Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5)(17)

I sat up groggily, the sheet tucked around my chest. I never tired of looking at him.

“Mick,” I said softly. “I need to tell you something.”

Mick glanced at me through the mirror above the dresser, where he was trying to smooth down his hair—never worked. He caught my expression and turned around. “What’s that, baby?”

He wasn’t expecting anything important. Just me going on about something or other.

I studied him a moment, getting lost in eyes blue enough to drown in. The dragon had receded.

I sat there wondering what past Janet thought was so urgent to tell him, then I realized.

Gods and goddesses, it was that day. The day that changed everything.





Chapter Six

Mick waited. He was always so patient with me, and yet so watchful.

It had been the watchfulness that had started to drive me crazy, on top of days when he’d simply disappeared and refused to tell me where he’d gone. At the time, I’d put down his watchfulness to him being older than me and restraining himself around a less experienced woman. I hadn’t realized at the time how much older. I’m talking a couple hundred years.

The Janet at this moment knew nothing of that. My chest was tight, my throat dry. I wet my lips, took a courageous breath, and blurted out:

“Mick, I love you.”

Mick stilled, his smile dying. His eyes flickered, and for an instant, the black depths of the dragon looked out at me.

The me in the past felt her heart plummet, embarrassment mixing with my outpouring of emotion. I got myself off the bed. “Shit, I just freaked you out, didn’t I? Forget it. Forget it. Forget it.”

Wrapped in the sheet, I headed for the bathroom door, my feet trying to take me out of this awkward situation. I’d been raised to keep my emotions close to my chest, and gushing that I loved a guy wasn’t in character. I don’t know to this day what made me tell him.

Mick got himself around in front of me. “Janet. Stop.” His voice had gone soft, a little bit growly.

“I’ll shower, and we’ll pretend I never said a thing,” I babbled, my eyes fixed on the hollow at his collarbone. “Promise me you’ll still be here when I get out.”

I tried to duck around him, but Mick caught me. “No,” he said in the gentlest voice I’d ever heard him use. “I don’t want to forget it.”

He put his hands on my face and looked down into my eyes as he liked to do. The me of the past didn’t understand what he was searching for. The me of the present did. He was looking for signs of the evil goddess who’d spawned me. Trying to discover if I were just as evil, if everything I said or did was a cover as I waited to explode onto the world and destroy all in my path.

Mick had learned that I wasn’t that evil being. We’d gone through hell before he’d understood that—we were still going through it in some respects.

At the moment the two of us Janets, juxtaposed and both confused, waited while Mick tried to figure out what we were.

One thing Janet past and future shared was love for Mick. That hadn’t changed. In the me of the future, that love had broadened and deepened, until we had understanding between us that I’d never dreamed possible. The Janet of the past had simply been blown away by him, as giddily in love as a young, unworldly woman could be.

This Mick didn’t know me. He even feared me, big-bad dragon that he was.

His eyes flickered again. I saw fire there, anger, and a tiny flare of hope.

Mick closed his eyes, cutting himself off from me. He bowed his head, his unruly black hair brushing my lips.

When he looked up again, something had changed inside him. The me of the past didn’t know what. The me of the future did.

This had been the most important day for me, changing everything.

What I hadn’t known then was—that day changed everything for him. That day, Mick made his choice.

He cupped his hands around my neck, caressing, and his blue eyes moistened. “What am I going to do with you, baby?”

Standing here with him in a bedroom, I could think of a lot of things he could do with me. Mick’s smile came back, full of wickedness. He wound his arms around me and dragged me up for a long kiss.

I found myself in a few minutes, not on the bed, but sitting on the dresser, the mirror cold at my back while Mick loved me with an intensity that rivaled even the storms of the night.

***

That was the day I started to forget. I rode off with Mick an hour later, pleasantly sore, and was both Janets. As the day and the ride went on, the Janet in my future began to fade, my memories of what was to come blurring and receding into dust.

I didn’t fight it too much. These days with Mick had been the happiest of my life. Why not let them take over? Unhappiness and bad times were coming. I would enjoy the hell out of what I had right now, and who cared if I never woke up?