Brighter Than the Sun

by Darynda Jones

  She begins to make small, desperate sounds, and I can feel the pressure building in her abdomen. Cutting to her core. Burning her bones. I drive into her faster and harder, each thrust pulling her climax closer to the surface. At the same time, I fight my own. I fight the destruction of my defenses. The fracturing of my shield. When her light envelops me, I try to shake it off. I bite. I battle. I broil.

  “Come for me,” I say through gritted teeth.

  And in that instant, her muscles contract around my cock. Her need stings and pushes and floods until it explodes, delicious and bittersweet.

  And I realize it’s not just her need that has risen like a tidal wave. I’m coming, too. The initial burst of pleasure is followed by a pulsating high that throbs inside me for several long moments. Each surge chips away my resistance a little more. Each rush of blood shatters the carefully constructed barricade a little more. Until her light seeps between the spider-web cracks. Until the tension builds. Until it ruptures, and she pours into me like a floodtide.

  Until I have drowned in her light.

  I am shaking. Trembling so hard my knees give, and we collapse into a heap the floor. A soft sigh slips through her lips, and I wonder if she’ll remember this in the morning. If she’ll remember me. If she’ll understand what she’s done.

  23

  The dreams continue for over a month. Each one reveals a new facet of her personality. One night, she is wild and unpredictable. The next, she is shy or giggly or coy. She laughs and growls and bites and sucks. She brings me to the brink of orgasm, then pulls back. Forces me to wait. Revels in my agony.

  I continue my quest to no avail, and I grow more frustrated every day. But at night, I know what’s coming. Who’s coming.

  Part of me, a very small part, wonders why this is happening now when she’s never pulled me into one of her dreams before. When we’ve never even come close to have sex. Most of me doesn’t give a shit and just enjoys the ride. But there’s another part, an obstinate part, that wants more. That wants Dutch live and in the flesh. That wants her hand. Her mouth. Her hips under mine. It wants all of her. Every last ounce. Body and soul. That part is just going to have to settle for what it has. There’s no getting Dutch. There’s no having her. Even if it did come to that, even if it could, the minute she sees the truth about me, the dirty little secrets I carry around, she’ll run for the hills.

  So for now, I savor what I have. I relish the intimacy.

  When I’m not scouring through the backstreets of every city in the state, I keep an eye on the girl. My girl. She’s working a case with Angel, a departed kid she picked up off the streets, and Cookie, her receptionist and best friend. It’s dangerous. Three lawyers are dead already, so I stay close for a few days.

  She’s also working a case on the side. Mine. She’s beginning to put two and two together. To suspect that the man she pulls into her dreams every night and the cloaked figure who’s followed her since the day she was born are one and the same. But that still won’t lead her to me.

  I head back to the long-term care facility the state has moved me to. Something is wrong. When I get there, the doctors are speaking with the warden. Neil Gossett is there as well. He’s upset. Wants to give it more time.

  Basically, since I have no next of kin and no one to protest, to petition the courts to keep me on the machine, the state is going to take me off life support in a few days. The doctors say there is no hope of recovery. My brain is dead.

  They got that right. I may have faked my condition a little too well. I have three days before they pull the plug. Three days to figure out how I’m going to fake my own death without actually being buried alive. Or cremated.

  Maybe I could have Amador steal my body. How hard could that be? But Amador doesn’t know the truth. I didn’t have time to get him word. It’s not like I could go to him and explain the situation incorporeally. Well, I could, but since he can’t see into the supernatural realm, it would do me little good. And when he came to the facility to see me, the nurse never left his side. I couldn’t just magically wake up. Not yet. I had places to be and people to see.

  I am about to check out another lead when I’m pulled back to Dutch. This time she’s not asleep. She’s in the shower and I’m standing behind her, naked as the day I was born. Steam rises around her and I step to her. Mold myself against her backside. Slide my hands up her thighs and rest them on her hips.

  She lets a soft sigh slip through her lips, and blood rushes to my cock. I pull her closer as she reaches around and runs her fingertips over my ass. Dutch is slick and hot and I want to melt inside her. I’m not above begging, but we seem to be on the same page when she forces a hand between us, slides it down my abdomen, and wraps her fingers around my rock-hard erection. I suck in a sharp breath and almost come.

  Too soon. Much too soon.

  I lock my arms around her, hold her tight against me to keep her from moving. To keep her from creating friction. Once I have control over my body’s response again, I lean close and brush my mouth over her ear. Then I whisper her name.

  She goes still a microsecond before her lids fly open and she whirls around to face me. But I am gone. Like a douche, I’ve broken the spell.

  I jump back into her bathroom to make sure she’s okay. Shaken, she opens her shower curtain and wraps a towel around that delicious body. I’ve learned over the years to hide my form. Only a handful of people can see me when I’m incorporeal, but now I can hide even from them. Even from Dutch when I have to, though she seems to be able to feel when I’m near.

  I don’t want to upset her, so I leave her a message on her mirror. In the steam, I write the letters DUTCH. Then I leave. I watch over her. I don’t spy. I don’t invade her space unless she summons me. But I stay close by.

  The lead ends up just like all the others. Taking me on a wild goose chase. I’m beginning to wonder if I was wrong.

  I hear boots echoing around me. Around my corporeal body. I jump back to the long-term care facility and hear her talking to O’Connell, the guard set to watch me. She’s here. In the flesh. How the fuck did she find me? How did she figure out who I am?

  I’m stunned as I settle back inside my own skin. It’s a tight fit. I’m not sure they’re feeding me well. I sense it the moment her gaze lands on me, and it feels like a jury is out for deliberation, deciding my fate with a few, precarious votes.

  Does she recognize me? Does she like what she sees?

  She steps closer and her warmth is intoxicating. The attraction even more so. I feel the pull of her interest. The rush of her desire. Her hip brushes my arm. Then her fingertips brush over my shoulder.

  “Reyes Farrow,” she says, her voice cracking with emotion. “Please wake up. They are going to turn this machine off if you don’t. Do you understand? Can you hear me? We have three days.”

  She leans closer and I can smell the coconut shampoo she uses. The exotic perfume she dusts lightly on her skin. The underlying scent of her feminine being. I fight the pressure building under the sheets with a mental curse. I can’t even smell her without getting hard, for fuck’s sake.

  Then she makes it even harder. Not my cock, but my ability to order him down. She lowers her head and puts her mouth on mine. Her lips are sweet and warm, but the electricity that passes between us is like lightning.

  Images rush at me and I can’t tell if they’re in my head or hers. I replay the last month. The nights we had together. The unimaginable pleasure. The sense of surrealism.

  Then I remember that night so long ago when Earl was beating the shit out of me. When I lost consciousness for a split second. When I swam back to the surface and spotted her. Glared. Furious that anyone would see the truth. Livid that it was displayed so openly and under such garish lights.

  But then I see her up close. Her gold eyes. Her soft mouth. And I am stunned that she is real.

  She begins to faint beside me. I can’t help her without giving up the ruse. I feel her limbs go slack and her mi
nd open. Her light swallows me. Soaks inside. Illuminates every dark corner of my psyche. And I remember everything. In one great wave of enlightenment, I remember it all.

  I begin with the first time I see her. A shimmering light in the vast blackness of the universe. How many centuries ago was that? How long have I been waiting for her? She turns and smiles at me and I am lost.

  I abandon my mission. The one where I’m supposed to be there when the light is born a human on earth. The one where I’m supposed to kill her, the vessel, and capture her soul. The light. The portal to heaven. The preeminent power that is inherent in her kind.

  I’m supposed to wrap her soul up with a bow and lay it at my father’s feet. Not the retched human who pretended to be my father, but my real one. The one who sent me to strangle the vessel and capture the light for his own machinations.

  Instead, I wait. I plan. I find a family and give up my memory, my identity, to be born on earth as a human as well. To be raised near her. To meet her on common ground.

  We should have gone to school together. We should have been high school sweethearts. We should have lived happily ever after.

  Apparently, my father didn’t appreciate my changing his plan, so he threw a killer wrench into mine by means of Earl Walker. That’s what happens when your dad is public enemy number one. It certainly explains a lot. But I am not my father’s son. I am nothing like him. I am not evil.

  If my father wants a war, if Satan wants a war, he’ll have one. He never should have created me. He never should have stoked the fires of hell and forged such a ghastly thing. Such a despicable beast.

  Dutch collapses and O’Connell helps her to a chair. She didn’t see those last images. She doesn’t know what I am, and I have no intention of letting her find out.

  I smile inwardly. She’s becoming a badass detective. And she wants me to wake up.

  Maybe I should. Maybe she could actually help me in my quest. Help me find answers.

  I’ve never understood how Earl died. Who did it. How I was so perfectly framed. I was hoping to get answers from Sarah. She flat-ass lied on the witness stand. Said Earl was afraid of me. That they both were. Afraid for their lives. Why would she say that unless Earl put her up to it? But why would he put her up to it? And why would she follow through with it after he died?

  She didn’t want to. I felt every emotion running through her alcohol-abused body when she was on the stand, and the last thing she felt for me was fear. She still wanted me, even after all the years. I guess I should be grateful she never mentioned Kim. I know now why she didn’t. She liked Kim. Didn’t want her mixed up in any of this. In a way, Sarah set her free.

  I went to see her—incorporeally, of course—a few months after I’d been convicted, but she was killed in a home invasion. That was when the niggling in the back of my mind began.

  But the postcards are what nailed it for me. The scent of his cheap cologne. The sentimental garbage strewn across one of them.

  Earl Walker is alive, and I’m going to find him.

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  About the Author

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author DARYNDA JONES won a Golden Heart and a RITA for her manuscript First Grave on the Right. A born storyteller, she grew up spinning tales of dashing damsels and heroes in distress for any unfortunate soul who happened by, annoying man and beast alike. Darynda lives in the Land of Enchantment, also known as New Mexico, with her husband and two beautiful sons, the Mighty, Mighty Jones Boys. Visit Darynda at www.daryndajones.com. Or sign up for email updates here.

  Author photograph by Donita Massey Privett.

  Also by Darynda Jones

  Eighth Grave After Dark

  Seventh Grave and No Body

  Sixth Grave on the Edge

  Death and the Girl He Loves

  Fifth Grave Past the Light

  Death, Doom, and Detention

  Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

  Death and the Girl Next Door

  Third Grave Dead Ahead

  Second Grave on the Left

  First Grave on the Right

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Books by Darynda Jones

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN. Copyright © 2015 by Darynda Jones. All rights reserved. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover design by Danielle Fiorella

  Cover image by Shutterstock

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  e-ISBN 9781250090201

  First Edition: October 2015