Page 2 of Beyond Dreams

After a moment, while he remained unmoving, stricken by this news and all the possible ramifications, Sidheag spoke again, her tone more ominous than ever he had heard it. “Dinna fear. Another comes to take her place.”

Chapter One

Holly Wright clampedher lips and blinked several times to dispel the image of the brutally handsome man from her mind. He had no right to occupy her daytime thoughts, that was just unfair. Already he’d stolen too much of her time and her sleep, coming to her in her dreams. And honestly, if he didn’t stop with his rage, she was going to start taking a sleeping aid to hopefully pass a night uninterrupted by dreams of him.

He’d been angry again last night and thus deserved not one minute of her waking thoughts or time.

But then, he was always angry—at her or because of her, she could never figure out.

And while she’d taken to privately calling himthe man of her dreams, he most certainly was not that. Well, he was, since he did appear in her dreams, but theidealbehindman of her dreamsdidn’t fit this guy, and that mostly had to do with that aforementioned anger, which was hard to ignore because it was so glaring, though certainly Holly had tried.

In the beginning, when she’d dreamed of him for the first time, the anger was easier to overlook, her sleep-shrouded brain quite happily attaching itself to the image of the man—masculine, godlike, breathtaking. On that first occasion she’d literally crossed her fingers inside the dream, hoping this was one of those rare but usually satisfying erotic dreams. The last one of those that she’d had had featured her history teacher from high school—ew, even though he was handsome, kind of, sort of—and while successful as far as erotic dreams went, it had left her craving a bath—or a visit to the principal’s office—the following day.

It had become clear pretty quickly that her first dream ofhimwas, sadly, not of the erotic variety. Just her luck since she had, at the time and with some flight of fancy thought,Now there’s a temple in which I would happily worship.

He was dressed plainly, almost strangely, and at first she’d assimilated him with a fantasy series she’d binge-watched just the week before. But those TV characters, despite the show being set in an ancient world, had been dressed with a bent toward futuristic, wearing a lot of tight black clothing, having many pockets and numerous belts that held a variety of other-worldly weapons. This guy in her dreams wore what looked like peasant clothing she might see at one of the many medieval fairs she’d been to over the years, including rough-hewn breeches and a belted linen shirt.

Also strange, that for as many times as he’d visited her in her dreams, never was the picture of him crystal clear. She knew that he was big and muscular and that his lip was curled often, regularly, but she didn’t know the color of his eyes or if his hands were clean or dirty, or soft or coarsened. She had the impression of dark hair and dark eyes but that was it. She saw his lips move and sometimes he spoke to her—hollered at her, it seemed—but she didn’t know what his voice sounded like. She had a suspicion that the sound she’d attached to his words was invented by her, how she thought he should sound. She’d given him a deep voice, a bit raspy, to mesh nicely with the image of him, rough and ready, impatient and wanting action, looking for a fight, she often thought.

She’d been dreaming of him for years now. In and of itself, this was strange. Aside from a briefly recurring childhood dream of a witch who lived in the basement of her home, Holly could not recall ever having dreamed of the same person over and over—certainly not to this degree. By now, after almost three years of being visited infrequently but continuously in the night by him, she might guess she’d dreamed him possibly fifty times or more.

At first, she’d loved the dreams, had been so enthralled by the man, his face and figure, and all that was so... dynamic about him. He seemed so real, so potent, so alive. But those initial dreams, which she’d since labeled as their meet-cute—because she was a sucker for a good romance—had turned dark, seemed now more desperate.

Or ratherheseemed more desperate, as if he were trying to tell her something. What had been rather a pleasant nighttime interlude was now cloaked in something sinister, she sensed, and of late the man’s anger was too stark and bothersome. She knew she dreamed, even as she was inside them, but theyfeltso real, and danger felt so close, so inevitable, that they were no longer enjoyable.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me,” she’s said to him just last night when he’d yelled at her, his hands fisted in front of him.

“You’re not listening,” she was pretty sure he’d said then.

She’d been very upset at that point, their communication as futile as ever. “I’m trying. I really am. But geez, stop yelling at me!”

There were rarely any clues around them to explain the why or where of her dreams. Sometimes she thought they were inside a forest, and once she’d clearly known that they’d stood upon a gray and foggy beach but that was all. On more than one occasion, she had the impression that they stood inside an ancient house, surrounded by dark stone and dampness. Last night, there had been only inky blackness surrounding them while a menacing and shifting fog wafted between them.

No longer did sleep tempt her, but fear kept her too long awake each night.

She’d thought for sure coming to Scotland—traveling, being jet-lagged and travel worn, being in hotels in new beds and fresh surroundings—would have offered her a reprieve from the dreams. In fact, they had only intensified, and Holly was pretty sure she would need to seek professional help once she got back to the States. For now, as exhausted as she was, she would simply have to make the best of it.

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