When she straddled him, looked down at his handsome face, saw the greedy desperation in his eyes, she smiled. She took him into her, fast and hard and thought that nothing fit so well inside her as did a rich man’s cock.
Hayley bolted up from the sofa as if she’d been shot out of a cannon. Her heart clanged, hammer to anvil, in her chest. Her breasts felt heavy as if, oh God, as if they’d been fondled. Her lips tingled. Panicked, she grabbed at her hair and nearly wept with relief when she felt her own.
Someone laughed, and had her stumbling back, rapping up against the couch and nearly spilling onto it again. The television, she saw as she crossed her arms protectively over her breasts. Just the television, sophisticated drama in black-and-white.
And oh, God, what had happened to her?
Not a dream, or not just a dream. It couldn’t have been.
She dashed out of the room to check on Lily. Her baby slept, snuggled with her stuffed dog.
Ordering herself to calm, she went downstairs. But when she reached the library, she hesitated. Mitch sat at the library table, tapping away at the keyboard of his laptop. She didn’t want to disturb him, but she had to check. She had to be sure. Waiting until morning just wasn’t in the cards.
She stepped inside. “Mitch?”
“Hmm? What? Where?” He looked up, blinked behind his hornrims. “Hi.”
“I’m sorry. You’re working.”
“Just some e-mail. Do you need something?”
“I just wanted to . . .” She wasn’t shy, and she wasn’t prudish, but she wasn’t sure how to comfortably relate what she’d just experienced to her employer’s husband. “Um, do you think Roz is busy?”
“Why don’t I call up and see?”
“I don’t want to bother her if . . . Yes, yes, I do. Could you ask her to come down?”
“All right.” He reached for the phone to dial the bedroom extension. “Something happened.”
“Yeah. Sort of. Maybe.” To settle one point, she walked to the second level, behind the table and studied the pictures on Mitch’s work board.
She stared at the copy of the photograph of a man in formal dress—strong features, dark hair, cool eyes.
“This is Reginald Harper, right? The first one.”
“That’s right. Roz, can you come down to the library. Hayley’s here. She needs to talk to you. Right.” He hung up. “She’ll be right down. Do you want something—some water, some coffee?”
She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m okay, just feeling a little weirded out. Ah, when Stella first came here, when she was living here, she had dreams. That’s when it really started, right? I mean, before that there were . . . incidents. Sightings. But nothing much ever happened—at least not that Roz heard of—that was dangerous. Regarding The Bride, I mean.”
“That seems to be the case. There’s been a kind of escalation, which seemed to start when Stella moved in with her boys.”
“And I came a few weeks after. So it was the three of us here, living in Harper House.” Her skin still felt chilled. She rubbed her bare arms and wished for a sweatshirt. “I was pregnant, Stella had the boys, and Roz, well, Roz is bloodline.”
He nodded. “Keep going.”
“Stella had the dreams. Intense dreams, which we have to believe were somehow plugged into her subconscious by Amelia. That’s not a very scientific way of putting it, but—”
“It’s good enough.”
“And when Stella and Logan—” She broke off as Roz came in. “I’m sorry I dragged you down here.”
“It’s all right. What happened?”
“Finish your thought out first,” Mitch suggested. “Line it up.”
“Okay, well, Stella and Logan got involved, and Amelia didn’t like it. Stella’s dreams got more disturbing, more pointed, and there were violent incidents, culminating in how she blocked us all out of the boys’ room that night—that first night you came here, Mitch.”
“I’ll never forget it.”
“She told us her name that night,” Roz commented. “Stella got through to her, and she gave us her first name.”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t you say she’s left Stella be pretty much since then? She’d have told us if she had dreams still, or if anything happened to her directly.”
“The focus transferred to Roz,” Mitch said.
“Yeah.” Pleased they seemed to be traveling the same road, Hayley nodded. “And it was even more intense, right? Like waking dreams, Roz?”
“Yes, and an escalation of violent behavior.”
“The closer you got to Mitch, the crazier she got. That’s the kind of thing that pisses her off. She nearly killed you. She rode to the rescue, you could say, when you were in trouble, when push came to shove, but before that she attacked you. But since then, since you and Mitch got engaged, got married, she’s backed off.”
“Apparently, at least for the moment.” Roz stepped over, ran a hand down Hayley’s arm. “She’s moving on you now, isn’t she?”
“I think so. I think that the three of us being in the house—you and Stella and me—maybe that pushed her out of pattern.” She looked toward Mitch, lifting her hands. “I don’t know how to put it, exactly, but things really got rolling then, and the ball seems to pick up bulk and speed, if you get me.”
