Disclaimer: Laurell K. Hamilton and the Berkley Publishing Group do not authorize this author. All characters that you recognize belong to Laurell K. Hamilton except for the ones created by the people in this group. This is solely for entertainment purposes.

Rating: R just to be on the safe side

Nightmares

Part Two

I awoke to the feel of a strong muscular arm encircling my waist and warm breath upon my neck.  Snuggling back into that warm body, a sigh of contentment escaped my lips.  The arm around my torso squeezed in response.  A pair of lips kissed my temple.  I smiled in reaction.

The warmth emanating from Dante's body was enough to lull me back to sleep.  I was just beginning to drift off when the sound of a door being kicked in and hitting the wall reached me.  I sat bolt upright in my bed the Browning already aimed at the doorway before my eyes had even focused on the intruder.

When they did focus I was less than pleased to put it mildly.  "For the love of God, Conor, couldn't you have at least knocked?"  I dropped the weapon so that it was pointing at the end of the bed rather than at him.

Conor looked, much as he always did, handsome.  His longish auburn hair curled over the collar of his tight white t-shirt.  His faded black Levis fell over a pair of work boots.  His bright blue eyes were burning bright with an intensity that I hadn't seen in a long time.  He was pissed.  No it was more than that.  He was livid.  His mouth quirked into something resembling a grimace rather than a smile.  "What and give your lover time to head out the back?  I think not Luna."

One of the things Conor of all people should have known was not to piss me off before I'd had my first Pepsi.  My gaze narrowed on him and I was contemplating shooting him.  Dante's fingers digging into my thigh made me think better of it.  I patted his hand to let him know that I wouldn't do anything that foolhardy.

As it turned out that was one of the worst things I could have done.  Conor stormed over almost too fast to be believed and threw Dante across the room.  I was so angry that I didn't even think about it.  I drew back my hand and slapped his face.  His head turned with the blow but otherwise there was no indication that anything had happened.  "What's eating you?"  I demanded of him angrily.

Conor pushed his face into mine.  His words and voice deceptively calm.  "Apparently not you."

I couldn't help the flush that was rising up my neck and face.  It was a combination of anger and embarrassment.  Evidently he thought there was something more going on here then there actually was.  I yanked the sheet up and scrambled out of bed.  "I should slap you again, you know that?"  I wrapped the sheet around me as I spoke.

Dante wasn't saying much of anything.  His face was curiously blank.  I was walking over to him to see how seriously he was injured, if indeed he was.  The look in his crystalline blue eyes stopped me.  It was a mixture of longing and warning.  The latter didn't penetrate my brain until Conor's vice like grip seized my upper arm.  He spun me around to face him, "It's always like that isn't it?"  When I gazed at him perplexed a sneer broke across his handsome face.  "Do you know how to be faithful to anyone?"

That comment found its mark.  I jerked my arm out of his grasp, tears of anger and frustration welling in my eyes.  My voice shook with the effort not to yell.  "I have been faithful to you since the day I put this damn ring on" I waved my left hand in front of his face.

"Oh really?  Then what's he doing here," he waved a hand in Dante's direction.

Up until then Dante hadn't said a thing but now he decided to break his silence.  "I'm here because you couldn't be bothered with her."  His eyes were lit with an inner fire.

Conor laughed condescendingly.  "Oh, is that what she told you?  That I couldn't be bothered with her.  Don't let that pretty face and attractive body fool you.  She is a master manipulator.  I should know!  I was one of her first test subjects."  I was too busy glaring at Conor to see the look Dante gave him.  But the next words out of his mouth out of his mouth floored me.  "Oh don't look so surprised.  Luna's the most fickle woman I've ever met.  First she wants ya then she don't.  That's just the way she is."

If I didn't know better I'd say that he was deliberately trying to provoke me.  I couldn't help the warning growl that escaped my throat any more then I could help the tears that glittered in my eyes.  I didn't know what was wrong with Conor, and I wanted to, but he wasn't making that easy.  Trying to rationalize it only made it worse somehow.  Reaching out I tried to touch him.  He jerked back out of reach.  I was confused and hurt.  "Conor?"

His eye bored into mine and snarled. "What?"

"Why are you acting this way?  What did I do?"  I reached out in a supplicating manner.

His face twisted into a sneer.  "Do you really have to ask Luna?"  At my questioning looked he snorted.  "I guess so.  You really wanna know what you did?"  I nodded wanting to understand even though I was beginning to understand why he was upset.  "I come over this morning to take you out to breakfast and what do I find?  You in bed with him.  Really Luna, if you wanted to keep him a secret you shouldn't have told me where the spare keys were hidden."

I'd had enough.  If he wanted to be nasty so could I.  I could feel a smirk spread across my face. Distantly I heard Dante groan softly.  He was already following my train of thought.  "Conor, do you really think that if we had been having sex that we would have been sleeping?  Not likely, we would have still been at it."  Conor looked like he'd been doused in ice water but I ignored the surge of sympathy for him.  I continued on relentless.  "Oh no.  If we had really been in here doing it you'd have been able to hear it from the street.  There wouldn't have been any doubt about what I was up to."

Conor's sapphire blue eyes clouded over for a moment and I almost thought he was going to strike out.  Then his eyes became shuttered and his face became an unreadable mask.  That was my first clue I'd gone to far.  The second was when he stepped up to me wrapped an arm around my waist and whisper in my ear.  "I always knew you were a tease.  I just didn't know that in the time I've been gone, you'd turned into a slut."

I pushed away from him tears streaming down my face.  We'd known exactly where to hit the other, below the belt, but I was fed up.  I would not be treated that way in my own house.  "Get out."  My throat ached with the effort not to yell, or scream, or shout at him.

He raised an auburn brow at that, almost as if he couldn't believe what I'd said.  He crossed his arms and stared at me a long time.  If he was waiting for me to back down he was in for a long wait.  When he continued to stand there I spoke through clenched teeth.  "GET! OUT!  NOW!"

He gave me one last long look then through equally clenched teeth said, "FINE!"  He stormed out of the bedroom down the stairs. As he left the house a resounding thud could be heard.  He'd slammed the door.  How childish!

Only after he had left the house did I give in to the need to really cry.  I curled into a little ball on the floor and let the tears run their course.  I lay there sobbing little bits of my heart onto the carpeting.  Vaguely I realized that Dante had come and once again wrapped himself around me to comfort me.

When I finally was able to compose myself I left Dante's embrace and went in search of the Kleenex.  They were on my nightstand as usual.  I grabbed a couple out of the box and blew my nose then wiped my face.  Turning to look into his ice blue eyes I mumbled an apology.

I thought I heard him say, "I can't believe I'm going to say this."  Then in a louder voice he said, "It's not me you should be apologizing to."  At my shocked look he continued. "You hurt him pretty badly.  It's one thing to think we've had a relationship, but for you to rub it in his face?"

A frown furrowed my brow and my tone became waspish.  "So what!  I was supposed to let him talk to me like that?  I don't think so not in MY house."

Dante ran a hand through his hair, looked at me and rubbed his face.  "No, I'm not saying that you had to let him talk to you like that.  But how would you feel if you walked in on him and some other woman?  You'd have been pissed.  What was he supposed to think when he saw us in bed together?  Think about it Luna, he lashed out to protect himself."

I wanted to deny what I was hearing.  I wanted to scream, cuss, and carry on.  Most of all I'd wanted to hear that I'd done the right thing.  So it came as something of a shock that I wasn't being told "good girl you did what any one would have done in that situation."

I stared at Dante and for the first, I think, I saw him.  I mean really saw him.  I saw him as a person, without all the other random weirdness that inhabits our lives, just the person that he was before all of that happened to him.  He was a natural peacemaker. I wondered if he even knew that about himself.  He didn't like the fact that I'd given Conor shit over something anyone would have reacted badly to.  He did it even knowing it might not go over well with me.

As much as he was sharing with me, I wondered if I showed him half as much.  I sat there silently pondering it.  It wasn't just Dante that I'd been thinking about, but everything I'd thought I'd understood about this world.  I gave a silent chuckle.  I was still doing that, kept trying to hold myself apart from the world.  Even in my head I still called it this world, like there was any likelihood that I was going to back to the one I'd known.

If by some miracle I did get back I'd be confined to a rubber room for the rest of my days.  They'd think I'd had a breakdown from which I could never recover.  They would be kind and patient with me. They would continually tell there were no such things as vampires or werecreatures or any of the myriad of things that I'd witnessed and been a part of.

"Luna," Dante's voice was hesitant and questioning.

Blinking I focused my eyes back on him. "Hmmm?"

"What were you thinking about so hard?"  His expression was mildly curious which meant he was dying to know.

"Nothing and everything."  I shook my head at him.  I didn't know if I was ready to share that just yet.  Yes, he did know a great deal about me and vice versa, but sometimes you can learn that one thing that you wished you'd never heard.  If and when I came to terms with it myself then and only then would I share it with others.

"Thinking about how to apologize to Conor?"  He asked blatantly changing topics back to the one we had been discussing before.  He knew when I wasn't going to share; this was one of those times.

"No actually I hadn't."  I crossed my arms over my chest.  If a psychologist saw, he'd have said that I was closed off, uncommunicative.  Fuck 'em!

"Luna!" It was sharp and snapped my gaze back to his.  "Don't be like that," he warned.

My eyebrows pulled together and I could feel a frown marring my face.  "Like what?"

"Like a spoiled brat," he said blandly.

My lip curled at the comparison but unfortunately he was correct.  That's what made it worse.  I squeezed my arms tighter to my chest.  "He should apologize first," I stated vehemently.

Dante rolled his eyes and stood up.  "Fine, if you want to lose him that's your business.  I'll tell you this.  If I found you in bed with someone else the last thing on my mind would be apologizing for busting into your room."  He looked thoughtful for a moment.  "How the hell did he know you weren't alone in here?  I mean I know he isn't human but just how did he know you were with someone?"

That gave me pause.  How exactly had Conor known I hadn't been alone?  I mean he had kicked the door in, evidently expecting to find me in the middle of something I shouldn't have been.  Idly I looked down at the ring, beginning to twist it on my finger.  "Maybe it's the ring.  Maybe Conor can sense whom I'm with because of it.  He is Fey after all.  It could have been bewitched.  Or maybe he has heightened sense and could just smell you in here."

Here is where the difference between Conor and Dante came glaringly to light.  Conor, who I did think I was in love with, I knew very little about.  That was not because he hadn't been willing to share but because I hadn't asked.  Don't get me wrong.  I knew who I was dealing with I knew about his parents and his connection to Killian.  However sometimes I didn't feel like I really knew him.  It sounded crazy even in my own mind.  That's why I never tried to express it with words. Dante, who I'm not sure how I felt about him, I knew a great deal about.  Sharing information with Dante had always been so easy.  It was always like I was talking to a trusted friend.

Dante walked over to me.  Staring down at me and at the ring he said, "Cool.  I have to ask him where to get one like that."

I gave him the bird while I stood up.  "You're not as funny as you look."

He clutched a hand to his chest feigning hurt and fell on the bed.  "You wound me."

"Apparently not often enough or you wouldn't be here now," I commented as I rummaged through my dresser drawers pulling out clothes for the office.  I looked at him, "But seriously don't you have to get to work as well?"

He stretched, scratched his chest, then said, "Yeah, but unlike you I just have to show up I don't have to be there at a particular time."

Laughing, I fastened the last hook on my bra. "And I'm sure all those people waiting on their cars are so appreciative of your promptness."

"Yeah, well they'll never know unless you tell 'em."  He sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed his jeans.  His eyes were searching the room.

"You lose something,"  I asked as he continued to search my floor.

"Yeah, my shirt."

"You dork, you weren't even wearing one last night."  I shook my head at him.

He had the good grace to look embarrassed.  "You got something I could borrow?"

I reached into the dresser.  I'd kept all the clothes he'd left here. "I think I have something in a lovely shade of pink.  It would match your complexion perfectly."  I said as I drew a white t-shirt out of the drawer.

"Ha ha. Very funny.  Just throw me the shirt."  He looked rather annoyed when he pulled it on.

"Now what's wrong," I asked as he began putting on his shoes.

"Nothing," he said while he tied his boots.

"Right, you're always this grumpy first thing in the morning." I said rolling my eyes.  "Now why don't you tell me what's really wrong.  I fixed my gaze on him.

"It's nothing, really."

I frowned at him.  "It doesn't sound like nothing."

He sighed harshly and turned to look at me.  "You know ignoring it won't make it go away."

Confused I could only stare at him my mouth gaping.  Recovering myself I asked, "Would you like to explain what I'm ignoring?"

"You're really not going to apologize to him are you?"  He'd crossed his arms over his chest and was giving me the same look my dad used to when I'd done something wrong.  The one that said "I'm not going to tell you what to do, but you know I'm right."

The sad fact was I knew he was right but if there was anything I hated more than being reprimanded it was being told I was wrong.  I could feel my face draining of any emotion; it was my shield, my way to protect myself.  It was second only to the place that allowed me to kill with such ease.  "I don't want to talk about it," I said somewhat stiffly.

Dante made a disgusted noise and threw up his hands.  "Oh no, of course not.  You never wanna talk about it when you're so blatantly wrong."  It was his turn to fix a stare on me.

I was getting angry.  I had no idea why Dante of all people was trying to get me to apologize to Conor.  I mean if you thought about it, wouldn't he be dancing in the street?  Then a blinding insight came to me.  He didn't want me to apologize to Conor per say; it was almost like he was seeing if I could apologize.

I don't know why it made me so angry.  All I can say is that it did.  "Dante, I think you've made your point."  I grabbed the clothes I had pulled out of my dresser and was leaving my bedroom.  I'd change in the bathroom.

His hand closed over my arm in a firm grip.  I could have broken it if I'd wanted to.  "Have I?  Have I really?"

I looked at his hand on my arm then coolly up at his face.  "I said that you have, now let go."

He did but he looked angry.  He opened his mouth, must have thought better of whatever he was going to say, and closed it again.  If he got any angrier steam would be coming out of his ears.  Some how that analogy didn't make me smile.  We stood there for who knows how long uncomfortably staring at each other.  Suddenly I just wanted to be alone.  Alone to think, to maybe cry again, I don't know but I suddenly didn't want Dante in the house.  I broke our Mexican standoff.  "You better hurry up, you're going to be late for work."

With that I left the room and hurried to the bathroom to finish getting dressed.  Cowardly, yes, but how do you tell someone, anyone, that cares about you that you can't stand their company any more?  Answer, you can't, so I didn't even try.  The sound of breaking plaster reached my ear just as I closed the doors.  Moments later another loud slam signaled Dante's departure.

Well I was batting a thousand today.  I guess I couldn't blame him for being angry.  Well yeah I could; he is the one who kept pushing a subject I so obviously didn't want to discuss in the first place.  I was so deep in angry thoughts that I tore my sweater as I jerked it on.  "Damn it!" I said vehemently.

Storming back into my room I threw my sweater in the trashcan.  I drew out another cardigan sweater set and changed quickly.  I rushed into work.  I was ten minutes late.  That was just the start of my day.  It seems that this morning had set the tone for my whole day.

While I was coming back from the coffee machine someone bumped into me and I spilled the coffee all down the front of me.  I'd glared the sputtering fool into silence.  Then half of a report that I know I finished before I left last night managed to disappear.  So I had to go hunt that down.  By four o' clock I'd had enough.  I was going home.  Informing Buchanan I punched out and walked out to Igor.

The only smooth part of my day was the ride home.  I arrived home tired, hot and sweaty, not a very good combination.  My only consolation was that I would have a few minutes before Lilli and Nahla arrived home.  It would be enough time to shower and change.

Those soothing thoughts danced around my head as I inserted the key in the lock.  I dropped my purse on the entryway table and froze as I came into the living room.  Sitting there staring back at me was Lilli and Nahla.  So much for being able to shower and change.  They shared a look as they watched me walk in and slump into the armchair.

"I'm guessing your day didn't go so hot either," asked Nahla assessing my mood correctly.

"You could say that," I commented dryly.

"Did the coffee put up that much of a fight," Lilli asked amusement coloring her words.

"Not today Lil," I said holding up a hand.  "Today started out bad and just got worse."  I pulled myself out of the chair and headed for the stairs.  "I'm just gonna run upstairs, take a shower, and change clothes.  Okay?"

Nahla nodded, but it looked like she was dying to know what had put me in my current mood.  As I put my hand on the banister Lilli spoke.  "What started it all?"

Shooting her a self-depreciating smile, "I threw both Conor and Dante out of the house."  I didn't wait to see what Lil or even Lala had to say on that score.  I took advantage of their stunned silence and made my way upstairs.  In my bedroom I pulled out my usual cutoff blue jean shorts and white wife beater tank top.   Stripping out of my work clothes I threw them at the hamper, groaning when they hit the floor instead.

I started running the water in the shower letting it heat up.  When it was at the temperature that I liked I got in.   Letting the water sluice over my aching body I relieved the events of this morning.  Well Luna, I told myself, you've really done it this time.  I wondered if I could hide in here forever.