Free Highest Bidder: 1 (Mercy) by Lexxie Couper Page B

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    He walks through long grass, letting the tips of the bowing blades brush his palms. The soil is cool beneath his bare feet, as cool as the gentle breeze lifting his hair from his face. A frown creases his forehead. It has been many solar cycles since his hair reached his eyebrows, his cheeks. And for that matter, the field he walks no longer exists, lost to time and civil war.
    The field of the dream invader, where a lunar cycle of fasting moves a potential adolescent invader into either the dream plane or the dreamless sleep.
    He never sleeps here. Here he destroys enemies, shatters sanities and crushes uprisings.
    Here he grew stronger, stronger, until no other dream invader could best him.
    Here he learned the terrifying power of a nightmare.
    And the terrifying cost.
    The soft grass turns to slicing blades and he lifts his palms, studying the fresh blood seeping from the tiny but deep gashes in his flesh. The pain radiates up his arms, lancing at his heart, and his body turns icy.
    Let me take your pain away.
    Naya forms on the air, soft and delicate, her eyes silver, her lips the color of an Ezilian rose. She takes his bleeding hands in hers and lifts them to her lips, a smile dancing in her gaze.
    A wave of rapture rolls through him and his heart hammers into life. She removes his hands from her lips and shows them to him.
    The blood is gone, replaced by a kiss that shimmers like the new stars on Equox Eve. Because I love you , she says, and her voice comes not from her mouth but from the heavens. It plays over his body like a caress and he pulls in a deep breath, the air sweet and no longer tainted with bitter memories. Because I did not change .
    She gently presses her palms to his jaw and heat melts into his body. She smiles again, the expression sad. But now I have to go.
    No! he cries, reaching for her. You can’t. His hands slip through the misty shape she’s rapidly becoming and his heart screams. No.
    Naya’s lips feather his own, a final kiss. A gentle farewell.
    I must, and you understand why. It is one of the reasons I love you, and one of the reasons you love me.
    Naya! he calls, desperate to hold her to him, but she’s just a wisp. Smoke. Particles of reality floating in a dream. Naya, no!
    My soul , the wind whispers.
    My heart , the blades of grass cry.
    Dreylan drops to his knees, the soil hard and brutal. He looks for his love.
    But she is…
    Gone.
     
    Dreylan sat up, the sheets of his sleeping station tangled around his legs. He peered into the darkness of his rental unit, his heart already knowing what his eyes were learning.
    Naya Kistara was gone.

Chapter Six
     
    “Blowjob to blow your mind,” the Slessorian hooker covered in poorly inked tattoos called from her service booth. “Special offer for you, cowboy, two orgasms for the price of one.”
    Dreylan ignored her, and everyone else on Level 7. He had to find Naya. Now.
    He pushed through the crowd. Or rather, the crowd melted away from him. Which was a good thing. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with fuckwits .
    An image of Naya, as insubstantial as mist, flashed through his head and he scowled.
    Dream invaders didn’t have dreams the way other beings did. For invaders, dreams were meant to be entered, not experienced. But not for Dreylan. And he had never spoken of his erotic dreams of Naya. That he was able to dream at all would be viewed as an abnormality. He’d heard of others of his kind having their minds invaded and wiped by the Ezilian government for merely mentioning the possibility of experiencing a personal dream. The horrific fate of those invaders was a cautionary tale with a profound lesson—one did not confess to dreaming without invasion unless one wanted his mind utterly destroyed.
    Dreylan had been half convinced the dream memories of Naya were the product of an over-traumatized mind. The things he had done inside other people’s heads…the mental exertion it took to work such malevolent chaos… It would