Dark Flame Read online

  His heart pounded in his chest. He could hear steps up the walk, a man’s stride.

  He followed the sounds, turning his body with each footstep. He drew his Glock, then extended his hearing. The doorbell rang and he listened hard. Carl, the owner, asked, “Can I help you?”

  When he heard the stranger’s voice, he cursed softly.

  Juliet tapped his telepathy. You recognize him, don’t you?

  He glanced at her, surprised that she could communicate mind-to-mind. The woman had power.

  He dipped his chin once. He’s corrupt. This isn’t good.

  What’s he saying? I can only hear a mumbling sound and you vampires have much sharper hearing than the rest of us.

  He’s asking about me. He’s saying I told him I was headed over here. But Carl is playing it smart. He says he only met me once in a pool hall near some Chinese Restaurant east of Rotten Row. He doesn’t know why I’d say I was coming to his house. The officer is pressing him, but he’s not getting anywhere, thank God.

  He felt Juliet’s hand on his arm. She was trembling.

  He held her gaze. Hold steady. We’re still okay.

  She squeezed his arm. I know.

  Our host is shutting the door. The officer is moving away.

  The man’s footsteps echoed all the way down the walk. A moment later, the vehicle roared to life and a few seconds later rumbled down the street.

  “Oh, thank God.” Juliet turned into him and as though he’d done it a thousand times, he surrounded her with both arms. She shook from head to foot. With his heart slamming around in his chest as well, he wasn’t doing much better.

  If things had gone south, he would have been forced to kill the man and the gunshots would have been reported. He was grateful it hadn’t come to that.

  Juliet pulled out of his arms. “Sorry, Brann. But that was a close one.” She put a hand to her chest. “My heart is racing.”

  He stared at her. Wait a minute. Had she just called him ‘Brann’? No one called him that. His wife had when they’d been married, but no one else and definitely no one in Five Bridges.

  A sudden dizziness hit him hard. He stepped away from Juliet. He could barely keep himself upright and stumbled sideways.

  He felt her hand on his shoulder. “Brann, what’s wrong?”

  There it was again. ‘Brann.’

  He squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t think. He didn’t know what was going on.

  Then suddenly, the erotic dream from earlier exploded through his mind, only this time in full color, every sensual detail and smell and taste hitting him like a Tsunami. It hadn’t been an ordinary dream after all.

  Juliet was under him and he had his fangs buried in her neck, tasting blood that wasn’t blood. The sounds of her moans pushed him on, drove him harder. He wanted her to come.

  He’d said things to her, wicked things. Her hands moved over his back. ‘Brann.’

  She’d called him Brann in the dream.

  A dream that was more than a dream.

  Regaining his balance, he stared at her, his heart pounding in his chest all over again. The reality of what must have really happened struck him hard, like a hammer between the eyes.

  “Juliet, what the fuck have you done to me?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Juliet Tunney stared at Brannick for a long, difficult moment. Something had happened just now, but she didn’t know what and she was afraid she’d say the wrong thing. So she remained silent, watching him carefully.

  She could hardly breathe. She suspected it might have to do with their secret bedroom activities, but his dream-self had sworn her never to reveal the truth. The real-time Brannick wasn’t supposed to know what they did together in her fae dreamglide.

  Yet here they were, face-to-face, and it looked like he’d just remembered one or more of their shared dreamgliding experiences.

  She decided the best course, given her gag order, was to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. “I don’t know what you mean, but you seem really upset. What’s going on?”

  He narrowed his green eyes. “I’m not sure, Juliet, but what I just saw flashing through my head in extraordinary detail makes me think it wasn’t a dream, but something else. A dreamglide, in fact.”

  Juliet had feared this moment for a long time, when Brannick’s sub-conscious mind would finally force the truth to the surface. However, it appeared he was only recalling one dream and not everything that had happened between them.

  She shuddered just thinking about how Brannick would react once he knew the whole truth, especially how their affair had gotten started. She was guilty of breaking a law, a big one in both Revel Territory and Five Bridges. Once Brannick knew what she’d done, he could prosecute her.

  She needed to buy herself some time.

  She glanced at the closed tunnel door. “We need to get this job done, then get out of here.”

  Brannick glanced at the boxes then back to her. “You’re right. But then we’re going to talk.”

  “Of course.” She’d have to stay calm and let him lead the conversation. She didn’t need to tell him anything he couldn’t remember.

  He headed over to the scattered tubs, bags and boxes and started picking them up and moving them back into place.

  She offered to help, but he said he’d prefer to arrange them according to weight and it would be faster without her assistance.

  She didn’t argue. If anything, she wanted distance from him right now.

  She moved to the van. The sliding door was still open, so she reached inside and grabbed a bottle of water from the small cooler. Water would help. Staying hydrated in the desert, even for an alter fae, was important.

  The van was sufficiently large and her ass just small enough that she could sit on a combination of the floor and the running board. Wearing a dress, she angled her knees away from Brannick.

  She unscrewed the lid of her water bottle and took a sip, then repressed a heavy sigh. She’d been dreading this moment for months now and couldn’t believe it had come. Although, she suspected it had happened because they were together physically for the first time since the dreamgliding sex had started up.

  She’d been warned this could happen. Her sage teacher, Agnes, had told her all about dreamgliding, how it was done and how only fae of a certain level of power could engage in a dreamglide. Though it was also true that the dark flame drug could prompt dreamgliding even in humans.

  She could kick herself for not having provided a secondary transport option for the women. Mary always drove which had prevented Juliet from ever seeing Brannick in real-time.

  Up until tonight, Mary had been completely reliable. But life happened, especially in Five Bridges, and moving forward Juliet would engage a back-up driver.

  She took her cell from the pocket of her dress and checked for a text from Mary, but nothing was there. So, where was she?

  Juliet smiled. Mary was tall, blond and gorgeous and had been a model in her previous, human life. She always had men buzzing around her. Maybe one of them had finally caught her eye, and Mary had lost track of time.

  The van would stay in the garage for at least a week, and Juliet would fly out with Brannick, just as Mary always did.

  Juliet would have him take her to her canal home in Revel, using his vampire cloaking ability to shield them from any other species that might be out flying. It was an easy way to get home and at the same time avoid the requisite vehicle stops at either of the intervening main bridges and their security checkpoints.

  As Brannick worked to stack up the boxes, Juliet wished the van faced a different direction so she didn’t have to look at him. Like most of the male, border patrol officers, he had a body to die for. Watching him move around tore at every resolution she’d worked so hard to build over the past several months.

  He wore a typical border patrol uniform of black leathers, a way-too-sexy tank top, and his Glock holstered on his belt, though he’d left off the short sword. The uniforms
of Five Bridges were very different from the human part of Phoenix and enhanced the physiology of the alter species. The essential change in DNA added to the muscles and power of the men designed for law enforcement, a necessary component for any species grappling with drug-runners and killers every night.

  Brannick was a gorgeous man and the mere thought of what they’d been doing in secret, had her trembling all over. She sipped some more water and tried to calm down, but she had it bad for the vampire. She wished it otherwise, but she’d gotten to know him over the five months they’d been seeing each other in the dream-world.

  Five months ago, she’d offered to become part of Brannick’s operation to rescue abducted human women out of the Revel sex clubs. The brief time she’d spent with him at the White Flame club while he interviewed her had been intoxicating.

  She’d responded to him like a woman on a date and that alone had felt miraculous, besides being sexy as hell. She’d experienced a sudden powerful attraction to him the moment she laid eyes on him.

  After she’d gone home, the solitary and very lonely nature of her existence had hit her hard.

  So it was, in a moment of terrible weakness, she’d entered her fae-based dreamglide for the first time but with only one intention: To find Brannick.

  She’d found him all right. All she’d done was picture him and whoosh, she was there, hovering her dreamglide above him while he lay asleep in bed.

  She’d done a very bad thing when she’d penetrated his dreams and essentially hijacked him into her dreamglide without his permission. This boundary was considered sacred by both Revel Territory and Tribunal law.

  Within the dreamglide, she’d kept him in a half-sleep state while she climbed into his bed and began seducing him. By the time she’d brought him to a dreamglide level of consciousness, he was fully aroused and she was on top of him.

  She’d meant to explain the situation, especially to let him know he could send her packing if he wanted to. But he’d been shockingly ready to be with her and had taken her on a ride that to this day caused shivers and chills to chase all over her body.

  The man knew his way around a woman.

  Now she was here, uncertain what to tell real-time Brannick about everything they’d been doing for the past five months.

  She tilted her water bottle back and let more of the liquid flow down her throat.

  As she watched Brannick, she’d thought more than once that he would have made an exceptional subject. She’d been a photographer before the alter transformation and couldn’t help but see Brannick as through a lens. And it wasn’t just the perfection of his face and body, but something more, something Brannick exuded through the sheer strength of his personality. He was like staring at a massive and very beautiful wall of granite.

  He wore his dark brown hair combed straight back and had the most beautiful green eyes, though they had a pinched look most of the time. She understood why, since she’d come to know him so well over the past few months. The man spent his nights trying to right the wrongs of his past. Guilt drove him relentlessly.

  She’d screwed up, though, calling him ‘Brann’. No wonder his conscious mind had started filling in the blanks.

  It was a weird conundrum to face the man she’d been having sex with for the past several months and unable to tell him that’s what they’d been doing. Or how it was done. Or even that he’d forbidden her not to say a word. Very bizarre.

  But there was another reason why she didn’t want Brann to consciously know the truth. She knew, with every cell of her body, that the moment she fessed up, he’d never come near her again. Brannick had demons that kept him locked up tight as a drum. He’d gone berserk when he became an alter vampire and lost his family to the alter serum.

  She’d heard about his mania and how he’d become a one-man death squad, attacking anyone in the drug trade. He’d kept it up until the cartels had sent assassins to take out his parents and abduct his sister, Tracy. Only then had he stopped his vigilante killing spree.

  Juliet had heard many versions of his sister’s fate, but the one consistent element was that Brannick had been forced to watch while dark coven witches used her as a human sacrifice.

  Juliet couldn’t imagine how Brannick had survived both the loss of his wife and children, then the guilt because of the deaths of his remaining family.

  She cut the man a lot of slack because of it.

  She sighed. She really, really didn’t want her time with Brannick to end. She wanted him in her dreamgliding bed until she was lying in the Tribunal’s overburdened morgue, an inch away from cremation.

  She released a heavy sigh.

  “Feeling guilty?”

  She’d been staring at the cement of the garage floor, lost in thought. Brannick now stood in front her having finished stacking the boxes.

  Looking up at him, she shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.” She’d play dumb as long as she could.

  “You’re dreamgliding me, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t look nearly as upset as he had earlier, but she still wasn’t going to tell him anything. “What got you all upset before?”

  He planted his fists on his hips, his biceps flexing. His lips turned down. “So you’re going to play it this way, dumb as shit?”

  She sighed. “I’m under a strong obligation to keep my mouth shut.”

  His green eyes narrowed a little more. “I don’t get it. Who has you under an obligation?”

  “You do.”

  He snorted. “Oh, that’s damn convenient.” He turned away from her. She could see he wanted to let loose with a few obscenities. His lips were definitely mouthing the words.

  Then he grew very still and frowned, though staring at nothing. “I remember that we talked and you asked me something. You asked me if I would finally give my permission, but I refused.” He turned back to her. “Permission for what? Does this have to do with drugs?”

  “No. Oh, God no.” She waved a hand in the air. “No drugs, I promise you.”

  “Juliet … ” His deep voice carried the exact tone he used in the dreamglide, affectionate and almost weightless. “Talk to me.”

  She rose slowly to her feet as another compressed sigh forced its way from her body. “I can’t, Brann. You have to trust me in this.”

  “Can you at least tell me how long this has been going on?”

  “You told me not to tell you anything,” she said.

  “As much as I can’t imagine how some dreamlike part of me would insist on your silence, I’m giving my permission now, here, in real-time. So, how long have you been sexing me up in the dreamglide?”

  It took her a moment to make the decision, but she finally decided she couldn’t hold back. “Five months.”

  “Holy shit.” He shook his head back and forth very slowly. His lips worked again, only this time she didn’t think he was uttering obscenities. Maybe he was trying to frame the right words for what was going through his head right now.

  He frowned even harder. “You want to know what I saw earlier? What came to me?”

  She put her hands to her throat and smoothed her fingers down the length. She was trying to ease the knot that now felt like a noose. Given that every dreamglide she’d ever had with Brannick either began or ended with sex, she found it hard to breathe.

  The Brannick in the dreamglide was all in, one-hundred-percent. He was an exceptional lover and an engaging companion. If Juliet had to guess, they’d probably spent as much time in conversation as they had tangled up in each other’s arms.

  But there was only one answer to give him in this situation. “Yes, I want to know. Please tell me what you saw.”

  He moved to stand just a couple of feet from her. “We made love, in my bed, and you said the color of my red comforter was called Alabama Crimson. Dreams usually don’t have such specific details, do they?”

  “Sometimes they do.” And just like that, she was right back there, with him. They often made love in his bed, some
times in hers, sometimes they ended up in all sorts of places. The dreamglide could be amazing.

  But this time, yes, she’d been in his bed.

  He searched her eyes as though trying to understand. She knew he was thinking the whole thing over.

  He moved closer still and took her arms in his hands. “It’s as though I’m two people right now, Juliet. One of them knows you extremely well, the other is a stranger.”

  He leaned close and ran his nose over her temple, drawing in his breath at the same time. “You feel so familiar to me, yet not, and you smell like strawberries.”

  “It’s my shampoo. And Brann?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He drew back and met her gaze. “Well, I’m angry.”

  How many times had she stared into his haunted, green eyes? A hundred? A thousand?

  She knew he was struggling with the nature of the situation. She also knew that this could be the last time she’d ever be close to him in real-time. For one thing, he could easily drop her from his operation and she’d never see him again.

  So, she slid a hand around the nape of his neck and mirrored what he’d done to her. She swept her nose over his cheek. She smelled soap and the citrus fragrance of an aftershave, only everything was more vivid because it was real-time.

  She also caught the scent of him, the sweat on his skin, his vampire masculinity. All was new, yet familiar at the same time. The dreamglide could communicate part of the sensory experience, but not all of it.

  She pressed herself up against Brann and slowly met his lips with hers. When he didn’t pull away, she kissed him harder.

  The same.

  But different.

  Yet so much better.

  Real. So real.

  She trembled as his arms slid around her in response.

  Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe this would make things a thousand times worse. After all, Brannick would never forgive her for coming to him illegally as she had. He was a man of rules, procedures and control.

  She started to draw back, but he followed with his lips and captured her mouth. She gave a cry as his tongue drove within, familiar, yet so much more.