“Shhh,” he said against her skin.
The dream surroundings—shapes incomprehensible—gleamed so bright that her vision was dazzled.
“Is it always this intense in dreams?” She wondered who the hell she was, didn’t recognize herself. Or was the heat of the kiss a product of her essential self, too long confined?
“I’m pretty sure it’d be this way between us while awake, too,” he said. “We should experiment.”
The huskiness of his voice, proof that he was similarly affected, made her glow. And like him, she already knew what the outcome of said experiment would be. She’d been putting distance between them from the first moment they’d met for that very reason.
Not him. Dangerous. Bad.
God, who had she thought she was fooling? From her first glance at him, her whole body had become painfully, frighteningly aware. It was just that she couldn’t afford to lose her mind over anything or anyone right now. Maze needed her, always needed her. She was in trouble again.
“You think about it.” Didn’t seem like he’d accept an answer he didn’t like.
Yes, she wanted to try this awake. “You warned me about danger.”
He laughed, and it felt so good rumbling against her.
“I didn’t mean me,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure you’re the most dangerous thing in Rêve.”
“Will you let me show you around? You’ve really got to know how to operate here.”
She knew she was going to love it, no matter what might lurk in the dark. She felt amazing, all-powerful, as though anything and everything were possible.
But then, Michael’s arms were still around her, so that might have had something to do with it.
***
He had to release his hold—couldn’t very well travel holding her as tightly as he was—but he kept a grip on her hand. The hollow in his chest had lit with something. The sensation was so sharp and sweet it almost hurt, and he was scared that it might go out.
Fuck it. Girl was never getting away. Not after a kiss like that. He was near cross-eyed with the need to finish what they’d started—and he would in the waking world. It’d never been like that. Never. If he’d known it could be, he’d have tracked her down years ago. Brought flowers. Begged.
How weird that she was the kind of woman his mom would’ve liked. Pretty and sweet—a nice girl, a young lady. Next to her he was so rough.
But when Jordan looked up into his eyes and said, almost daring him, “Show me,” he forgot how rough he was. Didn’t really matter. They were the same in at least one way that mattered. Dreams were like that.
It’d been so long ago that he’d first tried Rêve, when he’d been plugged into a dirty dream cooked up by a street-corner dealer who’d shifted from selling silver to something even more psychedelic. The crash into sleep had been hard—dangerous by any standard—and the bootleg shared dream had been a twisted mindfuck with talking 2D animals doing bad things to Revelers.
Jordan, on the other hand, was just waking to the possibilities of shared dreaming.
She surveyed her surroundings, which were dimming and growing more detailed. The random crumbled walls became the red brick of a suburban house with windows so dark that they were empty, sad, and frightening. Where she’d grown up, maybe?
Protocol said to begin by walking through her dream and showing her how to take it apart. However, this particular house was so meticulously recreated and solid that it went beyond the mere suggestion of real that was so typical of dreams, to something iconic in her imagination. He was hesitant to move her toward it after they’d started out so well.
Didn’t feel right.
When she yanked her attention away, he took her cue and ignored the house, too. Another time. He had things in his dreams he wanted to ignore, too, and no one should be forced to reveal their darkest places to others or even investigate them themselves if they weren’t ready or didn’t want to.
Next up, the Agora, which she should know about anyway. That’s where she’d learn, crossing into Rêves and observing how they were created, until her talents became evident and she was sent out into dreamspace in whatever capacity Chimera saw fit.
That she would become one of them was a foregone conclusion. Free agents never lasted long. And after she signed up and took her vows, he’d casually break it to her that Michael wasn’t his real name. It was a security measure for anyone who went out in the field.
Rook turned away from the house and drew her down the street. “All the basic stuff to know you should feel, but I’ll go over it anyway.”
In a regular dream, the rest of this neighborhood might materialize out of her memory, but since he was leading, the street gradually deteriorated, more and more houses seeming empty, incomplete, with missing walls. Haunted. The pavement crumbled beneath their feet.