Free Bring Me A Dream: Reveler Series 5 by Erin Kellison Page A

tangling in bed. It’s how she’d kept their relationship unknown for so long, sneaking into sleep. It was an intimate thing, maybe even more so than sex, sliding soul-naked into darkness with someone else.
    Would Vincent dare?
    His gaze hardened and his jaw flexed, but he handed the jack back to Agatha. “All right.”
    Mirren was suddenly nervous. He’d barely touched her, now this? Maybe it wasn’t a good idea.
    Agatha looked back and forth between them. Mirren’s pride kept her from voicing her misgivings.
    “Go easy on me, darling,” Vincent said, setting his tux jacket aside and relieving his neck of his tie. “I’ve had some terrible dreams lately. Nightmares following me around. I threw a hen at one.”
    She settled into a chair, too, a smile pulling at her mouth. The nightmare following him was a recent thing, so she asked, “When were you on a farm?”
    “It was a city hen.”
    “They have hens in New York City?” She closed her eyes. She could do this. She just had to embrace a little madness. Vincent. He was making this easier on her.
    “Indeed, they do,” he said. “Good for fighting.”
    “If you say so.”
    “I just did.”
    “Shut up and go to sleep.” She really did like him. A lot.
    “Anytime you’re ready.”
    “I’m ready.”
    “Then quit stalling,” he said.
    She let Agatha go first, and then fell backward, taking Vincent with her. It was a freefall, as if arching off a high cliff into her native waters.
    Breaking the surface of sleep was usually a fast, cool rush that charged her senses, but with him so close the water was hot, scalding her descent, trickling up inside her to fill, heat, and claim that secret spot deep within. Her awareness was bombarded by sensory detail—all masculine. A simmering rage, barely contained, and a desire roiling about her like bubbles on her skin. It was so much at once that she held her breath, and when the pressure that was undeniably Vincent Blackman faded, she found herself still braced against his need and shocked at the intensity of her own.
    He was clutching her, but not in fear. His mouth was hot against her neck, his arms protectively drawing her into his chest, as if anticipating danger and acting as the shield.
    She was a master of illusion, but she didn’t know how to cover this reaction. Refuge. He was a refuge. An island in the waters. Ally. Friend. And as soon as she could make it happen, much more.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    Vince released Mirren slowly. If he didn’t, Agatha was going to get a show.
    They descended into a work Rêve, the surroundings a soft, misty gray that could be manipulated to create a setting and from there, a narrative for revelers.
    Wait a sec. What did he care if Agatha saw anything? He snuggled closer to Mirren, relishing the feel of her body against his, and let his hands roam. He loved the way her waist dipped in, tight and tiny, but nature hadn’t scrimped anywhere else. She had an hourglass figure. And like an hourglass, he had the strange anxiety that their time together was growing short.
    Submerged in the dreamwaters once again, his mind went cold, threatening to fragment. It was the black stuff on his hands—still there, still staining—that made him let go of her. The stuff had eroded some essential thread in his nervous system. Functions that had been autonomic now required his concentration. His right hand still bore Lambert’s bite, the open scream of a wound. Maybe it was Lambert’s nightmare nature that had made it last, when most everything else in dreams was so ephemeral.
    “How do we get the Sandman here?” Once again, he prayed the legend was indeed Lambert.
    “I want to see my city first,” Mirren said.
    His grip on his sanity slipped. Something about the name Maze City was familiar, but he’d been so mixed up these past couple of days he couldn’t say why. Maybe Jordan had mentioned Lambert was building a city? Vince agreed the concept was very interesting. A working