The Touch of Magic Series, page 46
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.
He still frowned at her, ignoring the noise, barking out his words. "Are you all right?"
Nodding, she held the shirt together with just her grip, the open buttons useless, but he didn't seem to notice. He took her at her word and turned, military sharp, and stalked into the living room.
She was still doing up the last buttons as the noise stopped. Right at the same time she stepped into the living room and saw what had happened.
Her heart stopped cold as all the pieces clicked into place.
Luke had no such revelation, he was simply frowning at everything.
He stood by the door, where he had clearly punched in the code to turn off the alarm. For the first time she saw that he was holding his gun along his leg. On the surface he appeared almost calm, but she could sense he was more like a leashed storm.
His voice held the same controlled tone. "The motion sensor went off." Then he pointed at the couch, his eyes looking where his finger indicated, at the furniture scooted back from its original position.
He still seemed as though he hadn't put it all together, but Yasmin had. Her breathing went shallow as she realized how everything fit. Luke's voice rumbled through her and the sound shot along her nerves much the way his touch had just a few minutes earlier.
"How did the couch move?"
But he didn't wait for her answer, just clutched the gun and walked the border of main room again. He ducked just out of sight as he checked the dark corners of the kitchen.
She almost fell to her knees, her hands clutching the front of her shirt again even though it was now buttoned.
Coming back into the room he spotted her there, sinking down the wall, her breathing now shallow. His arm—the hand not holding the gun—went around her shoulders but she shook him off.
It was that touch that had caused all this.
His alarm was real—he still didn't understand.
Shitshitshit.
"Yasmin?" He looked in her eyes and she didn't want him to. "I think it's safe. I don't know how the alarm went off . . ."
He looked around the room, but ignored her squirming. Instead he held her tighter. "Maybe the cats did it?"
No way had her tiny kittens moved his couch. No, she knew exactly what had and her mouth ran before she could think better of it. "We did it. We moved the couch."
That got his attention right back.
In for a penny . . .
"You're a dreamwalker, Luke."
Sensing the topic was bigger than he might have liked, he slid to the floor beside her asking his tentative question. "What do you mean?"
"You can do actual things in your dreams, including finding other people and bringing them along." She paused only for a heartbeat. "We moved the couch."
"We? I was asleep."
"Yes . . . And no." She couldn't look at him. The things she'd done. The things she'd allowed him to do to her. She'd wanted them. "You have the ability to pull other people into your dreams."
She was starting to say more, to attempt an explanation, when he pulled back and just stared. "Did you do this to me?"
Shaking her head, almost violently, Yasmin denied it. "No! I don't mess with people that way. I don't even make the clerks give me extra change or anything. And if you had asked me to conjure it for you I still wouldn't have done it. What advantage would it give me anyway?"
She realized what she'd said only as the words left her mouth.
His brows rose at her. Then he snorted at some other thought he had. Finally, some odd third expression changed across his face and he relaxed. "It's not right. It was just a dream. I wasn't even sleepwalking. I put a doorstopper under the door and marked it. It never moved. I checked. It was only a dream."
"It wasn't. I was there." She had really enjoyed those dreams, but she wished now she hadn't been in them.
He shook his head. "They weren't real."
Though she would love to let him go on thinking that, she couldn't. They were probably in enough trouble as it was, and he should learn to control it rather than go around thinking there were no consequences.
"Luke, it wasn't a dream."
Again with the eyebrows and the expression that simply did not believe.
"What color is my underwear?"
He almost laughed. "Red with little white and pink hearts."
She lifted the edge of her shirt but didn't say anything else.
Luke shook his head, still in denial "Lucky guess."
Yes, surely when asked for a 'color' a lucky guess was the right main color along with the details in the right color and shape. But she didn't say that. "Where's my birthmark?"
"Back of your shoulder, but I saw that when you were in a towel . . . A week ago."
"It's not that memorable of a birthmark. You remembered it because you'd already seen it in a dream and you were shocked that your dream got it right." She'd been guessing that, but the look on his face told her she was spot on. Then she went for the kill. "And the other?"
"Left hip." His shoulders slumped.
He knew because he liked to bite her lightly there. Yasmin could feel her face turn red and she scrambled for something else. Before she could talk, he suddenly scooted back as though she might burn him.
"You did this. You pulled me into your dreams." His eyes were wide.
She got it. She really did. People were afraid of what they didn't understand. She already demonstrated some power to him in the past. Of course he thought it was her. Of course he was afraid of it, of her. But that didn't make it hurt any less. "It's not me . . . Believe me, I've tried and I have no talent for it. It's you. You have to have done it before, maybe when you were a kid?"
Luke's eyes glazed as his thoughts turned elsewhere. "My best friend and I would dream the same thing sometimes."
Prodding a little, she asked another question. "Did you ever see evidence from those dreams?"
It took a moment of Luke gazing into the middle distance before he answered. "My dad was building a shed once and he had put these stakes out in the yard where the corners would be. Jason—my childhood best friend—and I dreamed we were digging up treasure in the yard and that the stakes were markers. In the morning the stakes were all out. . . But the yard wasn't dug up." He was frowning at her again as though she had done this to him.
"I wasn't there when you were a kid. I didn't even know you then." She could ward off his accusations if not his fear. Maybe she could help fill in some of the gaps he had. "I can't do it, I've tried. What I understand is that when you're in that state, especially if the two dreamers are really in sync—" her face flared red, she could feel it, "—then you can move things. But you can't break them."
For example, the first night he'd ripped open her shirt, sending buttons flying, and when she woke up the shirt had been open, but the buttons intact. Not that she was going to say that out loud and remind him just how steamy it was between them.
He was still keeping his distance, and from his perspective she really couldn't blame him. "So we moved the couch and that set off the motion sensor?"
Yasmin shrugged. Just when she'd thought her life couldn't get much worse. She answered him first, "Yes, I think we moved the couch. Check if there's any other way it could have happened."
While he checked, she looked upward, as though the universe and all its powers were over her head. Silently she pleaded.
Look, I'm sorry. So sorry. I knew casting that love spell was so wrong. But even so, I didn't alter anyone's feelings. I just wanted my love to notice me. I won't do it again. Believe me I got the message the first time I was shot at. The second time was just mean. And this? Finding out my steamy dreams weren't even dreams? Just stop! I've learned my lesson. I've learned it very well, thank you.
She had no idea if it would work. It wasn't even much of a prayer, by the end it had turned into a bit of a rant with a touch of sarcasm. Maybe the universe wasn't done with her yet. Maybe the punishment for bad casting was far worse than she'd thought. Right now, Yasmin wished Delilah had been a little more clear about the gravity of casting on others.
Luke stood in front of her, having swept the whole apartment while she sat there. "I don't see anything else."
Then he almost crumpled in front of her. She was leaping forward to catch him but he fell into a cross-legged sit, the gun almost smacking the ground beside him and making her wince. The look on his face was so defeated she almost cried.
She wouldn't have done it if she'd realized he was dreamwalking. Especially since he had no idea what he was doing. But she didn't think it deserved this look . . . As though he had cheated on someone with her and it had destroyed his life. Her breath sucked in and came back out on a barely audible whisper.
