9. Parker
9
PARKER
F rom Archer House, I went home with Raina and Foster.
We’d been trying for four months to reach my parents through Raina’s dreams. Most of the time, our sleep patterns didn’t even match, though. It was hard for me to fall unconscious just anywhere. We’d tried in the living room, but neither the sofa nor the chair had reduced me to drowsiness at all.
Our best bet remained the bed. So Raina and I usually crashed next to each other above the covers while Foster watched over us, playing on his phone from the chair in the corner.
It was weird, though, especially since I always made sure to keep my shoes on just to keep it as professional as possible, which only made sleep even more elusive. But whatever. Getting too cozy with Union’s girl felt wrong.
So far, I’d met Foster’s dead brother, Hayes, a total of three times in Raina’s dreams, and I’d talked to her dead sister once. As a spirit guide for the recently deceased, Hayes was our main point of contact, though.
The first time, we’d just been able to tell him who we were looking for before a thunderstorm had woken us up.
The next time after that, Hayes had reported that he’d looked for my parents but hadn’t had any luck finding them yet.
The last time we’d seen him, he’d heard word of where they might be, and he was going to try to get them to us the next time we visited. Except every time I’d tried to dream share with Raina since then, I’d been too antsy and nervous to fall asleep.
I’d tried getting so drunk that I simply passed out. But for some reason, that usually drew her into my dreams, which held no spirit guides at all.
And I really didn’t like sharing my dreams with her. She always saw what I didn’t want her to.
Like tonight, for instance, as soon as I drifted off and found myself somewhere other than a beach—because beaches were the only place Hayes hung out—I knew I was driving the dream again, not Raina.
I was literally driving too. Seated behind the wheel of my Lucid Air, I talked to Hope as I escorted her to Archer House. She cracked off some insult about my driving abilities, and the next thing I knew, I was whipping toward the curb so I could drag her from the passenger seat and into my lap, where she naturally just straddled my thighs.
Still pissed at her, I grabbed the hair at the base of her neck, and I yanked her head back roughly before pressing my mouth to her pulse and causing her to cry out in ecstasy.
We didn’t even remove any clothes, yet I was inside her a moment later, clutching her ass as I guided her up and down on my cock.
Then, I’m not sure how, but she was facing away from me another moment later, so that her back was to my chest, and I could see her breasts bouncing in the reflection of the windshield as she threw her head back, splashing me in the face with her curls as she rode me reverse cowgirl style.
I reached around to catch her thigh, feeling warm flesh under my skin, and I smoothed my palm up, encouraging her to spread her legs wider as my fingers sought her clit.
But before they made contact, she sighed the name, “Foster…” And that was the wake-up shove I needed.
Eyes flying open, I jerked my hand from Raina’s leg where it was too dangerously close to places I should never go, and I cursed in horror as I yanked my face from her hair.
“Holy shit. Shit, shit, shit!” Flying off the bed backward, I stumbled in reverse until my spine cracked against the wall.
There, I gaped at Raina who was also scurrying off the bed as if she couldn’t escape it fast enough. I watched her tumble into the opposite wall, where she hovered against the Sheetrock, clutching her nightshirt to her chest and pressing her legs together as if trying to hide everything from me.
We blinked at each other for a good second before she croaked, “Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
I blurted out a dry laugh. “No shit.” Glancing toward the chair where Foster usually camped out, I motioned aggressively. “And where the fuck is Union?”
Raina frowned at the chair as well. “I don’t know. Foster ?” she lifted her voice, calling.
“Yeah?” he answered from the other end of the apartment, completely oblivious to the fact that I’d just been feeling up his girlfriend.
Narrowing my eyes in outrage, I pushed away from the wall and stormed from the bedroom. He was just exiting the kitchen as I entered the living room.
“Where the fuck were you?” I raged, glaring at him as if this was all his fault.
“Uh…” He blinked at me in confusion before slowly lifting a glass full of clear liquid with ice. “I was getting a drink.”
“Give me that!” I snapped, stalking forward and snagging the vodka from his hand, only to take a big gulp and promptly spit it out, shuddering. “Gah. What the fuck is this?”
Foster furrowed his brows in question before uttering, “Water.”
“Ugh.” I made a sour face and shoved it back at him before marching toward the kitchen. “I need something so much stronger than that right now.”
“What the hell happened?” he asked, trailing after me.
“I got handsy with your girlfriend, that’s what the hell happened,” I groused, going straight to the first cabinet I saw and throwing it open, only to find cereal and granola bars and macaroni and all the worthless shit that contained no alcohol whatsoever.
From the kitchen entrance, Foster blinked. “What, really?”
“ Yes , fucking really. I grabbed her thigh and was working my way up before I came to and realized what the hell I was doing.”
“But it’s okay,” Raina assured, appearing at Foster’s side in the entrance of the kitchen.
When I glanced at her with lifted eyebrows to disagree, she clung to her boyfriend as if she were traumatized and never wanted to let him go again.
“I knew it wasn’t me he thought he was touching,” she went on, shifting her gaze back to Foster. “Since he was dreaming about?—”
“No!” I warned, stabbing a finger in her direction. “Don’t you dare.”
Foster turned to his girl fully. “Who was he dreaming about?”
Her eyes widened right back before she leaned close and whispered, “Hope.”
“Red!” I shouted in outrage.
“I’m sorry,” she wailed. “I couldn’t help it.” Bringing her fingers up to her mouth to start chewing on the nails, she confessed, “It was just too juicy. And he’s Foster. I couldn’t not tell Foster.”
Spinning to me, Foster dropped his jaw and blurted, “You had a sex dream about Hope ?”
“No,” I growled before I pointed condemningly at Raina, warning her to keep her damn mouth shut. “No.” And then because I couldn’t stand it being true, I repeated, “No,” for a third time.
“He totally did,” Raina told her boyfriend.
Gnashing my teeth, I groaned out a sound of miserable rage and slammed the cabinet door shut. “If either of you breathes a word of this to anyone, I swear to God, I’ll murder the pair of you in your sleep.”
Both Foster and Raina bobbed their heads in unison.
“And where the fuck do you keep your alcohol?” I demanded, flinging the next cabinet door away from me in disgust when I found nothing in there either.
“We don’t have any.”
I whirled to blink at them, sure I’d misheard that. “What?”
Foster shrugged. “We’re not big drinkers.”
I squinted, still not understanding.
“So… Hope, huh?” Foster finally said, lifting his eyebrows in question.
I pointed my finger, daring him to breathe one more word about it.
“I mean, she’s—” He winced through a painful-looking swallow. “Pretty,” he finally allowed.
“I like it,” Raina announced, nodding her approval. “I think you two would make a?—”
“That’s it,” I decided, lifting my hands and starting toward the exit of the kitchen. “I’m leaving.”
“Hey, hey.” Foster laughed and blocked my way. “Fine. We’ll stop teasing. We know it was just a dream. You can’t control what you dream about. Hell, I had a dream once about riding on this huge flying submarine sandwich in nothing but boxer shorts to go ask one of my old math teachers from sixth grade for my teeth back in front of the entire school. It was…bizarre.”
“This,” I told him, steadily lifting both hands to emphasize my point as I squeezed past him to get into the living room where there was more space to breathe…and freak out. “This wasn’t bizarre. It wasn’t even a dream. Alright? It was a fucking nightmare. A horrific, traumatizing nightmare.”
“Oh, that so wasn’t a nightmare,” Raina disagreed with a laughing snort as she glanced at Foster to send him a telling look. “It was straight-up porn.” Tipping her head thoughtfully, she added, “Kind of classy porn, though. He’s got some pretty smooth moves. You’re seriously going to have to pull my hair sometime because that part looked super hot.”
As Foster’s mouth went slack, I gripped my head and groaned, “Oh Jesus,” wishing the torture would stop already. “Still leaving,” I announced, heading toward the door.
“Whoa, hold up!” Jostled from whatever mind trip his girlfriend had just put him through, Foster laughed and lurched after me. “How do you think you’re getting home?”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and cast him a seriously? glance. “I’m calling a ride.”
“I can take you,” he said, looking strangely concerned.
I furrowed my brow, not sure what he was so worried about. But then I said, “Sounds like you have some hair-pulling to do, pal.”
He rolled his eyes and was unable to hide a flush. “Let me at least wait with you.”
Taking that as code for he wanted to talk privately, I lifted one shoulder in an indifferent shrug. “Whatever.”
With a nod, he said, “Sweet. Let me get my shoes on.”
As he darted from the front room, leaving me alone with Raina, I stiffened, not sure what the hell to say to her after I’d just pawed her.
I busied myself for the first few seconds by ordering a lift, but Foster still wasn’t back by the time I finished.
An avid hater of being stuck in awkward moments, I finally looked over and mumbled, “Sorry about the?—”
When I splayed out a hand, hoping she’d get the point, she started in surprise, “Oh!” Obviously already over it and not expecting an apology, she swept the subject aside as if it were nothing. “It’s fine. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. Foster knows too.”
I nodded and dropped my gaze.
And thankfully, Union returned, then.
“Be right back,” he told his girl as he paused long enough to give her an affectionate kiss. She rubbed his arm and smiled encouragingly, as if wishing him good luck.
It made me think they both knew exactly what he wanted to say, and I was not going to like this little talk.
My back was already up by the time we stepped out the door and he was pulling it closed behind him. I headed off toward the stairwell without him, delaying the inevitable, and I jogged down to the ground level to leave him behind. But athlete that he was, the damn bastard caught up easily.
And as soon as we reached the bus stop bench, he was already shoving his hands in his pockets, saying, “So?—”
“I swear to God,” I warned him right there, lifting a threatening finger. “If you say her name right now, I will punch you in the throat.”
Because he could really only go in two directions with Hope talk. He’d either want to explore the meaning behind my dream—and there was definitely no meaning behind it; it meant absolutely nothing—or he wanted to remind me that she was forbidden. And I already knew she was fucking forbidden. She was Alec’s damn sister. Plus a menace to society. No good could come from getting tangled with her. I was fully cognizant of that. I didn’t need a friendly reminder that would only piss me off more.
Lifting both hands, Foster chuckled softly. “Okay. Alright. But seriously, was she the reason you drank so much tonight?”
“Huh?”
Foster shrugged. “It’s been a minute since you’ve gotten that blitzed. Since Raina’s coma, anyway. I was worried something might have triggered this, but if you’re only freaked about some new attraction you’re suddenly feeling for?—”
“I am not attracted,” I cut in sternly, unable to believe he’d still gone there after I’d explicitly warned him not to.
Union only lifted his eyebrows as if he knew better.
Growling out my anger, I flung up my hands and muttered, “She fucking flirted with me. Okay?”
Foster only shrugged. “Yeah, she flirts with me sometimes, too. More so with Archer. Because she knows it unnerves us. She’s an apex predator, man. She senses weakness and goes straight for its jugular.”
“Yeah, well, she’s never flirted with me before.”
“You must’ve done something today that tipped her off and let her know it’d get under your skin, then,” he said a little too logically for my taste.
“I didn’t—” I started adamantly, only to pause and remember that moment at the car when she’d tried to be all tough and load the luggage by herself when her battery had clearly been drained to zero. “Okay, fine. There was like half a second at the airport,” I admitted begrudgingly. “Where I had one damn thought. But it passed as soon as I had it.”
Except it hadn’t. The thought never passed . It had stuck and stayed, and it was still swirling through my head. But I wasn’t going to mention that because I was still pretending it wasn’t happening.
Foster shrugged. “Bro, half a second is all it takes for her. Langston’s merciless; I’m telling you.”
I scowled, instinctively wanting to defend her, and I had no idea why. I usually gave her a harder time than anyone. Why did I give a shit if Union wanted to malign her?
Probably because hearing him suggest that she’d only flirted to unnerve me didn’t…sit right. She’d been in those moments just as deeply as I had. She’d gotten just as aroused as I had.
I knew she had.
“So do you want to try again tomorrow?” Foster asked, making me blink because I was still thinking about Hope. It took me a second before I realized he’d already lost interest in that conversation and had changed gears back to the dream sharing shit.
I grimaced. “Man, I just had my hand on your lady’s?—”
“You were asleep,” he defended. “And she didn’t seem traumatized by it, so…”
I groaned out my resistance anyway. “I still need to hold off for a while. After I unwind a little. Let’s wait until I at least get laid again.”
“Ah.” He nodded in understanding. “Gotcha.” A second later, he cleared his throat. “So hair-pulling, huh?”
Fuck. He just wasn’t going to let this go.
Yes! I’d dreamed about pulling Hope’s hair. So the fuck what?
“I mean…” He shifted closer so he could ask in a quieter tone, “Like, do you pull it hard?”
I blinked at him before dryly answering, “Yes. She wants you to scalp her bald. Really , man?”
He shifted a step in reverse, clearing his throat again. “So…gently, then?”
“Seriously?” I asked him with raised eyebrows.
“What?” He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture.
“For fuck’s sake.” Sighing out my exasperation, I grabbed a hunk of his hair. There wasn’t much there, but as soon as I got a good handful, I wrenched his head back and spoke directly into his ear. “Like this. With just enough force and aggression to let her know she’s got you good and wound up and wanting to fuck the shit out of her. You got me?”
“Uh...yeah. I definitely got it now.”
“Good.”
As soon as I released him, he straightened and rolled his shoulders before plucking at his shirt as if to get more air in there. “Thanks,” he said.
I lifted my brows, watching him try to squirm the discomfort back out of his system. “Mm-hmm,” I said as a car turned the corner at the end of the block, and headlights blinded us with its approach.
Stepping away from the bench, I said, “Looks like this is me.”
“Yep.” Foster sighed as he glanced over at me. “You gonna be okay, Park?”
I snorted. “Always am,” I told him.
Even when I didn’t want to be. Even when everyone died around me. I was always okay, left with the guilt of living through another day, while they couldn’t.
As the car pulled up to the curb next to us, I saluted my friend before reaching for the passenger side door. “Later, bro.”
“Later,” he told me softly.
I plopped into the seat and shut the door, making my driver glance out the window with a confused frown when Foster turned away and started back toward his building. “Is he not coming? I thought I had two stops to make.”
“One of them is just a drive-by,” I answered. “I loaned my car out to someone and wanted to make sure it was okay.”
The driver seemed momentarily confused, but then he shrugged and mumbled, “Whatever.”
Following the directions from the GPS coordinates I’d gotten from my Lucid Air’s location, we traveled about twenty minutes from Foster’s apartment, coming to another apartment complex. There were no hotels in sight. But my Lucid Air was sitting in the building’s parking lot as if it belonged.
Which meant—son of a bitch—she really had moved back to town. This wasn’t some short-term visit.
“She look okay?” the driver asked, jarring me from my thoughts.
I glanced at him. “What?”
“Your car?” he asked
“Oh.” Slumping back in my seat in dread and letting my head fall back so I could peer out the window up at the stars, I muttered, “Yeah. It’s all good.”
But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. Because learning that Hope was here to stay sent a spark of interest through me that was more than concerning. It was straight-up frightening.