Darkness Falls(20)

“The ones you go after.”
“Used to go after. I’ve had enough.” He shrugged, the frustration easing out of his expression. “I like recruiting now.”
Hmm. She didn’t want him going into any other woman’s dream. Made her grumbly inside. “You could be a marshal like that other guy.” Just a suggestion.
“Well, technically, I am one already. I’m just assigned to a different task force. Usually I work alone.”
Oh. She looked away to cover her disappointment. She’d been thinking how awesome it would be to go to sleep every night and find him here waiting for her. There were lots of things she wanted to try, and the first thing on her list required his participation.
But this was his job. She was his job.
The memory of their kiss tingled on her lips.
Well, not just his job, she hoped. He’d felt something, too. She had to cool her jets, was all. Infatuation was what this was—the excitement of all these firsts. All of them amazing. Out of everything the Rêve had to offer, his kiss had definitely been the best. She was pretty sure seconds were going to be better. And thirds.
She wanted to hurry up and take it slow at the same time. She’d never been with anyone like him. For good reason, probably. The crash when this ended was going to be brutal. But she didn’t care. Nope, not one bit.
“Okay, so what would you like to start with?” Michael had called up a lightpanel in front of the column and was flicking though the screens. “Did any of the Rêves Fawkes mentioned appeal to you?”
But Jordan’s attention was caught elsewhere. There was someone else walking toward them in the dark space between the columns. Another marshal?
“You pick,” she said to Michael as she took a step away to get a better look.
It was a kid.
His torn jeans and dirty shirt said he was tough, but he still had that childlike, almost girly smoothness to his face. No hormones going on yet, so maybe ten?
What the heck was he doing out in the middle of the Agora? A person had to be eighteen to be able to participate in shared dreaming. Marshal Fawkes wasn’t doing his job.
She bent her knees and leaned forward as he came close. “Hey, are you lost?”
The kid’s eyes filled with tears—poor little guy—and he drew a breath to speak. Michael would know what to do. She almost turned to get him, but the longer she looked at the boy, the less kidlike he appeared. His eyes seemed old and sick. Very sick. So not a kid.
“Jordan!” Michael roared.
The kid leapt on her, rolled them both in mid-air, and brought her down in a dizzy drop, straddling her belly. He drew an arm back, as if to strike—
—but Michael grabbed his wrist and yanked him up and off her. Threw the kid a couple of yards away, where he hit another column with a bone-crack and collapsed on the floor.
Jordan was trying to sit up, when Rook reached forward, presumably to help her up.
But instead he pushed her hard on her chest. “Wake up!”
She fell backward into a stunned collapse, her vision momentarily blanking. When she opened her eyes again, the early pink of dawn illuminated her bedroom curtains.
    







 
    Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance by Jennifer Ashley, Alyssa Day, Felicity Heaton, Erin Kellison, Laurie London, Erin Quinn, Bonnie Vanak and Caris Roane
    
 


 
CHAPTER 5
Vince Blackman clicked through the file he’d found in his morning email. “Yeah, Dad, tell them this should work well.”#p#分页标题#e#
The file detailed the history of the other guy who’d been following Jordan Lane. Hell of a childhood. He had to be Chimera, what with the way he’d disappeared from his life so long ago. There was no record of him past seventeen.
Chimera were supposed to be able to do strange things—both in Rêve and in real life. They were ghosts. They had powers. Or they had really good PR people making them into urban legends. The spin was smart, psychological. Would carry into dreams, where they were supposed to dominate.
“I’ll show it to her this morning,” Vince said.
“They think you should already have her,” his father growled. “Does it always take you this long to land a woman?”
“There are Chimera everywhere watching her.”
“We have people watching her, too.”
We? That was a laugh. His father wasn’t one of them, no matter how much he wanted to be.
“I can’t get close,” Vince said. “She has to come to me.”
“And here I thought you were a Blackman.”
His father had made his bed and was looking for anyone other than himself to lie in it. “Careful, Dad.” His own threat. Jordan Lane didn’t deserve a life of fear. Neither did Vince.