She’d dared to daydream about going off with him to a cabin in the woods—just the two of them. In her imagination, she’d made it a sexy little adventure. She’d gotten her wish—with a twist. They were here to fight for their lives. Against Black Trousers. And . . . something else, a being from another world who was somehow tangled up with the magician.

  Jack looked up and found her watching him. “Your turn to sleep.”

  “I . . .”

  “Don’t argue. I’ve been sleeping off and on half the day. I’ll get you up in a few hours. While you’re sleeping, I’ll do a little light reading. And eat some of this nice nourishing food you’ve thoughtfully provided.”

  “You like my taste in junk food?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  He crossed to the kitchen, opened the freezer compartment at the top of the refrigerator, dropped ice cubes into a glass, then added Dr. Pepper. After carrying the drink and a bag of onion and sour cream chips to a table in the corner, he settled into the Morris-style easy chair and started sorting through the box of books Ross had brought.

  Kathryn wanted to cross the room, lean over the chair, and wrap her arms around him. Instead, she closed the curtains across the windows, used the bathroom, then pulled off her jeans and crawled into the double bed, wearing just her tee shirt and panties.

  She knew Jack was watching her, and she liked that, liked the fact that her legs were long and sleek below the tee shirt.

  The lamp behind his chair cast a warm pool of light. She watched him pretend he hadn’t been very aware of her, watched him settle back and open the bag of chips. Then reach for a book.

  He looked up, saw her regarding him, and smiled. “Sleep.”

  “I like watching you.”

  “An old broken-down cop?”

  “Stop fishing for compliments. You’re not old. And you’re not broken-down.”

  He gestured toward the white sling. “I wouldn’t be much good in hand-to-hand combat.”

  “If you came over here, I’d show you how wrong you are.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  A grin flickered on his lips, and she thought for a moment that he might actually come to her. Instead, he said, “Grab some sleep while you have the chance.”

  She wanted to ask what could happen later. But she tucked that thought away and snuggled down under the sheet and quilt.

  When she closed her eyes again, exhaustion took over. She’d been operating on nerves for hours, and letting go was suddenly a luxury.

  Quickly she left the world behind and slipped into oblivion.

  JACK watched her, wanting to join her in the bed and strip the tee shirt off her. Sure! One-handed would be a little awkward. Resolutely he turned back to the pile of books. There were so many volumes. What should he read?

  As he shuffled through them, one felt hot when his fingers touched the cover.

  He blinked, pulled his hand away, then gingerly touched the cracked and faded blue leather again. It felt like a stove burner. Only it looked perfectly normal.

  The title was Portal to Another Universe. By Jonathan Zacarias, written in 1787. With clumsy fingers, he flipped through the pages. They fell open in his lap to page 28, and he stared down at the old print, his pulse starting to pound.

  FOR a short time, rejuvenating slumber cradled Kathryn.

  Then she awoke. Well, not awoke, literally. She was there again—in that place of dim light and unbreathable air. The place of fear. The place where a huge, dark presence hovered over her like low, storm clouds bringing the fury of a tempest.

  “No,” she gasped, struggling to pull herself back to the world. But the land and the being held her captive as surely as if she’d stepped into a steel trap.

  Relief flooded through her when she saw the magic wand. Eagerly, she staggered toward the beacon shining in the gloom. But this time when she reached it, there was no sense of relief.

  She was on a grassy hill. Under a blue sky. But still her lungs burned.

  Then suddenly ropes captured her hands, pulled her backward, bound her to the plastic post that till now had been a symbol of safety.

  She saw that faggots of wood were piled around her. And as she watched in terror, flames sprang up, leaping at her, reaching for her flesh.

  A tongue of fire licked at her, and she screamed at the burning pain.

  “No! Please stop! Why are you doing this to me?”

  You ran away.

  “No.”

  Go back where you came from.

  “No. We can’t. He’ll find us.”

  You think he won’t find you here? He wants to enslave me! You must stop him.

  The fire receded, and images came to her then—hazy, ghostly. Like at Sugarloaf Mountain. Only now she was seeing the chamber Jack had described. A ceremonial chamber, hung with black. But it wasn’t Swinton tied down on the table in the specteral scene. She gasped when she saw it was Heather—unconscious. Wearing a white dress slit down the middle to bare her breasts.

  Black Trousers stood over her, chanting, a knife in one hand, his other hand . . .

  She gagged. His other hand was on his erect penis, stroking in time to the words he was chanting.

  In a corner of the room, the dark presence hovered. And then interspersed with the scene was another—herself and Jack that first time, he in Roman military garb. She in a sheer white gown.

  They were kissing, touching, totally absorbed in each other. And all at once she knew that the scene had flashed into Black Trousers’s mind, making the downward stroke of his knife falter.

  He climaxed then, his seed spewing onto the table—even as he cried out in rage. And she understood the ceremony had failed.

  Then the flames leaped around her once more. And she screamed in pain and terror, screamed again, then struggled against the force clamping her in place.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “KATHRYN! KATHRYN!”

  “No! Don’t! Please don’t! Oh, God, please stop,” she gasped, trying to wrench away from the force that held her.

  “Kathryn, it’s just a dream. You’re all right. You’re with me. With Jack.”

  Finally, the words penetrated the horror and the terror. Her lids blinked open, and she found herself staring up into his worried eyes. It was his hand on her shoulder, holding her down.

  As soon as he saw that she recognized him, he eased up the pressure. She blinked, her eyes filling with tears, and she clutched at his shoulders. When he grimaced, she realized she must be hurting him, and relaxed her grasp. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “I’m okay. What happened? One minute you looked like you were sleeping peacefully. Then you were flailing around, moaning. It was another one of the dreams, wasn’t it? Another one by yourself,” he said between gritted teeth.

  She nodded, her mind spinning back to the dream. There were so many things she needed to say.

  “A magic ceremony,” she gasped out. “I saw a magic ceremony. Like you did when you were driving. Only it wasn’t Swinton strapped down to the table. It was Heather. It was like up at Sugarloaf. I could see them. But they were ghostly.” A sob escaped her lips as she recalled that picture.

  Jack reached for her, folded her close. “I’m so sorry.”

  She nodded against his shoulder, wanting to wipe the terrifying image from her mind, yet knowing that it was important. All of the dream was important.

  “You don’t have to tell me any more.”

  “Yes I do. I have to tell you the rest. It’s the key to what’s been happening, I think. It wasn’t just the ceremony. And I saw us, too.”

  “Us? In his clutches? He’s going to get us?”

  “Oh, Lord, I hope not. No. That’s not what I mean. I saw us . . . from that first dream in the painting. Remember, you stopped kissing me because you thought something was happening?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I think I know what it was. I . . . I . . . think the magician saw us while we were there. And seeing us messed up the ceremony for him.” She knew she was babbling, knew she must barely be making sense, but she couldn’t stop. “But that wasn’t all of the dream. He was punishing me. That’s how I know. . . .”

  Jack interrupted her, his voice urgent. “Who was punishing you? Black Trousers? Or was it the demon?”

  Her eyes widened. “What demon? What are you talking about?”

  “The creature. That’s what it is. Well, not one of Satan’s minions, if that’s what you mean by a demon. It’s what you’ve been telling me—a being from another universe.”

  She gasped. “How . . . how do you know? I thought I was alone in the dream. Except for that thing.”

  He turned and gestured toward a book that lay splayed open on the floor. “While you were dreaming, I was reading about it in A Portal to Another Universe, by Jonathan Zacarias. One of the books from Ross. I was shuffling through them, trying to decide what to read, and that one felt like a hot brick.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath before telling him the rest of it. “Hot. Right. I was hot, too. In the dream. I was tied up at a stake—burning. And the stake was the magic wand.”

  “Jesus! That bastard!”

  Fearfully, she held up her hand, inspecting the flesh. It was whole, unburned. “At least it didn’t carry over into the real world this time. I guess he just wanted to give me a warning.”

  “A warning about what?” Jack asked, his voice grim.

  “He . . .” She stopped, readjusted her thinking. “The demon thing was angry. He told me to go back home. He wants us to save him from Black Trousers.”

  She waited for Jack to make some objection.

  Instead, he looked toward the book he’d dropped on the floor.

  “Yeah. I was reading about it.”

  “You were?”

  “It’s hard to make sense of the text. The writing is pretty convoluted. But it was talking about a magician trying to enslave a demon with a magic ceremony.”

  She took a gulping breath as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place in her mind. “I think it’s what I told you. I saw him doing the ceremony. Black Trousers. He had Heather strapped down on a table. He was going to kill her, and at the same time he was . . .” She stopped, gulped again. “He was masturbating.”

  “Jesus!” Jack said again, making no attempt to hide his revulsion.

  “But we stopped him. He saw us, and he lost his train of thought. So maybe that’s what’s going on. The demon brought us into it. And now he wants us to go back and stop Black Trousers again.”

  “Okay, after reading the book, I can buy that. But why us?” He gestured in frustration with his good hand. “Why is he giving us all this information now? And why the hell doesn’t he just give us the guy’s name, so I can arrest him?”

  She shared his frustration. “Maybe he’s finally telling us stuff he didn’t want to reveal because he’s gotten desperate. And . . . maybe there’s a magic spell that keeps him from telling us Black Trousers’s name.”

  “That’s just great.” Jack muttered. “The problem is, we’re screwed either way. If we don’t stop Black Trousers, the demon keeps torturing you.”

  “Not just me. Us,” she corrected.

  “Yeah, well, right now it looks like you’re taking the brunt of it. But that’s nothing compared to what happens if Black Trousers does get it right. If he succeeds with his damn ceremony, we don’t want to be anywhere around.”

  Kathryn took in the ominous tone of his voice. “What happens?”

  He gestured in anger toward the book. “Jonathan Zacarias wrote Portal to Another Universe as a warning. His friend succeeded in the ceremony, but the demon wasn’t willing to let himself be enslaved. You’ve heard of the Nemes explosion when they thought a big chunk of southern France was incinerated by a meteor. Well, that was the demon avoiding capture. And there’s no reason to assume this one won’t take the same route. Which means the explosion is going to be like a nuclear weapon landing on Rockville.”

  Kathryn gasped. “That’s what you read in the book?”

  “As near as I can figure it out—yes.”

  “You’ve got to call Granger.”

  “And tell him what—that a demon is going to blow up Rockville? He’ll put us in the loony bin for sure, and then we won’t be able to do a damn thing.”

  She looked around the warm, cozy room, feeling trapped. “What are we going to do?”

  He ran his good hand through his hair. “I wish to hell I knew.”

  The anger in his voice made her raise her head. “Jack, I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I got us into this.”

  He smoothed her damp hair back from her face. “How do you figure that?”

  “I reported Heather missing. Then you came to my house. That’s how all this started.”

  His jaw muscles tightened. “You had to make the report. It was the right thing to do.”

  She breathed out a small sigh. “But look at the consequences.”

  “You mean, I got to meet you?” he said, his voice low and husky.

  She felt her heart stop, then start up again in double time. Somehow, she managed to say, “You made it pretty clear you wished you hadn’t.”

  “That was when I was freaked out by the . . . bond forming between us. It was too fast. I couldn’t deal with it.”

  “The bond, yes,” she said softly. “Are you saying you can deal with it now?”

  “Not completely. I don’t like knowing that outside forces are operating on me—on us. But there are compensations. I’ve found out what kind of woman you are.”

  “What kind?”

  He grinned. “Are you fishing for compliments?”

  “Maybe I need some.”

  “You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”

  “How?”

  “What you go through every time you step into one of those dreams would have driven a lot of people crazy. And then there was the way you threw yourself at Black Trousers in my hospital room.”

  “I had to!”

  “Why?”

  “You were in danger. And, Jack, I care very much what happens to you.”

  “Kathryn.” His hand stroked gently down her cheek. She turned her head so that her lips brushed his fingers. He went very still. Watching him intently, she opened her mouth, using her teeth, then her tongue, to play with his flesh.

  Desire flared between them—desire and something so much more profound that her breath caught. “Jack, please. I don’t want to think about magicians and demons and terrible explosions right now,” she whispered.

  “Neither do I.”

  “Oh, Jack.” She clasped her arms around him and found his lips with hers.

  When the kiss broke, he said her name, his voice thick with emotion. Yet in the next moment, she heard him make a rough noise.

  “Oh, Lord, Jack, is your arm hurting?” she asked, abashed that she’d been thinking about making love when he had just gotten out of the hospital that morning.

  “It’s not that. I was sitting across the room, watching you sleep, thinking about how much I wanted to make love with you. But I can’t help comparing myself to how I was in the dream—when I didn’t have my damn arm strapped to my chest. I’m afraid I’m not going to be much good to you, sweetheart.”

  She gave him a slow smile. “If that’s your only problem, then lie back and relax, and we’ll see if we can work something out.”

  His gaze locked with hers, he did as she asked, easing to his back, giving her control of the situation. Feeling powerful and alive, she bent over him—kissing his mouth, his cheek, his hair, gentle kisses that were as full of warmth as they were filled with desire.

  She ached to tell him she’d fallen in love with him. But she kept the words locked inside her, trying instead to show him how she felt.

  Carefully she reached down to unbutton his shirt, spreading the fabric apart so she could slide her hand over his chest, under the sling, playing with the thick hair covering his warm skin, and finding his nipples with her fingers.

  Each time she touched those dark nubs, he sucked in a quick breath, and she grew more confident in her power to please him.

  When she moved away from him, he made a sharp sound of protest, but she only smiled at him as she pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it onto the floor. Nerves stopped her for a few seconds. Ignoring them, she reached around to do the same with her bra.

  His heated gaze made her nipples harden as if he’d touched them.

  “Sweetheart, you are so sexy. So beautiful.”

  She felt beautiful. She felt like a sex goddess. Holding his gaze, she reared up on her knees and skimmed her panties down her legs.

  Naked, she bent over him, sweeping her breasts back and forth across the part of his chest that she could reach and the fingers trapped in his sling.

  “Kathryn, dear Lord,” he gasped out, then gasped again as her hand slid down his body to find the rigid shaft of flesh behind the fly of his jeans.

  He arched into her touch, and she heard his breath catch as she rocked her hand against his erection.

  She had never held a man more firmly in her power, and she took complete advantage of him, slowly lowering his zipper.

  She gave him a lazy, provocative smile as she reached inside his pants, her touch going from light to firm and back again, her whole being caught up in the excitement of giving him pleasure. She had never been so bold with a man, never felt her own excitement grow as she teased and aroused and pushed him toward the edge.

  “Kathryn, please,” he moaned.

  Quickly she skimmed his jeans and his briefs down his body, and he helped her kick them away. He was still wearing his shirt, but she wasn’t going to take the time to get rid of it.

  She had much better things to do, she decided, as she lowered her head to his erection, caressing him with her face, then using her lips and tongue and finally taking him fully into her mouth.

  He made low, incoherent sounds as he used his good hand to play with the silky flesh of her bottom, then reached between her legs to find her most sensitive flesh, stroking and caressing and turning her molten while she indulged her appetite for him.