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I frowned, scratched my neck. “Um. Yes, ma’am.”

Satisfaction softened her steely expression. “I feel the same as I did at twenty. My dreams haven’t changed.” She met my gaze in the mirror. “Neither have my desires.” She swiveled around to face me. “This is why I called you up here.”

My throat got tight. “Um, I don’t understand.”

“It’s quite simple. You see, the man I love doesn’t want me. But I’m hoping you can make me forget about him.” She smirked. “Well, at least for a couple of hours.”

Fear burned across my chest. When the lady of the house got liquored up, a new woman emerged. My gut twisted once she rose and advanced.

“I’ve always wondered about you.” She inched closer. “You don’t mind if I call you Trace, do you?”

I started backing away, darting a glance over my shoulder every other step.

“I watch you sometimes.” A strap on her gown slipped down. “Riding your bike, working on the cars. In the garden….”

My butt hit a wall.

“Needless to say, you turn me on.” She sidled up to me, cupped my cock and squeezed. “Mmm. So the rumors are true. You’re hung like a bull.”

Took all of fifteen seconds before I was spike hard. If she didn’t stop, I feared I’d go off like a firecracker.

Lilith licked her lips. “I hear you perform at The Playroom for Ladies Night every week. My friend says you’ve got this prisoner/bondage shtick going on.” She smiled and ran a fingertip along my erection. “Handcuffs and shackles? Really? I never figured you for the kinky sort.”

Breath rasping, all I could do was stare at her.

“What does Dottie think about her son dancing around half naked for a bunch of horny women? Why, you’re not even old enough to drink.” She smiled. “Such a baaad boy.”

“Ma’am, I really need to—”

“Shhh.” She rubbed my stiff cock again, squeezed it hard, giving it a torturous stroking. “Here’s an idea. Since you did such a great job teaching Shannon that dance routine, how about a more intimate lesson for me—between the sheets?”

She tugged my face down to hers and invaded my mouth. Mass confusion trapped me in limbo for a few seconds, but then my brain started working again. Lust should’ve roared to life. Class distinctions should’ve dissolved, but all I could think about was escape. She sickened me. I shoved her back, wiped my lips on my sleeve. That’s when the dream became a familiar nightmare.

Lilith started chanting my name, her voice growing demonically deeper by the second. Blood trickled from her mouth. After the trickle, came a stream, then a flood. Her face turned skeletal and the skin shriveled like a prune.

Everything melted around me. The walls. The floor. Even Lilith.

In the next instant, I was home, in the basement, standing over her pale corpse. I had a garden spade in my hand. Blood on my clothes. Brains were strewn across the floor, the walls, the ceiling. The place looked like a slaughterhouse.

I hit my knees and choked on a stream of bile. The air was alive with death and sorrow. Carnival music poured from the walls. A naked bulb suspended from a wire in the cobwebbed ceiling, swung pendulously, lashing the room with piss-yellow light.

Lilith became Nyle Weathers, then Nyle morphed into Daddy, but half his head was gone. His brains spilled on the dirty concrete like scrambled eggs. The eyes in his bloated face, or what was left of it, stared off into the great beyond. As Daddy’s head angled my way, his irises went from blue to white. Chapped lips cracked and bled into a toothless smile.

Hey, ya little shit. Do ya miss me?

I bolted upright. My pulse beat like a jackhammer as I dragged a hand down my face and kicked the damp tangle of sheets off the bed. The dream ended just as it had before—with me trapped in the basement. Now here I sat, smelling my own fear. The fog of another hellish night clung to me like stink on a dog.

Desperate for something to ground me in reality, I squinted into the shadows. One by one, objects emerged. Mama’s cuckoo clock. A closet. Cole’s drawing easel. The sight should’ve filled me with relief, but this particular nightmare had staying power. No way was I venturing into that basement to replace the fuse. A floor lamp and an extension cord would have to do.

I’d been home almost two weeks now, yet none of Doc Rosen’s ‘therapeutic’ suggestions had helped. Renovating the house. Burying myself in work. All were creative ways to pass the day, but the nightmare ruled my dreams.

Geographically speaking, I was free, but I still thought like a con. Still felt like a caged animal. Something told me that to survive this alien place, I’d have to define stuff in terms of Gainstown. Nothing made sense outside of it.

I swung my legs over the side of the mattress and rested my head against my palms. Damn if I didn’t miss my cell, the concrete walls, the iron bars, and the heat-packing guards who prowled the catwalks. I felt like a total girl for all the missing I was doing. Had twelve years of being told when to take a leak turned me into a pussy?

Amber stirred. “Bad dream again?”

I nodded as her bare nipples brushed my back. She rescued the covers, and once she’d reassembled everything, she drew me down to lie with her. Foreign sounds drifted in from outside: snow shovels scraped the sidewalks. Engines turned over. Car doors slammed while the neighborhood canine chorus performed their early morning barkathon.

“You’ve been stressed out all week, shug.”

I wiggled a brow. “Well, I can think of a way you could take the edge off.”

“Oh, really?”

“Uh-huh.”

Amber grinned and slipped her hand over my cock. Wasn’t long before I was spike hard and ready for business.

I reached for a rubber, then scowled. “Shit. The box is empty.” I gave her a hopeful look. “I could pull out.”

She shook her head.

“Aw, come on, you know I’m clean.” I sat up. “Don’t you have any more of those sponge things?”

“Nope.”

Desperation set in. “Well, you’re on the pill right?”

“Not anymore. They made my ass spread.”

I barked a laugh and collapsed on the bed. “Well, damn.”

“All’s not lost.” With a sly curve of her lips, she lifted a brow and drew a teasing circle over my chest. “How about I kiss it and make it better?”

The alarm clock buzzed rude and loud. “Crap.” I slapped at it blindly. “There’s no time. I forgot I have to be in New Dyer in less than an hour.”

Amber rose on an elbow and frowned. “At The Slam Dunk? I thought Cholly had you working at his daddy’s garage?”

“I still am, but we switched things up. I’ll be back there next week once the Porsches come in. I’m restoring them. Think one’s a Speedster.” I pushed to my feet, flipped the light on and started rummaging around the room. “In the meantime, he’s driving Wynter back to school this morning, so he’s got me painting and hanging drywall at the club.”

“Wynter?”

“His baby sister. She goes to Howard. Anyway, we’re expecting a big delivery. I gotta be there to sign for it.”