Blade's Lady

Clutching the case to her chest, Anna lengthened her stride, but her sneakers kept losing their purchase, slipping on the wet grass.

She risked a glance over her shoulder. A burst of adrenaline punched hotly through her as she saw the man coming after her and knew this was no ordinary mugging. She stumbled, regained her balance. A sense of unreality gripped her as she passed by the darker outline of a set of swings and a slide—innocent reminders of a childhood that for her had ended brutally in a flooded river.

Oh God. She had allowed herself to become complacent, over-confident—lulled by the knowledge that her twenty-seventh birthday was only weeks away, and then she could end this madness. She had been wrong; she’d been found. Someone had been lying in wait for her.

If it hadn’t been for that burst of awareness, honed by years of running and hiding, she would be dead. She knew that as surely as she knew that Henry had set her up.

She had made a mistake. Stupid. Stupid.

The notice in the paper had served a purpose other than the obvious legal one; it had also been a ploy to flush her out of hiding. There had been someone watching the lawyer’s office; she had been followed from there.

She should have rung Emerson Stevens instead of showing up unannounced, only to be blocked. If she’d rung, she would have found out Emerson was dead, and that there was no point in approaching Stevens, Harrow and Cooper directly yet, because with Emerson gone, there was no-one there who knew her by sight. No-one who would believe that she hadn’t died when her car had plunged over a cliff into the sea almost seven years ago. No-one who would give her the time of day without irrefutable evidence of her identity.

It was a catch-22 situation. To establish her identity, she would have to reveal herself, turn herself into a target while the wheels of justice slowly ground their course. If she had to resort to DNA testing to prove her right to her own inheritance, that could take months, and money she didn’t have.

Panic grabbed at her insides as the ruthless simplicity of Henry’s strategy sank in and eroded her confidence. Henry was nothing if not thorough. Having her declared legally dead would finalise his claim on Tarrant Holdings, then he would make the legal fiction a physical fact by having her disposed of before she had time to establish her identity.

One way or another, the shadowed half life of Anna Johnson-Tarrant would cease.

She heard the pounding of footsteps above her own, caught the edge of a guttural phrase, and panic surged again. The man was gaining. She could hear the grunting rush of his breath as he strained to catch her, almost feel the brush of his fingers as he reached to grab her clothing, a shoulder, an arm. The trees loomed close, closer, then she was among them, branches whipping at her legs, tugging at her clothing as she weaved blindly, more by instinct than sight, because it was like running into a wall of darkness. She wavered, confused, slammed head first into a tree and fell to the ground, stunned.

She rolled and crawled on—the briefcase awkward—thankful that the thick layer of leaves was too sodden to rustle. A rough oath grated, low and harsh. Light dazzled her as the beam of a flashlight swept the trees, flooding the dense brush with an unholy radiance that backlit the short, stocky man who was after her. The beam scythed over her head. She dropped flat, damming her startled breath in her throat, hugging the cold, wet earth like a hungry lover.

After an eon, he moved on. She could hear the uneven thud of his tread—as if he was limping—feel the hot pulse of a lump forming on her forehead, taste blood in her mouth.

Her head spun as she regained her feet and started in the direction opposite from the one the man was taking, feeling her way from tree to tree, lifting and setting her feet down with care. The ground was uneven, an obstacle course of jutting tree roots and slippery vegetation.

The beam swung back, almost silhouetting her. She ducked and crouched behind a tree trunk, holding her breath for long, strained moments. When the beam swung away, she once more hugged her briefcase to her chest and headed for the only source of light she could see, a blue and red glow that she knew emanated from the towering neon Gamezone sign that garishly announced the presence of the video arcade near her flat.

Minutes later, she stumbled free of the trees and stepped into…darkness.

The fall was abrupt, shocking. For long moments she lay unmoving, facedown in what she dimly recognised as the deeply carved groove of a storm drain. The smell of mud and her own fear filled her nostrils; the sound of her racing heart jackhammered in her ears. She still had her briefcase; it was lodged beneath her, its hard edges digging into her stomach, her breasts. She was going to have bruises—lots of them.

Pushing herself onto her hands and knees, she gripped the case and fought to still the sickening spinning in her head. She fingered the tight, tender lump already forming there.

Clutching a fistful of icy grass, she began to climb out of the ditch. She was almost out, so close, when she lost her footing and, hampered by the awkward weight of the case, tumbled back. A sound broke from her throat. Pain flared, as if someone had just driven a thick spike through her skull, then dissolved into swirling shards of darkness.

Just before the blackness claimed her completely, the elusive threads of the old familiar fantasy she used to escape into when she was a child—and sometimes even now, when she dreamed—wound through her mind.

Her knight.

His face shimmered into vague focus: the long hair, black as midnight satin; fierce, dark eyes; the strong chiseled planes and angles of a face that was both grimly handsome and exotically sensual. Oh yeah, he was a fantasy, all right. Why couldn’t you be real? she thought hazily.

Right now, the fantasy, pretty as it was, just didn’t do the job.

Blade shoved free of the bed. And the dream.

His heart was pounding, his skin damp with sweat, his chest heaving like a bellows. He swore, a low, dark rumble of sound. Dragging unsteady fingers through his hair, he fought to banish the image of mist and rain and darkness. Trees, lots of trees, and a pulsing neon sign. The woman, lying crumpled on the ground, afraid…hunted. A dark bank rearing overhead.

The dream had been strong this time.

A shudder swept him, compliments of the disorientating aftermath of the dream—and other far more potent emotions: his powerful need to intervene, to protect and help her, to push back whatever darkness had hounded first the child, and now the woman with such ferocity that she was somehow propelled into his dreams, his thoughts.

Renewed tension coursed through him. He didn’t have a clear idea of what the woman looked like, or her name.

His jaw locked. How he longed to hang a name on her.

If she was real, he reminded himself grimly. Oh baby, if she was real.

Either way, like the other dreams he’d had, Blade had nothing to go on other than the belly punch of the woman’s emotions, her desperate thoughts, the stark images that haunted him.

The dreams weren’t always about her being attacked, helpless—sometimes they were entirely different.

His breath sifted from between clenched teeth as he pushed a set of bifold doors wide open and stepped naked onto the paved terrace of his penthouse suite at the Lombard Hotel.

A cold, fitful breeze swirled, disturbing the black mane of hair that tumbled to his big shoulders, evaporating the sweat from his skin. He welcomed the ensuing chill that roughened his flesh, made all his muscles tighten.

He stared blindly out at Auckland’s version of a winter night, eyes slitted, focused inward, his mind consumed with the woman who consistently invaded his dreams.

Sometimes he made to love to the shadowy woman.

Frustration burned, threatening to erupt into temper. He reined it in. Blade didn’t like losing control in any area of his life. This desperate, endless hunger for a woman who existed only in his dreams tormented him, made him helpless in a way he couldn’t—wouldn’t—tolerate.

Dammit, he didn’t even know what she looked like, beyond the fact that she was slim and delicately built, with a silky swath of dark hair that glowed copper in the light, and when he touched her…

A hoarse groan wrenched itself from deep in his throat. When he touched her, it was like touching fire—they both burned.

His jaw tightened. The raw need to possess the woman in his dreams, the flood of pleasure that swamped him at the simplest of touches, haunted him, mocked him. He had never felt anything remotely like it in real life.

Dispassionately, he considered the yawning gulf between the dreams and reality.

His libido was healthy, some might say too healthy, but he was no sexual predator. The primitive desire to possess the woman that permeated those sensual encounters was as alien to Blade as the dreams were. The fact was, he enjoyed women—plural—their friendship and the sex, but he had never needed any of his sexual partners beyond the act.

Broodingly, he paced the width of the terrace, gripped the cold iron of the railing, and faced the disturbing essence of his unease. He wanted the dreams to be real. More, he hungered for what he experienced in the dreams but had never found anywhere else. Every time he touched a woman, made love to her, he was aware that he was grasping for that exquisite, primitive intensity and not finding it.

The breeze kicked up, sending moist air whirling like a damp cloak about his shoulders. The deepening chill matched the bleakness of his thoughts. When he was buried deep inside a woman, he shouldn’t have to feel…alone.

Then there was the matter of control. If he made love to a woman, he retained control. All the way.

And he never made love with strange women. He had certain standards, a code of honour that was as simple and ruthlessly direct as a set of military orders. One of the rules of engagement was that he always insisted on an introduction first.

He began to notice the cold. His breath condensed in the air, mist wreathed the streetlamps below and hung in streamers across the road. It was also drizzling, a light, drifting drizzle.

Like the dream.

Traffic was sporadic, but still steady. He could see couples strolling, maybe catching a movie or supper at one of the street cafes.

It wasn’t that late. He had only been asleep for a short time. The dream must have taken hold of him the second his head had hit the pillow. There was an odd jolting sensation he’d come to recognise, as if some internal switch had been thrown. Then the dream unravelled. Images. Impressions. Sometimes nothing but a jumble, sometimes pictures that were startlingly clear. Like tonight.