Dark Dreams: HarperImpulse Paranormal Romance. Dawn Treadway

she tried to take a step backward and stabilize her still sexually stunned body against the wooden counter.

      Naturally, being that she was Jade, her hand landed at the base of a stack of returned books, sending them and herself tumbling to the floor. She was now red-cheeked, with hair strewn across her face and in her mouth, on her hands and knees. She lifted her head to wait for the typical Matt-like wisecrack, which surprisingly never came.

      The mysterious man flashed a condescending grin the Cheshire cat himself would have been proud of and slowly turned and sauntered toward her front doors. Then he seemed to disappear. But that couldn’t be right, could it? He must have simply walked out the door and she had missed it.

      “What the fuck was that?” Jade gaped at the space the dark-haired man had occupied, as she sat back onto her heels and shook her head to clear it.

      Matt only raised his brows and looked down to her. His mind was obviously still more focused on the gorgeous stranger than his boss. As her clumsiness was pretty much constant, he looked at her with only a slight smirk. “That, my dear, was sex; pure, walking, fabulous sex. And not the weak-ass, watered-down kind. That man was fully loaded,” he chuckled, “and I would love some.” Matt furrowed his brow and bent down to help her.

      “Okay, Jade, tell me right now,” Matt demanded, tapping his fingers on the patterned rug beside her sore knees. “What was that hot slice of man feeling? I have to know.”

      Jade looked at Matt, past his crisp blue jeans and perfect orange polo shirt, the look in his eyes full of anticipation. He was one of the only people she trusted with the knowledge of what she could do. Well, actually, the only one, because she was reasonably sure he was the only one who didn’t ever want something from her. “I hate my curse, you know that. When I make a conscious decision to take advantage of the annoying thing, I am ashamed of myself. Please don’t make me go there.”

      Unfortunately, most of the time her ability crept in without her inviting it. Even now, all around them she could sense the crowd’s slow change back to their previous mix of emotions. Curious, she thought, that man appears as a sudden shift in emotion consumes the store and knocks me on my ass and, blam, he walks out, and it all goes back to normal?

      “Come on, Jade, you’re not going to tell me anything?” He gave her his sweetest puppy-dog eyes.

      “Sorry, dude, but I didn’t even try,” she lied; this was the easiest way out of the conversation. Jade hated using her blasted mental capabilities to read emotions, almost as much as she detested her ability to change those feelings, and she had absolutely no intention of discussing them or the sexual barrage that strange man had given her. The memory made her body release a shiver from head to toe, which unfortunately came to rest in a warm, aching pool deep down in the lower regions of her stomach.

      Why did this have to happen to me? Jade asked herself for the millionth time.

      A swirl of wind formed in the discarded trash and debris on the dirty sidewalk, out from under Nias’s black combat boots as he transcended outside to the not-so-fresh air of New York City streets.

      He usually didn’t take such a risk. Humans seeing a tall, dark stranger appear from out of nowhere tended to become alarmed. He had simply wanted to remove himself from within the vicinity of the human female immediately.

      When Nias first saw the backside of the statuesque redhead twirling a single curl and lounging on her forearms at the book counter his body began to boil. He knew right away he was staring at trouble. She was stunning. Watching the girl in plain, low-rise jeans and a white tank top … there was definitely something different about her. He could tell immediately that there was a force within her, the power they needed. But there was something else as well, something insisting his gaze remain on her, and not stray.

      When she turned around with her friend to look at him he could feel her immediate pull on him. All he had wanted to do was remove the space between them. Slip a hand around the curve of her hip to the small of her back and pull her body flush against him, for a long, slow kiss.

      The few moments after he had seen her were bad enough, but when she turned to look in his direction, the effect he had on her became abundantly clear. He began to mentally undress the beauty and, in detail, strip her down and find ways to make her react to him. His loins began to swell as his brain began to get more descriptive. It was only when she tumbled and their eyes broke contact that he was able to snap out of the apparent spell she had put him under. He had no other recourse for the moment but to get out of there before he walked up, took her by the hand, and transcended her straight back to his bedroom.

      He silently cursed Jibreel and the other Goddesses for asking him to locate Jade Shear. Oh yeah, that girl would definitely be trouble.

      A slight queasy ache swelled from the pits of his stomach. He straightened his bearing back to that of the warrior he was, returning to his now-comfortable state of numbness.

      Nias turned to survey the street. Humans, with their matching white paper coffee cups, sat a little nervously now, lounging and taking in the sun. An ordinary blond couple opened the wooden and glass door and moved into Jade’s establishment. Resting his hands in the front pockets of his faded jeans, he found peace in his old habit of surveillance, and slowly the feelings began to subside.

      None of the scattered few had noticed him appear. No wide, stricken eyes or signs of panic were visible. Only the common human reaction of shifting as an anxious tension swept through them. But it always did when a strong high-caste Daemon was near.

      His memory shifted to the last image he had of her as he exited the store. She was kneeling on the ground, a disheveled mass of books surrounding her, on her hands and knees in the middle of it. She was a beautiful disaster.

      This was the female that was supposed to help him traverse Sheol and rescue his brother?

      “Unbelievable,” he grumbled.

      He had spent ages, millennia even, in Sheol. He didn’t need assistance. Arousing or not, that clumsy human was going to get them both killed. She couldn’t even manage to stand on her legs; how the hell was he supposed to traverse Sheol with her? Much less kill multiple caste-leveled Shaitan in blazing underworld heat. And he was there to seek her help? The woman on her hands and knees, knocking things over and tumbling to the ground – she was supposed to be able to protect him from the Shaitan? He realized his teeth were grinding.

      Nias had a flash, a sudden, intense desire to leave her, to never see this female again. This is a really stupid plan. People are going to die; this girl is going to die.

      Now he had to return to Jibreel and her sisters and tell them he had found her. This day just kept getting better and better.

      “I am fucked,” he said to himself and transcended out.

       Chapter 2

      Nias opened the immense white door and stepped through for the second time in a scant few hours, taking long strides over the cloudlike path toward the Goddesses. Bathed in a bright light, the area consumed him in a powdery whiteness. He kept his head down, raising a hand to his brow and using the front sheet of his hair like a shield against its radiance.

      Djinn were rarely asked to meet with the Goddesses, and almost never here, at the Temple. And so, when he received the summons that morning, curiosity got the better of him, and he transcended immediately to the place of worship. Now he returned with a pit in his stomach to tell them the “good” news.

      Three of the High Goddesses stood facing him, the edges of their figures wavering against the light that Daemon could barely gaze upon. “Eternally beautiful, eternally dark, it has always been curious how he made your kind. If he were capable of love, or even remote affection, I would say it was used during your creation.” The center Goddess tilted her head of glimmering white hair to the side, using her hands to trace his outline when she spoke to him.

      “Thank