Captive Dreams Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Bound by the Dragon - DIANE WHITESIDE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  Bound by the Dream - ANGELA KNIGHT

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

  Praise for CAPTIVE DREAMS

  “Will leave you longing for more.”—Romantic Times

  “This book makes dreams come true. I highly recommend [it] to anyone who likes erotic stories written with skill and passion.” —ParaNormal Romance Reviews

  “Sensual and luxurious . . . Uninhibited . . . Any reader of erotic romance should be sure to pick up [Captive Dreams]. An incredible read.” —Sensual Romance Reviews

  “This book is so incredibly hot! It is eroticism at its best, and it is definitely not for the faint of heart . . . You will blush. I guarantee it!”—Romance Reader at Heart

  For Angela Knight

  “The future belongs to Knight!”—Emma Holly

  “Angela Knight is a writer whose star is definitely rising fast!” —The Romance Readers Connection

  “[Angela Knight’s] world is believable and her plotting fast-paced.” —Booklist

  “Her novels are spicy, extremely sexy, and truly fabulous . . . Complex and intriguing.” —Romantic Times

  And for Diane Whiteside

  “Prose so steamy that it fogs one’s reading glasses.”

  —Booklist

  “Hot and sexy . . . Diane Whiteside writes steamy tales of sensual delight. Once I started reading . . . I couldn’t stop until I reached the end.” —In the Library Reviews

  “Hot and gritty, seething with passion . . . A highly erotic romance . . . Sizzling.”—Romantic Times

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Captive Dreams was originally published in e-book format.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  CAPTIVE DREAMS

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the authors

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Elora’s Cave Electronic Publication / 2002

  Berkley Sensation trade-paperback edition / September 2006

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / December 2008

  Copyright © 2002 by Angela Knight and Diane Whiteside.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation

  of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-64395-8

  BERKLEY® SENSATION

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  PROLOGUE

  Jarred Varrain was no stranger to fear. He’d tasted its metallic tang staring down the muzzle of an ion pistol held in a scaly hand. He’d smelled its sickening stench as a prisoner on an alien moon, so deep underground he’d thought he’d never see the stars again. He’d even felt it drain away into hopelessness as his life’s blood pumped from gaping wounds he somehow always survived.

  And he’d seen the sheen of fear in his enemies’ eyes as he’d killed, with pistol or blade or bare hands. So many times he no longer kept count.

  He’d killed to protect. Killed to avenge. Killed because there’d been no other choice. Killed until he’d become an object of fear himself, even to the aliens and androids who didn’t feel that emotion as humans did.

  But he’d never known this kind of icy, helpless terror, even bound and beaten at the mercy of a merciless enemy. He’d been too busy plotting then, trying to find a way to escape and win. And he had. Jarred always won.

  But not this time. He knew from bitter experience there’d be no last-minute victory for him now. Not if Mykhayl failed.

  Because Celeste Carson was tired of him.

  “I mean it, I’m killing the son of a bitch off,” she said, as he stared at her with clenched fists. Oblivious as she always was to his invisible presence, Celeste sprawled across a white love seat in her primitive twenty-first-century living room. Irritation pulled her full lips into a tight line and narrowed her cat-green eyes. Yet even in her anger, there was a lush sensuality to that delicately angular face. Dressed in a confection of black lace and red silk that hugged every alluring curve, she looked more like a Kyristari sexsub than the implacable enemy who’d tortured him for a decade. “I just have to come up with a suitably heroic way to cash in his chips.”

  Her sister looked up from the pile of whisper-thin fabric on her lap, blue eyes rounding with scandalized horror under her smooth cap of platinum hair. “You can’t do that. The fans . . .”

  “This is science fiction, Corinne. Nobody promised them a happy ending.”

  “But look how many people love Jarred! Take the convention yesterday. Hundreds lined up for your autograph.”

  Celeste rolled her eyes. “Most of whom wanted to be extras in your movie.”

  “But . . . kill Varrain? I love that character!” Jarred wanted to kiss her elfin face. “You love that character!”

  “And I’ve been writing about him for ten long years. Ten long books. I want to do something different.” Celeste rose and began to pace. Her lovely breasts swayed seductively under the thin black lace that barely covered them as her long, muscled legs scissored with her stride. Jarred watched with resentful hunger. God, he ached to turn the tables on her. If Mykhayl came through with that spell . . .

  But without the spell, Jarred couldn’t touch her. He was trapped in this limbo, able to see and hear his tormentor, but unable to take the
revenge he craved.

  “You don’t have to kill Jarred to do something different, Celeste,” Corinne said. “Just give him a desk job and write about one of his subordinates.” Management? “Or make him an instructor at that agency star academy. Or . . .”

  “He’d hate that worse than dying.” Celeste glowered, nibbling a thumbnail. “That character is so damned infuriating. No matter what I plot out, he insists on doing the opposite.”

  Usually because whatever she planned was going to get someone killed. Like Garr.

  The memory of his friend’s bloody, broken body rose up in Jarred’s mind until he had to fight the need to strike out in pointless rage.

  “And if I try to force it, the characters just turn into cardboard,” his enemy said, pacing by. Reluctantly compelled, he opened his eyes to admire the way her luscious ass rolled with every long-legged, seductive stride. “It’s driving me nuts.”

  “Tell me about it,” Corinne muttered, picking up the bit of lace draped across her lap to study it dubiously. “Mykhayl’s been making me crazy for years. Now I can’t even get him to pick a wife. And since he’s sterile, God knows who he’s going to name as his heir . . . Do I really have to wear this?”

  Celeste propped her hands on her curving hips. Jarred stared, his attention caught by the golden shimmer of all that hair tumbling to her waist. He imagined wrapping his fist in gleaming curls as he rode her, taking a slow, sweet revenge while he taught her to crave every minute of her punishment. “Oh, come on, Corinne,” she said. “It’s just us girls. Everything you’ve got, I’ve got. Besides, considering what that slip cost, I’d think you’d want to try it on.”

  “Yeah, well, I only bought it because you insisted.”

  Full lips curled into a teasing smile. “I only insisted because you dress like a bag lady. Who can write sexy romance in sweat pants?”

  “Me,” Corinne retorted, sticking out a long leg covered in baggy gray fabric. “And I’ve got seven books to prove it.”

  “True, but the sweats obviously aren’t working for you this time. Why else are you having so much trouble deciding who Mykh’s going to marry?”

  “Sheer numbers.” Corinne balled up the silk and threw it against the wall. “The man’s got a hundred women in his harem. Why should he fall in love with anybody when he’s got the entire Rockettes chorus line waiting at home?”

  Celeste rolled her eyes. “That’s just sex, ’Reeny. Any guy will screw a hundred women if they’re handy, whether he’s shooting blanks or not. What Mykh needs is somebody who’ll drive him so insane with desire, he’s just got to have her.”

  “Exactly. But who?” Corinne retrieved the black lace. “I’m thinking of returning the advance.”

  “What?” Celeste gaped. “A million dollars? Are you nuts?”

  Her sister turned to face Celeste, biting her lip. “Maybe if I didn’t have that kind of pressure I could think of something. After all, if two weeks spent in daily kung fu practice didn’t break the block loose, then I don’t have anything else left to try. That’s always worked before when I got stuck.”

  “Honey, it’s not that bad, honestly.” Celeste hugged her sister. Corinne returned the embrace then slipped free, eyes damp as she tried to smile. She began to wander the room, tossing the cloth from hand to hand.

  Celeste flopped onto the couch, one shapely leg curled over the arm, the other stretched to one side. Jarred’s eyes were drawn to the thin red fabric molded lovingly over the lips of her vulva. He thought about plunging his cock into her, burying himself in slick cream and heat. “Look, I think you’re just having a hard time getting into his head as a romantic hero, instead of just the guy who comes to the rescue,” she said, lacing her long fingers together over her taut little belly. “So turn it around and focus on the heroine instead. Any ideas on the kind of character you really want to do?”

  “None. I even made a list of all the archetypes I could think of. The only tingle I got was for a sorceress,” Corinne said glumly.

  Celeste nibbled that fingernail again. Jarred imagined how she’d look with his cock in her mouth instead. “And all the female mages are all dead.”

  Corinne nodded. “Every last one of them, thanks to Mykhayl and his brothers-in-law.”

  “Okay, so that’s out.” She grimaced. “We’ll just have to try something else. Which brings me back to my original point: nothing puts me in the mood to dream up something fantastic like wearing really expensive silk. If you need to create someone sexy and hot, dress like someone sexy and hot. Works every time.”

  “Maybe for you. You are sexy and hot. Me, I’m flannel and sweatpants.” But she didn’t put the lacy scrap aside.

  “You only think that because you married an abusive creep.” Celeste’s voice dropped into a coaxing purr that went straight to Jarred’s crotch. “Go on, put on the slip and we’ll brainstorm. You can help me figure out how to kill off Jarred.”

  Her sister frowned, eying her. “You’re really serious.”

  “Hell, yes! And you’re going to marry Mykh off and finish your series. Get dressed and let’s get started.”

  “Yeahhhh.” Corinne nodded slowly. “We’ve always been able to help each other over rough spots before.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, I don’t know how much good it’s going to do this time. Writing an erotic romance around Mykhayl feels kind of like French kissing your brother.” Grumbling, she turned to march down the hall to the bedroom.

  Jarred barely noticed, his attention locked on his deliciously sprawled foe. “Bitch,” he growled at her. Celeste didn’t hear him, of course. She never had, not even in the beginning when he’d roared at her like a madman for the way she tortured him.

  For a decade he’d shuttled back and forth between his own universe and this limbo between their worlds, listening to her plan his torment, then going home to try to out-maneuver her. His attempts always failed. Even when he blocked one plot, she’d come up with something else that landed him in the same agonizing situation she’d originally intended. Yet she always made sure he survived.

  Bloodied, broken, surrounded by the bodies of those he loved, he always survived.

  But if Celeste had really decided to kill him, this time he would die. It was incredibly frustrating. The cybernetic implants scattered throughout his body allowed him to call up superhuman bursts of strength that made him a match for the toughest, most vicious alien warriors the galaxy could produce. Yet tiny, delicious Celeste could torment and destroy him at her whim, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  But if he ever got his hands on her . . .

  Suddenly he felt a familiar presence—a sense of simmering, formidable power. “Mykhayl?”

  “Aye,” rumbled a deep voice. Not for the first time, Jarred wondered if his friend looked anything like he did on the covers of Corinne’s romance novels. As many years as they’d shared this half-existence, neither had ever seen the other. They remained as mutually invisible as they were to their creators, though at least the two men could communicate. Sometimes that had been all that had kept Jarred from going mad.

  “Did you get it?” he demanded.

  “Aye. I had to pay that thrice-damned wizard in dragon’s blood. Now the blood-soaked amulet and the spell are mine to use.”

  But would it work? Mykhayl lived in a realm of sorcery where dragons were as common as the star cruisers of Jarred’s universe. But that was no guarantee the enchanted amulet he’d fought to obtain would function here. And if it didn’t . . .

  “What are the little witches plotting now?” Mykh asked.

  Jarred clenched his fists. “Celeste’s going to kill me off.”

  There was a short, stunned silence. “Then we must act quickly. If you have a god, my brother, pray to him.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Work a spell.” The warrior king sounded grim. “A very dangerous spell that the hellspawn wizard had never performed and would not guarantee.”

  “Just do it,�
�� Jarred snarled.

  Mykhayl’s deep voice dropped even more as he began to chant, incomprehensible phrases streaming off his tongue in twisting, guttural syllables. As he spoke, Jarred felt threads of power shimmer into being, lines of force that quickly wove together in a net around them both. Energies so dark and strange, his skin crawled and his mind howled in instinctive disbelief, There is no such thing as magic!

  And yet there was. The proof came in a blaze of pain as his nervous system protested the forces building around him. For a moment it seemed something massively alien ground against his body like a prowling dragon. Light exploded behind his eyes . . .

  Suddenly there was a floor beneath Jarred’s booted feet. He staggered forward, barely catching himself in time to keep from falling on his face. As he looked up, a man appeared beside him—even taller than he was, red hair brushing the small of a broad back, tight green trousers clinging to powerful thighs as a fringed vest hugged his muscled chest.

  And yes, Mykhayl looked just as he had on all those romance covers.

  Jarred’s head snapped around. Celeste was staring up at them, her lush mouth rounded in a perfect O, green cat eyes huge in a face as bloodless as paper.

  She could see them. It had worked.

  Glancing back at his ally, Jarred felt a demonic grin of pure anticipation spread across his face. Mykhayl returned it with one just as nasty.

  At last, the moment they’d dreamed of was at hand.

  Impossible!

  Celeste’s jaw dropped as she stared up at the two enormous men towering over her.

  One minute she’d been the only one in the living room. The next, everything had seemed to . . . stretch somehow, like a rubber sheet or a movie special effect. Then she’d heard a thunderous CLAP, a kind of mini-sonic boom.

  Now Rambo and Conan the Barbarian were standing in her living room, looking as if they’d teamed up to kick somebody’s ass. And since both were staring at her with identical expressions of pure menace, she had an ugly feeling whose ass they were planning to kick.

  But what really spooked her was her own sense of recognition. The redhead was damn near seven feet tall, with the same handsome, hawkish face she knew from the covers of Corinne’s books. He looked just like Mykhayl, protective older brother of her sister’s clan of romance heroines—except for the terrifying smile on his face. It was an axe-wielding-Jack-Nicholson-in-The-Shinning kind of grin, and she didn’t like it one bit.