Dreamwalker, p.17
DreamWalker, page 17
Yasmin was very grateful they'd gotten off the topic of her ill-advised crush on Tristan. Somehow talking about the limits of her Wiccan powers and the repercussions of her bad decision seemed safer.
She blabbered on, answering questions, feeling wide awake until the light bothered her. Only then did she realize that she'd fallen asleep, her head draped over the arm of the soft—if ugly—couch. Her feet were tucked up under her and the throw was tucked around her. Luke.
She looked up to find him looking at her.
His eyes looked as sleepy as she felt and—given that his position on the couch mirrored hers—he was only just now awake himself.
Her voice sounded thick to her own ears, but she pushed through the words. "What time is it?"
Eyes darting as his head lolled to one side, rather than lifted, Luke spoke in a voice that sounded sinfully rich. "Almost ten a.m."
It wasn't fair that he sounded and looked so good when he woke up. Her curls had probably gone full Orphan-Annie on her while she dozed. Reaching her hand up, Yasmin patted at the soft springs. She wondered why she did it. She had no particular skill at determining how good her hair did or didn't look just from touching it. She sighed.
Then sprang directly up from the couch. "I have to get back to the house. I have to get to work."
Luke just shook his head. Stayed calm and didn't react to her outburst. "Nope. Please call in and take a personal day."
"No, I—"
He didn't let her finish. And though he interrupted her, he was really polite about it. He just held his hand up to stop her, using the motion alone to make her interrupt herself. "Please. Last night was awful. You shouldn't be at work anyway. We don't know if they found you there."
"They wouldn't come after me at work!" That didn't make any sense.
But his nod was soft and sad. Clearly he thought the Del Surs just might. And if his silent belief didn't sway her, his next words sure did. "Are you willing to bet your life—and the lives of your co-workers—on that? Your friend Libby? Tristan?"
Plopping back onto the couch she actually felt her curls bounce. "Tristan doesn't matter." Immediately she woke up, realizing what she'd said. "I mean—he does matter, but not like that! Not anymore." Another deep sigh. "I'm over it."
Luke only raised his eyebrows and managed to refrain from commenting. He still hadn't moved from where he'd clearly spent the night draped along the opposite end of the big couch. "You should call the store and leave them a message that you're not coming in. You can tell them what happened. It may already be all over the news."
That sent her into another tizzy to race back to the office and search the futon covers for her cell phone. She'd gone to sleep with it, thinking that someone might hear about what happened and text her or call. Then, when she'd gotten up and followed Luke out to the living room, she forgot all about it.
Her blurry eyes were clearing as she looked at the screen. There were and handful of texts and two missed calls. All from Delilah and Libby. Not Tristan.
Both Delilah and Libby admitted to not knowing what was going on. Messages from Delilah at least stated that Tristan had called her with concerns just as she had been struck with sudden worry about her friend. Over the course of the texts the tone changed from 'call me back to let me know you are okay' to 'I know you're okay' to 'I see you're sleeping with a hunky police officer but it's not quite that . . . What's going on?'
Libby apparently hadn't gotten the final message from the universe that—though things were bad—Yasmin was actually fine. Physically.
So Libby was her first call. It took about ten minutes to explain what had happened and that she was safe. Luke peeked in and made a motion at his throat indicating that she shouldn't say where exactly she was. Thus Libby only learned that she was safe and she was about to call Tristan and tell him she wouldn't be in today.
Almost able to hear the gears in Libby's brain, Yasmin wasn't surprised at the final question. "Fine. But if you're really okay, you'll give me the code word."
"Of course. Marshmallow." At last her friend and co-worker was satisfied and let her off the phone.
Blessed Be was next. Tristan was already in the office and picked up before the first ring even finished. "Yasmin, what happened?"
She explained getting shot at, being detained at the police station, and finally being at a 'safe house'—she figured that was as good a name for Luke's apartment. And it was as good as she was willing to say with Luke himself standing in the hallway, listening in to the conversations as though he were just loitering in his own hallway for no reason.
Forced to consider his reasoning, she wondered if he truly thought any of her friends or co-workers could be involved in some way. She sighed, just wrong place, wrong time. Something that wasn't supposed to happen to her.
As she hung up, Yasmin closed the door to get dressed, not that she had anything to get ready for.
What had she been thinking? Falling for Tristan. For a moment, she forgave herself. After all, he was hot, talented in the field she wished to go into, ran a successful business, and was just generally a good guy. But . . . well, it was a big 'but.' He never had feelings for her. He didn't flirt with her at all, and he was a wicked flirt. The man clearly had a type and it wasn't her. Shiny blond hair, long legs, sweet smile and just a little slutty. Tristan liked his girls media-hot and media-stupid.
Somehow, Yasmin had managed to believe—for far too long—that she would be the one to break the mold. The one who would make him realize that being a man slut wasn't what he really wanted. Instead, she'd learned that he really enjoyed being a man slut. He like his women hanging on his every word and on his arm. And Yasmin was not going to be that girl—she couldn't and she wouldn't.
Getting dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, she fumbled her way through finding her things, taking care of the kittens and finally calling her friend Jenn just to keep her up to date. Jenn had absolutely zero Wiccan skills, so she hadn't gotten any 'concerning feeling' updates as bullets had ripped through Yasmin's front window.
At last, she stopped and sat on the couch, dressed and stroking Hex, who had finally eaten and calmed down, curling into a tiny ball of black puff in her lap. Her brain wandered to her windows, the trim she'd painted herself, the home she'd worked hard for. Sure, she'd played the lotto for the down payment, but she'd scrimped and saved to have it repainted and she—like everyone—had months where making the payment was hard. She'd eaten her share of Ramen noodles and cereal.
Now it had bullet holes.
Now she wasn't allowed in her own home.
Now she was sitting on Luke's couch having called in to work and with nothing to do today but stew about how horribly awry her life had gone and how it was completely her own fault. She knew better and she did it anyway.
Luke wandered into the living room having gotten dressed himself. Today he was in a fuchsia shirt that managed to cling like a girlfriend with low self-esteem. His jeans didn't respect themselves much more than the shirt, their deep blue hugging his ass and leading down to a pair of shoes that burned her eyes in bright orange and yellow.
She wanted to look away, but he was mesmerizing. She wanted to ask "how can you wear that?" but he did and somehow he wore it well. Instead she said "Clearly you aren't going to work today either."
"Nope. I'm off too while they investigate yet another shooting I was present for."
Her breath choked in her throat at the sudden thought this could hurt him. "You won't lose your job or anything over this, will you? You were supposed to be there. You saved me!"
As she said it, she realized it was true. He'd figured out what was happening just moments before her. He hadn't been angry when he dove at her, he'd been scared, reacting. "I didn't say it last night, but thank you. There's no way to ever repay you."
He tipped his head. "I didn't save you. Not that time." He sighed. "Their aim was so bad. They shot through the window but I don't think any of the bullets made it to the dining room. You would have been fine without me."
Yasmin didn't think so. He'd pulled out his gun the first time and talked them down, while her spell seemed to have worked, she didn't know how long it would have held. And this time? She hadn't seen, heard, or sensed it coming.
She was getting ready to say so when he suddenly pitched to the side as though he were going to fall and simultaneously opened his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut.
Her own mouth opened to ask what was wrong. She was starting to jump up off the couch to help him, too, but the tiny kitten on her lap made a heavier weight than one would think. By the time she had it figured out, so did Luke.
He was sucking in a breath and starting to smile. He tipped his head awkwardly to the side as a small black form made his way onto Luke's broad shoulder. "You know, bud, all you had to do was ask."
As she stood to get her pesky new child away from the allergic man, Luke reached up and plucked the kitten away before pulling it in toward his chest like one would a baby. "Hey Voodoo, I think you may have drawn blood."
Jeez. The man helped her dodge bullets and was nice to her dander producing kittens when they climbed him like a tree. She took the kitten back and tried to stay quiet and not cause trouble until she heard him swear a few times from the bathroom.
He was clearly trying to clean up any blood Voodoo may have drawn. And she felt obligated to knock on the door and see if she could be of help.
Just as she suspected, the poor man was bleeding from a few short scratches in inopportune places on his back. She had not prepared herself for Luke with his shirt off and her tongue almost got away from her and asked if maybe the kitten had scratched him through his jeans too and could she help with that?
It wasn't fair. Men weren't supposed to look as good with their clothes off as you dreamed they did.
The other thing she wasn't prepared for was the band-aids. Three lay crumpled on the counter from his clearly misguided attempts to put one on his lower right shoulder blade. She almost laughed out loud, "Hello Kitty?"
He tried to glare at her. "My nieces visited a while ago. It's what I have. I don't want to ruin that shirt. I like it."
Of course he did. It was bright enough to make up for a cloudy day and for now-obvious reasons his manhood never seemed threatened by pastels or pinks.
In a moment, she had several smiling white kitty faces covering the deep claw mark on his back and she had managed to not run her hand down his flesh. She'd done well in her dreams . . . Gotten the form right, the slight freckling on his shoulders, the abs that weren't gym-dog ridiculous but on the right side of awesome.
He had the shirt back on in a moment and she managed to keep the drool in her mouth and her heart firmly in her chest.
The man kept Hello Kitty Band-Aids for his nieces. Just another nice—no, great—trait to add to the list. He cuddled her kittens and treated the females around him by the same code he did everyone else. He saved her from bullets.
But a list of nice traits wasn't enough. Hadn't she learned that from Tristan? So she told herself that she had indeed learned it and learned it well. And she followed Luke down the hallway and out to his car.
Luke tossed and turned in his bed. He'd spent the entire day with Yasmin and it had been the best kind of hell.
She was friendly and easy with him. She bought him a late breakfast before they headed into the station to see what Jessica had on the new shooting.
It turned out, two of the neighbors reported that they thought their cars had been stolen and returned. When Valverde sent people out to canvas the neighborhood several others turned up. They hadn't called in because clearly who would steal a mid-level sedan and then return it? But one was the car that Luke had called in.
His timeframe for running the license plate as the car drove through Yasmin's neighborhood was directly in the window of time that the owners thought something odd had happened. The seat wasn't set right, the front door hadn't been bolted, the keys were hung wrong. And he couldn't tell Jessica really why he'd run the plate. Maybe partly because he hadn't really seen anything he could put a finger on, he'd simply been suspicious.
But the Del Surs had been there.
They had been watching.
His blood ran cold at the thought. They had waited for him to leave, which meant they knew he was a cop—her protection. They wanted her alone, and he wouldn't let that happen.
As he tangled his covers by way of sheer restlessness, Luke considered a really stupid question Giada had asked him years ago. She'd been reading some romance novel and said the cop had to pose as the witness's boyfriend and would that ever happen?
Luke had laughed out loud at his sister. Commented that surely both characters were too hot to be believed, and when the danger had passed they looked into each others' eyes and decided to get married. Giada had slunk away, huffing and spitting out "Fine!"
But he was starting to see the appeal of the story.
They problem was his prediction wasn't coming true.
He'd developed this sudden and crazy crush on her while following her through the grocery store before he even knew her name. But when things got tangled he reminded himself of his past: something would turn up about her that was unappealing. Maybe he'd learn she was mean to old people. One girl he dated was sweeter than honey to him then manipulated her friends and bitched about them behind their back to him. She'd suddenly gone from crazy hot to just ugly.
He kept waiting to learn that one awful thing about Yasmin that would set him free.
But it didn't come.
She rescued kittens on a whim and gave them silly names. She was willing to dole out some snarky comments and didn't pull her punches, but she was kind. She read fantasy novels with dragons and clashing armies as well as sci-fi. She defended her own religion fiercely but never pushed him to abandon his. She accepted people as they were and—while the whole spell casting thing was wildly out there—she seemed to be relatively unselfish with it.
Sometimes he watched her get a parking space. But she always prefaced her short spell with "an it harm none" as though her parking space was never more important than the greater good. He knew people who would literally kill for the power to always have a good parking spot open up for them.
At dinner that night he bought, heading for a mid-level Mexican place. The server referred to Yasmin as his 'girlfriend' when she'd stepped away from the table. He'd gotten a thumbs-up behind her back from another misguided man. What would he say? "Nope, she's not my girlfriend. Want to date her? I don't think she's seeing anyone."
So he'd smiled politely and not said anything.
It was as close as he'd come to crossing the line with her.
By the time they made it home, his body was exhausted; he really was tired and he wanted to climb into bed. The adrenaline from twenty-four hours ago hadn't been completely made up for. Luke finally felt the pull of sleep.
He reminded himself that his job was to keep her safe. That meant getting the Del Surs responsible locked up. That meant perfect protocol.
But he could dream about her.
He imagined what he wanted while he finally drifted off. Then, fully asleep, he wandered across the hall, quietly opening the door to his office to find her sprawled on his futon.
He stood there, looking at her for a moment. She should have taken his bed. He could be in here on this thin mattress. But she'd refused on the grounds of kitten hair and his allergy. Luke was grateful in his own way—he didn't know if it would amazing or torturous that his bed would smell like her.
Hex looked up at him and meowed. It was even harder to tell the two of them apart in the dark. The sound made Yasmin stir, pulling the tiny kitten to her a little closer.
She'd kicked the covers back and as she rolled over he saw that the nightshirt was actually a button down in some creamy shade of blue. It had rucked up her legs, leaving them bare and begging for him. And he quit fighting it.
It didn't count when he was asleep, and it was the only way to have what he wanted. So he brushed her hair back out of her face and leaned down close enough to kiss along her jaw line.
At first she responded with little sounds much like the kittens, but by the time he reached her ear she was whispering his name.
Her sigh hit his ears and something in his chest at the same time as he stood up and held his hand out to her. Accepting, she followed him into the living room where he proceeded to kiss her as though he could lay claim to her that way.
Then he did what he'd been wanting to do since he saw her sitting on his couch during her first visit. The vision had come back with a vengeance when he'd woken up to find her curled up opposite him that morning. And he proceeded to unbutton the cotton shirt and peel her open like a present.
Chapter 16
The noise broke her dream and Yasmin bounced onto the bed. It felt that way when she was suddenly yanked back into herself. Not that it had happened a lot to her.
Try as she might, she hadn't been one to master astral projection of any kind. And she'd tried. Even managed to accomplish a few short flights. But the fact was, they'd all been random, nothing was ever able to repeat.
So it was a shock to her system to get pulled back like that. She'd been in the middle of another very steamy dream, featuring none other than her own version of the man asleep across the hall.
Or he had been asleep. She heard him slamming through the door to his room, the wailing noise piercing her brain and yanking her from her thoughts as surely as it had pulled her from her dream.
Was it really a dream? If she was yanked back—
She didn't complete the thought. As she sat upright her nightshirt gapped, all the buttons undone—just as they had been in her dream. She was grabbing it and pulling it together as her bedroom door slammed open and Luke filled the doorway, his cotton pants riding low and concerning her with their familiarity.
She had not seen them before, not in reality, but she knew they were soft. Her frown formed as she ignored the mechanical beep that signaled something bad. A fire? She looked around, didn't smell smoke.
