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The identity of the woman who haunted his nights with seductive pleasures was lost to him. He couldn't remember her, but she was becoming part of his soul in a way he didn't understand. And on a basic level that frightened him.
When she came to him out of the soft shadows, she brought a need with her that was all consuming. She came closer, so close that he could sense her body heat and smell a gentle sweetness. His whole being tensed with anticipation. Then she touched him. The contact was stunning, compelling, and he reached out for her. His hands skimmed over naked shoulders and along slender arms, spanned a tiny waist and then high, full breasts.
He had no idea where he was, or why he was there, but one thing he knew: he wanted this woman with a passion that burned like fire in his blood. When she lifted her face to him, he had a flashing memory of a need long ago, someplace in the past.
But as her lips found his, everything centered on the taste of her in his mouth. Warmth and heat, taking and giving. A kiss that felt as if it could brand his soul.
He let go, falling with her into a softness that had no name. He was over her, looking down at her, her image blurred, yet he knew he'd wanted to do this forever. When her hips lifted to meet him and her legs wrapped around him, he would have taken her. But in that instant she drifted away from him. Her hands were stretched out to him, but didn't touch him, and she blended with the shadows that were growing around him.
He cried out in frustration, and that, plus his loss, jarred him awake. He was alone in his bed in the darkness of the night in his houseboat anchored on the sheltered bay in San Diego. Alone and frustrated. His body ached. His hands clenched, his breathing was shallow and his skin was sheened with moisture.
Another dream. God, a dream. It wasn't real, but his body's reactions denied the simplicity of that explanation. He shifted to look out the deck doors and exhaled, waiting for some easing to come. Beyond the low glow of the security lights at the docking area, everything was blackness. No stars. No moon. He couldn't see the ocean beyond the breakwater. Just blackness. The dead of night.
He slowly eased himself to a sitting position, then brushed at his tangled, shoulder-length hair, pushing it back from his face. His hand hesitated when the tip of his finger touched the raised knot of tissue under his hair near his temple.
The irregular scar that cut jaggedly up toward the crown of his head had healed long ago. It had been almost exactly two years since the accident. His hair had grown back, and he'd gotten on with a life he'd almost lost on a deserted desert highway on a hot August day when his motorcycle had gone out of control. He'd gone on with that life, but he knew it wasn't the same life he'd had before his world had been shattered.
His low hissing release of breath echoed around him. Even after he'd come out of the coma, he never had dreams like the ones he had now. God, he had to be going mad to respond to dreams like the ones he'd had this past week. To feel things in a dream that he wasn't sure he'd ever felt with a flesh-and-blood woman. Mad. Pure madness.
He thought about a cold shower, but with a low curse he got up and padded barefoot across the hardwood floors to the deck doors. A need for fresh air and openness grew in him.
It wasn't just the dreams that left him feeling off balance. He was having a hell of a time writing lately. His T. J. Pierce novels that he'd been writing for over five years seemed flat, as if there was no life in them anymore. T. J. Pierce, rogue investigator, was a bore.
As he gripped the cool brass of the door handles, he had a sudden jarring feeling that he wasn't alone anymore. He spun around, but the combination bedroom and living area with its red, white and blue color splashes was empty. The low ceilings overhead, the bed in the middle of the room with the linen tangled and spilling onto the red throw rug on plank flooring, his computer table with its constant disarray, sat in the shadows. Everything was familiar. Everything was the same. And everything was empty.
"Mad as a hatter," he muttered as the emptiness of the room invaded him once more. It seemed horribly small and claustrophobic. The air felt thin, as if he couldn't quite get enough in his lungs. And for the first time since he'd bought the houseboat, he hated it.
He jerked open the doors and stepped out onto the deck into the balmy August night. Naked, except for his Jockey shorts, he stood alone with the soft flicker of safety lights from his and the other boats anchored in the bay reflecting back off the dark water. As he leaned forward and gripped the damp safety rail, he took deep, cleansing breaths of the tangy ocean air.
One thing Daniel knew for sure. It was time to get out of here, to move and be out in the open again. Tomorrow he'd fire up his Harley and leave. He'd go do research on the book he was working on, a book that wasn't going anywhere for him right now. Maybe he'd go to New Mexico and have T. J. Pierce fan out into the mountains there.
He liked the idea, and knew that was what he was going to do. He would call his twin brother, David, tell him where he was going, then ... That thought died when he remembered David and his wife, Carin, weren't in Berkeley; they were in Guatemala on a summer archaeological session for the university.
Actually, as much as he loved his brother and sister-in-law, he wasn't in the mood to explain that he was taking off again, or why. It went against his grain to be expected to check in, but David had been adamant about it since the accident. So he went along with it and humored him. But right now Daniel wasn't in a mood to humor anyone, either.
He closed his eyes and flinched when there was a burst of white light behind his lids. Then the woman was there again, coming toward him out of the light. He jerked back right away and opened his eyes, but it didn't stop whatever was happening to him. She was still there, blotting out the real world. Yet this wasn't a dream - he knew that. This was different and jarring.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Hart's Dream by Mary Wilson Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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