The Protectors Christmas Box Set (sexy paranormal romances) (21 page)

“It’s too late,” Stone was saying. She shook her head, not wanting to listen. Not wanting to believe.

In her heart though, she feared Stone spoke the truth. Brendan’s eyes had turned as dark as the midnight sky. His face twisted with pain, he stared sightlessly at the ground. He’d curled himself into a fetal position, hugging his legs to his chest as if struggling to hold in all that pain and suffering.

He’d taken
the darkness
from her. She felt lighter.

“I didn’t want this,” she whispered. “The cost is too high.”

She wanted Brendan, not this. Her heart was being torn to pieces as she lost the only man she’d ever let herself love.

“I love you, dammit! Don’t you dare die!”

“It’s too late,” Stone said again. His arms slipped away from her waist and she flung herself to Brendan’s side.

She brushed her hand over his cheek. The skin under her fingers felt cold. He wasn’t struggling anymore. It was over.

“No, dammit. No!” she cried.

Brendan didn’t respond. She closed her eyes and reached out into the universe, hoping to find some remnant of his spirit, but there was nothing to be found. The bond between them had been severed. Like Stone had said—it was too late. Brendan was gone.

Forever.

Dallas curled up on Brendan’s bed and sobbed. Two days had passed since his death. She had coolly faced down the council, who’d scolded her for breaking their laws. Thanks to Stone’s arguments on her behalf, they’d ultimately blamed her actions on
the darkness
that had infected her. Since she was no longer tainted, they overruled the mandatory death penalty. For Brendan’s sake, she was pleased. He had given up his life to save hers.

No one had ever loved her so thoroughly. For him, Dallas vowed to move on with her life. She would live, even if every hour that passed without him felt like a lifetime in hell. She owed Brendan that much.

Tears ran down her cheeks as grief overwhelmed her. She was drowning in it as surely as if she were being pulled under the water in a raging river. Or perhaps it was more like a waterfall, a luscious, sapphire blue waterfall that dropped from an azure sky.
His world
.

Dammit, she’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry anymore. But how could she possibly keep the tears at bay when she’d lost the only man she’d ever love?

It would kill him to know she was so miserable, reminded herself. He’d given his life because he wanted her to live. Choking back her tears, she heaved a deep breath and caught a whiff of the sweet aqua aroma she’d only experienced in one place…a place that no longer existed.

Rubbing the tears from her eyes, she gasped when she saw the indigo-tinted reflecting pool not ten feet away from where she had been curled into a tight ball. The cool spray from the waterfall tickled her face.

His world. His sanctuary
. How had it managed to survive?

She pushed herself up to her knees. Her gaze tripped over the landscape, searching. Hoping. Praying.

Then she spotted him. Wearing an old pair of cut-offs and nothing else, he was walking across the sandy beach at the shore of the Caribbean blue sea.

Dallas sprang to her feet and ran to him. He folded her into his embrace and kissed her forehead. She snuggled into his heat.

He nibbled her lips, kissing and licking, while his hands explored her body. Her heart turned a flip when he touched her breast. She found herself getting lost in the sensations filling her. It was easier to forget all about her grief and pretend they could be together forever. In his world.

But this wasn’t her reality. In order to move on with her life, she needed to find out the truth and learn to accept it. Brendan was gone and she was dreaming.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him.

He furrowed his brows and considered the question for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he said, finally sounding completely baffled.

“Are-are you…” She gathered all her courage. “Are you
dead
?”

He glanced down at his arms and then wiggled his toes, half-burying them in the sand. “I don’t think so,” he said, carefully. “You didn’t let me go, remember?”

“But your body…it’s…it’s dead.”

A playful smile brightened his expression. He placed a quick kiss on her nose. “You keep forgetting something important, love. We’re not human.”

“And I keep telling you, I could really use a handbook.”

“Did the humans give you one?”

“Of course not. But, your body. What are we going to do?”

“Don’t worry, tender one,” he said with such confidence, she couldn’t help but believe him. “I’ve left my body for days at a time before. As long as I have a body to return to, I should be okay.”

She bit her lip.

“I do have a body to return to, don’t I?”

She closed her eyes, trying to remember what Stone had told her. It had something to do with the county coroner’s office.

He grabbed her shoulders. “This is important, Dallas. What did they do with my body?”

“The coroner has it. There was some question about cause of death and—” She swallowed down a sob. “They’re going to perform an autopsy today.”

“Okay,” he said. “This isn’t a problem. I’d be in cold storage. That’s good. The cold will preserve the organs. I simply have to get back into my body before some technician starts pulling the important parts out.”

He went very still. His smile faded.

“What? What is it?” Dallas asked.

“I don’t know how to get back. In fact, I don’t know where I am right now.” Pain tightened his expression. “I’m lost.”

Dallas kissed him. Heat swirled between them like a living breeze. “Let me be your guide.”

* * * * *

Dallas had never driven more recklessly in her life. After sending Brendan’s spirit back to his body—condition unknown—she took Brendan’s fast, sporty Audi TT and wasted no time getting down to the city morgue. On the way, she’d called Stone to let him know what was happening.

The guards at the door were no match for her determination. She blasted past the front counter and darted down the halls. A piece of her heart, the piece that was connected to Brendan again, knew exactly where to go.

There was a small, cold room at the end of the hall where two rows of naked bodies were lying out on metal tables. She darted past the pasty bodies until she found Brendan.

He wasn’t moving. His lips were blue and silent.

“I dreamed it.” Her heart sank to her toes.

His skin felt like marble.

She slipped her hand into his and gave it a squeeze. “Oh, my love,” she choked out, “goodbye.”

“
Don’t go
.” His marble-hard hand closed over hers.

“Brendan?” Her blood pounded through her veins. She held her breath, too afraid to hope, as she watched as his stiff eyelids opened. Ice crystals covered his once beautiful chocolate brown eyes.

“
Get me out of here
.” The words were spoken not from his lips, but in her head. This wasn’t good. Stress and grief had made her lose her mind. She was hearing voices while holding a dead man’s hand. If they find her like this, they’d have no choice but to lock her up.

Let them lock her up. She wasn’t going to leave Brendan behind. He’d taught her not to fight her impulses. And she had a strong desire to get him off that damned metal table. Her hands trembled as she reached under his shoulders and used all her strength to lift his upper body.

“It hurts like hell,” he groaned as she helped him sit up.

She kissed his icy, blue lips. “I’m glad it hurts, baby. It means you’re alive and I’m not crazy.”

The door swung open. Frank Stone rushed into the room and tossed a heavy blanket over Brendan’s legs. “We’ll take over from here.” Stone nudged her out of the way so the doctors who had followed him into the room could examine and take care of Brendan.

“She’s not going anywhere.” Brendan looped his frigid arm over her shoulder and pulled her back to his side. “We’re in this together for the long-haul.”

She stroked his bare chest, unable to keep herself from touching him. She had to assure herself that this was real. He was alive. And hers.

“Does this mean I get the associate position at Hamlet, Hamlet, and Golf?” she teased.

“Hmmm…That depends.” The teasing spark in his eyes warmed Dallas’s heart. He loved her. He really loved her. “You won’t have any trouble working for your husband, will you?”

“My husband?” she breathed.

She’d expected he might want to date. Or, if she was lucky, for her to move in with him.

“I mean…” His courage seemed to falter. “That is, if you’re willing to put up with a somewhat crusty, overly possessive lover.”

She was speechless. Utterly speechless. Perhaps she
was
the one who’d died. And she was now in heaven.

“Oh, this is too much. I don’t mean to pressure you,” he was saying. “We can talk about it later.”

“Oh shut up already, Brendan,” Stone said. He was grinning from ear-to-ear like a proud father. “Dallas? What are you thinking?”

She gave Brendan one of her best calculating glares, “Fish, you’d better grab onto something. You marry me, I’ll make sure you get one hell of a ride.”

**End**

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Turn the Page to Read Mystical Seduction

by

Dorothy McFalls

Praise for Mystical Seduction:

"AMAZING!! ... I have never read Dorothy McFalls before but she has earned a place on my 'to-be-read' list!" ~ Just Erotic Romance Reviews

"Dorothy McFalls brings a would-be couple's battle of wills to new heights . . . A botched mating and scorching sexual tension certainly make things interesting for the author's like-minded protagonists, Horace and Faith." ~ Heartstring Reviews 

Lady Czarina dragged a colorful green scarf from a small pocket in her decades old skirt and used it to wipe the puddles of sweat from her neck. She felt the heat more keenly this year than the last. The sweltering July air pressed on her bones like a constant ache.

Old as dirt
, her mother used to complain over a quarter century ago. Thanks to the endless march of time, Czarina finally understood what ancient dirt felt like. She likened it to sitting on a pebble—an irritant that only worsens. Nothing could help Czarina escape her sore, creaking bones anymore. Certainly not all this damned heat.

With the constantly rising mercury, foot traffic to her business had slowed to virtually nonexistent, and she still needed to make a few more psychic readings today before she’d have enough money to pay her overdue rent.

That’s why Czarina perked up when a tall, finely dressed, dark-haired man ducked his head and stepped into her makeshift tent. He looked as if he could afford some of her extras.

“Welcome wanderer,” she said and gave a grand gesture that set the bangles on her arms jangling. She might be the real deal, a palm reader with
the gift
, but she knew it was the show and not her talents, kept her clients coming back.

The man drew closer. She shivered despite the heat. Deep shadows surrounded him. They danced over his soul like demons around an unholy fire. A damp, flat darkness pulled on his aura with the same silence that followed the grieving. His presence weighted the air around him with such force it made her chest ached.

She drew a careful breath. It’d been a long time since she last had the freedom to choose her own clients. Anyone with thirty-five dollars enjoyed admittance into the tattered tent she’d set up on a vacant lot in one of the forgotten suburbs of Chicago.

The police rarely ventured down this narrow alley. And when they did, they weren’t looking for business license violators.

“Please, sit. Tell me what you seek,” she said, even though the last thing she wanted to do was look past the veil and into this man’s soul.
Stay away from the dark ones
, her mother had always warned. The haunted ones brought nothing but trouble…and death.

But she couldn’t turn him away. She needed the money tucked in his pocket, money so rich she could almost smell it. Here in Chicago, a place that had never been her home, she needed every penny she could get. Just staying alive was expensive these days.

Never a minute passed that she didn’t wish she were back in the old country, in Liechtenstein. Back home, surrounded by a large family who supported each other, she could be choosy. But not here. She had to eat and pay her rent. And haunted or not, this man was the first new face she’d seen all day.

The silent man tugged at his sharply pressed pants legs before sitting in the empty chair, a red velvet upholstered wreck she’d scavenged from a garbage dumpster. Without saying a word, he dropped the cash on the silk-draped table that separated them.