hostel, but only after you do some tricks on various people on the Underground. I want to see a homeless man chunk his only shoes at a rail and an honest woman flash some school boys.”
I paused, turned, and regarded her like she was a centaur or gnome or some other mythical creature. “You just said all that like you honestly want me to make people do those kinds of things.”
She blinked at me. “Of course I do.”
“But most people would think that kind of thing was cruel,” I said.
She gave me a slight sheepish look. “Oh, do you think those things are cruel?”
“Yeah, but they’re also highly entertaining.”
“Good. I thought you’d say that,” Dahlia said. “Oh, and who cares what other people think. Their opinions are almost always wrong.”
I stared down at her, pretty certain that she was a figment of my imagination. No one could be so incredibly perfect.
She stepped forward and pulled down slightly on the front rim of my hat. “I told you we were a lot alike. I could just sense it.”
I didn’t say anything, just stared at her with a heated look.
“Come on,” she said, lacing her fingers in mine. “Let’s go create some headlines.”
We rode the Tube for hours and actually ran out of people to manipulate with pranks before we ran out of pranks. Dahlia’s tricks were usually clever and detailed. I was impressed but hid it. However, it was hard to hide the drain all that mind control and hypnosis did to me. We ate dinner in a small pub by my building and thankfully our disguises held up the whole day. Dahlia walked me to the entrance of my building and as she expected her guards were there waiting for her.
“They’re predictable dogs, aren’t they,” I said.
One was holding her heels and the other her purse and coat. They’d probably been standing there all day.
She cast them a single look before turning to look up at me. “Are you going to invite me up?”
I squinted down at her. “What? Do you want me to?” I said, unable to hide the disbelief in my voice.
“No, I just asked that question so I could reject you and make you look like a fool,” she said with the perfect degree of snark in her voice.
I didn’t grant her a response, just stared at her. I’ve found that my stares are usually more effective than speaking. They have a nice punishing quality to them.
“Of course I want you to want to invite me up,” Dahlia finally said. “But I get that you’ve been trying to prove to yourself all day that I don’t really like you and that there’s no way you’d ever fall for a girl. Not with powers like yours. Not when you can cut the dreadful companionship crap and just have sex. But you can go ahead and drop the act you’ve been trying to keep up since we met. It’s cute but getting old.”
“Where did you come up with all that?” I said, wondering if she had duped me and was in fact a Dream Traveler with telepathy.
“Since I met you, I sense things about you,” she said plainly, like she wasn’t shattering my very existence. “For some reason I see things about you so clearly, like I know what you’re thinking at times.” And she just shrugged. Like she’d said nothing of consequence.
I studied her. “You sense things about just me or other people too?” I said.
“Just you.”
“Dahlia?” I said, a gruffness in my voice.
“Yes,” she said.
“Would you like to come up?”
“No,” she said through a fake yawn. “I’ve got an early flight tomorrow.”
I narrowed my eyes at her and hoped that they felt like punishment by fire.
She pushed me in the chest, her face cracking with a giant smile. “I’m kidding. Come on,” she said, hooking her arm through mine and pulling me in the direction of the entrance for the building.
I gave the doorman a curt nod when we entered.
“That guy, the doorman, he didn’t give you any trouble this morning when you barged into the building?” I said to Dahlia when we rode up to my flat. One guard had taken the lift before ours. The other one would take the next one.
She looked at me with an exasperated gaze. “I’m Dahlia,” she said, like that was a sufficient excuse.
“I’m Dahlia,” I said in a mocking tone.
She laughed. It was hard to believe I’d just met this girl. It didn’t feel like it. Actually it felt all wrong, like I’d always known her and her me. I was too comfortable with her and she was absolutely right, I didn’t want whatever this was, but I needed it. And that boiled my insides with anger. I had never needed anything.
“Are you coming?” Dahlia said, staring back at me. She’d already exited the lift and was holding the door open for me. I didn’t meet her eyes as I stalked past her.
“You’re doing that brooding thing again,” she said, hurrying her footsteps to catch up with me. “Were you just thinking about how much you don’t want to like me, but can’t resist?”
I spun around and shot her a fuming look. “If I find out that you’re a telepathic Dream Traveler who’s been lying to me then you better move off the grid because I’m coming after you with vengeance.”
“So I’m right, aren’t I? That was what you were thinking,” she said with a triumphant smile. “And what happens when you realize that I’m not and I’m just this connected to you?” she said, watching for my reaction. When I didn’t give her one she plucked my keys out of my hand and trotted off to my flat. She pulled off the cap as she walked and let down her hair with a shake of her head.
Damn, this woman is going to be the death of me, I thought as I stalked after her.
Her guards stayed stationed outside my flat when we entered. I took my keys back from Dahlia and dutifully hooked them on the wall. When I turned around she had peeled off the enormous sweatshirt she’d been wearing and smoothed down her lavender dress. We stood staring at each other for a long few seconds.
“Come here,” she said and I finally knew what it was like to be one of my mind-controlled victims. I felt forced to move forward. I couldn’t resist her command and I also didn’t want to. I halted when I was right up against her. The fabric of her dress bristled against my shirt.
She brushed her hand against my clean-shaven face. “How does it feel not to hear thoughts righ
t now?”
And I decided to be honest since there didn’t seem to be any way to hide anything from this girl. “Like a gift,” I said.
She took her other hand and slipped it around my neck. The experience was so surreal. I’d never been this close to someone without having forced them.
Everything about that moment was so freeing. I didn’t dare move. I was frozen under the realization that Dahlia was touching me because she wanted to. Then she stood up on her tiptoes and paused a breath away from my mouth, regarding me with wide open eyes. She tilted her head and pressed her mouth against mine. Her lips brushed my lips gently, but only once before I unleashed a kiss bursting with a desire I was tired of smothering. She pushed back into me with a heavy passion. Her hands found the button to my suit jacket, undoing it. Our mouths still locked on each other’s, she slipped her hands under my jacket and began exploring. I was leaning over her when I felt her step back from my force. Steadying her with one hand around her waist I then locked my fingers into her hair and gently tugged. A satisfied groan escaped her lips. My mouth started a fervent path along her jawline.
“Do you want to know what I’m thinking right now, Ren?” she said through heavy breaths.
“No,” I said, trailing kisses under her ear, down her slender neck. “I think I already know.”
“It might actually make you blush though,” she said, leaning back, inviting me to continue exploring her with my mouth.
“I’ve heard it all, luv,” I said, rising up tall and regarding her under hooded eyes.
Dahlia slid her hands up my chest and wrapped them around my neck. “You haven’t heard this because you can’t read my thoughts.”
“Then please, do tell,” I said, my mouth only an inch from hers.
“I was just thinking that without hearing my thoughts you’re still giving me exactly what I want and how I want it,” she said.
I didn’t blush. But her words did send a rush of heat through my stomach. Without a single warning I whipped her off her feet, cradling her in my arms. A surprised gasp escaped her mouth, but then she grabbed my face and her lips were on mine, demanding and spilling with a frenzied passion. I kissed her with my eyes wide open as I marched us both across the flat and straight into my bedroom. My lips didn’t disconnect from hers until I laid her down in my bed, a deliciously heated look in her eyes.
Chapter Thirteen
November 1996
Being with Dahlia was harder than I would have expected. It should have been a luxury. She traveled incessantly and was always busy. We hardly ever saw each other. Only on rare nights could we spend more than a few hours together. And this was precisely the unbelievable reason it was difficult. I missed her. Wanted to see her more times than I was granted. Most times I could dream travel to one of her nearby locations and generate my body using a GAD-C, but even then some travel was involved for me. And since my “work” was flexible I could have stuck by her side as she asked numerous times and given up my place in London. But that was never going to happen. I wasn’t going to be a touring diva’s boy toy. I had my own life and my own ways of doing things and I wasn’t giving that up for anyone. Even for someone I actually cared about, for the very first time ever.
We settled for the evenings when I’d travel to Los Angeles, where she spent most of her time. I’d shack up with her until she had to depart. I’d then join her in New York or Hong Kong or Morocco. It was exhausting and it was also absolutely worth it. I couldn’t stop touching her. Even after I’d committed myself to her for a whole year, my fingers were magnets to her skin. Before Dahlia I’d never experienced the freeing feeling of touching someone without being pressured by their thoughts. It was such a treat. And her skin seemed to simmer under my touch, like it also had a freeing effect on her.
“Do you wish you could read my thoughts?” she said to me one autumn evening, a full year after we’d met.
“Not even a little bit,” I said with an unhampered smile. Of all the thoughts I could read, hers probably wouldn’t make me barf. Dahlia wanted fame, riches, and me. And she had it all. She didn’t want to bodge up her life with breeding. Like me, she thought kids were repulsive but she didn’t mind taking their money, or their parents’ money, as it were. Dahlia was perfectly selfish and smart. And her affection was all I wanted, well besides my own loads of riches.
On a rare occasion, Dahlia had a show in London and had blocked off a few extra days to spend with me. She wanted to see some sights around London but I convinced her they were all tourist traps and that we should just lock ourselves in my flat.
“The Tower of London is a tourist trap? It’s like a thousand years old,” Dahlia said. Her head was resting on my stomach and we were laid out on the rug in front of the fire.
“It’s crawling with snotty Europeans and uptight Americans who will constantly stop you to ask you to take their picture. I promise it’s not worth the dreadful effort,” I said, combing my fingers through her silky hair.
“You know I’m not a Dream Traveler who’s had the opportunity to see the world without crowds. I have to see things like a lowly Middling and sometimes I even have to wait in a line or two,” Dahlia said.
I shivered with disgust at the idea. “You’re Dahlia. If you really want something you can have your people do stuff. Hell, you could probably make a few calls and have St. Paul’s Cathedral shut down for a private tour.”
She turned over suddenly, propping herself up on my chest, a jazzed look in her eyes. “That’s a great idea. If I do it, will you go with me?”
I regarded her like she was a sad, naive orphan. “Oh no, dear Dahlia. I’m not allowed in holy places. They make my flesh burn. I literally have a reaction. I think it’s God’s way of telling me I’m going to hell.”
She lifted herself and climbed onto me, leaning down so she was looking directly at me from above. “Well, I’m going with you. It’s going to be more fun there anyway,” Dahlia said.
I smiled up at her. “Yes, we’ll harass the hell out of the sinners down there.”
Still straddling me, she moved in closer. “Well, you don’t have to go on tourist treks with me, but you are going to escort me to the Grammys.”
“We’ve been through this and no, I’m bloody not. Get one of those guys from Front Street Boys to take you,” I said.
She burst out laughing. “They’re called Backstreet Boys.”
“Whatever,” I said, pinning my hands on her hips, hinging her in place.
“Please, Ren,” she said with a pout.
“You just want me to go so I can make Madonna grab someone’s boob on stage,” I said.
Dahlia hopped a little on my abdomen, knocking the air out of me. She gave me a mischievous grin when I coughed out an irritated breath.
“Hey, why’d you do that?” I said.
“You know I’m not with you because you can entertain me with your gifts, right?” she said.
“Oh no?” I said, rolling over suddenly, throwing her on her back and taking up the spot she just had on top of me. I pinned her hands beside her. “Well, are you with me because I’m a recluse who steals money from innocent people?”
She fought my restraints with a giggle. “Is that why you won’t go with me to the Grammys? Are you afraid people will ask questions and dig into your nonexistent past?”
We had been very careful to keep my interactions with Dahlia as secret as possible. The last thing I needed was a bunch of paparazzi snooping around and figuring out I was a millionaire without a job to speak of. I’d been able to create a full persona to fool the Crown, but if a hungry reporter got motivated they’d grow suspicious. I had zero collegiate experience, had never held a single job, and yet I had a portfolio to put Donald Trump to shame.
“That’s part of the reason and also because of the whole people make me sick thing,” I finally said. “I don’t think I could stand a bunch of cameras in my face.”
“Well, have you ever thought of a profession?” Dahlia asked, l
ooking up at me. “You know I’ll love you no matter what. Criminal or not.”
I looked away at the use of that word. Love. Dahlia often confessed her love for me but I’d never returned the sentiment. Wasn’t sure how to.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I get bored scamming but it’s so easy,” I said.
“What do you think you’d like to do if you could?” she asked, angling her knee in a curious place.
I smiled as I thought for a minute. “I’d stop people like me. It’s the only thing I think that would actually offer a real challenge.”
Her face lit up. “I can just see it. Bad guy turns good guy because he knows all their tricks,” she said in an announcer-type voice.
“Yeah, but I’d still have to do naughty things on the side. I couldn’t stand being a goody-goody,” I said.
“Well, and I definitely don’t want a superhero boyfriend,” Dahlia said.
I leaned in and growled against her throat. “Oh, I know all too well that you like villains.”
Just then the phone rang. I ignored it as I always did, but Dahlia turned her head to the phone on the table. “Aren’t you going to get that?”
“Does it look like I’m going to get that?” I said, nuzzling my nose against her neck.
“But what if it’s important?” she said, wiggling her hands out of mine and then twisting to the side.