By the time I walked into the house, I was ready for a few good hours of uninterrupted sleep. Sleep not haunted by dreams of Jax, although I had no idea how to manage that.
I was halfway up the stairs to my bedroom when my cell rang. Frowning, I pulled it out to check the screen. We’d dropped Kendra off at home a few hours ago. A little ball of apprehension rolled in my belly. She should’ve been asleep, and that she wasn’t told me something was going on. If there was one thing Kendra didn’t skimp on when it came to self-care, it was sleep. She could’ve fallen asleep in the middle of a rock concert. I knew because she’d done it before. I’d actually been impressed.
I answered before it had the chance to ring again. “Hey, what’s up?”
She didn’t bother with hello. “I had a dream.”
The Sandman didn’t have as many dreams as Kendra. “Okay.” But I also knew that because she had so many dreams, she wouldn’t call unless this one was important. It must’ve been major, because it had her huffing and puffing through the phone.
“A storm. It was about a storm rolling in.”
Hmm. “Was it a dream or a premonition?”
The difference was important. Dreams were musings of the mind, a way for the brain to process events and ideas of a day. But a premonition, especially of a storm coming our way, was fearsome. I had no reason to believe one of her premonitions wouldn’t come true. They always had before.
Always.
“Something bad is coming.” When she said it, I didn’t doubt it. But I couldn’t ask questions. She wouldn’t have the answer about more than what sort of clouds signaled the storm in her dream.
“Okay.”
“I’m outside your house.” With a sigh, I hurried back down the stairs and looked out the window. Sure enough, she was standing in the middle of my yard, staring up at my bedroom window. I walked to the door and opened it with a sigh. “Come in, then,” I hissed. Dawn was on the horizon, the sky starting to turn purple, and there wasn’t much I would be able to do until the evening, but she was freaked enough to be here, so I waved my bestie in.
And she waved me out.
In our respective spots, we each flapped our arms about, trying to get the other to move, until finally she shrieked, “Would you please get the hell out here? We need to warn your boyfriend.”
Sometimes her premonitions came with intense feelings that told her who was involved. If she said it was Jax, then I had no reason not to believe her, but shouting in the street when the not-quite boyfriend of mention had the hearing of an owl. Better than an owl, actually.
“Keep it down, would ya?” I sighed and looked around like he was going to walk out and be convinced this was further proof of our need to complete the mating bond. It was the predominant thought in my head, anyway.
She lowered her voice to a hiss of a whisper as she marched across the yard and pointed. “We need to warn your boyfriend.”
I rolled my eyes because even her whisper was as loud as a scream for me. “I’ll be out in a second.”
Not that I needed to do much more than calm down, but I couldn’t very well head outside breathing like I was one huff from hyperventilating. I concentrated on slowing down, clearing my mind, not picturing Jax, who was likely getting ready for bed right then. That sparked a whole other set of thoughts—if he slept naked, if he hugged a pillow the way he would a lover, if he snored—none of which would make the phantom beating of my heart settle.
I couldn’t keep standing inside waiting for my body to get with the program. There was a storm rolling in and, if Kendra had a feeling that Jax needed to know then Jax needed to know. Now. Plus we still needed to beat the dawn.
I walked out, and together we headed across the street to his house, and the nerves inside of me, the apprehension, and more, the anticipation hurried me along so I was a few steps ahead of her when she reached the porch to his place. Heck, I’d already knocked on the door. Dang it! It was like I just couldn’t wait to be near him again.
I easily heard him moving around inside, but I wasn’t prepared when he opened the door bare-chested, smiling, and flirty. “Change your mind?”
Tempting as it was, I shook my head. “No.” Oops. The word erupted from my mouth, abrupt, sharp and loud.
He smiled and looked down. “Damn.”
His gaze burned its way up my body, smoldering, hot in ways I’d never noticed people look at me before. Then his gaze cleared and he nodded at Kendra as we walked inside.
“Did we wake you?” I asked. Of course we hadn’t. We’d just gone to our respective homes a few minutes before.
Kendra began frantically pacing. Back and forth. One way then the other in front of the blackout curtains at his window. “I had a dream.”
Jax looked at me, but I was still ogling the abs. He cleared his throat, and I looked up.
“Her dreams are a big deal.”
Kendra nodded. “Right. You don’t know this, presumably, but when I have a feeling so strongly connected to a dream, it’s not just a dream. It’s foretelling.”
“Is that like foreplay?” His voice was smoky and suggestive as he stared like a heat seeking missile, and I was on fire. We knew where his mind was.
I didn’t have time to answer because Kendra had stopped pacing again to glare at him. “Not at all like foreplay.” She shook her head but not enough to make her scowl waver. “I dreamed of a storm rolling in.”
Jax glanced at me then back at her. “I need a little bit more than that.”
“Storms are bad. They’re indicative of danger. I can’t speak to what kind.” More to herself than to either of us, she continued, “Of course the dreamweavers wouldn’t let me know what kind. They’re evil that way.”
I’d heard her speak of dreamweavers before, and until then I’d always assumed the idea was a fiction, a song from the seventies. According to her, they were the ones responsible for her premonitions. She’d never lied about anything so magically related before, but I had no firsthand knowledge of them. My dreams were never vibrant or indicative of danger. Since I’d met Jax, not that I planned to share this information with either Kendra or him, they were mostly about Jax.
Jax nodded at her, his brow pinched. “Dreamweavers are the senders of messages.” His tone said he believed her, or he’d already known that.
“You know about dreamweavers?” She swirled her head to look at him, black hair fanning out behind her.
He nodded. “Back in the day”—and with as old as he was it could’ve been anywhere from pre-revolutionary to the 1980s– “dreamweavers were blamed for all manner of catastrophe and disaster because the messages they sent weren’t clear. But they were doing what dreamweavers do.” He spoke as if dreamweavers were real entities.
I looked at him. “Dreamweavers.” Not questioning. Just restating. Clarifying.
He nodded. “Someday, I’ll tell you about the dreams they send me.” The eyebrow wag wasn’t entirely necessary, but I liked it anyway.
“Can we please?” Kendra’s voice had risen to an octave that made Jax and me each wince. Volume was not our friend when wielded as a weapon. And that was exactly what she’d done. “Can we please talk about the storm rolling in?”
We could’ve but none of us knew exactly what it meant. Jax shrugged. “Okay. Exactly what did you see?”
She blew a breath out of her nose. “I was a leopard, and I know it was me because I was wearing a collar with my name on it.” She looked at me. “Dreamweavers are crafty like that.”
“Okay. Does being a leopard have a meaning?” She’d paused and my question seemed pertinent to the situation.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged and tilted her head for a second. Then stared at me again. “I don’t think so.” She sighed like I was inconveniencing her with my interruptions. I held up a hand and mouthed sorry as she continued. “So, anyway, I was a leopard, and I was running down this street, and I stopped in front of this house.” Even her arm gestures were dramatic. “I could see the storm clouds, the dark horizon, the way the storm seemed to be coming just for this place, this house.” All of a sudden, she was a dramatic actor. “And then a single cloud broke free and swirled into a tornado over this house. Whipped the roof off. Took the papers and books into the funnel.”
From behind her, Nash snorted. “A dream?” I whirled around. The enforcer was good. I hadn’t even heard him come in.
She shot him a look so potent the big bad vampire enforcer wiped the smile from his face and stepped back. Her magic wasn’t the only powerful thing about her.
“A dream.” She nodded at him. “And you’d all do well to take heed.” Kendra’d never seemed so witchy before.
I nodded at Jax. “When Kendra says something bad is coming, you can bet your million dollar mansion that your video doorbell is going to find a reaper or maybe even a hungry snow leopard who dines on the soulless bodies of vampires at the door.”
Jax chuckled. “Nice.”
“And serious.” I couldn’t reaffirm enough how urgent it was that he pay attention to her.
She huffed out a sigh and turned toward the door, like she was about to leave.
Jax stood and put his hand on her arm. “I believe you.” And then he glanced at me like I could help him.
“It’s all right, Kendra. He’s going to listen.” I had no idea if she cared what I had to say at that moment. Her anger was written in her eyes.
A wobbly smile was the only reassurance that came from my friend, and it did very little to settle the rumbling in my stomach.
His voice, on the other hand, was a balm for my lack of soul. “Do you have a theory about what the storm means?”
She looked from him to me and back to him. “I do. I think it’s connected to this mess with Cleo.”
“Connected how?” Jax watched her as she fiddled with the zipper on the jacket she’d worn over, since the spring nights were chilly and we were still at the edge of the night before dawn. Judging from my heavy eyelids, perilously close to dawn.
“I don’t know, but while I was dreaming, I had a sense of Cleo.” But since Cleo hadn’t appeared in the dream, Kendra seeing her might’ve been relative to having just come from rescuing her. I didn’t want to say that, though, since I knew so little about her process of dreaming other than they were usually spot-on accurate.
I nodded. “Whether or not we connect Cleo, there’s definite danger surrounding her, since we just now rescued her from the kidnapper guy.” Not that Cleo couldn’t defend herself, or more surprisingly, that Jordan couldn’t protect her until she was back at full-strength.
I yawned, and Jax smiled. “Maybe we should sleep on it.” He didn’t say the word together, but it was where my brain went, and I nodded.
His gaze traveled up my body, and he pulled his lower lip between his teeth, although it didn’t hide his smile. If I wasn’t completely sold on the mating bond, I was definitely smitten. Definitely in lust, if not in love.
“Do you want to stay?” Jax asked. “We could talk it through after you sleep.”
I nodded because the words were jumbled somewhere between my throat and my mouth. I couldn’t get past the thought of sleeping here. With Jax.
He held his hand out, and when I took it he smiled at me then looked at Kendra. “The Wifi is strong here. If you want to do some research?” It was like he was asking her to stay, and I wondered if it was to make me comfortable or her.
It didn’t matter, because she hid her wink to me with a slight turn of her head as she answered him. “That would be great.”
Jax and I walked toward the steps. “Is this okay?” he asked.
I liked that he was cautious, that he sounded less than confident. “Yeah. It’s not like we’re going to…” I shook my head. No delicate way to say this one. “We’re not going to.”
He grinned. “Yeah.” He gave my hand a squeeze, and I would’ve liked to have known what he was thinking, if knowing we weren’t going to mate made a difference in whether or not he still wanted me to stay.
“Do you want me to go home?” There was enough cover of darkness I could make it if I hurried.
He stopped in the hallway outside his room and linked our free hands together. My phantom pulse could’ve powered a hundred fifty horse engine.
“No. Not at all. I don’t want you to leave.” He pulled me closer. “I just want to hold you.”
Maybe it was the tone of his voice, the softness, the cadence, but I wanted him. Wanted so much. “Okay.” If he’d asked me to walk into fire, so long as he’d said it in that voice, I would’ve happily grabbed a flame retardant suit and started sauntering toward the blaze.
When I pulled his t-shirt over my head, one that hung to my knees, I breathed in the scent of his laundry soap, of him, which was in the air in his house, in the blankets he slept in, in the drawers and closet where he kept his things. My stomach clenched.
I crawled beneath the sheets, cool and crisp, again scented by the man himself, and I wanted to turn to face him, to look into his eyes, to lay my hand on his bare chest, to kiss a trail from his throat to his belly button. Maybe lower, even.
Instead, I stayed on my side, facing away, even when he slipped an arm under my head, and settled the other over my waist. When he moved closer, his chest pressed against my back and his legs curved behind mine as he kissed the back of my head.
Many hours later, when the sun set, I woke up with his hard body still pressed against mine, except some parts were more prominently harder than others. To his credit, he didn’t mention it, ask for me to help relieve it, or read my mind when I visualized doing just that.
I was only moderately let down by his conversational lapse. Not let down enough I stopped immediately visualizing. But it did hover a bit too near the idea of mating, so I pushed back the blanket and stood, pulling the T-shirt down as I did.
Then, like I was a proud confident woman who only wanted the benefit of his shower, I walked to the attached bathroom, started the water and undressed. And even after waking up with him, wanting him, yearning in ways I hadn’t in years, the shower was uneventful. Boring even. And I stepped out, wrapped myself in a towel and used another on my hair.
Holy freaking crap, this was the most daring I’d ever been. And without a thought to the mating bond, I stepped into his bedroom wearing nothing but a towel and a bit of hope on my face.
His empty bedroom.
He’d sent someone to my place for clean clothes which were now laid out on his already made bed. I dressed and found him in the dining room looking over Kendra’s shoulder at her laptop screen.
The poor witch was bleary eyed, like she’d spent the entire day surfing the internet or databases or whatever websites led her to whatever she was showing Jax when I walked in. He looked up at me and smiled, slow, like he’d never seen me before or like he’d never seen me like this—wet-haired and in clothes fit for jogging. The shorts were actual running shorts I’d outgrown a year or so ago before being turned and the top was part of a Halloween costume the year I’d dressed as a Honkers waitress.
Kendra chuckled. “Can I get an order of hot wings and a pitcher of beer?”
I mimed a big, fake laugh. “Is this your doing?”
This time she giggled. “I got bored. I did also bring you a real outfit. It’s in my bag.”She pointed to a paisley print overnight bag on the sofa. “Help yourself.”
I nodded. “Yeah. You bet.” I shot Jax a glare. “What are you looking at?” I walked to the bag with my head held high.
Kendra tilted her head at me as I peeked inside the bag at jeans and a Bon Jovi t-shirt that wouldn’t pack the punch of a Honkers tank top and my running shorts, but was probably more appropriate for time inside a mate’s house until we truly were—if it ever happened—mates.
“The guy we brought in wasn’t the kingpin we thought,” Kendra said.
“Do tell?” I hefted the bag over my shoulder so the meaty part hung over my back while my hand gripped the straps.
“Rodney Coleman. Low-level drug dealer.” She turned the screen around so I could see his mug shot.
“Low level? I didn’t get that vibe from him.” He’d been more confident than low-level. “Are you sure he’s not at least mid range?” I seldom missed the mark on reading people.
But she shook her head with her eyebrows up. “No. Even his arrest record calls him low level.”
Hmm. “Maybe it’s a false clue.” Now I had their attention and nothing to do with it. They didn’t know what I meant. Sheesh. “Maybe he’s keeping his kingpin-ness on the down low.”
Kendra shook her head. “You shouldn’t say down low. It just sounds wrong coming from you.”
“You prefer hush-hush?” I didn’t have a preference but apparently she did. “On the QT? Under wraps? Off the record.” I smiled at them, still dressed like I was about to slap an order of wings on the table. “Do you suppose this could be where the phrase ‘off the record’ came from?”
Jax grinned and pulled his lower lip between his teeth as he blatantly looked me up and down. “Smart and sexy.”
Man, he’d really stepped up the hitting on me game since the formal announcement of the mating bond ritual’s participants, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to resist him or if such a thing was even possible.
“Why would some low-level thug want to kidnap Cleo?” He spoke as if he thought he knew. Wasn’t that just the million dollar question, though? “And why would he make it so easy to get caught?”
Well, if I knew that, I’d be able to solve the whole damned thing and concentrate on what to do about the mating bond. Oh, well. That would make life a bit too easy.