White Hot (Hidden Legacy #2)(49)

When he was little, I used to read baby books to him. One of them was about a puppy lost in the forest, with a picture of a small golden puppy among tall dark trees. Both Leon and Arabella inevitably bawled when we came to that part. Behind all of that sarcasm, he was still that little sensitive kid with big eyes. I just wished his magic would show up already.





Chapter 7

I sat in near absolute darkness. Around me the cave stretched on, deep, deep into the black. Watching me. Breathing cold that seeped into my bones. The jungle waited around the bend of the brown wall. Something stalked within it, something with long vicious teeth. I couldn’t see it or hear it, but I knew it was there, waiting. Other shapes rested next to me, swathes of deeper blackness. They knew it too.

The cave breathed. Something was biting my legs and I knew it was ticks and I should pick them off, but moving seemed too hard. I was too tired.

The sniffers were out there, waiting for the faintest splash of magic. Desperation had passed. Emotions too. We were numb animals now, trying to get from point A to point B. Animals who didn’t speak, who communicated with glances, and who moved as one.

A watery green light to the left announced someone had sacrificed a glowstick. The shapes around me shifted, drawn like moths to this pathetic ghost of a real fire, starved, filthy, stretching hands to each other looking for some human touch in the nightmare.

A smaller shape scuttled to the side and fell under someone’s knife. Another squeaked and died. Rats. At least we’d eat tonight . . .

I sat upright in my bed. The shreds of the nightmare floated around me, melting. I groped for the lamp on the night table and flicked it on with trembling fingers. The welcome electric glow flared into life. My phone next to it told me it was almost two in the morning.

I wasn’t in a horrible cave. I was in my bedroom.

I felt clammy all over. I’d had nightmares before, but this was different. Oppressive, chilling, and hopeless. My room didn’t seem real, but the cave was. It was very real and it waited for me just beyond these walls. I was trapped.

I shuddered.

Pulling the blanket to my chest and clenching it didn’t seem to fix my freak-out.

I peered around the bedroom with wide eyes. There was no way I could go back to sleep. There was no turning off the light either. My stomach growled. I’d gone to bed without dinner. I’d been too tired to eat.

Okay, sitting in bed and shivering really didn’t accomplish anything. What I needed was to get out and go downstairs to our clean modern kitchen, and drink a hot cup of chamomile tea and eat something that didn’t look like a rat. Possibly a cookie. Cookies were as un-ratlike as you could get.

I pulled the blanket back, put on a pair of yoga pants, and opened my door, half expecting to see the cave walls.

No cave. No secret enemy with terrifying teeth waiting in the darkness. Just the familiar warehouse.

I tiptoed down the ladder and went along the hallway toward the kitchen. The above-the-table lamp was on and warm electric light pooled at the doorway. Rogan sat at the table, a laptop open in front of him. He leaned forward, his chin resting on his chest. His eyes were closed. He dwarfed the chair. He was so well proportioned it was easy to forget how big he was. His shoulders were huge and broad, his chest powerful, his arms made to crush and rip his opponents.

His hair wasn’t really long enough to be tousled, but it looked unbrushed and messy. Dark stubble touched his jaw. He’d lost some of that killer efficiency that made him so terrifying. He was human and slightly rough. I could picture him looking just like that, stretched out on a bed, as I climbed in there next to him.

Mad Rogan in his off mode. All of his titles—Prime, war hero, billionaire, major, butcher, scourge—lay at his feet, discarded. Only Connor remained, and he was so unbearably sexy.

I could just turn around and go back the way I’d come, but I wanted him to open his eyes and talk to me. My mother taught me that former soldiers could fall sleep anywhere, in any position. And they didn’t react well to being surprised.

“Rogan,” I called from the door. “Rogan, wake up?”

He awoke instantly, going from deep sleep to complete awareness in a blink, as if someone had thrown a switch. Blue eyes regarded me. “Problems?”

“No.”

I walked into the kitchen. Electric kettle or single-use coffeemaker? Coffeemaker was faster. I took a cup out of the cabinet, dropped the tea bag into it, and watched as the coffeemaker poured hot water over it.

He checked his laptop. “What are you doing up? I thought we agreed that you would rest.”

“I had a nightmare.” I extracted the jar of cookies from the pantry and brought it and my tea to the table.

He straightened, squaring his shoulders, stretching slightly. The chair couldn’t have been comfortable.

“What are you doing?” I peeked at his laptop. A shot of the video with the Suburban passing our Range Rover, ice frosting the road behind it. He must’ve been going frame by frame through it, trying to see some clues he missed.

“Bug is really good at this sort of thing, you know,” I told him.

“I know.” He pushed the laptop away. Drowsiness still hid in the corners of his blue eyes.

A cup of coffee sat in front of him. I stole it.

“I wasn’t finished with that.”

“It’s cold. I’ll warm it up so you will have something to drink. You can’t eat cookies without a drink.” I stuck the mug into the microwave. “Why aren’t you asleep on your air mattress?”