Chapter One
Lindsey Walters, Earth Freighter Jefferson, Cargo Hold
The nightmare always started the same way. Sunshine warmed my face and I couldn’t stop smiling. My son, Wyatt, walked beside me, his sweet little face excited as I took him to his favorite place in the world, the park near our apartment.
I wore a bright yellow and white striped sundress, one my mother and Wyatt had picked out for me on Mother’s Day. Yellow daisies with green stems were embroidered into the hem. Wyatt’s little blond head barely came to my waist, and his hand was warm and soft, so small and sweet in my own.
His father was long gone, a college boyfriend who’d heard the word pregnant and bolted like a coward. Not that it had been a big loss. The sex had been lackluster. No spark. No one had ever managed to light my fire. I hadn’t heard from him, nor seen him since, and I refused to put his name on Wyatt’s birth certificate. To me, he’d just been a sperm donor who couldn’t get me off.
Wyatt was mine, and I would do anything for him. Lie, cheat, steal, kill. He was my baby with pale blue eyes and dimples that made my chest ache.
Birds sang and a light breeze stirred the top of the trees. Wyatt lifted his head and smiled up at me…my heart nearly burst with love, and everything shifted.
We were in the car. Screeching tires. Explosion of glass. My baby screaming, then sobbing…then silent.
Blood. Everywhere.
The hospital, stark white walls and frowning nurses with pity in their eyes.
Wyatt’s small, broken body lying unconscious in the recovery room, the doctor telling me he might lose his leg. Never walk without pain. Never run. Never play on the playground he loved so much.
My heart pounded, as it always did, but I knew this dream well. When I looked around, I expected to see my exhausted mother sleeping in the cramped chair in the corner of Wyatt’s hospital room wearing wrinkled clothing and worry lines around her sharp blue eyes. Wyatt’s eyes. He’d gotten them from her.
Instead of the hospital room and my mother’s worried expression, a man stood behind me, his dark eyes looked as confused as I felt.
My hand burned, the odd birthmark I’d always had itching and red hot as if I’d been stung by a wasp. It hurt, but not badly. More…startling.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice a dark rumble in my dream.
I blinked slowly and the hospital room faded. Wyatt faded until it was just me…and him. And God help me, he was hot. Sex-on-a-stick, I want to lick him all over, hot.
As dreams went, this was much better than Hospital 101, the dream I had almost every night. I knew that in the real world Wyatt was safe in his bed, that the car accident had been three months ago, that my mother was watching over him until I could return from this dangerous, desperate assignment. Wyatt wasn’t here. This wasn’t real. None of this was real.
But the man stood, motionless, like a predator watching his prey as he waited for my response.
“I’m Lindsey,” I said.
He walked toward me in this nowhere place. There were no walls, no floor. It was like we stood in a thick fog, staring at one another. I held my ground as he drew closer, eager to feel his touch, eager for this fantasy that my stressed-out mind had apparently conjured, to run its course. I could use a break. And if I’d been watching the new Superman movie a few too many times, and my sex-starved, stressed-out body wanted to conjure up a bigger, darker, sexier version of my favorite superhero…well, I wasn’t going to argue. This larger-than-life man was in my dream and I was going to enjoy every minute of it.
As he approached, I had to tilt my head back and I realized he was at least six-six, maybe taller, and built like a linebacker. His hair was so dark it was nearly black, his eyes a deep, seductive brown as dark as my favorite coffee but with startling golden flecks around the pupil. His skin was olive toned and flawless, a true Greek Adonis. He had just enough stubble on his face that I knew he’d leave whisker burn across my breasts if he kissed me there. My nipples tightened at the idea of those full lips sucking and tugging. He wore black boots, black pants and a black shirt that could have been from anywhere or nowhere. Non-descript, but I didn’t care about the details. I didn’t care where he came from, because wherever he came from, he was in my dream now. Mine.
Slowly, he lifted his hand to my hair, running the blond strands through his fingers as if hypnotized. I anticipated a rough touch, his size too great for anything this hesitant, but I was wrong. He was beyond gentle. He was tender, and so was his voice. “Lindsey. You can’t be real.”
I couldn’t contain my smile. Not real? Check. None of this was real. It couldn’t be. But I could feel the heat of his palm on my scalp and it almost tingled.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Kiel. I am a Hunter.”
A Hunter? Well, didn’t that just fit this superhero, hot-as-hell fantasy I had going on? Yum. “Are you hunting me?”
Please say yes. Please, please, please say yes.He could hunt me, strip me, shove me up against the wall and fuck me until I screamed. I’d never had an orgasm without my battery operated best friend. No man had touched me in five years.
Not since Wyatt. Not since the sperm donor. Being a single mother made the dating thing a real pain in the ass. I was never just on a date, I was auditioning dads, and so far, none of the men I’d met were good enough for my Wyatt. And if they were? Well, so far, none of them were interested in an instant family. I was too young, only twenty-four, and guys my age were still more worried about what kind of beer they were going to drink on Friday night than taking a four-year-old to preschool and packing lunches. I had baggage, which meant I slept alone.
Except Kiel was touching me now and I wanted more. Craved it. I ached for it.
I hadn’t had a dream this delicious since…well, ever.