Cold Sight (20 page)

Saturday, 5:45 a.m.

Lexie couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such vivid dreams, the kind that were so intense, it was hard to know where fantasy ended and reality began. She only knew that as she woke up, she had to sit straight up in bed and blink a few times, plus pat her hand on the pile of rumpled sheets beside her, just to be sure she wasn’t still asleep.

Because in her dreams, she hadn’t been alone beneath those sheets.

“Good God.” She swung her legs off the bed and sat in the darkness, trying to slow her rapid breaths. She’d had nightmares a lot lately. Bad ones. But last night was the first time she could recall dreaming about hot, sweaty sex with a guy she hadn’t even known a few days ago.

If Aidan McConnell really had the kind of skills and talents she’d dreamed about, he didn’t have to worry about going back to work as a psychic. He could get a job providing satisfaction to women. She’d hire him. Dream Lexie had taken every little bit of physical pleasure she could get from the man until she’d been totally wrung out and unable to move.

Her breaths evened out, but nothing cooled off the heat in her. She was hyped up, her nerve endings afire, every feminine part of her in thrall to the fantasy delights of the night before.

Considering they hadn’t even kissed, and Aidan had done nothing more than gently touch her face, she couldn’t understand why her nighttime rest had been consumed by him. Yes, he was incredibly good-looking, but she’d met good- looking men before and her subconscious hadn’t spent entire nights indulging in wild fantasies about them. It seemed like it had gone on for hours, dream after erotic dream about being with him, touching him, having Aidan in every way a woman could have a man. Thinking about it, she suspected she’d actually been rocked awake by a real orgasm about an hour ago, but had interpreted it as part of the illusion.

“You are losing it,” she told herself as she got up and stumbled to her bathroom. “And you need to get laid.” Preferably by someone who could satisfy her and then be easily forgotten.

Which left Aidan McConnell out of the picture. He wouldn’t be easily forgotten. The man had already taken up residence in the most secretive, hidden part of her brain, where her deepest fantasies and sensual wishes resided. Though she hadn’t communicated with that part of herself for a long time—it had been eighteen months since she’d slept with anyone—she knew she wouldn’t be shutting it down again soon. Not when it had been so thoroughly awakened.

Standing at the sink, she eyed herself in the mirror, seeing the tangled hair, the moist, parted lips, the pucker of her nipples against her T-shirt. She didn’t look like a woman who’d had erotic dreams; she looked like one who’d had an actual erotic night. As if she’d truly given herself over entirely to her new lover and he’d given her immense satisfaction.

But now she was awake. And very—
very
—needy.

Part of her wanted to go back to bed, to lose herself in that decadent bliss again. This time, she wasn’t even sure she’d have to fall asleep before the images overtook her thoughts. She was, for once, easily remembering every detail of her dreams.

Wow, the details. Obviously she had a wild side she’d never tapped into before.

A worried thought flashed through her mind, because everything about last night—and now—was so out of character for her. “Did you do this to me?” she asked, speaking not to her reflection but to the man she’d dreamed about. Had he somehow caused last night to happen?

Crazy
. Whatever he might be able to do when it came to the woo-woo stuff, she definitely could not. Psychic ability wasn’t catching. The simple touch between them in the car might have left him with some residual sensations, but it shouldn’t have done anything to her beyond feeling nice at that particular moment.

And it had. Really nice. But there hadn’t been any mystery, any otherworldly stuff about it. From the minute she’d met Aidan, she’d been overwhelmed by his magnetism. He hadn’t used any powers to arouse her, beyond his own strong sexual appeal.

She didn’t breathe a sigh of relief yet, however. Because the way he’d described his abilities brought another worrisome thought to mind. What if he tapped into her dreams? Were they floating around, her own invisible lust-print on the world, waiting to be discovered? Could he see what had been on her mind throughout the long night hours, envision the erotic moments that had played out behind her eyes? If so, how would she ever face him again?

“Naked and on a flat surface,” she immediately whispered, not giving it a second thought.

She didn’t know where the response had come from; she knew only that she meant it, as if she’d always known that’s where they would end up. No, she hadn’t gone to bed imagining he was with her. She’d liked his touch, liked the warmth that had been building between them. Still, she hadn’t truly thought about them having sex, beyond the general he’s-so-damn-hot stuff.

Now, however, when she did think about it, she had to wonder whether her subconscious was telling her to just drop any mental barriers and go for it if she had the chance.

Okay, so he wasn’t an unchallenging, no-strings guy.

She didn’t see him as the type who would indulge in meaningless one-night stands, not when intimate touching opened him up to so much potential conflict. She already knew he wouldn’t be easily taken and forgotten. But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t want to go right ahead and take him.

So take him
. Her heart beat a little faster and she went soft inside. Oh, yeah, she definitely wanted to take him. She just wasn’t sure how. Or when.

Unfortunately, she had no time to think about it. The only thing she had time for right now was a long, hot shower. But hell, if that shower included a little erotic daydreaming and some flirtation with her shower massage, well, there were certainly worse ways to start the day.

Chapter 8

Saturday, 5:50 a.m.

Having long been a victim of insomnia, Aidan was used to sleeping in short increments. He took rest when he could get it, not even attempting to shut himself down unless his mind was devoid of any pressing thoughts. Which meant he’d done very little sleeping the previous night.

But at some point he had drifted off. He’d last looked at the clock at three. Checking it now as he jerked awake, he realized he’d managed almost three solid hours, which was good for him these days. Yet he didn’t feel rested. God, no. In fact, he felt more edgy and tense than ever.

Because of his dreams.

“Shouldn’t have touched her, man,” he told himself as he sat up on the couch in his office, where he almost always slept these days. “You should never have made contact.”

Too late. He
had
touched her, cupped her cheek, felt the brush of her hair on his skin. And though he’d been honest that he couldn’t do any kind of Vulcan mind meld, that simple connection of his fingertips to Lexie’s face had created a hell of an opening between their minds.

Maybe not. Maybe it was just a normal dream. And just
yours.

Maybe. After all, he’d never experienced anything like that before, sharing actual real-time mental images with another person while they both slept. It never worked that way, his ability. There had never been an actual open channel with thoughts, feelings, and sensations flowing back and forth between him and someone else.

So, yeah, it probably had been just his dream. A hot, sexy dream about a sexy woman who’d intrigued him from almost the very start.

“Yeah, dream on,” he muttered.

Because, somehow, he knew it had been real. Last night hadn’t been some standard sex dream. It had been so physical, so tangible. He was out of breath, as if he’d completed a hard workout. His heart was pounding. He could smell that spicy shampoo of hers, plus the sweet, pungent aroma of steamy sex. He was sweating, his skin sensitized. And he had a huge hard-on.

“More than just a dream,” he admitted aloud.

There had been communication, give-and-take between them. Each intimacy had been returned with an equally erotic one, and they’d moved together like long-time lovers.

They’d met in the night. Her mind had been swept up with midnight visions and he’d barged into them. The details were too clear, the sensations too extreme to mean anything else.

Though he’d walked her to her door last night, he hadn’t gone in. Yet he knew the sheets on her bed were a soft yellow and the bedspread had daisies on it. He knew the ceiling fan above the bed squeaked, but that the breeze it generated felt good against their sweat-tinged bodies.

He knew Lexie had a small birthmark just below her right pelvic bone, that it was shaped like a crescent moon, and that his lips would fit perfectly against it. Just like he knew she loved having him tangle his fingers in her hair when he was inside her.

He knew all of that. Because he’d been there, in her mind, sharing every experience as it had happened. He’d slipped inside her dream and upped the stakes, answering each of her fantasies with mind-blowing attention, fulfilling every one of his own at the same time.

He knew something else, too. They hadn’t been sharing one dream about some could- have-been kind of encounter. They had jointly anticipated a someday-soon one.

And though he knew he was nowhere near ready to let anybody—any woman—into his life on a real, permanent basis, especially one who was upbeat, energetic, outgoing, and his total opposite, his bed was a completely different story. There, he didn’t think it mattered how different they were, or whether he was even capable of connecting emotionally with anyone ever again. He was definitely interested in connecting physically.

So if he had his way, that someday soon would be very soon indeed.

Saturday, 10:55 a.m.

“Ms. Jackson? Berna Jackson?” Lexie asked, knocking on the warped apartment door. She’d intentionally arrived at the dilapidated building at midmorning. Her hope was to be late enough that Vonnie’s mother would be awake, but early enough that she hadn’t yet left to go out for a liquid lunch that would last dozens of courses and many hours. “I need to talk to you!”

She got no answer. Lexie considered pounding harder, yet she hesitated. The building was quiet. On arrival, she’d seen none of the residents smoking on the outside stoop like there had been yesterday, nor did any children play on the rusty swing set outside. The dingy halls, lit by bare, weak bulbs, were deserted. No ragged women watched with suspicious, bruised eyes; no thin, jittery men tried to hide the needle they’d just used to shoot up. It was a ghetto ghost town.

She suspected she knew why. Lots of people would be sleeping off hangovers or recovering from a wild Friday night that lasted until dawn. Children had probably been plopped down in front of Saturday-morning cartoons and told to stay quiet for fear of waking up somebody who wouldn’t be happy being awakened. What a life. What an awful, tragic life.

Vonnie
. God, no wonder she’d so desperately wanted to get out. For her sake, she couldn’t give up. Hopefully, now that Aidan seemed committed to helping her, and the whole town was starting to demand answers, the truth would come out.

She couldn’t deny it felt good to have allies. Especially allies who could stare down a belligerent jerk, or touch her and make all the anxiety melt away.

She knocked again. “Mrs. Jackson, please open the door. I have some information. I think you’re going to want to hear about what happened at the game last night.”

Mentioning the game reminded her of the rest of last night. As in, her car. She still had to deal with the legalities of that. She’d called her insurance agent this morning, who’d told her she’d need to file a police report. Not up to that, she’d arranged for a rental car. To her knowledge, her poor little Honda still sat on its four flat tires in the school parking lot. It wasn’t going anywhere and could be dealt with this afternoon—when she didn’t have to do it alone.

Somehow, the image of going to the police station and reporting the vandalism seemed a little easier when Aidan was included. He’d made the offer last night, and while it hadn’t seemed entirely necessary then, now she intended to take him up on it. It would be one of their first stops after she met up with him at his place at noon. Hopefully by then she’d be able to meet his eye without revealing that she’d spent all night dreaming of doing wild things with him.

Glancing at her watch and realizing Vonnie’s mother was either dead to the world or already gone, she gave it one more shot. She knocked again, a little harder, and raised her voice as much as she dared. “Please, Ms. Jackson, I know you wanted to talk to me!”

Still nothing, but she did hear a creak from behind her. Swinging around, Lexie saw a robe-wearing neighbor, eyeing her through a cracked door across the hall. This wasn’t the same woman she’d talked to previously, who’d been weary but worried about her neighbor’s daughter. This one looked hard and bleary-eyed, as if she’d been on an all-night bender. And Lexie had woken her up. Not a good way to begin an acquaintance.

“Hi. I’m sorry to—”

“She ain’t home. Ain’t been home since yest’day mornin’.”

A vicious-sounding dog barked from behind the closed door of another apartment in the rundown building. A thin wooden door, a chain, and a dead bolt didn’t sound strong enough to keep it away should it choose to sic. It might, however, keep random drug dealers and thieves from coming too close, which was probably the animal’s entire purpose in life.

Honestly, Lexie found it hard to believe the girl she’d been learning so much about over the last forty-eight hours had grown up here. How had she done it? How had Vonnie had the strength to overcome this when so many could not?

“Do you know where she is?” Somehow, Lexie suspected Vonnie’s mother wasn’t out there holding candlelight protests.

“She got the notes you left,” the woman said. “Was supposed to call you.”