Captive Dreams Read online

  The other man she’d seen only in her dreams. No artist had ever managed to capture Jarred Varrain’s hard, lupine face with its broad cheekbones, narrow nose, and cruelly sensuous mouth framed in that neat dark goatee. Yet here he was, just as she’d always imagined him, dressed in the gleaming black armor that looked and moved exactly like leather.

  Celeste gaped helplessly, her eyes locked with his, feeling as though the planet had suddenly rocketed out from under her feet. “How did you do that?” she managed at last. “Who are you?”

  The redhead touched a green gem that hung on a thick gold chain around his neck. “I built a doorway to this world, a portal of magic dearly bought with dragon’s blood.” The redhead’s handsome jaw took on a grim cast, as if he were remembering something nasty. “And not a little of my own.”

  She licked dry lips, finding herself almost believing him. “But . . . who are you?”

  The Jarred clone gave her a deliberately insulting head-to-toe scan that lingered at her cleavage. “Exactly who you think we are.”

  Before she could insist otherwise, high heels clattered in the hallway. Corinne burst in, just barely dressed in that stretch lace slip. “Celeste, what the hell exploded . . . ?”

  “By the dragon’s breath,” the Mykhayl lookalike said, his eyes lighting as he rocked back on his heels to look her up and down. “There was a woman’s body under all that baggy fabric after all.”

  Corinne’s brows snapped down. “Oh no, not again. Look, buddy, I have nothing to do with casting that damn movie, so you’re wasting your . . .”

  “I don’t think they’re actors,” Celeste said hoarsely. For one thing, their costumes were far from cheesy, unlike the outfit the last would-be Mykh had worn during a futile bid to convince her sister to get him an audition. And while Corinne’s The Leopard and the Lily was scheduled to start shooting next month, Celeste didn’t have a movie deal. There was no reason for the dark-haired man to dress up like Jarred.

  Besides, what kind of wannabe actor could produce a sonic boom at his audition?

  “Of course they’re actors.” Corinne propped her fists on her lace-covered hips and scowled at the Mykhayl-alike, who started toward her with a long, lazy stride. “And they’re going to be actors in jail if they don’t get their leather-clad backsides out that door now.” She broke off and blinked as the redhead loomed over her, grinning evilly. More than a foot taller than she was, he looked as wide across the chest as Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Damn, you’re big.”

  “And getting bigger by the moment,” the Mykhayl-alike rumbled. “What call you that bit of lace you wear? ’Tis intriguing.” With a taunting grin, he reached out and cupped her left breast in long, bold fingers.

  In one smooth blur, Corinne plucked the redhead’s hand from her body, twisted his arm, pivoted, kicked his feet out from under him, and sent him tumbling across the floor like an astonished bowling ball. She struck a combat stance and glared. “Who the hell do you think you are? Get out before I get nasty.”

  “That’s my girl!” Celeste cheered. A third-degree black belt in kung fu had done wonders for Corinne’s self-esteem after that wretched marriage. It was also great for discouraging would-be Lotharios with fast hands.

  But then the redhead looked up from the carpet. Celeste felt the temperature drop in her opulent apartment just from the ice in his eyes. He rolled into a feral battle crouch—Conan, ready to kick some kung-fu ass.

  A soft chuckle sounded behind her back. “This should be good,” the Jarred-alike said. “Too bad it won’t last long.”

  Corinne studied the redhead’s stance and frowned in wary recognition. She shifted her own position as her hands wove delicate patterns designed to confuse and intimidate.

  Which had absolutely no effect on her opponent. He leaped for her as though intent on rolling over her like a masculine tidal wave. She met him with a flurry of blocks and blows. For an instant they seemed evenly matched, but then the redhead picked Corinne’s wrist out of the air and spun her around, waltzed her three steps forward, and bent her over the arm of the couch.

  Celeste gaped in horror. Her sister had finally met a faster opponent—and it couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

  “For these ten years, you tormented me as a child pokes a chained dragon with a stick,” he snarled, whipping a length of rope from a pocket of his trousers. Before Corinne could rear out of his hold, he twisted it around her wrists in several neat, tight turns. Ignoring her frantic kicks, he knotted the ends, leaving her wrists thoroughly secured. “But now the dragon has slipped his leash, and you will pay for every poke.” He rolled his hips against her butt in a gesture that spoke volumes about just how he intended to collect.

  Corinne had a phobia about being bound. Any minute now, she was going to go nuts. “Let her go!” Celeste lunged for the big man, but before she took more than a single step, a powerful forearm coiled around her waist. One jerk slammed her backwards against a hard male body. Frightened and furious, she shrieked like an opera star trying to shatter a wine glass.

  The Jarred-alike clamped a hand over her mouth, his hand so big it practically engulfed the lower half of her face. “Shhhh,” he crooned. “I haven’t given you a reason to scream. Yet.”

  Dammit, she would not be terrorized by him, no matter who he was. Baring her teeth, Celeste sank them right into his palm. He simply tightened his grip until it seemed the bones of her jaw creaked. Desperately, she stomped one high heel down onto his foot, but it glanced off the hard, slick material of his boot.

  A material that felt way too much like the armor she’d always imagined Jarred wearing.

  Celeste forgot her fright at that comparison when he bent her forward and forced her down onto the carpeted floor. She went wild, kicking and punching at him as she spat a stream of acid curses, but she couldn’t get in a solid blow with him behind her.

  Fear surged through her veins, cold as a river of dry ice. Oh, God. They’re going to rape us . . .

  He ignored her frantic struggles and flattened her ruthlessly on the pretty white carpeting. The smooth, slick surface of his armored jacket pressed against her back as he covered her body with his, then caught her right wrist with his free hand and released her jaw. She writhed, but it felt as though he’d blanketed her in solid steel. “Let me go, you son of a bitch!” This can’t be happening!

  “Not until I’m done with you,” he told her in a low, threatening rumble. Deliberately, he let his weight settle onto her, trapping her so thoroughly under two-hundred pounds of very large male that all she could do was squirm. “And considering everything I have in mind, I won’t be done with you for a long, long time.”

  Oh, God, a small voice prayed at the back of her mind. Get me out of this, please! I swear I’ll never write another space opera as long as I live!

  The man reared off her just far enough to pull something metallic from a pocket. In seconds, he had the thin cable wrapped around her wrist, then grabbed the other hand. Despite her attempts to jerk away, he gathered both her wrists behind her back and finished coiling the cable around them. The minute he released it, the flexible metal line snapped tight and rigid.

  Celeste’s eyes widened. The fictional Jarred used something just like that to handcuff captives in her books, but there was no such thing in real life. Which meant . . .

  Oh, no. The ice in her veins chilled still more. Could he really be . . . ? She thrust the idea away. That’s ridiculous. He’s an actor. Or a nutcase with really cool toys. Or . . . something else. Anything else.

  Her captor stood, pulling her up with him as though she weighed no more than a cat. She cursed him futilely, since there was absolutely nothing else she could do. When he turned her loose, she almost fell on her face, off balance from her bound wrists. He caught and steadied her with a hand on her bare shoulder. His fingers felt very warm.

  Shrugging off her kidnapper’s grip, Celeste saw the big redhead still had Corinne bent over the couch, his hips plastered agains
t her fanny. He whispered something in her ear that made her blue eyes go the size of dinner plates.

  Celeste bit her lip. Corinne couldn’t even stand to watch cop shows on TV because she was so phobic about hand-cuffs. How long could she take being bound like that?

  “Dungeon? That’s . . . that’s not necessary,” Corinne stammered, apparently replying to something the big brute had said. “Look, dammit, I’m sure if we all just sit down and talk . . .”

  “If we sit, it will not be to talk.” Mykhayl-alike smiled with chilling anticipation. “It will be so I can slide my rod into some tight orifice of yours.” He pulled an amber pendant from his pocket and dropped it around her neck.

  Corinne gasped and reared up, her feet flailing as if he’d done something much worse than put a piece of jewelry on her. One swinging high heel caught her captor between the legs. Cursing, he whipped another rope around her ankles. She wriggled under him frantically and hurled a string of locker room names at him. He squeezed her hip, growling a warning.

  Terrified for her sister, Celeste twisted to stare up at her own captor. “He’s hurting her! Make him stop!”

  He lifted a taunting brow. “Why? He deserves a little revenge after what she’s done to him.”

  “You don’t understand! Corinne was abused by her ex-husband. She can’t stand being tied up. Please!”

  She threw a quick glance at her sister. Corinne stood stock still as the big redhead fondled her breast possessively and whispered in her ear. Fine tremors ran through her slender body, but she seemed to be hanging on to her self-control and her tongue.

  In fact, she looked almost . . . intrigued?

  “Just me?” Corinne whispered. Her voice strengthened as she drew herself to her full height and tossed her head in dismissal. “No, you’re only an actor. And you’re exaggerating anyway. Even in Hollywood, there can’t be that many horny bimbos.”

  “I do not exaggerate,” the big man said, his eyes narrowing in offense at her skepticism. The embroidered green dragon on his chest seemed to sneer. “All the women of the Seven Kingdoms consider it a great honor to warm the High King’s bed. ’Tis why I often take more than one to my furs—Juli and Daio last night, Mhari and Treva the night before. I . . .”

  “How did you get those names?” Corinne interrupted, staring at him in startled shock. “I’ve never even told Celeste who the concubines are.”

  The redhead arched a brow. “How could I not know who serves my lust?”

  “Well, I’m still not buying any of this,” she told him defiantly. “For one thing, if you were him, why would you give up all those beautiful women to concentrate on me?”

  “ ’Tis simple, wench.” Lowering his head, he explained with silken menace, “The thought of listening to your pleas for mercy night after night makes my rod hard as a sword.”

  As both women stared at Corinne’s captor in shock, Jarred shifted. “There’ll be time enough for that when you’re back in your own universe, Mykhayl. Why don’t you work your spell, so we can both get started on our revenge?”

  “Revenge?” Celeste squeaked.

  “Revenge for what? I didn’t do anything to you!” Corinne protested, as the big redhead chuckled and stepped back. A thoroughly impressive erection strained the fabric of his tight green pants. She stared down at it, her eyes widening even more. She whispered, “Well, except for that . . .”

  “You also fed me to a thirty-foot ice serpent,” the redhead told her grimly. “Not only did the cursed beast near kill me, the enchanted venom of its fangs rendered me as sterile as a gelded bull.” His lips curled back from his teeth. “A palace full of concubines, and I cannot get a son on any of them no matter how many I fuck.”

  The acid in his tone made Celeste’s heart skip a beat. As angry as he was, what would he do to her sister once he had her alone?

  “Don’t even bother asking what you did,” the Jarred-alike hissed in Celeste’s ear.

  The reminder that she was in just as much danger as Corinne made the bottom drop out of her stomach. “Stop it,” she ordered in a voice that shook. “I will not believe this. You are not him!”

  “But I am—and it’s time I proved it.” He looked over her head. “Mykhayl?”

  The big man nodded and swung his captive up over his shoulder as he began to chant something alien and guttural.

  “Dragonese? Nobody else speaks that! I made it up!” Corinne’s voice rose, taking on a note of true hysteria. She broke off in a screech as Mykhayl smacked her rump without interrupting his chant.

  They’re fiction, Celeste thought frantically as her skin began to tingle from the rise of dark energies. None of it really happened. Oh God, I hope none of it happened. Garr . . . If he thinks I killed Garr . . . Her heart lurched with a sudden, horrible suspicion. Did I kill Garr?

  Rainbow bands of energy appeared and began to swirl right in front of Celeste’s living room couch. The colors swirled tighter and faster, until it seemed they were boring like a giant drill bit, right through the wall into . . . somewhere else. Somewhere almost visible through the dark, man-size opening the energy drill created. Staring inside, Celeste could make out wavering shapes that looked at once alien and yet naggingly familiar. As she fought to make out more, wind poured through the shimmering hole to lift her hair, cool and smelling faintly metallic.

  “Jump, my brother,” Mykhayl said, his voice urgent and strained. “I know not how long I can hold the connection to your world. It . . . fights me.”

  “No!” Celeste gasped, jolted out of her unwilling fascination with the energy doorway. She whirled to run. With a soft, grim curse, Jarred bent and swept her into his arms. She screamed in pure terror as he turned and leaped right into the glowing maelstrom.

  “NO! Celeeesssste!” Looking over her captor’s shoulder, she saw Corinne fighting Mykhayl’s iron grip, an expression of panic and hopelessness on her pretty face. “Don’t leave me!”

  Her heart twisted, but for the first time in her life, she knew there was nothing she could do for Corinne. Or for herself.

  Bound by the Dragon

  DIANE WHITESIDE

  ONE

  “Damn you, bring her back!” Corinne screamed at the leather-clad jerk disappearing into the gate’s swirling maw with her sister. A dull thud sounded, like a drum skin snapping back into place—and then the gate was gone, leaving only Celeste’s prized artworks on an expensively painted wall.

  She twisted farther around on her own captor’s shoulder, hoping for one last glimpse of Celeste. But no strange cauldron of frothing colors above endless depths returned her protective older sister. She swallowed a last sob and turned her back on the unresponsive paintings.

  “I’ll hunt you down, no matter who you are. Or where you are,” she growled. She’d have to rescue Celeste somehow. And fast. That dark male looked pissed as hell and capable of anything.

  The big man holding her chanted again in Dragonese but Corinne barely listened, too worried about her sister to think of her own predicament. Even the ropes rasping against her wrists and ankles were less nerve-wracking than Celeste’s plight. And the amber pendant that clutched her neck like an unseen hand was only a minor irritant now.

  Maybe—maybe the police could help if she yelled loud enough to overcome the soundproofing that Celeste was so proud of. I should be able to do it; screaming for the cops shouldn’t be too hard . . .

  She opened her mouth to try.

  A last rasping masculine phrase snapped another gate open in front of them, its energies whirling with all the colors of the spectrum. He settled her more securely on his shoulder and leaped into the void beyond.

  Shock clamped her throat shut.

  They fell endlessly through darkness, brightened by cascading plumes of light that burned her eyes, even as the winds slashed her bare shoulders. They spun as they dropped, until the only reality was his iron grasp on her hip and his long red hair whipping across her face, borne by the vortex’s chill, dry wind.

&n
bsp; She tried to tell herself that this was only an illusion or fancy movie stunt. But George Lucas couldn’t pull off an effect like this.

  I swear I’ll never write another cross-genre book, if I can just wake up in my bungalow again . . .

  The lights formed into spirals, then icy nets of power that threatened to carve her flesh from her bones. Every energy path in Corinne’s body wakened to agonized life, as her ch’i flowed in a hundred different directions. She screamed, but the vortex carried her voice away before she could hear herself.

  She flung her head from side to side, searching for somewhere solid to take refuge against, and found her captor’s head and neck. His warm strength flowed into her and his grasp tightened on her hip. The energy lines pulsed then quickly aligned into a cleaner flow than she’d ever found in a kung fu class.

  Suddenly the vortex burst into a world of air and matter, not energy. Far below, she could see a forest of polished marble columns rising above a bright floor. She squeezed her eyes shut and screeched, as they plummeted downward. But he merely grunted and gripped her more tightly. Somehow he landed on his feet, maintaining his hold on her behind. Corinne gagged when his hard shoulder slammed into her belly.

  Her eyes cracked open warily. She hung upside down over the stranger’s shoulder, staring at a complex mosaic of a dragon and a tiger. Pulling herself upright, she looked away from the all-too-accurate replica of Torhtremer’s Great Seal and tried to ignore the massive hands gripping her ass.

  “What the hell,” she moaned and swallowed hard. The sudden change to a stable universe irked her stomach, while her ch’i was taking its own sweet time returning to normal patterns.