“I need you tonight.” His voice emerged from the darkness, a low male rumble of heat and hunger. “Will you give yourself to me?”
Valerie Chase sat up in her tumbled bed. The cowboy stood just outside the open French doors, watching her from the balcony as moonlight spilled around him. The brim of his white Stetson shadowed his face. It always had. She’d never seen his features clearly, not in all the years she’d dreamed of him.
His white cotton shirt stretched over broad shoulders and tucked into the worn jeans that hugged his long, muscled legs. Moonlight glinted on the star of a Texas Ranger pinned to his leather vest. He wore two gun belts crossed over lean hips, the holstered Colt revolvers forming a seductive frame for the thick, impressive ridge of his erection.
It was the way he’d always looked in her dreams, her cowboy fantasy, her dream lover. Her hero. “Come in,” she said softly, and felt her nipples tighten.
He started toward her with that long, pacing panther stride of his. As he moved, his clothes melted away, revealing the hungry jut of his cock.
Her mouth went dry. Her sleep shirt vanished. She wasn’t sure which of them had made it disappear.
Then his hands were on her, warm and long-fingered and skilled as he took her mouth in a deep, famished kiss flavored with desperation. Her own hands found brawn and heat as he slid onto the bed, his weight pressing her deliciously into the mattress.
“I couldn’t stay away,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
She gave him a wicked smile. “Good.”
He laughed, the sound midway between a chuckle and a groan of hunger. “Vixen.” As if starved, he bent his head to sample her lips, the angle of her jaw, the curve of her collar bone, stringing a line of hard kisses and gentle bites along her skin. Fire poured through her veins to pool low in her belly.
“God, I missed you.” Closing her eyes, she fisted her hands in his short, silky hair, not even noticing when she knocked off his Stetson. “Not as much as I missed you.” He lifted his head to look at her. Even without the shadowing hat, she couldn’t see him clearly, though she could feel the love and the need in him. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Nothing.” His low voice vibrated with a fierce determination that made her frown.
“What’s wrong, Cowboy?" She caught his face between her hands. “What aren’t you telling me?"
“Nothing, darlin’.” She could hear the strained smile in his voice. “I’m just a dream, remember? I’m not even real.”
Before she could protest, he dropped his head to her breasts. His tongue flicked the stiff points as his teeth scraped delicate flesh. “You sure don’t feel like a dream,” she moaned, dropping her head back on the pillow as lush, glittering pleasure built beneath her skin. Her legs fell bonelessly apart. “Then again, maybe you do.”
He stroked down her thigh to find her sex. “Mmmmm,” he purred. “Don’t wake up.” Long fingers slipped inside in one possessive thrust. “At least, not yet.”
Her eyes slid closed. Instinctively, she dug her fingers into his powerful shoulders, seeking an anchor against the pleasure that swamped her with each caress and kiss. “Are you sure…” She sucked in a gasp. “…sure this isn’t real?"
“It’s as real as we’re going to get.” He sounded bitter. Before she could ask why, he buried his head between her thighs. She cried out in shocked delight as his wet tongue stroked her clit, teeth gently nibbling as he reached for her nipples to tease and pinch.
Relentlessly, he devoured the tender folds until she felt an orgasm building like a cresting wave. She pumped her hips, trying to grind the climax into breaking, but it hung suspended just out of reach.
Then he stabbed two fingers into her, flicked a skilled thumb over her clit, and brought her crashing home. She screamed.
As if that was the signal he’d been waiting for, he tore himself away from her, sat up between her thighs, and took her knees in both big hands. Dazed, Val looked up at him. His cock stood high and hard as he spread her wide. He released one knee just long enough to aim himself. She felt the silken head brush swollen, creamy lips. He angled his hips and drove into her in one breathtaking thrust.
“Oh, God!” she gasped, her fingers fisting in the sheets as he began to shaft her hard.
“Come for me again,” he growled. “I want to watch you.”
As he bucked against her, every nerve in her body seemed to detonate. Convulsing, Val screamed the only name she knew for him. “Cowboy! I love you!”
“I. Love. You.” Jolting her hard with his last thrusts, he threw back his head in a guttural roar. Still shuddering, she looked up, eager to watch his raw male pleasure as he climaxed. Instead, her deliciously erotic dream became a nightmare. As Val stared, stunned, the canine teeth in his open mouth grew longer, sharper. She froze, ice washing away the heat.
When he lowered his head to look at her, his eyes glowed red over menacing fangs.
“Cowboy?” Her voice shook. A scream of betrayal and disbelief built in her throat.
He didn’t answer. Still buried deep inside her, he lowered his head….
Val catapulted off the bed expecting to feel Cowboy’s fangs tear into her skin. Her ears still rang with the echo of her own screams. Racing for the bedroom door, she threw it open and flew out into the hall.
Hands clamped around her shoulders. She yelped and swung a wild fist. “Hey, watch it!”
The cry yanked Val from the dream’s grip. Her eyes focused to find Beth staring at her, dark hair tumbling around her shoulders, fright and annoyance mingling on her young face. “You’re asleep, dammit,” her sister said, giving her captured shoulders a little shake. “Wake up!”
A dream. It had been a dream. “Cowboy was going to bite me.” Beth rolled her eyes like the teenager she was. “So what else is new? And since when do you mind?"
Val sagged against the hallway wall as her terror drained away, leaving behind weak knees and a brassy taste in her mouth. “He was a vampire.”
“Oh, babe.” Beth reached out to scoop a lock of hair out of Val’s eyes. “You must be freaked, if you’re seeing Cowboy as monster material. Come on, sweetie—let’s fix some chocolate. I think we need to talk.”
***
Cade McKinnon jolted awake, frustrated fists gripping the sheets. The head of his erection brushed his flat belly, and his fangs ached. The room would have appeared pitch black to human eyes, but his vampire vision easily made out the empty elegance of Ridgemont’s mansion, the polished mahogany and expensive crystal.
Valerie was gone. Not that she’d ever been there to begin with. And he’d terrified her, dammit. Their last time together shouldn’t have ended in fear, but he’d lost control of both the Hunger and the dream.
Reaching for Valerie’s mind without feeding first had been a mistake, but he’d had to see her, touch her, one final time. Knowing he’d never have another chance, he’d wanted to capture as much of her as he could. Silken skin, long muscled legs, velvet pink nipples, the dizzying musk of her scent, the hot, salty feast between her thighs.
With a groan of frustrated hunger, Cade rolled onto his belly. Once, twice, again, he ground his hips into the tangled linen sheets, imagining her tight and slick around him. Throwing back his head, he came with a growl, his fingers clamping the soft fabric of the pillow.
Heart bounding, he collapsed, the taste of bitterness and loss in his mouth. Finally he shook off the depression and rolled out of bed.
It was time to get ready for the last night of his life.
***
“He doesn’t even exist,” Val said, hands still shaking faintly as she sliced slivers from a chocolate bar into a saucepan of milk. She and Beth stood in the apartment’s wonderfully normal kitchen with its cheery strawberry wallpaper and cream counter tops. Unfortunately, her vibrating instincts kept insisting Cowboy was somewhere just out of sight, all sex and fangs and menace. She breathed in, trying to settle her jangling nerves with the scent of chocolate and simmering milk. “He’s just the world’s longest running dream. Hell, I lost my job this week—I have real stuff to be upset about. Why do I feel so damn betrayed?"
“Well, for one thing, your own personal knight in shining armor is not supposed to turn on you.” Beth perched on the counter next to the stove, swinging her tanned legs as she watched the cocoa preparations. “Anyway, I’ll bet you had the nightmare because of the job.”
“Maybe.” Stirring the chocolate, Val studied her sister. Beth was a tall girl, barely eighteen, her elfin face dominated by perceptive brown eyes. A loose red shirt skimmed down her rangy, athletic body to the tops of her thighs. Like almost everything else she owned, the shirt was smudged with oil paint—peaches, browns, ochers, blues. Matching smears marked her fingers and the bridge of her slim nose. “Working late again?" Val asked. “You getting enough sleep?"
Beth rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mother, I’m getting enough sleep. I’ve just got to finish Tommy Wilson’s portrait. I promised Mr. Wilson I’d have it by Mother’s Day, and I’m close to deadline.”
“Well, don’t push too hard while I’m gone.” Val bit her lip, worrying once again whether she was doing the right thing in leaving Beth at home while she went to New York. Taping the interviews for Edward Ridgemont’s memoirs would take a good three weeks. That was a long time to leave the kid alone.
Still, Beth was eighteen. She’d be going off to college soon. Too, Val had never met her new employer. Ridgemont looked clean on paper, but she wanted to get to know him before exposing Beth to his influence.
Frowning, Val dug her fingers into the muscles she could feel contracting into knots in the base of her neck. She’d been making decisions about her sister’s welfare since their grandmother died seven years ago, but the process hadn’t grown any easier. Not that Grandma had been all that involved with Beth’s upbringing even before she died. The nearest bottle had always held far more fascination for her than her murdered son’s children.
“Have Cowboy dreams ever gone bad before?" Beth asked. She lifted a brow. “You changing the subject?"
“Yes. I’m not going to New York, Val. I’ve got that portrait and a portfolio to finish. So—Cowboy?"
“No.” She looked down into the melting chocolate slivers swirling around her spoon. “God knows I’ve had plenty of nightmares about vampires, but he’s always been the one saving me in them.”
According to a slew of child psychologists, Val had created Cowboy to protect her from her parents’ murderers—the killers who became fanged monsters in night terrors she’d been having since age twelve. Yet tonight he’d tried to feed on her himself. She wondered what buzzwords the shrinks would have used for that little twist.
Logically, Val knew there was no such things as vampires, any more than Cowboy himself existed. But logic didn’t keep her hands from shaking at the thought of those sharp white teeth. “He. Is. Not. Real,” she gritted, more to herself than her sister.
“Maybe not, but you’ve had him so long, he might as well be.” Beth propped her chin on her fist and smiled slightly. “When I was little, I thought he was real, just from listening to you talk about those dreams.”
“You weren’t alone. I believed in him half the time myself.” Sometimes she still did. Especially when she was impaled on that massive cock. Which definitely wasn’t a thought she had any intention of sharing.
“I was so jealous.” Beth shook her head. “I wanted Cowboy to visit my dreams too.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted him there tonight.” Remembering the seductive tenderness of those big hands, she suppressed a feline smile. Well, maybe at the beginning….
Her sister’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, right. I see you fighting that grin.”
“Let’s just say his role in my dreams has…” The smile broke free, “…expanded over the years.”
“A good eight inches, I’ll bet.”
“Beth!” She tried to look shocked, but a giggle spoiled the effect.
The guess was pretty damn close.
***
Cade stood with his face turned into the shower’s hot, stinging spray. He couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Valerie.
Her beauty dazzled him, of course—the delicate elegance of her features, the wild, curling Gypsy tumble of her red hair, the arousal shimmering in those gray eyes. Every time her full lips parted, carnal images spun through his mind.
But it wasn’t her looks that had wrapped around his mind and held him fast. He’d known too many beautiful women over his long life for that. Of course, none of them had possessed Valerie’s power—the psychic talent she didn’t even realize she had, though he’d felt its strength even when she was a child. Still, Cade had known the dark side of such abilities too long to find them seductive.
No, it was the woman herself that made him willing to die to protect her. Her intelligence, her wit, her devotion to her sister. The courage she’d shown even as a twelve-year-old facing her parents’ murderers. Courage that hadn’t faltered even when she’d realized how close Cade was to killing her himself.
He turned to let the hot water blast his shoulders, remembering the horrific night seventeen years before when his desperate refusal to kill a child had collided with Val’s desperate need to survive. For just an instant, their minds had…fused.
Which was impossible. Neither of them should have been able to penetrate the other’s mental shields. Yet they had, and it saved them both. Without that connection, Cade doubted he could have found the strength to free her and her sister, then distract the killers until both children could escape.
Since then, Cade and Valerie had shared a link, if only in their dreams. When she’d begun having nightmares about the murders, her terror had reached out to him. He’d become Cowboy, slaying her dream vampires—including himself—and providing her with the male influence the death of her father had stripped away.
The dreams had stopped in her mid-teens. He’d thought, hoped, he’d never see her again, since every contact between them had the potential to draw his enemy’s attention. She didn’t need the risk.
But at twenty-two, she’d reached for Cade again. Her grandmother’s death had left her to raise eleven-year-old Beth alone, and she’d wanted comfort. When she came into his dreams to get it, Cade discovered that the courageous, wounded child he’d known had grown into a sensual woman he couldn’t resist.
Now, seven years later, there was something else she needed even more. Edward Ridgemont had reentered her life, and if he wasn’t stopped, he’d destroy her. But if Cade played his hand well, she’d never even realize how close she’d come to death.
He shut off the water with a twist of his wrist and opened the shower door.
The ghost child waited for him, floating in the steam from his shower and the wafting scent of the peppermint candy she’d loved in life. Two enormous bows framed her head, binding her curling black hair into pigtails. The toes of her kid slippers floated six inches above the tile floor, and her white silk dress belled around thin, stocking-clad calves.
The gown had once been their mother’s, cut down for Abigail after she’d outgrown all her own. When Cole had buried her in it in 1865, the dress had hung on a body wasted with yellow fever.
Damn you, Cade McKinnon. Abigail’s thoughts drove into his mind, carried on a psychic wave of mingled jealousy and fear. Her ghostly body still looked like the thirteen-year-old she’d been, but her mind had long since left childhood behind. Valerie Chase is not worth dying for.
Cade smiled slightly. “Oh yes, she is.”
***
“I wish you wouldn’t look like that,” Beth said. Resting her head on the couch’s back, one hand steadying a mug of cocoa on her knee, Val opened one eye.
“Like what?"
“So damn defeated.” Beth sat curled next to her, legs drawn up, her face worried. She reminded Val of a brooding cat. “You don’t do defeated. No matter how bad things get, you always come out slugging.”
Val took a sip of the cocoa. “It’s been a rough week.”
Beth studied her with those dark, knowing eyes. The kid was entirely too damn smart for eighteen. “Did that conversation with Kim trigger this?"
“Didn’t I ever teach you not to eavesdrop?"
“Yeah. Didn’t take. Come on, what did Kim say?"
“She hung up on me.” Leaning forward, Val put the mug down on the glass coffee table and ran a frustrated hand through her hair. The combination of the Cowboy dream and the week’s events had left her wrung out and battered. “What the hell is going on? Damn it, I have a right to know why I was fired from a job I’ve held for ten years. What do they think I did?"
“And why are they keeping it such a deep, dark secret?" Beth wrapped paint-smeared fists in the hem of her long T-shirt and pulled it down as she drew her legs up under it. A frown scored the skin between her dark brows. “This whole thing is weird.”
“Tell me about it.” Bracing her elbows on her knees, Val fixed brooding eyes across the room on the painting of a rearing stallion Beth had done in the tenth grade. “One day I’m Gerry Price’s fair-haired girl, the reporter who can do no wrong. The next, I walk into the office and everybody’s looking at me like I French fried a puppy. Gerry fires me on the spot without telling me one damn thing other than I somehow betrayed the paper, journalism, and basic human decency. Yet nobody—not Gerry, not Kim, not even the guy who empties the trash—will tell me what the hell I’m supposed to have done. And now even Cowboy’s sprouting fangs.” Unable to sit still any longer, she stood and began to pace.
Beth watched her long, agitated strides. “I don’t understand it either. You’re good. Everybody knows it. And everybody knows you wouldn’t do anything unethical.”
Val stopped her pacing at the entertainment center to brace both arms against its oak cabinet. Sightlessly, she stared at one of Beth’s clay figures, this one a dancing nymph. “You and that job were my whole life. How could they do this to me?"
“It’s going to work out, Val. You’ve already got a new job. You’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, right. Writing some rich guy’s memoirs. I’m a journalist, dammit, not a ghostwriter. I don’t even know Ridgemont. Why did he pick me? I’ve never even written a book before.”
Beth was silent a little too long.
Val glanced over her shoulder, then turned to stare. “Oh, I know that look. What are you thinking?"
“I hate to mention this under the circumstances,” Beth said finally, “but don’t you think there’s something a little…off about that?”
“About what?" Her sister might be young, but over the years
Val had discovered the kid’s instincts were uncanny.
“I mean, you lose your job, and the very next day some rich guy calls up out of the blue and offers you big bucks for his memoirs—when you’ve never ghostwritten a word in your life. It’s way too pat.”
“So you think, what? Edward Ridgemont got me fired, and now he’s offering me a job to lure me up to New York? Sounds like a romance novel.” Val walked over to pick up her mug, summoning a smile as she lifted it to her lips. “Although if he turns out to be some brooding, handsome, sexually insatiable millionaire, I guess I’ll just have to sacrifice myself for your well-being….”
“God, I hope not.”
She lowered the mug untasted. “That sounded awfully fervent.” Beth bit her lip.
“Out with it.”
“I got a call.”
“What kind of call?” Something in her sister’s tone made the hair rise on the back of her neck. “When?"
“Right after you went to bed. He asked to speak to you, and I told him you were asleep."
"Who was it?
Beth shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t recognize the voice. He said…I should try to convince you not to go to New York. That Ridgemont wasn’t what he seemed.”
Val thumped the mug back down on the coffee table. “Boy, somebody really is out to get me. First chance at a decent job I get, and he’s trying to ruin that, too.”
“What if he’s right? Val, you don’t know this Ridgemont. What if he’s not what he seems?"
“I’m a reporter, dammit,” she said, and began to pace again, her steps quick with simmering fury. “I check people out for a living. Ridgemont is clean. He’s been a New York businessman for more than a decade, and he’s got more money than God. There isn’t even a whiff of rumor attached to his name.”
“But….”
Val whirled on her. “I don’t have a choice, Beth! You’ll be starting the fall semester in a couple of months. Without that job, I can’t pay your tuition.”
“So?" Beth leaned forward and braced her hands on her knees, her young face taking on a determined scowl. “Look, I want to go to the art institute, but not bad enough for you to get mixed up with a crook.”
“You’re going to college, dammit!” She clenched her fists until her fingers went white. “You have talent, and you’re going to get the training to make the best use of it you can. I don’t care how many jerks try to scare me off, and I don’t care what axe they have to grind. I’m not failing you.”
***
There’s got to be another way.
“There isn’t.” Staring into the mirror, Cade ran a razor over his jaw. Though he could see his own reflection, he couldn’t see Abigail’s as she floated behind him; unlike him, she was pure spirit. He’d always been amused by the legends that insisted vampires had no reflection. God knew there was nothing spiritual about them. “I even called. Val was asleep, so I tried to put the fear of God in Beth. Unfortunately, Val’s not going to listen to her. She needs that job too much.” Tilting his head, he stroked the razor down his cheekbone. “Which means Ridgemont has to be dead before she flies in tomorrow night.”
So get to her first. If you made her a vampire, she’d be able to amplify your power enough to beat Ridgemont.
“Maybe.” Cade ran the razor under the faucet’s stream, washing away foam and the remnants of his beard shadow. “Or maybe he’d hack off my head and kill you both.”
He’d be a little late in my case, considering I died a hundred and thirty-eight years ago.
He gave the ghost an annoyed look over his shoulder. “You know what I mean. And you know what he can do.”
I’m willing to take the chance. Her little face hardened.
“I’m not.” He turned back to the mirror and studied his own grim features. “Risking my life is one thing. Risking your soul is something else.”
You’re not risking your life, Cade. You’re throwing it away.
“I can’t think of a better cause.”
If you Changed her….
“But I won’t, and I’m going to make damn sure nobody else does either. We’ve done enough to that girl as it is.” He took a towel off the black marble rack and wiped away the last traces of shaving cream as he turned toward the ghost.
She wore the same determined expression he remembered from his boyhood. Even at thirteen, Abigail could’ve taught stubborn to a field mule. The only thing you did was save her life. It was Ridgemont and Hirsch who did the killing. And they’d have killed her, too, if you hadn’t gotten her out of there. The way I see it, she owes you.
Cade shook his head as he walked past her into the bedroom. “If she does, I’m not collecting. She hates vampires, and I’m damned if I’m going to make her one. I want her to have a normal life. Kids. A husband.” Never mind the fist that clutched his heart at the thought of Valerie with another man.
Abigail floated after him. Do you really think she’d want Cowboy to die for her?
Striding to the closet, Cade pulled out one of the chauffeur’s uniforms that hung in neat rows. He tossed it on his bed, then pulled out the starched white shirt that went with it. “Look, I know you don’t like this, but I don’t have a choice. Ridgemont’s got to die, and since he has seven hundred years on me, there aren’t a lot of ways I can kill him.”
But….
“I’m sick of this, Abigail!” he exploded, slinging the hanger across the room. “I was that bastard’s slave for one hundred and twenty years. I’ve finally broken his control, but I can’t leave because he’d track me down, kill me, and destroy you. And God knows what he’d do to Valerie.” Quickly, angrily, he jerked on his shirt. “Tonight he dies—even if I go with him.”