Pleasures of the Night(70)
“It’s breakfast.”
“Are you babysitting Justin again?”
“Nope. This is my breakfast.” Lyssa picked up a cracker and took a bite. It was the best thing she’d ever tasted. Made by loving hands, it carried a heated reminder of their late night snack.
“Ugh.” Her mother wrinkled her nose. “So where is he?”
“Where’s who?” Lyssa poured a quick cup of coffee, added cream and sweetener, and washed down the sticky peanut butter.
“Don’t be dense. I want to meet him. I haven’t seen you look so good in years.”
Smiling, Lyssa picked up another cracker and walked around the counter to take her favorite stool at the bar.
Her mother followed, a frown marring the space between her brows. “Is he a professor?” She moved to the dining table and looked over the books there. “Or a student?”
“Something like that.”
“Why the mystery? I don’t like it.”
For a moment Lyssa tensed, wondering how she would explain the jeweled book. Relief filled her to see that it was hidden beneath a stack of papers. “You’re just nosy.”
“Stonehenge, huh? I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“Not me.” Not if it meant Aidan would go home. There was so much she wanted to learn about him, so many things she wanted to show him and share with him. He said he knew everything about her because in the Twilight he could see into her mind. She wanted the time to know him just as well.
“Did he go to the store or something?” Cathy asked, looking around. “Maybe he saw your idea of breakfast and decided to get some real food. Really, Lyssa. You can’t feed a man a meal like that.”
“He’s sleeping upstairs.”
“Oooh.”
Lyssa immediately regretted telling her mother. Cathy was hurrying up the stairs before Lyssa could protest. All she could do was follow and hiss, “This is bad even for you, Mom!”
“Just a peek. I promise I won’t wake him up.” Her mom paused in the bedroom doorway and froze. She said nothing for a long moment, and then, “Jesus. Is he real?”
“No. He’s a blow-up doll. Top of the line.”
Her mother glanced over her shoulder with a glare. “Smart ass.” She turned her gaze back to the bed. “Where did you find him, and are there any more like him?”
“He found me, remember?” And thank god he had. Lyssa lifted to her tiptoes so she could see him, too. Aidan Cross sleeping on her bed was the most erotic sight ever.
The two of them were silent, both of them arrested by the glorious specimen of masculinity stretched out in vulnerable slumber. The only sound in the room was breathing, the soft in and out of air in lungs. Her mother took one step into the room…
…and JB’s sudden protective growl scared the shit out of both of them. Cathy jumped and screamed, which frightened Lyssa enough to leap back and screech.
Aidan didn’t even twitch.
Lyssa knew her mother could wake the dead with that scream, and her own screech wasn’t too shabby in the corpse-raising department, either. Her heart, already racing from recent events, kicked up a notch. Something was very wrong. “Mom, you’ll have to leave now.”
“Why?”
“Hot guy. In my bed. You figure it out.” A hot guy who wasn’t moving or reacting to external stimuli.
“I don’t know how the hell you plan to wake him up if two screaming women didn’t do it. Poor guy. You wore him out.” Cathy moved toward the stairs, her hand still pressed to her chest. “That animal is possessed, Lyssa. You’ll never catch a man with that beast around.”
“Don’t worry about that now.” Lyssa hurried her mother down to the first floor and then hugged her with more than usual fervor in the entryway, breathing in the familiar scent of Coco by Chanel. In case she wouldn’t get the chance again, she said, “I love you, Ma. A lot.”
“I know, baby.” Cathy’s hand stroked over her head and down her back, bringing tears to her eyes. “Will I get to see your McDreamy awake sometime?”
Lyssa set her shoulders back. “I’ll do everything I can to make that happen. I promise you that.”
“Connor, damn it. Where the fuck are you?”
Just as a Dreamer would be, Aidan was fully cognizant of his surroundings. However, unlike a Dreamer, his stream was degraded, creating a murky glass effect. Connor spent precious moments trying to figure out if he could reach his best friend from the control panel or if he would have to leave. In the end, he quickly erased all the vids of the last several minutes in the Temple, then met Philip outside.