Free Dreamwalker by Kathleen Dante

except . . .
    She’d ordered the coconut custard? But his master thief had been the one who’d sent him that message. He knew her touch. She’d recognized him in the dream!
    He stared at her, this time deliberately probing with his mental sense. Now that she was focused on him, he recognized the cool determination he’d picked up when his master thief had climbed the museum’s wall. Her aura was one and the same— there was no mistaking it.
    “You?”
    Despite appearances to the contrary, she had to be the master thief who’d eluded him. He continued to stare, stunned by his discovery. The difference was as jarring as . . . that Asian woman and the bleached blonde who’d replaced her. How had she pulled it off? She’d actually made him doubt his mental sense.
    She took a bite of custard. “This is really good. You should have some more.”
    He ignored the meaningless remark, still grappling with her disguises. “You’re the one?”
    “You tell me.” She sucked on the tines of her fork, her full lips puckered suggestively. “You’ve been entering my dreams. Traipsing around in my head. Manipulating me.” Despite the blunt accusation, her delivery was calm and unemotional, her aura only tinged with wariness and curiosity. “What are you?” Her level stare demanded equal candor.
    “An incubus, of course,” Damon heard himself answer flippantly, with enough amusement in his voice to make a joke out of honesty. He could only hope she’d find it too ridiculous to give credence.
    “An incubus?” Her brows winged up before knitting over her nose as her gaze sharpened, the jade hue of her irises darkening to bottle green with flecks of blue along the outer edges—no way that color came from tinted contact lenses. “Of course,” she added, her voice soft with apperception.
    Fuck, she’d taken him seriously. He shifted the discussion to safer waters. “So, how did you get to the other building so quickly?”
    Still playing with her fork, she smiled, sphinxlike in her self-possession. “If I did, it’s a secret.”
    Fair enough. He was here to acquire her services, nothing else. So long as they didn’t impact the mission, she could keep her professional secrets.
    “Have some more,” she insisted, gesturing at the plate.
    Wondering if she’d had the custard drugged—with truth serum, maybe; how else to explain his inadvertent honesty?— Damon took a bite, this time paying attention to what he ate. Sweet and creamy, but nothing out of the ordinary—unlike his companion. His incorrigible libido leaped at the unfortunate description, his cock twitching in response beneath its plush terry-cloth camouflage. “It is good, but that’s not the point.”
    She shrugged, the movement flexing her bountiful assets admirably. “You’re the one who asked for this meeting. To discuss something, you said.” Her excitement and attraction lapped at his senses, belying the cool smile she gave him. Though she hid it well, she was intrigued. “Well, what is it?”
    He set his fork down, determined to get down to business. “It’s come to our attention that you excel in . . . clandestine acquisitions.”
    “Whose attention? You’re a Fed.”
    Nodding, Damon cautiously fished out his official ID from his trunks—to keep from flashing her—and handed it over. “You probably haven’t heard of us. Leastwise you shouldn’t have.”
    Holding the plastic card by the edges, she studied his picture and data, then flipped the ID over to read the back. “Could be a fake. Though Venizélos is a mouthful, so that part might be real enough.”
    But that wasn’t the mouthful he wanted to give her.
    Damon’s belly clenched as desire flared against his will, hot and urgent, so strong he felt it deep in his bones. Damn it, he refused to let her get the upper hand in this. Sex was how she’d escaped him last time. He couldn’t let himself be distracted by his libido again.
    Not on a mission this important.
    “That’s as