Dead By Dusk by Heather Graham Page B

tired. Jet lag was a part of it. Her sleep having been beset by dreams was part of it as well.
    Feeling certain that she had closed and locked every possible entrance, she showered and went to bed.
    When she closed her eyes at first, they opened again immediately. She had locked the doors to the balcony, but hadn’t closed the drapes.
    The darkness outside seemed to hold shapes.
    Stephanie rose, and closed the curtains, and went back to bed. The events of the day kept going through her mind. They would always end with one thought.
    Grant was here.
    And she would think about her cast again, and how pleased she had been with the few intense hours she had spent working with Doug, Drew, Suzette, and Lena.
    Then Clay Barton had arrived. In the night, her eyes closed, attempting to sleep, she saw again the man’s very unusual eyes. Cat eyes, lion eyes, dragon eyes. Like pinpoints of red-gold light in the ebony of the shadows.
    Tossing and turning, at last she slept.
    But only a few minutes were restful.
    Grant was here.
    She dreamed that he was in the room. The drapes were fluttering, and she thought that they couldn’t be, because the doors were closed. The breeze was drifting over her. She was lying naked on the bed, and she could feel the air, as if it were part of an erotic seduction. She tried to tell herself that it was ridiculous, she had on a long T-shirt, she was swathed in cotton, but still . . .
    The air against her flesh was cool, and she was mesmerized by the lightly billowing drapes; every inch of her skin seemed to be touched by the breeze, damp and cool, teasing, touching. And there was the man in the darkness, and by the shape, she was certain that she knew him, knew him so well.
    Grant was there.
    Broad-shouldered, a lean muscle mass, hot and vital, and moving with slow, sinewed ease, coming toward her. Sleek and bronze, fluid and sensual, the pad of his step silent across the room, his confidence complete, as if he knew the air rushing over her held her spellbound, and she wouldn’t begin to protest . . . not at all, she would be waiting, anxious for the liquid energy and spiraling heat that would come with his touch.
    Grant . . . or someone like Grant.
    Hard-toned, agile, and the darkness hid the face, but there was a smile of amusement and assurance, and a knowledge . . .
    He reached the foot of the bed. Crawled there, crouched, with that same animal beauty of movement and ease and sleek agility. Fingers slid along her calf, and the pure, searing ember of a kiss slid with liquid seduction along the flesh of her leg, teased beneath her kneecap. Her limbs were parted to allow for the force of the body coming against hers with slow, sure solicitation and she was powerless to move. There was darkness now where the drapes had appeared to billow. As if something had come behind him. Something winged and huge . . .
    But she couldn’t concentrate on it, couldn’t remember to think, or even allow the rush of fear to touch her, because the sensation now streaming upward along her thigh was like a flow of lava, and she knew where it was coming, and she wanted it, and the hunger evoked was almost more than she could bear. She wanted to reach out and touch the man’s hair, dig her fingers into it, feel the warmth and power of the body, and the life within the man, but she couldn’t move, because the pulse between her legs had grown to a desperate fever pitch, and if the surge did not come completely to her soon . . .
    The darkness rose like a great, sweeping cape. It would engulf them both. She didn’t care. She wanted the man with a growing urgency that eclipsed all else. She writhed where she lay, still unable to make her limbs move. She tried to whisper his name, and remembered that they were not together, that there was something wrong, something so very wrong, no matter how cataclysmic their passion could be . . .
    Closer, oh, God, yes . . . closer.
    Then...
    Someone else was there.