She braced herself for the shock she knew was coming and touched his shoulder. To her amazement there was no electric crackle across her senses. She couldn’t believe it. She was touching a person who was deep in the dreamstate, but her senses were not recoiling from the brush with the energy field.
She badly wanted to think about what it all meant, to try to figure out the implications. But there was no time. She had to deal with Jack’s sleepwalking.
He seemed unaware of her fingertips on his shoulder. Cautiously she pulsed a little more energy, searching for the pattern of the sleepwalking currents. She found it quickly.
“Jack, wake up,” she said.
“You’re in danger.”
“Not now. Not tonight. Not from you.” She set up a dampening current, trying to interrupt the heavy flow of fugue-state energy. There was no response. That was not good news. By now he should have been fully awake. “Jack, can you hear me?”
He raised a hand and touched her face, his eyes hot in the shadows. “I’m dreaming.”
Another kind of energy suddenly infused the atmosphere. It was elemental, fiercely masculine and stunningly sexual. It rattled her senses like the first winds of an oncoming storm striking the closed windows of a well-sealed house. She was suddenly disoriented and, for the first time, seriously alarmed.
But underneath the rising tide of uncertainty and confusion she was aware of the sensual heat shimmering to life inside her. She knew what sexual attraction felt like. Under normal circumstances the pleasant warmth and the sense of arousal were nothing she couldn’t suppress or ignore if necessary. But what was happening now could no more be ignored than lightning. And it was probably just as dangerous.
“Yes, you’re dreaming,” she said. Her voice sounded a little husky to her own ears.
She pulled more energy, struggling to push through the compelling distraction created by the currents of desire so that she could zap Jack with a stronger jolt of dreamlight. She tightened her grip on his shoulder.
Psi flashed across the spectrum. To her heightened senses the energy looked like iridescent snow falling through the beams of a car’s headlights. She had no idea how Jack perceived the sparkling, glittering waves of light, but she felt the change in the pattern instantly.
Jack did not simply emerge from the trance—he slammed into the waking state riding shockwaves of energy. The currents of psi roared over her own energy field, swamping the delicate pulses of dreamlight she was generating.
For a few seconds she felt consciousness start to slide away into a very deep hole in the ground. The room spun around her. The neon moonlight outside the window blazed as bright as a spotlight. Instinctively she covered her eyes with her arm, but that offered no protection. When she was using her other senses she perceived light psychically, not with her normal vision.
Instinctively she shoved back at the raging tide with all the energy at her command. She felt like a swimmer trying to stay on the surface of a violent sea while a whirlpool threatened to pull her down into the depths. For an eternity she thought she might actually go under permanently.
Without warning the wavelengths of heavy psi stopped trying to drown her. Instead, they began to resonate with her own currents.
It happened so quickly she had difficulty processing the shift. Between one breath and the next she was no longer trying to block Jack’s power. Just the opposite—she was responding to it in ways she had never dreamed were possible. Okay, maybe she had dreamed about this kind of experience, she thought, but she had never actually let herself believe it could happen.
Awareness blazed in Jack’s eyes. She knew for certain that he was no longer in the fugue state, but he was running hot on intense sexual arousal. He was focused wholly and entirely on her.
“Are you all right?” He closed his hands around her shoulders. “What the hell happened?”
“I’m okay,” she managed, fighting not to sound breathless. The feel of his strong hands sent shivers of excitement through her. She wanted him to keep touching her. She wanted to touch him, needed to touch him. “You were in a trance, just like you described. I woke you up. As promised. All part of the service.”
His fingers tightened around her. “I could have hurt you.”
“No,” she said, very certain. She glanced past him, checking out his smoldering footprints. “Never.”
“I shouldn’t have let you talk me into going to sleep without the meds.”
She flattened her palms on his chest. The sleek muscles beneath the T-shirt felt very good. She tried to ignore the sensation.
“Pay attention here, Winters. There is no problem. I was able to bring you out of the fugue, just as I said I would.”
He searched her face. “When I came back to my senses I had the feeling that I was crushing you, overwhelming you.”
“It was the first time I’ve ever tried anything like that with someone as powerful as you. First times are always a learning experience.” She sank her fingertips a little deeper into the T-shirt. “I had to make a few adjustments, that’s all. Like I said, no problem.”
Another one of her rules, she thought. Never let the client think you might just possibly be out of your depth.
He studied her, clearly awed, for a couple of beats.
“You are one hell of a bad liar,” he said finally.
“Hey, I learn fast, and I know what I’m doing now. Look, it’s after midnight. Go back to sleep. And whatever you do, don’t take any meds.”
“And if I sleepwalk again?”
“I’ll deal with it. Go back to bed, Jack.”
“I don’t want to go back to bed.” He pulled her closer, not forcing her but making his intent clear. “Not alone.”
She tried to think, but the fizzy, giddy elation sweeping through her made thinking difficult.
“I have this rule,” she whispered. “About sleeping with clients.”
“Chloe,” he said.
That was all he said. Just her name. But his voice was rough and urgent. Sensual hunger heated his eyes and his aura. The raw power of his still-hot senses created a dazzling whirlwind in the small space. Her own currents were still resonating strongly with his. Desire burned hot and deep inside her, incinerating the last vestiges of caution. She knew that if she did not seize this moment with this man she would regret it for the rest of her life.
Entranced by the magic and the mystery of the sensation, she raised her fingers to his face.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”