Which was why it came as a physical as well as a psychic jolt when she felt his powerful fingers lock fiercely around her wrist in the waking world. The shock brought her instantly out of the dreamscape. Judson came with her.
He opened his eyes. Simultaneously he tightened his hand around her wrist.
“It’s okay, Judson, you’re awake.” She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, assuming that, with his preternatural night vision he could see it. Delicately, she wriggled her fingers, trying to free her manacled wrist. He did not release her. Instead, he continued to shackle her while he watched her with eyes that burned.
“I’m not one of your clients,” he rasped.
“You’re awake. It was just a bad dream. I was afraid you might be sleeping a little too deeply, you see.”
“I’m not one of your damned clients.”
“What?”
“I said I’m not your
She reminded herself that after awakening from a deep dream, the dreamer often continued to be confused by images from the underworld for a time. The goal was to soothe and reassure and guide the dreamer all the way back to the shore of the normal.
“You’re not a client,” she said soothingly.
“Damn right.”
He used his hold on her wrist to pull her off her feet and down onto the bed. The maneuver was conducted with the precision of a judo throw. One instant she was upright, the next she was flat on her back. The shadowy bedroom spun around her.
Okay, this was a new experience in the uncharted waters of psychic dream counseling, she thought. She had lost control of the session. That was not supposed to happen.
Before she could reorient herself and come up with a game plan for dealing with the situation, Judson was on top of her, one muscled thigh pinning her leg to the quilt. He captured her other wrist, anchored it beside her head, and took her mouth with a ruthlessness that stunned her senses.
The kiss was incendiary, literally. Hot energy burned in the atmosphere. She was mildly astonished that they did not set fire to the drapes. But unlike the terrible energy of the dream, this was the fiercely exhilarating fire of turbocharged passion.
Judson was running hot. She was still fully jacked from the dream therapy work. That made for a lot of heat. But it was the return of the breathtaking sensation of psychic intimacy that shocked and thrilled her. Something very strange had happened between them last night and it was happening again tonight. Her intuition warned her that the more time that she and Judson spent together—not just having superheated sex but within range of each other’s auras—the more powerful the bond would become—at least on her end.
Judson freed one of her wrists so he could untie the sash of her robe. His palm closed over her breast. He moved his mouth down to her throat.
She slid her hand up under his T-shirt and clawed at his muscled back. He was burning up with a psi- fever.
“Judson,” she whispered.
“Not a client,” he growled. “Say it. Not a client.”
“Not a client,” she gasped. “You can’t be a client, because I never sleep with clients.”
“That’s right. You don’t sleep with clients. You sleep with me now. Only me.”
He yanked opened the top of her nightgown and kissed her breasts with a hungry, desperate reverence. At the touch of his tongue on her sensitive nipples, she cried out. He released her other wrist to unzip his trousers. He fumbled the hem of her nightgown up to her waist. Then his hand was between her thighs.
“Wet and hot,” he said against her throat. “That’s how I like you.”
She reached down and circled him with her fingers. “Hard and hot. That’s how I like you.”
His laughter was low and dark and wicked. “We were made for each other, Dream Eyes.”
Maybe, she thought, but probably not. This wasn’t love. They hadn’t had time to fall in love. This was raw passion fueled by the bond that had been forged in the paranormal fires of shared danger and the dream therapy experience. She knew she could not trust her emotions tonight, but in the heat of the moment she did not care.
Judson got his pants off and then he was back on top of her, driving into her hard and deep. She pulled him close and wrapped herself fiercely around him.
Her release swept through her in seconds. She heard Judson groan as he followed her over the edge and into the effervescent seas that awaited them.
Twenty-eight
It had been a good night at the online fishing hole. The grooming of the new client was coming along nicely. The woman’s ninety-two-year-old father-in-law was in excellent health and showed every indication of making it to a hundred. Unfortunately for the heirs, the old man was burning through the inheritance at a fast clip. At the rate he was going he would outlive his money. The daughter-in-law had a problem with that. She and her husband had been counting on her father-in-law’s money to finance their own retirement.
It was all so unfair. Sundew understood that. And it wasn’t as if the old man enjoyed a good quality of life, after all. He had been forced to give up both driving and his beloved golf a few years ago. Now he spent his days playing cards and watching television with the other residents at his very expensive retirement community while he whined that no one ever came to visit him. Meanwhile his son and daughter-in-law were watching their inheritance go down the drain.
The old man’s death would change everything.
Back at the start, Sundew had been obliged to spend months drumming up business. The process involved hours of online research just to identify potential clients. Then followed the laborious task of introducing them to the notion that their inheritance problems could be made to go away as if by magic—for a price.
The business was more streamlined these days, requiring less research and less risk. As always, word of mouth had proved to be the best form of advertising. The online whispers were so effective that Sundew had no shortage of potential clients dropping into the chat room.
Money was no longer the object. Now Sundew worked to support a habit.
Somewhere along the line, the murder-for-hire game had become a total rush.
Until recently, Wilby, Oregon, had been the perfect lair in which to hide between hunts. True, the brouhaha two years ago had been a near disaster but things had settled down after Gwen Frazier left town. Then Sundew had discovered that Evelyn Ballinger had become suspicious. The problem had been resolved easily enough, but now the situation had begun to disintegrate.
The bitch was back in town, and she was not alone.
On her own, Frazier wouldn’t have been a problem. She was nobody, just a low-level talent who could view auras—not exactly a weapon of mass destruction. In spite of what had happened two years ago, it was hard to see her as a serious threat. One way or another, she could be dealt with.
But Coppersmith’s presence complicated the situation. His family was powerful and would no doubt make a lot of waves if one of the sons and heirs to the business empire turned up dead in a small town like Wilby. Questions would be asked.
The Coppersmiths also appeared to be a family with a lot of secrets. What’s more, they were very good at concealing those secrets.
Secrets were always interesting. Sundew’s own family kept a lot of them. And they were just as good at hiding them as the Coppersmiths were.
Twenty-nine
