Falling Awake

She buried her face against his shoulder. “I suppose it’s only natural that we would be curious about each other.”
    He caught her chin on his forefinger and urged her to look at him. “Are you telling me that you’ve imagined this moment, too?”
    Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were fever-bright. “I’ve spent a lot of nights working on your dreams, Ellis Cutler. Naturally I was curious.”
    He studied her intently. “Are you equally curious about all of your dream clients?”
    “No. Not the way I was about you. I wanted to know if the real you would be anything like the you I imagined when I worked on your dreams.”
    “Come to any conclusions?”
    She framed his face with her hands and brushed her lips lightly across his. “Yes. You are exactly as I knew you would be.”

    He looked into her incredible eyes and wondered if he would ever be able to pull himself free of the spell she was weaving around him.
    “You and I know better than most people that dreams can’t be trusted,” he made himself say.
    “There is truth in dreams. You just have to know how to look for it.” She raised her brows, amused. “That’s why you hire me, remember?”
    He told himself it would be a huge mistake to take what was happening between them seriously. Isabel’s elevated interest in him had a lot to do with the fact that he was a Level Five, just as she was. She had admitted that she longed to meet someone else who dreamed the way she did. It was probably inevitable that she would allow herself to be intrigued, perhaps even a bit enthralled, by the first man she met who knew what it meant to go into an extreme dream state.
    He kissed her again, wrapping her close. She melted into him.
    The roller coaster was moving faster now, heading into a dangerous turn.
    But he suddenly realized he did not want to be an experiment for her. He did not want to be used as an experience meant to satisfy her curiosity about what it would be like to have sex with another Level Five.
    Reluctantly he raised his head and eased her away from him.
    “I think I’d better leave now.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “Tomorrow we’ll talk about contracts that will protect you.”

    An enigmatic expression veiled her eyes. She stepped back and coolly clasped her hands behind her back.
    “Protect me from who?” she asked softly. “You?”
    “A lady who can do what you do shouldn’t take chances with strangers.” He picked up his jacket, hooked it over his shoulder and opened the door. “Good night, Isabel.”
    She trailed after him, watching him cross the porch and go down the steps. Sphinx made another appearance. She reached down and scooped him up in her arms. The big cat’s purr was loud in the night.
    “Ellis?”
    He paused on the last step and looked at her. She was a sultry silhouette framed by the low light of the foyer lamp.
    “Yeah?” He waited, wondering what he would do if she invited him back inside. He knew he wouldn’t have the will to walk out a second time that night.
    She rubbed the place behind one of Sphinx’s ears. “Drive carefully.”
    “I’ll do that,” he said. “Lock your door.”
    She obeyed without protest. He waited until he heard the sound of the dead bolt sliding home before he walked to the Maserati and got behind the wheel.
    He drove away from the welcoming glow of Isabel’s porch light, keenly aware of the empty seat beside him. He thought about the unfamiliar kind of need that the kiss had unleashed inside him. Taking Isabel to bed a few times wasn’t going to fix this problem. This was more than sex, and that meant it was verydangerous. He could control his dreams, but he had learned that real life was a crapshoot.
    Tonight’s free pass was the only one Tango Dancer was going to get. He couldn’t afford to give her another. It would cost him too much.

13
    i sabel dreamed . . .
She reclines on an elegantly curved Regency-style sofa covered in dark blue velvet and trimmed with gold tassels. The only lamp in the lavishly decorated room illuminates the place where she waits for Dream Man. Her nightgown is made of pale candlelight-colored satin. It is cut very short. The hem barely covers the swell of her buttocks. The neckline plunges between her breasts.
    A door opens and Dream Man enters the room. She cannot see him clearly yet but she knows it is him. She has invited him into her dreams on a regular basis for several months now. The routine is familiar.
    She senses that