She ripped at buttons. Tore the material back until she was scraping his bare skin. Fire from her touch streaked to every part of him that craved this hidden fierceness she allowed no one else to see. His own fantasies promised wicked retribution. She smiled at the images that filled his mind. The green of her eyes deepened, their dreamy softness beginning to smolder. The woman dragging his body closer was demanding. Wanton. Undeniable. Insatiable. An all-consuming passion Jarred craved.
In the dream he saw the grass beneath them become black satin sheets. The tree shading them from the sun’s rays was now a velvet canopy of darkest ebony, shadowing them in a scorching realm of desire. The glide and heat of Maddie’s body bewitched him. Every naughty wiggle challenged him to pin. To conquer until she screamed. Until the power of his need threatened to incinerate them both if it didn’t release.
Jarred ripped away her bra. She laughed a sultry challenge. Her jeans went next, and—Jesus—the lacy thong beneath. She dug streaks down his back with her nails as he shoved his own clothes away. The pain and pleasure of it hardened the edge of violence riding him, until he slammed her hands to the sheets beneath her head.
“Is this what you want?” he growled. His thighs parted hers, his body poised at her core. It took every shred of restraint he still possessed to wait. He had to be sure. “Is it?”
“I want you to take me, Jarred.” Her voice was soft and hard. Weak and powerful. Need and determination. “See me. All of me. Need me. Take what you need.”
She rocked against the bedspread. In the dream they were wrapped in satin. She lifted her hips, and the soft, wet folds of her sex brushed the head of his cock. She moaned when he drove into her. Just an inch. Nowhere near far enough.
“Maddie.” He should still be holding her hands instead of caressing her hips. He should be cherishing her gently, instead of guiding her closer. But reality was feeling further away as their dream demanded more. His fingers clenched the soft globes of her bottom.
“Don’t stop.” Her hips rotated, rimming him, stimulating flesh already painfully aroused.
He slid another inch into her tight, wet grip.
Pulled back.
“I…” This was their first time. Maddie was his soul mate. He’d never believed he had a soul before meeting her. He had to make this right.
Her hips surged. Took him deeper.
“Trust the dream, Jarred.” She said his name like she could swallow him whole, milk him until he lost himself in her forever, and still she wouldn’t have enough. “Don’t stop. Show me how much you need me.”
“God…” He closed his eyes.
Dream images of their intertwined bodies flashed through his mind. Slick with sweat and the summer rain now pouring down on them and the dream’s satin bed. Then the sheets and canopy overhead were gone. And the dream world was growing still, as if waiting for him to decide between being afraid for Maddie and relinquishing control to their craving. To the certainty that he’d gladly die in this woman’s arms, in her body, if it meant never being separated from her again.
Jarred’s will surrendered to the erotic vortex of caring and loving and needing without restraint. Without limits.
“Yes,” Maddie’s sigh rang in his ears.
“God—” He drove into her, balls deep. “Yes!”
Their world exploded into driving, soul-shattering sex. Desire and ecstasy and a bottomless compulsion for more.
“Not enough…” Jarred bit out. He nipped her lips, her neck, her nipples, until her passion flared with his, flooding him, forcing them both higher. “Never enough…”
“More…” She rocked into him, her calves sliding up and down his thighs.
With each of his strokes, her nails pricked, then clawed at his body. A man could die from needing this way. Needing this much. Hearing a woman scream for him. Hearing her demand more. Feeling the need pour off her, savoring it until it ruled him. Until he became a slave to it. Until he’d do anything to keep it.
Until he was willing to—
“Stay with me forever,” Maddie whispered, her skin misting with perspiration.
“Yes…” He pulled to his knees and sat back, still inside her. “Don’t stop. Don’t—”
“Never…” She straddled his hips, their lower bodies slapping together as her bottom rotated in an erotic dance.
She arched her back, thrusting her breasts toward him. Her pebble-hard nipple filled his mouth. Her nails raked his chest. He groaned and looked down at his body pistoning into hers. And all he could think was—
“More…”
Need consumed them, denied too long to require gentleness or care or nurturing. It had to bleed until it was dry. Until nothing remained but completion and the
raw essence of a man and a woman who were made for each other. Until they were both screaming in release. Shaking in each other’s arms. Throbbing and falling together. Neither letting go. Ever.
Jarred pulled Maddie closer. Tried to breathe. To absorb her softness. Her trust. Except…
Her body had grown suddenly rigid. Cold. And she was…
She was laughing.
A demented cackle that assaulted the testosteroneinduced fog that had swamped him. A bawdy giggle taking over his mind, wiping out Maddie’s whispers of completion. A laugh of hate-filled triumph. And that’s when Jarred realized he couldn’t fully wake up, no matter how wrong his and Maddie’s dream had become.
The dream had taken control.
No. Something outside of it had.
It wasn’t Maddie in his arms now, moving again and melting into his body and mind. Destroying his control. Taking his humanity.
“More…” the woman demanded in the altered voice he’d first heard in his office. The voice that kept coming back whenever Maddie lost herself.
“S…Sarah?” he gasped.
His mind rebelled against the wave of danger permeating the dream, but it wouldn’t disengage. The dark creature in his arms snuggled closer, the cold bite of steel suddenly between them. In the dream. In reality.
In reality he held tight to Maddie’s body, protecting her as Sarah’s hate, her dark heart, grew even stronger.
“Maddie?” he called out. “Please…”
“Maddie’s not here,” the voice whispered.
She brushed a kiss across his eyes so he could see the dream clearly, and there she sat.
Controlling him with her mind.
Painting the deadly shadows shifting around them.
“Sarah,” he gasped, fighting to pull back.
Back to the woman he loved.
But all he could manage was to gaze helplessly up at Death. And at the serrated edge of the knife clenched in her raised fist—in both the dream and reality—the knife Maddie had been holding at her mother’s house.
A part of Sarah was horrified by the nightmare she was projecting. But the control, the power that came with her sister’s dream…Sarah needed more. It had almost killed her, finding Maddie’s mind again. Now Maddie’s consciousness was feeding hers.
Sarah stared down at her sister’s valiant doctor. He was mesmerized. Terrified. Dreaming beyond himself. Beyond Maddie. Lord, he was beautiful. Making Sarah feel what he made Maddie feel, and then some. Why the hell had her sister spent so much time avoiding the man, instead of strapping him on and taking him out for a test spin? His devotion to Maddie was unwavering. Infuriating.
Sarah had let herself believe in that kind of love with her Raven. It had led to nothing but being manipulated and used until she’d become the darkness he’d promised to protect her from. So, really, she was doing her sister a favor, ending this before Maddie was betrayed, too.
Besides, it was Maddie’s turn to know real pain and loneliness.
Keith groaned while his mind battled for freedom. His gaze was pinned on the knife Sarah had made sure her sister swiped from their mother’s house.
“Take the first weapon you find,” she’d drilled into Maddie’s mind during those few minutes they’d been joined at the center. “Be ready when I need you.”
And now Sarah needed her sister to end her connection to the only person who could stop Maddie from coming to Sarah whenever Sarah needed her. Then Maddie would belong to Sarah. She would want whatever Sarah wanted—to end the Raven and the Wolf. As long as Jarred Keith no longer existed, Sarah would never be alone again.
She closed her eyes and absorbed the power of his and Maddie’s feelings for each other. She ran the tip of the knife along Keith’s chest, leaving thin trails of blood behind. And with each cut, his love for her sister fired higher than his fear. Sarah laughed at his stupidity. He knew she was Death. He knew it would be over soon. But he was enduring, believing he could stop her. Determined to save Maddie from her. While ravens circled above them in the dream.
Storm clouds swirled closer. A demented tree shifted in the wind. Cold steel cut into Jarred. But even in death, with anger and violence and evil haunting his unguarded mind, this man believed in the good in Sarah’s twin. He’d love her forever. No matter what. Outside the dream, he was gazing into Maddie’s eyes, the way the Raven had once gazed into Sarah’s.
Maddie had to suffer for that look, the darkness growing inside Sarah insisted. Jarred’s hateful promise of love had to go away. And then Maddie had to accept how much she needed Sarah, and only Sarah. Joining Sarah as Death was the only way. Then they’d be truly free. That’s what the Wolf had promised when he’d turned Sarah loose on Maddie’s mind.
Jarred’s hands grasped Sarah, breaking free of her control. Drowning her with his desperate need to protect the woman he loved.
Sarah screamed, hating him. Because he was making her feel that love, and she’d promised herself as she sat huddled in an abandoned building and prayed that Maddie’s mind would let her in, that she’d never feel anything again. But
now she was linked to her sister’s mind, to the world she’d never been allowed to have. And Sarah’s need for love was blooming back to life—even though she was still huddled and weak and alone, back where no one was fighting to save her. In that abandoned place, feelings meant only pain and loneliness until there was nothing left of her but death.
Sarah wanted no more pain. No more love. No more need for anyone but Maddie. Until one day soon there would be no more them, either, once they made the Raven and the Wolf pay. No more demented legacy. She and Maddie were going to end this nightmare together.
“No!” Jarred screamed as Sarah wielded the knife, cutting into his chest in Maddie’s reality. And still, his fear wasn’t for himself—but for the woman his soul was bound to.
“No!” Maddie screamed, pushing through Sarah’s control and clinging to the love she’d been too afraid to face before.
“This ends now,” Sarah said, while she and her scared-little-mouse of a sister shuddered in unison, neither of them in control of the dream now.
They raised the knife together to deliver the deathblow.
Summer thunder rolled.
Raven wings spread.
A tree’s ghastly limbs swayed…
“No!”
Outside the dream, Maddie saw the knife drop. She fought her twin’s compulsion for control. She felt Jarred’s shocked agony as cold steel pierced his chest again, ripping at his life and the love he’d given her…
“Die!” Maddie screamed in the dream. In Sarah’s voice.
Ravens overhead dove through the branches of a haunted tree, eager for their next victim…
“No!” Maddie begged in reality, trying to force her body to move beyond Sarah’s control. To throw the knife down and cover Jarred’s bleeding body, as if just her touch could heal him.
But the knife stayed in her hand…
Thunder rolled within the dream, blending with the sounds of rustling wings and Jarred’s cry of pain as she—Sarah—stabbed him again.
Sarah giggled in demented victory…
Jarred stared up at Maddie in the motel room, his love and acceptance and understanding still there, even in this. Even in death.
“Wake up!” she yelled at him. “I can’t stop her. Please wake up!”
He had to wake up before—
“Please, God…” His voice was weak. His mind was
accepting the end. “Let Maddie be okay…Take care of her and let her be okay.”
His prayer was her absolution, stunning both her and Sarah. Their father had said the same exact thing in Sarah’s dream of the accident. Maddie grasped at the tiny crack that ripped through Sarah’s control.
“Jarred?” she poured need into their link. Love.
“It’s not your fault,” he whispered. “But you can stop her, Maddie. I know you can.”
Even while he was dying by her hand, he believed she could control this violent, brutal thing she and Sarah had become…
“Wake up!” she screamed in the dream. This time at her twin, who looked up in shock from her bleeding victim.
Maddie glared directly into Sarah’s eyes for the first time in a decade. Both of them in the dream, but separate. Maddie could see the weakness and fear now behind her twin’s drive for destruction. The jealous rage. The hate Sarah couldn’t harness without Maddie.
A nauseating vortex of images transported Maddie to a vision of Sarah, curling in on herself, rocking side to side on the filthy floor of some awful building. And then Maddie saw herself, shaking her head and walking away from the heartbreaking scene, taking her strength with her, because control of the dream was hers now.
And there was Jarred, waiting at the door of what looked like a vacant storefront in the city. He was holding out his hand. His smile promised he’d always be there for Maddie, no matter what. And the wicked passion in his eyes promised much, much more. His warm embrace when she reached for him offered the understanding and acceptance and safety she’d always craved.