Dark Flame (Flame 3)

The same.

But different.

Yet so much better.

Real. So real.

She trembled as his arms slid around her in response.

Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe this would make things a thousand times worse. After all, Brannick would never forgive her for coming to him illegally as she had. He was a man of rules, procedures and control.

She started to draw back, but he followed with his lips and captured her mouth. She gave a cry as his tongue drove within, familiar, yet so much more.

She slung both arms around his neck.

Brann.

She hadn’t meant to communicate telepathically, but she was overcome.

She was in his arms at long last, this time for real.

CHAPTER TWO

Brannick had served on the Crescent Border Patrol for years. He’d faced death squads in Rotten Row. He’d had witches put their sizzling fingers up to his temple ready to kill him. He’d been cut open with a dozen sword swipes from fae and dead-talker bad guys. He’d had drugged out shifters, in wolf form, tear chunks out of his arms, legs and once his abdomen.

He knew what pain was.

He knew how to battle the enemy.

He’d grown strong on all fronts because of the hellhole he lived in called Five Bridges.

What he didn’t have either the will or the strength to do, was to let go of the woman in his arms.

His lips were pinned to hers, his tongue plunging in and out. She even tasted familiar, which seemed impossible. He ran his hands down her back and felt her tremble beneath his touch.

He could recall the dreamglide now in perfect detail, how just hours ago he’d been buried inside her, watching passion move in erotic waves over her creamy, freckled skin. He could hear her moans and see how he leaned down to kiss her cheek. He’d shifted his position and given her a solid rock of his hips to which her whole body had rolled with pleasure.

But it had only been a dream. No, that wasn’t accurate. It had been a dreamglide, an alternate reality the powerful fae could create.

He drew back and met her gaze. Holding her right now, however, was real life or ‘real-time’ as the fae called the present.

Setting his memory of the shared dreamglide aside, he could feel the flesh of her body through her dress and the way her breasts rose and fell against his chest. She felt amazing beneath his touch, familiar yet not, but now oh-so-fucking-real.

“Brann, what are you thinking? Talk to me.”

“That you feel the same but so different. Better. More physical. More … real.”

She nodded three times very fast, and her breathing was erratic. Her tongue touched her lips. Because of the dreamglide, he knew the signs of her arousal and how easily he could take her to bed because of the state she was in. She was clearly vulnerable to him, which turned him on.

Christ, he’d been her lover for five months now.

But what did any of it mean?

Slowly, he let his arms fall away, then took a step back. He needed distance on so many levels. In an essential way, he didn’t approve of dreamgliding. In terms of his work, it was illegal to turn yourself over to a fae who could invade your dreams.

Some of the more gifted Revel dwellers, like Roche, could do intensive searches within a dreamglide and ferret out all sorts of high-profile, highly classified information. The streetlights throughout Five Bridges and each of the security checkpoints at the main bridges were all governed by computers. This kind of information could be extracted during a dreamglide state and sold to anybody willing to pay.

Not that Brannick suspected Juliet of doing anything like that. Not at all. He trusted her allegiance to his cause.