Dare to Believe
“It’s called glamour. What you see around you isn’t actually here. It’s…all in our heads. A shared fantasy, if you will.”
“An illusion?”
“Not quite. If someone were to take a picture of us right now, it would show the two of us still in the hayloft. To you, however, everything feels real. I could take you outside, place you on my stallion and ride off into the desert with you, and to you it would all seem incredibly real.”
“And this is your fantasy? To be sheik to my houri?”
He brushed his thumb across one of her taut nipples. “Can you blame me?”
She stared up at him, that wicked sense of humor starting up again. “Man, you must have had some incredible jack-off material when you were a teenager.”
He blinked, stilling above her. “What?” He sounded like he was choking on something. More than likely it was his own laughter.
“Picture this,” she waved her hand around, encompassing the tent, “but with a naked Playboy bunny in my place.”
“Um, it doesn’t quite work like that, and I’d rather picture you naked.”
“Oh? How does it work?”
“I can’t really craft a fantasy and project it into my own mind. For me, it would be a daydream, just like anyone else’s.” He smiled, the expression crossing his face slow and wicked. His thumb caressed her bottom lip. The butterfly touch left her wanting more. “I can craft a fantasy of my own making and project it into our senses. Sight, taste, touch, all of them would respond to the magic as if everything were really there. Or…”
Ruby wasn’t certain she liked the speculative gleam in his eye. “What?”
“Or…”
The lights began to swirl together in a kaleidoscope of color, whirling sickeningly around them as the tent, and everything in it, disappeared. She closed her eyes against the sudden onslaught of her senses as everything, sight, smell, even taste became hypersensitive.
When the maelstrom of sensation died down, Ruby opened her eyes. She blinked and gasped. She was staring at her deepest, darkest sexual fantasy, the one she wouldn’t admit even on her deathbed. “What in the world?”
She stood at the street corner near the old deli where she’d grown up. Traffic was nonexistent. It often was late on a Sunday night. The chalkboard sign just outside Dooley’s Bar and Grill proclaimed it Suds n’ Spuds Sunday. Ruby felt herself relax, the fantasy taking over her body and mind. She stood under the glare of the streetlamp, totally secure, totally safe, knowing that he would be riding up any minute now to pick her up and take her away.
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55
Dana Marie Bell
She wore tight leather pants, so tight you could almost see the cleft of her *. Her black leather halter top left her midriff bare and made the most of her cleavage. Her navel was pierced with an electric blue stone. On her feet were high-heeled leather boots. She was dressed to kick ass. She knew, if she took her clothes off, there’d be no underwear to get in the way of whatever he wanted to do to her.
Her hair was pulled up in a cascading fall that drifted over one shoulder. At her throat was a diamond collar. Something about the collar felt strange, different from her usual fantasy, but she didn’t move from under the streetlamp to check it in the window of the deli. If she did she’d lose the safety and security the light provided. She knew, without having to look in a mirror, that her makeup was smoky, her lips blood red. Her nails were painted the same crimson color, and if she took off one of the ridiculous high heels her toenails would be the same.
She looked over her shoulder and blinked.
Behind her stood every single man she’d ever felt slighted by, including Bobby Pencil-Dick. Each and every one of them stared at her with a yearning expression.
But she didn’t belong to them. She belonged only to him.
A strange rumbling sound pierced the darkness of the night. She turned back and looked down the road. She could see the bright headlight break through the damp fog and felt butterflies begin to dance in her stomach. The sensation was so intense she pressed her hands to her middle. The motorcycle came purring up to a complete stop at the curb right in front of her.
The man on the cycle was to die for. Rich leather covered a lean, muscular figure that had her mouth watering in reaction. He swung his leg off the bike, pulling the leather taut over the firm globes of his ass.
He reached up and pulled off the helmet and set it on the seat. He seemed to flow into the light. He stopped before her, leaned down and gave her a swift, hard kiss that rocked her back on her heels.
When Leo pulled back, his gaze went straight for the diamond collar at her throat. With a smile of satisfaction and possession, he took her hand and started to lead her to the cycle.