Getting his eyes open was nearly impossible.
Blinking, he tried to focus on where he was.
It was dark except for the multicolored tiny lights glowing in the night sky. The smell that filled his nostrils was intense, overpowering. Musky, smoky, nauseating. Connor felt his stomach lurch, then roil. His skull was gripped in a closing vice.
His teeth ached. The roots of his hair stung and burned.
He was dying. No one could feel like this much shit and live. It wasn't possible.
Connor's brain stumbled into painful thought, goaded by sheer survival instinct.
… one second you won't be there and the next second you will… that'll be hard to explain …
He wasn't sure there was anyone to explain to.
From the looks of it, he'd ridden a slipstream straight into a hell dimension. The stench in the air was just a few breaths away from making him vomit.
Heaving his torso upward, Connor managed a kneeling position and then pushed back to rest on his heels. Everything around him spun dizzily. He groaned in misery and clutched his waist.
"Fuck me."
He glanced around with gritty eyes. Slowly, his surroundings came into focus. A thin line of light beckoned and Connor reached out for it… and promptly fell back into an ignoble sprawl. It was a curtain and he tugged it out of the way to find a massive convention hall. People stood nearby, impossibly close, frozen in a single moment in time.
It was a science fiction convention of some sort.
Some of the attendees were heavily disguised in costumes that ranged from alien beings to robots.
Looking over his shoulder, Connor surveyed the room he was in. He was in a small makeshift tent of some sort. Everything was black. The floor was hard and cold, but covered in a rough tarp. There was a round table nearby draped in black material. Atop it was a globe, which was creating the light reflecting off what he now realized was a ceiling. A woman lay on a padded table, eyes closed, lost in the hypnotic state that had brought him here. Connor suspected she had been "put under" by the man presently bent over stealing money from her purse.
Snorting with disgust, Connor lurched to unsteady feet and tried not to breathe through his nose.
He withdrew the man's wallet out of his back pocket and took all the cash from inside.
"Karma, asshole."
He left as quickly as his shaky legs would allow.
There was a soft buzzing in the air, the sound of words forming in their most infantile states. How he made it through the crowds was a mystery to him. The scents of the human world assaulted him. Fake smells, such as perfumes. Food smells.
Body odor.
In the Twilight and in the Dreamers' subconscious such sensory perceptions were dulled or stripped to their most basic. Not so in reality. Connor was forced to pause at a trash receptacle by the exit to throw up.
He didn't like it here. His heart ached. He wanted to go home, a home he loved and missed terribly already.
Instead he pushed open the glass doors of the Anaheim Convention Center and stepped out to his new world.
Stacey Daniels knew it was ridiculous to be sitting on the couch bawling her eyes out. She should be thrilled to have some personal time for herself.
"I should be making an appointment for a pedicure, a manicure, and a haircut," she muttered.
She should be calling the hot UPS driver who delivered the pharmaceutical supplies to Bates' All Creatures Animal Hospital where she worked.
He'd given her his card with his cell phone number on it after weeks of flirting. The accompanying wink had made the offer more than just a business one.
"I could be looking forward to a night of much-needed, no-strings-attached raunchy sex." She sniffled. "Hell, I could be having raunchy sex, right now."
Instead, she was a miserable lump, crying because her deadbeat ex-boyfriend had finally picked up their son for an overdue weekend visit. It was pitiful and slightly deranged, but she couldn't get over it.
Sinking deeper into her best friend's sofa, Stacey looked around the condo and was grateful to be house-sitting for her boss, Lyssa Bates. She didn't know how she would have managed being at her own home without Justin there. It would be too lonely. At least Lyssa had fish and a cat, though Jelly Bean was the meanest cat ever. A grumpy, hissing, tail-flicking beast who was presently sitting on the arm of the couch giving her the evil eye. Still, even his unpleasant company was better than being alone.
Of course, Stacey was realizing exactly how lonely she really was. At some point she'd stopped seeing herself as an individual woman and started herself only as "Justin's mom," which wasn't healthy, as her reaction this morning so aptly proved. She had no idea what to do with herself.
How sad was that?
You have a right to be mad, the devil on her shoulder said.
She worked her ass off to make ends meet without a dime of child support and Tommy was the one who got take Justin skiing for his first time. Tommy got to be "cool." Tommy got the privilege of seeing Justin's face light up with joy and wonder. All because he'd had a twenty-dollar bill burning a hole in his pocket in Reno a year ago. A twenty he'd promptly put down as a bet that the Colts would go to the Super Bowl.
"A twenty he should have paid me," she bitched,
"so I could put gas in the car to get to work and support our child."
It was so unfair. She had been saving up for a getaway to Big Bear for almost two years and Tommy ripped it out from under her in two minutes. Just like her life had been ripped out from under her when she'd gotten pregnant in college. You can always abort, he'd said blithely. We've got our whole lives ahead of us and years of school. You can't have a baby.
"Asshole," she griped. She'd had to drop out of school and get government assistance. Tommy had said it was her choice and good luck. See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya. He'd gone on to graduate and became a struggling screenwriter who had enough money to party, but not for child support.
She'd gone on to a series of temp jobs until she finally found steady, good-paying, nondemeaning work at the vet hospital with Lyssa.
Stacey yanked a tissue from the box next to her and blew her nose. It was petty and small of her to begrudge Justin a much-wanted trip just because she wasn't the one to take him. She knew it and acknowledged it, but doing so didn't make her feel any better.
The doorbell rang and Stacey turned her head to scowl in the direction of the foyer. If she'd been at home, she would have ignored it, but she was watching Lyssa's house and pets while the boss was on a mini-vacation with her fiance in Mexico, so that meant watching out for Lyssa's packages, too.
Grumbling under her breath, Stacey stood and crossed the soothing beige carpeted living room to the marble-lined entrance hall. JB hissed and followed her, rumbling his demon cat's warning.
He hated visitors. Well, he hated everybody pretty much, but especially total strangers.
The bell rang again, impatiently, and she called out, "Hang on! I'm getting there."
Stacey turned the knob and pulled the door open.
"You gotta give a girl a minute to get—"
A Viking stood on Lyssa's porch.
And he was devastatingly gorgeous.
Chapter 3
JB's bitching halted mid-rumble, just as Stacey's speech had.
Gaping, she took a long, hard look at the blond giant who filled every inch of the doorway. He was at least six foot four, with a sword hilt peeking over his left shoulder and a brawny chest that would make Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson jealous. His arms were massive, ripped with taut muscles that stretched the golden skin covering them. He wore a straight black, sleeveless v-neck tunic that looked painted on and pants that clung to lean hips before flowing into loose pants legs.
On his feet he sported wicked-looking combat boots.
"Wowza," she murmured, duly impressed. The man was hot, hot, hot. Even in a costume.
Chiseled jaw, a sinner's mouth, arrogantly slashed brows, and a perfect nose. In fact all of him was perfect. At least the parts that she could see.
Gorgeous in a way that was hard to define.
There was something different about him, a physical charisma or perhaps a foreign appeal?
She couldn't put her finger on what it was that was so unique; she knew only that she'd never seen a more beautiful man, ever.
He wasn't beautiful in the "pretty" sense. He was beautiful in the rocky moors sense, or the Serengeti sense. Harsh and untamed. Awe-inspiring in a wholly intimidating way. And because she was intimidated, Stacey did what she excelled at.
She got spunky.
Cocking her hip to lean into the door edge, she flashed a bright smile. "Hi."
Bright, azure eyes widened, then narrowed.
"Who the hell are you?" the man demanded, his voice rumbling with a burr that was charming and delicious, even though his attitude wasn't.
"Nice to meet you, too."
"You're not Lyssa Bates," he rumbled.
"Damn. What gave me away? The short hair? The big butt?" She snapped her fingers. "I got it!
I'm not drop-dead gorgeous and built like a brickhouse."
The corner of his luscious mouth twitched. He tried to hide it, but she saw it. "Honey, you're gorgeous and built, but you're not Lyssa Bates."
Stacey touched her nose, knowing that she had to be looking like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and sporting bloodshot eyes to boot. Some women looked great when they cried. She wasn't one of them. And built? Ha! She'd had a kid.
Nothing was where it used to be and she'd never dropped the last ten pounds from her pregnancy.
Unable to think of a witty comeback because her brain was fried by his maybe-a-compliment, maybe-a-joke, she said, "Lyssa's out of town. I'm watching things for her while she's gone."
"Is Cross here?" He looked easily over her head and into the condo.
"Who?"
He looked back down at her, frowning. "Aidan Cross. He lives here."
"Uh, yeah. But if you think he'd let Lyssa go anywhere without him, you're nuts."
"True." Something passed through his eyes as he looked at her.