Pursuing Paige (18 page)

“It’s a hot one
out there today, huh?” said Evan, smiling.

Oh,
great,
small talk. She forced a smile. “Yes, yes, it is.”

Silence. The
elevator music soothed them with soft jazz. Wow, it took a long
time to get to the sixty fifth floor.

Evan cleared
his throat and turned toward her a little. “I was wondering if you
were busy tonight, Kaitlyn. There’s a—”

Oh, no.

“I can’t.” She
blurted, and then froze, realizing how rude she’d sounded. Evan was
a nice guy, good looking too. He wasn’t married, or obnoxious, and
it really
was
time she got back to dating. Yet… “I’m sorry.
It’s not you. You’re an awesome guy. I’m just really into my work
right now.”

Evan took a
step back from her. He gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“No problem. It was just, you know, an idea. An…elevator pitch.” He
laughed, but it sounded a little trembling. Nervous.

The car dinged,
stopped, and let on another passenger. She and Evan moved to the
back and Kaitlyn touched his arm. “Like I said, it’s not you, but I
appreciate it.”

“No problem.”
But he wouldn’t look at her.

Great.
She felt like a total asshole now. Her sisters would kick her butt
if they knew she’d just turned down a date with a suitable guy,
too.

The elevator
doors opened and Evan scooted out as fast as he could. Kaitlyn
exited slowly, letting Evan get the distance from her that he so
clearly needed, and found her office, closing the door behind her.
All she wanted was to lose herself in work. Drown in it. If she
couldn’t be locked in those amazing daydreams all day, she wanted
to be completely distracted with something else. Something she
knew. Something safe. Something she was good at.

She worked into
the early evening. Finally, after the sun had gone down and the
office outside her door was dark, quiet, and the cleaning crew was
working, she sat back in her chair and stretched. Time to go home
to her empty, lonely apartment.

Maybe it was
time to get a cat. She sighed.

Closing her
eyes, she tried to drift into that lovely dreamscape, but she
couldn’t do it. She could never invoke the daydreams on her own;
they were always involuntary. A result, Kaitlyn was sure, of a life
filled with stress. Not only was she swamped at work, but that
nasty divorce had an emotional echo. She’d had to file a
restraining order against a man she’d thought had loved her. So it
was likely these little snatchaways she was having were probably
her mind’s way of dealing with all the tumult in her life.
Harmless…though their uncontrolled nature was strange. Worrisome,
even.

Her head told
her she needed to seek help, but her heart jealously guarded every
second she spent with the two men in her daydreams. Both of them
were tall, ripped—one dark haired and one light. One of them was
tattooed. There was something animalistic about the pair of them,
something brutal…something
wild
. Yet she sensed they wanted
nothing but to protect her.

They just
wanted her, every inch of her.
Forever
.

She supposed
that would be frightening if the men were real. But they weren’t
real. They were a figment of her overstressed, overstretched,
overworked imagination. So she was free to admire them whenever
they sprang up.

Neither of them
had talked to her in her daydreams, or touched her. They were
always doing something, forging iron, riding a horse, chopping
wood, whatever. That was okay, looking at them was enough. It was
like she segued into an alternate reality just for a couple minutes
at a time, observed their life there, except both the men knew she
was watching them. They looked her with such determination on their
faces, such hunger. They wanted her. They both had claimed her
as….

Ours.
The word breathed through her office, spoken in a low, rough male
voice.

Kaitlyn shot to
her feet, every muscle in her body tight. Occasional mental
vacations were all right, but hallucinating voices in her office
was going
too far
. She stood frozen for a moment, trying to
convince herself that she hadn’t just heard a disembodied male
voice claim her as his, but she couldn’t do it. She’d heard that
voice clear as if someone had been standing right next to her.

Maybe she
needed help after all.

“No.” She
gathered her tote bags, stuffing in a few files she might want to
look at before bed. “I don’t need help, I need Caroline. I need
company. I need—” She groaned. “Now I’m talking to myself. That’s
just great.”

She raced out
of the office, trailing loose sheets of paper behind her and nearly
colliding with one of the cleaning people. All she wanted was to
get to Caroline’s house. Her sister lived alone and would still be
up; she wouldn’t mind her little sister dropping in for an
unexpected visit.

Kaitlyn
shouldered her tote bag and mounted the stairs to the elevated L
stop at Milwaukee and North, not far from her office, and walked
onto the platform to wait for her train.

This was an
affluent area, yet she was still very aware of her surroundings.
But even though it was well after dark in downtown Chicago, she
wasn’t afraid. That’s what self-defense classes were for, classes
she’d been taking with abandon since her former husband had gone
wonky doodle. And pepper spray. No way was she going to be held
captive by the fact she was a woman.

Ours.
The voice drifted on the air, filling up the space around her. Just
one voice, but more than one claim. The two men of her daydreams,
she assumed.

Her eyes
widened and she went stock still. A man sat on the metal bench near
her reading a book. He didn’t budge. Seemingly, the voice was in
her head. That was
so
not a good thing.

Come to
us.

“Come to you?”
The words slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them, a
gut reaction to the whispered request of one of the men who were
only supposed to exist in her fevered, overworked imagination.

The man on the
bench shifted uneasily and glanced at her.

A train sped
by, blowing an empty drink container around the platform and
buffeting her hair.
Come to us
, the voice breathed again.
She turned to run away, off the platform, down the street, anywhere
to escape the voices in her head, but she knew she couldn’t run
from her own crazy. Maybe wonky doodle was catching.

Something
tingled through her body. A pulling sensation tugged at her
clothes.

The train
whipping in front of her seemed to speed up and grow longer. She
looked down the track and couldn’t see the end of it; it was just
one long stretch of blurry silver. Paper and trash buffeted around
her feet. The air from the passing train became stronger, thrumming
around her head and yanking at her clothing. She stepped back and
saw that the man with the paperback was gone. Had he run away…or
just vanished?

The wind grew
stronger, roaring in her ears. The train sped impossibly faster.
She turned to flee and she staggered to the side. Her tote slipped
from her shoulder and dropped to the pavement. This was not right.
This was
not
normal.

Her vision
became fuzzy. She dropped to her knees. Throwing back her head, she
shrieked in fright, but the roar of the wind swallowed the sound,
tossing it away like it was nothing.

Blackness.
Silence. Floating.

A couple
moments later, her throat raw from screaming, and she lay on
something soft and cool. She cracked her eyelids, letting in a
flood of bright light. Her pupils weren’t ready for that. She
pushed up and scrabbled backward, shielding her eyes with her
forearm.

“Take it easy,”
said a low, male voice.

She whipped her
arm down and blinked owlishly. The cool soft stuff was grass. The
bright light was sunshine. The low, male voice came from…..

“Oh, my….god.”
She must have had a psychotic break at some point, because one of
the men from her daydreams was standing in front her, though this
experience lacked the wispy, vague, removed quality that was always
present.

This was real.
Real grass. Real ground. Real sunshine.

Real
man
.

She squinted up
at him, drawing long, deep breaths into her lungs to stave off a
panic attack. Had she leapt completely into insanity? She pushed to
her feet. “What the hell is going on?”

It was the dark
haired one. He looked just as he always had—tall, broad,
dark-haired, black tattoos snaking down his sinewy arms and
crawling up his throat. Chocolate brown eyes that were deep and
dark, full of mysteries she wanted to explore. A face as if
chiseled from rock, not quite handsome, one cheek marked with a
long, white scar. Full, expressive lips—lips that made a woman want
to suck, nibble at; lips that made a woman think the most impure
thoughts. She wondered what a man could do with a mouth like
that.

His body seemed
chipped from rock, just like his face, yet she bet his flesh was
warm. She wanted to find out, wanted to explore the planes of his
chest with her fingertips, trace over the ridges of his abdomen.
She could spend hours exploring a body like his.

He was, in
short, her dream man. One of a matched set.

The man walked
to her. “Kaitlyn Isabella Gannet.”

“Y-yes.” Then
she understood that it hadn’t been a question.

He knew her
name.

He pulled her
against his body. She was too shocked to do anything but let him.
He was hard and warm and his arms felt good around her when she
should have been terrified. His gaze held hers and her breath
locked in the back of her throat. His head dipped suddenly and his
lips caught her lips. His breath warmed her mouth, scented like the
sweetest mint. His tongue slid into her mouth. Kaitlyn’s knees went
wobbly and her spine turned to marshmallow. This man, whoever he
was, had engaged every hormone in her body in under three
seconds.

She wanted him.
No…she
needed
to have him. Now.

For a moment,
she struggled with one of the strongest, most primal instincts
she’d ever had in her life.
Sex. With this complete stranger.
Right now.
It wasn’t right, wasn’t safe, definitely wasn’t
sane. She had to break this spell before she did something she’d
regret in the long run.

She reached
into her pocket, drew her pepper spray and squirted him in the
face, knowing she was close enough to get a little of it too.

White hot fire
hit her eyes. They pushed away from each other, both coughing hard
enough to break a rib. She scrambled away blind, her eyes burning
and watering, trying to get as far from him as she could.

“Stop,” came
his low, commanding voice from behind her.

“No way. I
don’t know who you are or where I am.” She wiped her watering eyes
and glanced behind her to find him on his knees, covering his face
and groaning.
Good.
“Why did you bring me here?” She
continued to move away from him, feeling her way forward, hindered
by her blurry eyesight.

“I didn’t bring
you. You were drawn.” He spoke with an accent she couldn’t place.
“You came because you were meant to come. You belong here with
us.”

She stumbled,
not understanding his words. Belong with who? Those two hunky guys
from her fantastical daydreams? No way.

“
Stop.
”
He sounded really close now.

She glanced
behind her and saw that the pepper spray had apparently worn off.
Her eyes still burned and she hadn’t even taken a direct hit. What
was with this guy? He strode to her as if completely unaffected.
Was he superhuman? She hastened as much as she could, but her eyes
were still watering. Her shoe caught on a clump of weeds and she
fell.
Hard.

By the time
she’d flipped to her back, he was looming over her. Through her
burning eyes, she watched him extend a hand. “Don’t be afraid. Come
with me.”

Don’t be
afraid
, easy for him to say. He was ten thousand times her
size.

She narrowed
her eyes. “Why?” The man was too gorgeous for words, but that
didn’t make him trustworthy.

“I am Lucas.
You are my mate. Mine and Rafian’s.
Ours.
That’s why.”

She stared at
him, trying to comprehend what he’d just said. “Mate? What does
that mean?”

Lucas shifted
impatiently. “Woman, I speak English very well. I learned it for
you. You must know the meaning of the word
mate
.”

She blinked
through achy, reddened eyes. “Mate as in
sex,
or mate as in
joined in some kind of….marital type arrangement?”

His teeth
flashed white as he bared them, looking predatory for a moment.
“Both. Lots and lots of…
both
.”

Kaitlyn’s mouth
went dry. “Uhm. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m a software
engineer from Chicago. I have a career back there. I can’t go off
mating
with a couple strange men from—wherever this is.”

His head lifted
as if he heard a sound in the distance. All she heard were
twittering birds. “We’re not safe here.”

She glanced
around at the lush forest that surrounded them. They were in a
meadow dotted through with tall grass and daisies. All the scene
needed were cavorting kittens. “What’s not safe about this
place?”

Not a
millisecond after she’d muttered the sentence the sounds of
shouting, horses, and men crashing through forest filled the air.
Lucas’s gaze caught hers and held. Then he moved, leaping to the
side almost faster than her eyes could track. His form blurred and
a curious sound she couldn’t identify came from his direction….a
stretching, popping kind of sound. It was a fleshy, organic,
alien
noise that made cold, stark fear race up her
spine.