Kitabı oku: «Dark Dreams: HarperImpulse Paranormal Romance»

Chapter 1

Jade Shear could feel the spark of emotion ignite; like a caged electrical storm it slithered up her skin and spread throughout her body. “No, damn it, not again,” she cursed into the air. Jade’s eyes strained shut as her long, French-manicured fingernails drew into fists.

Opening her stinging eyes she watched her customers begin to twitch and look around nervously. It was as if, suddenly, something ominous had just descended. She felt a wave of anxiety sweeping through their emotions even before the patrons themselves were aware of it. She let out an audible sigh and began trying to suppress the assault on her senses.

The patron’s responses were varied. Some began to look lost; others, more strongly affected, looked almost angry.

Jade opened her fists and tried to stabilize herself inside the circular wooden countertop forming the epicenter of her store. The emotion around her relentlessly crawled through her body, like a horde of ants on a mass exodus through the inside of her spine and limbs. She leaned forward and steadied herself, inhaling deeply. She closed her eyes, grabbing a thick, red curl between her fingers and began to twist. Fixating her mind she began deflecting the patrons’ feelings, pushing them away. Get out of my head!

Her eyes opened and Jade swore she saw a man-sized shadow move behind one of the crowded bookshelves in her peripheral vision. It disappeared so quickly she thought, for sure, it was her imagination.

“Hey, gorgeous, thought it was your day off!” Matt lilted accusatorily and sauntered toward the register. Nothing ever seemed to ruin his good mood. It was one reason she could stand to be around him. The other was that he was one of the few men she could be near and not read lascivious feelings about her pouring off of him. “You all right, sweets? You look like you need a drink.” His perfectly arched brows rose slightly for a moment. “And a hairbrush.” He chuckled and tried to tame her hair.

“Can you please not start with me?” Jade tried to shake out the last bits of the obtrusive emotions around her. She actually loved when Matt “started” with her.

“Now, darlin’, what in the world would be fun about that?” He moved his hand like a wand through the air when he spoke, a gesture he always seemed to make appropriate. Whether recapping a bad date he’d been on, appraising someone’s outfit, or generally talking trash about another of Jade’s employees, there was always “the hand” emphasizing his dramatic points.

He continued, without waiting for a response. “Girl, you need to stop with the workaholic spinster act.” He gave her a cursory disapproving glance from her disheveled hair down to her beautifully attired feet. She saw a small smile escape when he eyed her footwear. “Get out of here, go dig up a life, girl, get laid, fall down drunk somewhere.” He let loose with yet another wave of his hand around the store. “You know this place is fine. I’ve got the wheel. I make a fabulous captain.” Matt laughed; the man certainly loved to amuse himself.

“I just need a book or two, then I’m out. I won’t stay,” Jade swore, even as she scanned the shop for other things she could be working on.

“Okay, mama, but I’m watching you.” The characteristic hand wave ended with an accusatory finger pointed at her.

A gust of hot air blew up from the floor behind her. It seemed to come from nowhere. Jade inhaled as the fragrance of dark sandalwood and a dirty masculinity wafted into her nostrils. Her eyes closed and as she breathed in, her mind was abruptly flooded with the image of all the sex she wasn’t having.

Matt’s lowered voice invaded the darkness of her shut eyelids. “Oh, my Lord, no, I am not looking at you, not anymore, now I’m watching that!” She opened her eyes and saw the look in Matt’s eyes glaze over slightly as he motioned to something, or someone, behind her that had now consumed his attentions.

“Do not turn around quickly, but girl, turn the hell around. Slowly, I said, do not startle it and make it run away,” Matt hissed as he placed a hand on her shoulder.

“What are you talking about now? Is there some kind of animal in my shop?” Jade turned and not twenty feet away, he stood.

Legs crossed, a gorgeous man leaned against a bookshelf, his cocked head resting against it in a lazy pose. A long stream of dark, almost black, hair fell below his extremely well-built shoulders, contrasting with the lighter red of the cherry wood. This man was making no attempt to hide the fact he was staring right at her, assessing her. She felt some disdain for his audacity, but honestly his stare caused her to catch her breath, and then consciously begin breathing again. Rather than turn away, she stole another peek. Jade’s eyes met his and they seemed to grab and pull her in. His eyes contained darkness, but she saw that they were actually an intense gold laced by black lashes. As she trailed down his body, large muscled arms exploded out of the sleeves of his black t-shirt.

His emotion came upon her unbidden and she felt a sudden wave of lust crash over her. She unintentionally released a breathy sigh and clenched her teeth as the pure animal nature of him surrounded her in an all-encompassing cloud of arousal. Between this force and her body stood only a flimsy white tank and it apparently was going to provide her no protection. Her breasts and nipples tightened and became overly sensitive to even the slightest movements she made. The lower regions of her body went moist and warm and she crossed her legs; the clenching, however, made the feeling even stronger.

“Holy cow,” fell softly out of her mouth.

And Matt concurred, “Yes, ho-oly cow, girl.” Her mouth had apparently remained open because, keeping his gaze stuck on the tall hunk of man before them, Matt put his hand under her chin and popped it closed.

Trying to shake off the lusty arousal, she turned and tried to take on the look of the professional establishment owner she was, and took a tentative step in his direction.

Of course, that didn’t work out; instead she tripped on the edge of the Turkish rug beneath her, twisting her foot and breaking the heel off her favorite Jimmy Choo knee-high boots.

“Damn it,” she said under her breath, “I saved for months to buy those.” As she bent down to pick up the broken heel, she tried to take a step backward and stabilize her still sexually stunned body against the wooden counter.

Naturally, being that she was Jade, her hand landed at the base of a stack of returned books, sending them and herself tumbling to the floor. She was now red-cheeked, with hair strewn across her face and in her mouth, on her hands and knees. She lifted her head to wait for the typical Matt-like wisecrack, which surprisingly never came.

The mysterious man flashed a condescending grin the Cheshire cat himself would have been proud of and slowly turned and sauntered toward her front doors. Then he seemed to disappear. But that couldn’t be right, could it? He must have simply walked out the door and she had missed it.

“What the fuck was that?” Jade gaped at the space the dark-haired man had occupied, as she sat back onto her heels and shook her head to clear it.

Matt only raised his brows and looked down to her. His mind was obviously still more focused on the gorgeous stranger than his boss. As her clumsiness was pretty much constant, he looked at her with only a slight smirk. “That, my dear, was sex; pure, walking, fabulous sex. And not the weak-ass, watered-down kind. That man was fully loaded,” he chuckled, “and I would love some.” Matt furrowed his brow and bent down to help her.

“Okay, Jade, tell me right now,” Matt demanded, tapping his fingers on the patterned rug beside her sore knees. “What was that hot slice of man feeling? I have to know.”

Jade looked at Matt, past his crisp blue jeans and perfect orange polo shirt, the look in his eyes full of anticipation. He was one of the only people she trusted with the knowledge of what she could do. Well, actually, the only one, because she was reasonably sure he was the only one who didn’t ever want something from her. “I hate my curse, you know that. When I make a conscious decision to take advantage of the annoying thing, I am ashamed of myself. Please don’t make me go there.”

Unfortunately, most of the time her ability crept in without her inviting it. Even now, all around them she could sense the crowd’s slow change back to their previous mix of emotions. Curious, she thought, that man appears as a sudden shift in emotion consumes the store and knocks me on my ass and, blam, he walks out, and it all goes back to normal?

“Come on, Jade, you’re not going to tell me anything?” He gave her his sweetest puppy-dog eyes.

“Sorry, dude, but I didn’t even try,” she lied; this was the easiest way out of the conversation. Jade hated using her blasted mental capabilities to read emotions, almost as much as she detested her ability to change those feelings, and she had absolutely no intention of discussing them or the sexual barrage that strange man had given her. The memory made her body release a shiver from head to toe, which unfortunately came to rest in a warm, aching pool deep down in the lower regions of her stomach.

Why did this have to happen to me? Jade asked herself for the millionth time.

A swirl of wind formed in the discarded trash and debris on the dirty sidewalk, out from under Nias’s black combat boots as he transcended outside to the not-so-fresh air of New York City streets.

He usually didn’t take such a risk. Humans seeing a tall, dark stranger appear from out of nowhere tended to become alarmed. He had simply wanted to remove himself from within the vicinity of the human female immediately.

When Nias first saw the backside of the statuesque redhead twirling a single curl and lounging on her forearms at the book counter his body began to boil. He knew right away he was staring at trouble. She was stunning. Watching the girl in plain, low-rise jeans and a white tank top … there was definitely something different about her. He could tell immediately that there was a force within her, the power they needed. But there was something else as well, something insisting his gaze remain on her, and not stray.

When she turned around with her friend to look at him he could feel her immediate pull on him. All he had wanted to do was remove the space between them. Slip a hand around the curve of her hip to the small of her back and pull her body flush against him, for a long, slow kiss.

The few moments after he had seen her were bad enough, but when she turned to look in his direction, the effect he had on her became abundantly clear. He began to mentally undress the beauty and, in detail, strip her down and find ways to make her react to him. His loins began to swell as his brain began to get more descriptive. It was only when she tumbled and their eyes broke contact that he was able to snap out of the apparent spell she had put him under. He had no other recourse for the moment but to get out of there before he walked up, took her by the hand, and transcended her straight back to his bedroom.

He silently cursed Jibreel and the other Goddesses for asking him to locate Jade Shear. Oh yeah, that girl would definitely be trouble.

A slight queasy ache swelled from the pits of his stomach. He straightened his bearing back to that of the warrior he was, returning to his now-comfortable state of numbness.

Nias turned to survey the street. Humans, with their matching white paper coffee cups, sat a little nervously now, lounging and taking in the sun. An ordinary blond couple opened the wooden and glass door and moved into Jade’s establishment. Resting his hands in the front pockets of his faded jeans, he found peace in his old habit of surveillance, and slowly the feelings began to subside.

None of the scattered few had noticed him appear. No wide, stricken eyes or signs of panic were visible. Only the common human reaction of shifting as an anxious tension swept through them. But it always did when a strong high-caste Daemon was near.

His memory shifted to the last image he had of her as he exited the store. She was kneeling on the ground, a disheveled mass of books surrounding her, on her hands and knees in the middle of it. She was a beautiful disaster.

This was the female that was supposed to help him traverse Sheol and rescue his brother?

“Unbelievable,” he grumbled.

He had spent ages, millennia even, in Sheol. He didn’t need assistance. Arousing or not, that clumsy human was going to get them both killed. She couldn’t even manage to stand on her legs; how the hell was he supposed to traverse Sheol with her? Much less kill multiple caste-leveled Shaitan in blazing underworld heat. And he was there to seek her help? The woman on her hands and knees, knocking things over and tumbling to the ground – she was supposed to be able to protect him from the Shaitan? He realized his teeth were grinding.

Nias had a flash, a sudden, intense desire to leave her, to never see this female again. This is a really stupid plan. People are going to die; this girl is going to die.

Now he had to return to Jibreel and her sisters and tell them he had found her. This day just kept getting better and better.

“I am fucked,” he said to himself and transcended out.