Chapter Five

“I’m sure glad you’re feeling better. You looked like you were gonna die when I dropped you off Sunday after camping, and you didn’t look a whole lot better when I stopped by your apartment to check on you Monday night. Have to say, I was surprised to see you back at school on Tuesday morning. At least it was a short-lived flu bug.” Chloe reached across the table and scooped up a piece of pizza from the pan.

Dawn nodded as she munched on a piece of pepperoni. She hadn’t been worried about dying from the Orgasm Flu nearly as much as she had been worried about going crazy. Those insane dreams, or rather, sensuous nightmares that seemed entirely too real and crossed over into her waking hours were more than a little disturbing. If the strange occurrences hadn’t stopped when they had, Dawn was sure she would be in a mental hospital by now.

“And thank you for not giving it to me,” Chloe added as she took a big bite of her pizza slice.

“You’re welcome. Thank goodness you didn’t get that awful flu or whatever it was. It was short, but ruthless.” Dawn leaned back in her chair and drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. She didn’t dare tell Chloe the extent of her crazy symptoms.

When she had time, she still planned to research poisonous spiders and bugs in the area to see if everything that happened to her might have been caused by a toxic reaction to being bitten. But for now, she was just relieved the odd symptoms disappeared. There had been no more nightmarish dreams, and she was back to feeling like herself.

The Arizona evening was a perfect temperature, and filled with the tantalizing aromas from the little outdoor pizzeria where they were having dinner. Everything in Dawn’s world seemed perfect again. She reached for another slice of pizza.

“Hey, you girls look familiar,” a deep masculine voice rang out.

Dawn pulled her hand back protectively as her gaze rose to the man who had just spoken. The intense gaze of Anton Two Moons met her own. Her mind went blank for a moment.

“Hi there,” Chloe practically squealed. A wide smile settled on her lips as she blatantly gave Anton’s entire body an appraising scan with her discriminating blue gaze then glanced past him to the other two men who accompanied him.

Anton stepped aside slightly and motioned at the man closest to him. “You probably remember my brother, Rafael, and this is our youngest brother, Mateo Two Moons.”

She giggled. “Of course, we remember you, Anton, and Rafael…” Her gaze settled on the youngest of the trio of brothers. “Ni-Nice to-to meet you, Mateo,” she stuttered as she stared shamelessly at him. “I’m Chloe. Chloe, um, Webster.”

Rafael motioned toward Dawn. “And you are Dawn Malone if I remember correctly?”

Her head nodded in a barely conscious response to Rafael’s question, but she didn’t attempt to reply. She, too, was staring shamelessly at the youngest of the Two Moons brothers. Shimmering and dark as night, his eyes were rimmed on top by thick black and perfectly shaped brows. From beneath heavy lashes, his mesmerizing gaze locked with hers.

A strange sense of familiarity floated along the edges of her consciousness. But there was no way they had met before now because there was absolutely no way she would forget meeting a man as mysterious and sexy as Mateo Two Moons.

She didn’t even try to stop the smile that came instinctively to her lips. He smiled back. She noticed the way his full lips turned up slightly more on one side, revealing teeth so glistening and white they stood stark in contrast to his golden brown complexion. Raven hair was combed back behind his ears and from her view point it looked as if it was pulled into a ponytail or braid that must hang down his back.

A white western shirt was tucked into faded jeans that hung low on his narrow hips. White pearl snaps running down the front of his shirt were open to mid-chest revealing glimpses of the heavy turquoise necklace he wore around his neck. Pointed toes of scruffy black cowboy boots peeked out from the frayed bottoms of his jeans and completed his rugged look.

As uneasy as she had been when they first encountered Anton and Rafael Two Moons in the Superstition Mountains last weekend, she was now instantly enamored with their brother, Mateo, as she noticed every inch of him in a matter of seconds.

“Would you care to join us?” Dawn heard herself asking without a hesitant thought.

“Yes, please do,” Chloe said with another giggle. She motioned at the empty table next to them where they could grab three chairs. As the brothers pulled the chairs over to their table, Chloe glanced at Dawn and gave her the thumbs up sign. Dawn couldn’t help but notice how her luminous blue eyes were extra sparkly all of a sudden.

In a matter of seconds, the three brothers were seated around the table. Mateo Two Moons was sitting so close to Dawn she was sure they would touch if she moved even one fraction of an inch. Her body shook slightly with her stanch effort not to move. Unconsciously, she sucked in her breath. As she did, she caught a whiff of his musky cologne.

He smelled like the flowers that bloomed on the prickly cactus covering the desert floor; an intoxicating mixture of sweet succulent floral and the heavier earthy scent of cacti.

She choked back the lump that formed in the hollow of her throat. Please, don’t be crazy now.

“May I buy you another beer?” Mateo motioned toward her half-empty beer bottle setting beside her plate with the uneaten pieces of crust from her last piece of pizza.

She glanced at him out of the side of her eye. She was afraid to look directly at him again. The memory of the man’s cologne from her dreams left her seriously shaken, and sitting this close to a man like Mateo Two Moons while recalling one of those kinky dreams was dangerous to her health—and maybe to his health if she couldn’t control herself. She felt as though her entire body and soul had been awakened by some unexplainable force, and it appeared the force was sitting right next to her.

“Um, yeah, sure,” she said in a squeaky voice.

He’s not the freaky stranger in your weird dreams. But he is seriously, seriously hot. She heard the other men and Chloe talking, but couldn’t concentrate on one thing they were saying. Yet, she did know Mateo was watching her every move and could feel his gaze as strongly as if his fingers were traipsing all over her face and body.

“Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

Mateo’s tone was deep like Anton’s voice. Only so much sexier, Dawn thought in a giddy moment. Something ridiculous like butterfly wings were fluttering wildly in her stomach. She was acting like one of her twelve-year-old students discovering she liked boys for the first time.

She gave a quick nod of her head. The night was more than beautiful. Since Mateo Two Moons sat down next to her, the night had turned magical. If she thought everything was perfect in her life just moments earlier, she was positive of it now. Is this what love at first sight is like?

The quivering in her stomach grew as she glanced over at the handsome man who was so close she only had to move an inch or two to press her body against his. He was taking two full beers from the waitress. Dawn hadn’t even realized he already ordered them.

She had been correct about his hair. A brown band held a thick mass of ebony hair at the nape of his neck and the shiny locks hung past the middle of his back. As he grabbed the beer bottles in each hand, she noticed the way his muscles rippled above his shoulder blades under the thin material of his white shirt.

She clutched her sweaty hands together in her lap. She wasn’t sure which she wanted to do most—run her fingers through his long hair or dig her fingernails into those taut muscles she glimpsed beneath his shirt. Of course, to do either, they would most likely need to be engaged in a wild sexual romp.

Wow. Sluts R Us calling. She seriously needed to stop.

She reached out to take the beer he was holding toward her. Her hand visibly shook as she grasped hold of the bottle. She glanced up to see if he noticed. His dark eyes were focused on her face and not her hands. It was impossible to look away.

“Th-Thank you,” she stammered in the strange sounding voice again. Well, he surely thought she was a total nutcase now. She couldn’t even talk like a regular person.

“My brothers mentioned you and your friend are school teachers. So, what grade do you teach?” he asked as if he didn’t notice she was a blubbering idiot.

She focused on speaking, but it was not an easy task. “Middle School, um, seventh grade history.” Please don’t say they didn’t make teachers like me when you went to school, or then I might think you are an idiot, too, and right now I think you are just perfect, Mr. Two Moons.

Although she didn’t want to look directly at him again—for fear she would do or say something really stupid—she couldn’t help herself. He was staring at her with such a tender and almost intimate expression on his face. Goosebumps broke out on her arms. Like his brothers, there was a dangerous aura about him. Only the danger part was seriously over-ruled by his undeniable sex appeal.

Her mind filled with curiosity again as she wondered what it would feel like to release his thick black hair from the ponytail and immerse her fingers in its luxurious mass. A lucid picture of the way the long shiny black locks would look all entangled around his handsome face and spread out on her pillowcase—in her bed—dominated her thoughts.

Unwanted, and unexpectedly, the images from her sensuous dreams began to flash before her eyes in vivid recollections and filled every one of her senses. The indescribable explosion of the delectable way the stranger in her dreams tasted filled her mouth; she inhaled the delicious scent of the man sitting so close to her, and her entire body grew fevered with the image of his hands roving where only a ardent lover would touch.

She was reliving every moment of those tempestuous dreams right now in the middle of this pizzeria, because it felt as if the man from her dreams was no longer a faceless stranger.

Dawn fought to remain in control and not let the outrageous memories of those stupid dreams continue to surface, but it was already out of her power. She gasped and dropped the beer she was holding in her hand. The bottle smashed against the ceramic tiles at her feet and shattered into a dozen pieces as the beer splashed over her feet, the bottom of her jeans, and even on the toes of Mateo’s black cowboy boots.

“Oh crap, I am so sorry.” She gasped and closed her eyes for an instant in an effort to wipe away the last of the erotic images that were completely consuming her. Damn! When she opened her eyes, there was a flurry of activity around her.

“Dawn, are you okay?” Chloe asked in a worried tone. She was already standing next to Dawn with her arm draped protectively around her shoulders. With a glance at Mateo, she added in an apologetic tone, “She’s been really sick recently.”

Fire erupted in Dawn’s cheeks again. This is your last chance to prove you are not a complete moron. She drew in a cleansing breath and willed her voice to sound as normal as possible at this humiliating moment, but she couldn’t bring herself to look directly at Mateo or his brothers. Focusing her gaze on the floor where the broken beer bottle was smashed, she managed to speak in a somewhat sane tone. “I’m fine, really. I don’t know what happened; the bottle just slipped out of my hand.”

“Thankfully, it doesn’t appear you were cut by any of the broken glass, so no harm done,” Mateo said in a soft tone as he knelt to pick up the broken pieces of the beer bottle from around her feet. “Let me buy you another one, that is, if you are feeling up to it?”

At least, she was wearing her nicest black flip-flops with rhinestones and she had painted her toenails a delicate shade of pink before coming here tonight. Did he notice? What had he just asked her? Dawn began to imagine how her toes, with their pretty pink nails, would look as she inched her foot up along his taut muscled thigh, headed toward his...focus. What had he just asked her?

“I should probably call it a-a night,” she mumbled as she once again attempted to rein in her slutty thoughts. She still avoided looking at Mateo, because she didn’t dare chance another fanatical episode like the one she just experienced. But when she glanced at Chloe, it was obvious by the expression on her face she was disappointed the night with these three gorgeous hunks was coming to an abrupt end after such a short time.

“Of course,” he said in a worried tone. “I hope you don’t have a relapse of whatever it was that made you sick.” He held his out-stretched hand to her.

She hesitated for a second. If only being this close to him induced such a foolish reaction, did she dare touch him? But how could she not?

Her trembling hand slipped against his palm as he pulled her to her feet. He was taller than she by several inches she realized as her gaze was drawn upward. His dark shimmering eyes focused on her face. Their gazes met; her mind went blank once more.

“I would like to see you again if you’d be up for that?” he asked in a hushed voice as if he wanted only her to hear.

“Y-Yes,” Dawn stammered. Her voice sounded far away. “I would like to see you again, too.” As soon as possible. Like in five minutes in my bed.

“Tomorrow night?”

She tried to concentrate on his suggestion. It was Friday, tomorrow was Saturday. Tomorrow night was so far away. Should she suggest breakfast? Her voice didn’t work. She nodded her head.

He smiled, exposing those perfect teeth again. Their stark whiteness made his skin look like rich bronzed satin. She was distracted by his enticing mouth for only a second before looking up and locking gazes with him once again. His fingers tightened around her hand, but she was only vaguely aware because she was lost in his hypnotizing gaze and nothing outside of this moment in time existed.

“Should I meet you here around this same time tomorrow night then?” he said. “We can grab a beer. I owe you one. Then maybe go dancing, a movie, or something if you would like?”

Dawn nodded her head again and stared mutely up at him. He was looking at her as if he didn’t notice she was not able to speak, or unable to think, or be coherent in any ordinary way as long as she was in his presence.

“Same time, same place tomorrow then.” He leaned down and whispered against her ear before he gently slid his hand away from hers and stepped back. The smile on his lips seemed to extend up to his shimmering gaze. He smiled even with his eyes, her entranced mind thought as she stared wordlessly up at him.

A return smile came naturally to her lips. If she was able to move, she just might reach out and grab his hand again and never let go. But as he backed up and turned to leave, she could do nothing more than stare numbly at his back as he walked away. It wasn’t until Chloe grabbed her arm that the trance she seemed to be in began to crumble.

“What the hell was that all about?” Chloe giggled.

Dawn shrugged with an unconscious gesture. “What?”

“You and the sexy Apache stud. I thought he was going to do you right here in the pizza joint, right in front of God and everybody.”

“I-we—nothing happened, really,” she wasn’t going to try to explain what actually happened, because there was no rational explanation.

Mateo Two Moons just invaded every one of her most intimate senses and stolen her mind and body. He’d basically rocked her world in every way, and that had been in the few short minutes he had been here. She was pretty sure nothing in her life would ever be the same again after tonight.

Chloe was practically shaking her by the shoulders as she stood in front of her and continued to talk excitedly. “Come on, girlfriend, you have to tell me what just happened here. That was like the hottest thing ever, right? I mean, was that some sort of mind-fucking telepathic sex going on there or what?”

All of a sudden, she remembered they were standing in the middle of a public establishment, with hordes of other people who might have witnessed the same sensual episode Chloe was talking about. She groaned inwardly. Just kill me now. She grabbed Chloe by the arm and pulled her along until they were out of the pizzeria and away from the curious stares she was certain were directed at them.

“It wasn’t that obvious, was it?” she said in a whispered voice, even though they were alone out on the sidewalk now.

“Oh, hell yeah. It most certainly was.” Chloe gasped. “So obvious and so incredibly hot. I started sweating and getting all horny just watching the two of you stare at one another like you were about to jump one another’s bones right there. But his two gorgeous brothers didn’t seem to notice at all, which is weird because, I mean, how could they not? They just paid the bill—even for the pizza and beers we had before they got there. Then they politely said goodbye to me like I was no longer worth their time, and waited out here on the sidewalk until he finished screwing you with his eyes and talking dirty in your ear. They all took off while you finished having a Mateo-gasm back there in the middle of the restaurant.”

Dawn threw her hands over her face and groaned out loud. She knew Chloe wasn’t exaggerating, because she had never experienced anything even as remotely erotic as what had just taken place between her and Mateo Two Moons with no more than their brief encounter, and in a crowded public place, no less. Well, except for her recent wet dreams, but she didn’t want to go there again. Look at what happened when her thoughts wandered there earlier?

Still, her rebellious mind began to recall the arousing details of how the dangerous long-haired stranger in her dreams touched her mind and body as intimately as Mateo had done to her tonight with nothing more than his mere presence. Only with her crazy dreams, she almost convinced herself she had been sleep walking and hallucinating because she was ill, or bitten by a rare poisonous spider, or even that she was just losing her mind. But what happened tonight had taken place in front of Chloe and the entire patronage at the pizza place. This one wouldn’t be so easy to explain to herself or anyone else.

“I don’t know—that was just so—” Dawn still couldn’t find the words to explain what had just taken place. She shook her head and shrugged in defeat. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me.” But there was no denying the way her body and mind were still clinging to the mad sexual attraction she had for Mateo Two Moons. Life-changing might be a better way to describe how meeting him affected her.

Chloe chuckled, and tossed a long strand of hair back over her shoulder. She focused her gaze on Dawn and asked in an innocent tone of voice, “Um, so was it like lust at first sight? I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that happen before, either. And I’m a little pissed it happened to you and not me, especially since there were two spare Apache sex gods who could have easily had their way with me.”

Another shrug lifted Dawn’s shoulders as she chuckled and tried to appear nonchalant even though there was nothing calm about her raging emotions. She stared back at her friend wishing she could confide in her about all the outlandish things that had been happening to her in the past week since they went to the Superstitions to hunt for the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine. But there was no rational explanation for any of it, including the way she was feeling about meeting Mateo Two Moons tonight.

“Geez, I think I might be too embarrassed to come back here tomorrow night.”

“But you will.”

“Oh, hell yes,” Dawn said without an instant of hesitation. Twenty-four hours from now she would be here or anywhere else Mateo Two Moons wanted her to be. But tomorrow seemed like forever right now.

****

“She is already under your spell,” Anton Two Moons said to his youngest brother. “This silly game you are playing is all a waste of time. First, you make us go out to meet her and her friend at their campsite on the mountain so you can look at her from afar,” he swept his hand through the air in a theatrical gesture. “And now, you talk us into pretending to be a bunch of yuppies carousing around town. And for what? What more do you need to know about her besides the fact she is your mate?”

Mateo retorted in an indignant tone. “How is it you consider this wasting time when time is all we have?”

A snide chortle escaped from Anton. “Guess you got me there, little brother. We do have a lot of time, as in forever.”

“Well, it’s still her destiny to be your mate. No amount of time can change that,” Rafael added. “Why prolong it? It’s great to have a mate to look after all your needs and well, you know, all that other stuff.” Rafael chuckled when Anton punched him playfully in the arm.

Mateo shook his head and cut in, “It’s not about some game or about that other stuff.” He rolled his eyes. He heard both his brothers make exasperated noises. “I don’t even know how to begin to explain why it’s so important to me to be down here in Dawn’s world with her, even if just for a little while before I take her up to the mountain. It just is.”

He didn’t grasp any of it yet, so how could he make his brothers understand? He had no doubt Dawn was partially under his vampire spell already—this was proven when she had come to the mountain in the middle of the night after he telepathically summoned her to him. As far as he knew, no one in his clan ever attempted to use their vampire power to beckon a real one to come to them, and he still had a hard time believing it worked. But it was then he realized how powerful and unbreakable their connection truly was, and how there was no changing their ultimate fate.

He didn’t want to alter the fact she would become his mate and bear his children, he just wanted to discover all there was to know about her as she was now—just a woman—and he desperately wanted to love her in the way a man is meant to love a woman. There would be so much more between them than there had been with all the other clan males and their human mates. He was determined he and Dawn would have a real love story first and he would do everything in his power to make that happen.

He found it hard to believe no one in his clan or any members of other Blood Clans in different locations ever questioned if it was possible for their kind to expand beyond their current limitations and outdated beliefs. They knew nothing of how the old traditions had come to be and if there could be a safer or easier way for the clans to survive in the modern world around them.

The males did not even know how their mates were chosen. Anton’s woman, Nita, came from the Navajo tribe in Southern Utah. She had been a student at the University of Phoenix when she made her trek up to the Superstition Mountains to fulfill her destiny. Anton had been waiting for her and without hesitation he drank the blood from her neck, wrist, and lastly and most importantly, from the large artery in her thigh...the final phase of the mating process before he led her from her previous life as a twenty-year old college student to a life of obscurity with her immortal mate.

Nita gifted him with three sons and three daughters in the past fifteen years. Their oldest son, Chaz, was fourteen, and he would be the next dhampyre—half-human, half-vampire—in their Blood Clan to claim his mate when he reached maturity at one hundred years of age.

Lydia, Rafael’s mate, had come from much farther away—from the Algonquian Indian tribe in Canada. The delicate beauty had shown up on the mountain eleven years ago. On a camping vacation with friends, she disappeared on the first night and was never seen or heard from again. As was usually the case, it was assumed she wandered out into the rugged terrain and fallen into some hidden cavern or abyss where there was no chance of finding her. But she had been spirited away to her destiny on the highest peaks of the Superstition Mountains to live out what remained of her human life at the side of her vampire mate.

Their first born dhampyre children had been twin daughters, then eight more years passed before she had given birth to a male. He was a handsome three-year-old who would someday follow in his father’s footsteps among the ancient clan. Lydia was soon due to give birth again to their fourth child and already special ceremonies were being conducted in their village with the hopes she would produce another male dhampyre.

It was during this process when real ones, the term used to describe humans since the beginning of their time, were in the most danger from the clan, because more blood was needed than usual for the primeval rituals held before an impending birth.

Now, at last, it was Mateo’s time to fulfill his destiny with the woman who had been preordained to spend eternity at his side. His mate, Dawn—Udaya—was so drastically different from the other eternal mates in his clan...she was older and not of Native American descent. Although he couldn’t explain it, he believed she was also the beginning of a new way of life for his clan.

He knew he didn’t need to drink the blood from her thigh to make her his...nothing could have stopped their fates from entwining once she had been drawn to the mountain. But meeting her in the restaurant in Apache Junction tonight only proved to Mateo they belonged together in both of their worlds.

Maybe his brothers and the rest of his clan did feel it was foolish to waste time with mere human traditions. But they did have forever to live their immortal lives hidden in the shadows and caves of the Superstitions, and for now, Mateo loved being here with her in her world. What would a few days or even a few weeks matter?