Neptune's Lair (sensual paranormal romance) (The Protectors) (5 page)

* * * * *

It was dangerous to go searching for Dallas again so soon. Even so, Brendan pulled out his stash of lavender candles and started spreading them across his bathroom floor. Despite the trouble he was causing for himself, he felt compelled to do this.

She might need him. To hell with the risk and
the darkness
infecting her, he had to find her and fast.

He had to see her. Touch her. See that she was okay.

She’s strong
, he told himself. But how strong? Strong enough to weather what he’d done to her? It had virtually been a psychic attack. Could she possibly be strong enough to have survived his attack without coming away with scars?

He didn’t know. And the not knowing scared the hell out of him.

That wasn’t the only thing scaring him this morning. By taking her spirit from her body last night, he’d crossed a line very few like him have ever crossed. Those who had done it in the past had already been devoured and were merely following the destructive thoughts
the darkness
had planted in their minds.

Stealing souls. That’s what the council called what he’d done. A body without its spirit died. When he left his body last night, he’d held onto a cord—a lifeline—that would help him find his way home. It was that lifeline that kept his heart beating and his vital organs working.

When a spirit is snatched from a body, like he’d done with Dallas last night, she had no lifeline and no real hope for the spirit to find its way home. Not without help, anyway.

He had never wanted to harm her and wouldn’t have needed to worry if he’d whisked her away to his world, questioned her, and gotten her back to her body before more than a few seconds had passed. But instead of doing any of that, he’d held on to her. Simply feeling her powerful spirit moving through him had been a heady experience. It had tempted him more than he was comfortable admitting. Even to himself.

He’d been tempted to keep her and her amazing powers...
forever
.

He shook the thought away. It had been his damned starved libido acting last night. Not some power game.

He lit the first candle. Today, he wouldn’t snatch her into his world. After last night, the connection between them was strong. He could feel it tugging at him even now. That connection should give him sufficient power over her and her attempts to block him.

He lit another candle. The flame sputtered and hissed as if it had been splashed by water. Not a heartbeat later, the phone rang.

“Mr. Hamlet asked me to check in with you,” his secretary, Trina said. Unlike Franz Hamlet, she was human and wouldn’t understand why Franz was suddenly concerned about Brendan’s welfare. Rumors moved among
the Protectors
at a frenetic pace.

“Tell him I’m fine,” Brendan said. Although neither Stone nor Horace would have said a word about this morning, there were several who were adept at reading minds and anxious to share the secrets they learned. He wondered what exactly those busybodies among them were saying about him today. “Oh, and Trina.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I won’t be coming into the office for the next couple of days. But please don’t hesitate to call me if something important comes up with any of the cases I’m working on.”

He needed uninterrupted time with Dallas—preferably with her in his bed. He pictured her with her wrists tied to the bedposts so she couldn’t dash away from him.

“Of course, sir.” Trina knew well enough to not ask why. “You missed a job interview yesterday with a Dallas St. John. But I should tell you that she was nearly a half-hour late. You might want to forget it and move on to the next candidate.”

“Dallas St. John?” An unusual name. He doubted that there were more than a handful of women in Chicago named Dallas. His heart started beating in his throat.

“
Dallas St. John
?” He’d been swamped with work and had completely ignored the stack of applications for the vacant associate position the personnel officer had sent to him over a week ago. Personnel and Trina had scheduled the appointments. All he had to do was look at the files and show up for the interview.

“Yes, sir. That’s what the file says.”

Fate or the universe or whoever was pulling the strings up there had screwed him over good this time. If not for that damned vision, he would have met Dallas under normal circumstances and recognized that she was a New One all on his own.

Stone would probably want to hear about this new complication right away.

“Give me her address and phone number. I’ll contact her.”

Trina gave him the information without questioning why he would bother calling a potential employee. After talking to Stone, he dialed Dallas’s home number. The answering machine picked up.

A sense of dread filled him. He pictured her lifeless body sprawled out in the middle of her apartment. But that wasn’t a vision, he reminded himself. Those were his fears speaking to him.

God help him, he needed to find her.

* * * * *

A light snow twirled through the soggy, cold Chicago streets. The dreary weather must have convinced the sun to stay away. In the grim light of late afternoon, Dallas plodded forward, searching aimlessly.

She dabbed a tissue to her nose. It had started bleeding again.

That morning, she’d taken a cab to her apartment to shower and change into some warm clothes before setting out on this insane search of hers. Insane or not, she felt pulled by a force outside herself.

“I’ve got to find him,” she grumbled and dabbed at her nose again.

A horn honked behind her.

“Dallas.”

The horn honked again.

“Dallas!”

A flashy, red Toyota sports coupe pulled up alongside her. It slowed to match her pace.

“DALLAS!”

“Leave me alone, Janice.”

The car jerked to a stop. Dallas kept going forward. She wished whatever force tugging at her would do her a favor and look at a map. She’d already been down this street. Twice.

She was about halfway down the block when she heard Janice slam her car door shut. The tattoo of heels beat against the pavement sped up as her friend grew closer.

Dallas figured there was nothing to do but wait for the inevitable. Annoying as Janice could be, she couldn’t deny that Janice really was a good friend to be looking out for her like this. Her mind was still tripping over that warm, fuzzy thought when Janice grabbed Dallas by her tender shoulders and spun her around until they were standing face-to-face and toe-to-toe. She gave Dallas a nasty shake that made her brain knock around in her head.

“What the hell are you doing?” Janice shouted. She didn’t need to shout since she was close enough that their foreheads nearly knocked together.

“Not so loud,” Dallas breathed. “You’re hurting me.”

A frigid wind swept through her, chilling her to the core. She pushed away from Janice and hugged her arms against herself, trying to fight the intrusion of all this cold. A shiver tiptoed like icy fingers down her back.

She blinked.

This was her third time down this street, yet not until Janice had spun her around had she noticed a storefront that wasn’t much wider than its full glass door. A faded, old wooden sign announced that the place was called The Oblique Café.

A long-forgotten and neglected voice from her childhood whispered that she had finally found what she’d been searching for. She twisted out of Janice’s grasp and headed toward the door.

Halfway there, her attention jumped from the door to a large figure approaching from her right. It was
him
.

He looked harried, exhausted, worried…and absolutely wonderful.

Dallas pounced. She swung her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his. To call it a kiss would be too simple. She was tasting him and, liking the heat in her mouth, she pulled him deeper. With a wanton’s eagerness, her tongue pushed past his lips and plunged into his mouth as if they had been lovers forever.

He groaned.

A very solid, very real expression of his pleasure pressed against her belly. He wrapped his arms tightly around her.

This isn’t a dream
, she told herself.

“Neither was last night,” he murmured.

* * * * *

“What the hell’s going on here?” Janice demanded.

“It’s him,” Dallas happily declared and pressed herself against the length of Brendan’s body. They were both wearing far too many clothes. He was dressed all in black. Black pants. Black shirt. Black sweater. Black wool coat. Though it suited him, he would have been even more attractive without any of it.

“Him who?” Janice asked.

“My dream guy.”

“The Fish?”

He flinched.

“No, no. Not that one. The
other
one.” She didn’t want to say it aloud. It embarrassed her to even remember that she’d gotten herself all worked up over a stranger. She turned toward Janice and waggled her brows, hoping Janice would catch her meaning.

Dallas wasn’t sure what was going on in her friend’s head. But whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. The frown Janice was wearing deepened. “And what are you planning on doing?” she demanded. “With a stranger.”

The delicious thoughts that skittered through Dallas’s mind brought a rush of heat to her cheeks, which was a good thing because that biting cold was seeping back into her blood. She hugged herself and shivered.

“Well?” Janice pressed. “What are you planning on doing?”

“That’s a good question,” her delicious dream guy answered just as Dallas was thinking it. Okay, perhaps she wasn’t thinking that. But it had sounded like such a reasonable thing to be thinking that she wanted to claim it for her own. Better to steal his thoughts than admit—even to herself—that she had been wading in visions of having hot and heavy sex. With him.

“There’s nothing wrong with admitting your desires,” he said as if he could read her thoughts. “But we do need to make some decisions since we can’t do anything out here on the street.”

He glanced at the café door. “No, it’s too soon,” he said. “Let me take you to my apartment.”

“Now wait a freaking minute.” Janice edged her way between them and used sheer strength to push them an arm’s length apart. “I’m not letting you—a stranger, in case you didn’t hear me mention it the first time—take my friend anywhere.”

“You’d s-said y-yourself—” Dallas started to argue, but her teeth were chattering so hard she could barely get the words out. She rubbed her hands over her shivering arms. No matter what she did, she couldn’t seem to chase that cursed cold away. And now that she was no longer marching down the Chicago streets at top speed, her shivers had grown stronger. Even her hands had started to visibly shake. She took a deep breath and rushed on with what she had to say as best as she could. “You told me th-th-that I should find him. Th-th-that I sh-should s-s-start taking chances.”

Janice didn’t seem to be listening to what Dallas was saying. Instead, she’d turned a speculative eye toward Dallas’s dream lover.

Dallas had a bad feeling her friend was going to try and win herself an ally.

“Look at her. She’s sick. She should be in the hospital, not wandering the streets looking for you.”

A dark brow shot up. “Looking for me?” He sounded surprised.

“A-all d-day,” Dallas admitted through her still chattering teeth.

“She spent the night in a hospital critical care unit.”

“She’s okay.” He started to say something else but hesitated.

Dallas blushed as his gaze pressed against her. Even if she only looked half as bad as she felt, it would mean things crawling out of swamp bogs would look more appealing than she did at that moment.

“I’ll take care of her,” he amended and took the stained tissue from her hand and gently pressed it to her bleeding nose. “I know how to fix this.” He paused again. His frown deepened. “She should be okay.”

He opened his wool coat and pulled Dallas closer. Before she realized what was happening, she found herself snuggled up against his chest and soaking up his heat as he enfolded her in the warmth of his wool coat’s thick, soft lining. It wasn’t enough to chase away the biting chill, but it was a start.

“She needs to go back to the hospital,” Janice insisted again.

“No. They wouldn’t know how to help her. I do.” A dark force emerged from behind his voice. Dallas felt it pressing against her chest, compelling her to listen to him and believe what he was saying. “Go home. I will care for Dallas.”

Janice didn’t seem to notice the warm, soothing sensations his voice carried with his words. “I don’t even know who you are!” she screeched.

“You don’t know me,” he agreed. “And you are a good friend to be so concerned.”

“Dallas, you don’t know anything about him. Don’t do this. I beg you, don’t go with him.”

He signed and then reached in his pocket. He pulled out a small golden case and produced a business card printed on a slick, nearly transparent paper. He handed the card to Janice.

She read it. Her eyes widened. She glanced at him and then read the card again. “Brendan Cromerty, Vice President of HH&G?”

He gave a sharp nod.

“Dallas had a job interview with you yesterday,” she said. Confusion glittered brightly in her eyes.

“I know. She was late.”

“But she missed the interview. You weren’t even there.”

That seductive eyebrow of his rose again. “But I saw her anyhow. The universe works like that sometimes. It’s best not to think too hard about it. I know when I do, I always end up with a pounding headache.”

His arms tightened around Dallas. He seemed to be doing everything he could to lend her his heat. “I’m taking her home.” That dark force in his voice had returned. It swirled around them like a building wave. “Like it or not, she belongs with me.”

Chapter Three

She belongs with me
.

Nothing had ever sounded so wonderful or so comforting to Dallas’s ears. She’d never belonged with anyone. Not really. While her friends all had families and parents, she’d been raised within the sanitized halls of St. John’s Children’s Home and had learned at an early age to depend on no one.

She belongs with me
.

If only…

Brendan unlocked the door to his apartment and pushed it open. He stepped aside, silently inviting her to go in first.

They hadn’t spoken a word on the way to his home. She’d huddled, shivering in the passenger seat of his sleek, black Audi TT, unable to get rid of the cold. He’d wrapped her in his coat, but it didn’t seem to help her feel any warmer. She needed his body. Flesh to flesh.

But by time they had reached his car, he had distanced himself. That curious look of indecision had remained on his lips and had crinkled the skin around his piercing brown eyes. She’d watched him as he drove and could almost hear the thoughts churning in his head.

He was conflicted.

But about what
? She wondered.

Hugging his coat tightly to her chest, she wandered into the middle of his living room. Off to one side she found a kitchen that would make a gourmet drool. The black stone countertop and the stainless steel appliances sparkled under the kitchen’s task lighting.

Even more impressive was his living room. It was twice the size of her entire apartment—the same apartment she would soon be evicted since she couldn’t pay her rent. Unlike her cramped living room where the furniture was used, worn and uncomfortable, a plush, dark brown overstuffed sofa beckoned from where it sat near the brick fireplace in Brendan’s living room.

She’d plowed through the cold and the snow all afternoon with an arousal that wouldn’t go away. The soft, excited flesh between her legs had turned tender and uncomfortable hours ago. And it wasn’t as if she’d been feeling all that healthy when she’d left the hospital in the first place. Thinking about her various aches now only made her more conscience of her pain-ridden body.

“I would offer you a painkiller if I thought it would help,” he said, just as her legs started to give out under her. He caught her elbow and helped her make it over to the sofa without falling on her face. She appreciated that.

“Stay there.” He tucked a blanket over her legs. “I think I can do something about the chill you’d caught. I’ll be right back.”

She watched him move around in the kitchen with the confidence of a well-honed cook. When he returned, he handed her a piping hot cup of tea and wrapped a second blanket over her shoulders.

“It’s a special recipe,” he said. “The herbs should help warm you up and renew your strength.”

She sniffed the steam. The tea smelled sweet. She picked out the distinctive scents of honey and orange. But there were other aromas there as well. Too many. They overwhelmed her senses.

“Go on.” He hadn’t moved. He was hovering over her much like the nurses had at the hospital that morning. “Personally, I like its sweet taste.”

She took a tentative sip. The overwhelming flavors mixed in her mouth, blending like the individual notes and sounds at a symphony to produce something wonderful.

She took another sip. The drink’s heat did help push away the cold. Her toes started to prickle as they thawed.

“Hmmm…” she sighed. “That’s nice.”

That made him smile. “Good. Now, I suppose we should get down to business.”

Business
? Her body snapped to attention. “You mean sex, right?”

“No!” He backed away from her as if afraid she might attack him. Talk about crushing rejections.

“Oh, I see,” she murmured. Lord, she
had
attacked him in the street this afternoon. She’d nearly climbed into his arms. And had been kissing him without his permission. That was so not like her. She blushed so hard her cheeks stung.

“It-it’s not that I don’t want…I-I mean, yes, lets,” he stammered and then dragged his hand through his hair. “No. I mean, no.”

On his retreat he stumbled over the corner of his coffee table, tipping it over and sending a pile of magazines flying.

“Damn.” He planted his feet and held his ground. “I want to take you to my bed.” The words flew out of his mouth as if he was arguing a tough case. “Of course I want to. But you’re not strong enough. Not yet.” He bent down and started gathering up the magazines. “Drink the tea.”

“Oh.” Dallas stared into her cup and pretended to be reading the leaves.

He righted the coffee table and dropped the magazines on top. “I’m attracted to you. Don’t forget about what happened between us last night.”

As impossible as it seemed, her blush turned even hotter. She waved the thought away. “How do you know about last night? It was a dream. A wonderful dream, yes. But still…” She sipped some more tea. She liked how it made her feel relaxed and slightly giddy. “It was probably triggered by a near-death experience. I was in a coma.”

The brown of his eyes darkened. “We’ve been over this already. Last night happened. It was real.”

“I was in a coma.” Perhaps repeating it would help her believe it too. “They told me it could have been triggered by a brain tumor or any number of life-threatening ailments.”

“You weren’t in a coma. And there is nothing wrong with you.” He dragged his hand through his hair for a second time and started pacing. “This is why we need to talk.”

“About business?”

He nodded.

Oh dear, he meant
business
business, as in law firm business. The same law firm she desperately wanted to work for.

“Please don’t ask me about my qualifications for the associate position right now. I don’t feel up to it.”

Both his brows shot up. “But you think you could handle sex?”

She smiled shyly at that, and then returned her attention to her tea.

He cleared his throat. “When you’re stronger I’m not going to let you get away with those teasing glances so easily.”

She bit her lower lip and planned on holding him to that promise.

He started pacing again. “Our meeting in the alleyway wasn’t an accident,” he said. His gaze locked on the floor, he kept his hands clasped behind his back. “I knew you would be taking that shortcut and I was waiting for you.”

“That doesn’t make sense. If I was heading to your office, why didn’t you wait for me there?”

“I don’t think you were ever going to make it to the office. That’s why the universe sent me that vision.”

“A vision?”

He nodded. “In my vision I saw you in that alleyway. And you were in danger.”

She took a nervous sip of her tea. “From you, you mean?”

That stopped him. He shook his head and chuckled. “I can understand why you might think that.”

“But the danger was from someone else?”

“Some
thing
else,” he corrected. “And it’s not gone away.”

The chill she’d felt earlier started to return. Or was that fear? She wasn’t sure.

He placed his hand on the back of the sofa and leaned in close enough that she was engulfed by his clean sandalwood scent. “I know you feel the connection between us, Dallas. The reason it’s so strong is that we are the same, you and I. You belong with me.”

You belong with me
. His words sparked a new glow.

“I know this will be difficult to accept, but I promise you it’s true. And you’re not alone. I’m here for you. And there are others. When you’re ready, you’ll meet them and they’ll love you. You’ll charm the socks off them. I promise you that.”

He drew a deep breath.

“Dallas, you aren’t human.”

Not human.

“Okay.” She shrugged. “Not human. So, what am I?”

He jerked back with a look of surprise. “Um…um…there’s no quick and easy answer for that one.”

“You can’t tell me I’m not human and leave it at that.” She supposed she should have been surprised hearing that she wasn’t part of the human race. But she wasn’t. After all, she’d never fit it anywhere. Not really. And she often felt alienated from the rest of the world. Being told she wasn’t human was the first thing in her life that made perfect sense.

“No, I don’t mean to leave it at that. There’s much more to tell you.” He sighed. “It’s just that I expected the not-human part to dominate the conversation. It usually does, you know.”

“You’ve done this before?” Her voice rose. This was becoming all too fantastic to believe. And not fantastic like winning the lottery was fantastic…but fantastic like a low-budget futuristic movie.

“Yes, I’ve done this before.” He plopped down next to her on the plush sofa and cradled his head in his hands.

“Then you should be better prepared,” she scoffed. “You should at least have a handbook ready or a lecture prepared. Visuals would be nice, too.”

He rolled his eyes. “No one has ever reacted to the news with a shrug. Aren’t you the least bit skeptical? Shouldn’t you argue with me that I’m wrong?”

“Are you?”

“No. I’m telling you the truth.” He looked quite adorably put out. A lock of dark, brown hair slipped over his brow. If she weren’t still feeling so weak, she would have hugged him.

“I’m being pragmatic.” She inched closer to him because he was warm and she craved his heat, and his other parts, but she didn’t want to think about that. Acting like a wanton still felt new and frightening. “I’ve always known I was different. Why should I argue with you if what you’re telling me is something I know in my heart to be true?”

“Because…because…most people feel some sort of emotion!”

He was wrong. She was feeling an emotion. A strange sense of calm had filled her, and she was starting to regret it. “What’s the acceptable reaction?”

“They usually cry.”

“Why?” She didn’t feel the least bit like crying, not when this not being human business explained so much.

“I don’t know.”

“Did
you
cry?”

He grew very still.

“My situation was different than most,” he said. His cool voice made her shiver. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

They sat in silence for several moments. The only sound in the room was the tap, tap of her fingernail against the side of her ceramic mug. He reached over and took it from her. Their hands touched. A spark of heat jumped between them.

“You asked what we were.” He still sounded irritated that she hadn’t argued with him or withered into a puddle of tears. “There is no easy answer for that because none of us really know. The best I can do is a description. All of us are foundlings. Orphans.”

“No,” she whispered. Her childhood wasn’t one she’d wish on anyone.

“No parents at all,” he continued. “Each of us appeared out of nothing and was raised by humans. But no one truly accepted us or treated us as their own because we are different, and the humans sense it.”

That sounded only too painfully familiar.

“Our unusual beginning isn’t the only thing that marks us as different. As adulthood approaches, we start developing powers.”

“Powers?”

“Each of us has our own unique abilities. I can’t tell you what yours are. You’ll have to discover them for yourself.”

“Do I have any now?” She snapped her fingers. “Like make fire shoot out from my fingertips?” She snapped them again.

He caught her hand and held it as if worried flames might actually spring from her fingertips and singe his smooth plaster ceiling.

“That probably wouldn’t be a good thing to try inside,” he said. And he sounded serious! “There is energy all around us in the air and traveling through the dimensions of the universe. For some reason, we all have an ability to tap into this energy, to direct it and sometimes change it into something tangible…like fire. Learning how to use and control the energy is what takes time and practice.”

“So I have to wait and see what I can do?
If
I can do anything?” That didn’t seem fair. She wanted to prove to herself and to Brendan that she was actually different. Special.

“You do have at least one power that I know about. You can turn back time. It’s a form of trans-dimensional shift. For most, it takes years of practice. You. You’re an anomaly. A strong one at that.”

“I can’t turn back time.”

“No? Yesterday morning when you were trying to get to my office, you threw back the clock at least three times. Don’t you remember?”

No, he had to be mistaken. Trans-dimensional—what did he call it? Whatever it was, it was something way beyond her comprehension. And if she didn’t understand it, how in the hell could she have possibly pulled off something like that?

“Think about it.” His voice had deepened. It brushed her body like an intimate caress.

She closed her eyes and remembered the frantic dreams where she tried over and over to get to her interview, but always failed. “I had nightmares,” she admitted.

“Last night wasn’t a dream and those weren’t nightmares. We’re different, Dallas.”

“Not human, right?” She gave him a wry smile. “So what are we? Demons? Fairies? No, don’t tell me…we’re aliens from Mars.” She giggled at the thought. It must have been the calming tea making her lightheaded and giddy.

He shrugged. “We could be any or all of those. I don’t know. None of us do.”

“You really need to work on your presentation. I need visuals. And definitive answers.”

“I’m sorry, but there isn’t a handbook. What we’ve learned has been taught to us by those who came before us. Over the ages, we’ve picked up new tidbits of knowledge here and there mostly through happenstance. We are all the same—foundlings with no one to guide or train us. Much like the humans, we each have to search to find our purpose in the world.”

Not being human was all well and good, but she needed to be able to attach a name to her new state of existence.

“There has to be a better answer.”

“I wish I could tell you more, Dallas, but I can’t.”

“And the danger stalking me?” she asked, hoping he could at least explain that much to her.

“
The darkness
.”

“Another empty answer.” Darkness. That didn’t mean anything to her.

No…

Wait…

A distant memory returned from the orphanage. A frightening power had haunted her throughout the long winter nights, staying just on the periphery of her life and had scared her like the boogieman hiding in the closet. There had been no one to run to for comfort. No one had wanted to listen to her tears. She closed her eyes and shivered.

“It’s a power that exists alongside the other powers in the universe. But this one is dangerous. Destructive. It devours our spirit and leaves behind a being of hate and a force of destruction,” he said.