was holding.
The gaslight carved his arrogance with shadows and fatigue. He wasn’t pretty the way so many Hollywood men were. His face had a ruggedness to it, accentuated by the scar that ran along his jawline. His mouth was wide and turned up a little at the corners without trying, but even that perpetual half smile of friendliness couldn’t mitigate the bruised look in his eyes.
“What the hell are you doing in my cabin?”
That voice. It sent a shiver down her. “Fair question. But on the subject of who’s supposed to be where,” she pointed out, “what are you doing in my dream?”
“Your what?”
She pointed to his clothing strewn across the floor. “Oh, and you’d better check your things. That little underdressed petunia who was in here a minute ago? She was rifling through them.”
He looked confused. What petunia? “The only one I see in this room is you.” He narrowed a look at her, then glanced around at his clothes. “You think I can’t spot a panel thief when I see one?”
“Panel what?”
“Hand it over.”
“Hand what over?”
“The money. And whatever else you took.”
Ellie was outraged. “Whatever I took? You’ve been robbed, pal, but it wasn’t by me. And—as if I owe you anything considering that minibazooka you have pointed my way—I believe it was a watch she took. Out of your coat pocket.”
Some of the color drained from his face. Keeping his gun trained on her, he shuffled to the other side of the bed to pick up his jacket, exposing—she had to admit—a very nice-looking behind.
One-handed, he went through the pockets until he came up with a little leather pouch filled with what sounded like coins. Next he reached under the mattress and recovered a small leather satchel chock-full of what seemed like play money. Relief flickered briefly over his face, but he kept searching nonetheless.
“Like I said, the watch went that way,” Ellie reminded him, pointing at the doorway and the now-vanished pickpocket.
He held out his hand.
She pursed her lips. “Don’t have it.”
A slow, wicked smile crossed his face. “Well, then, you leave me no choice. I’ll just have to search you.”
3
“OH, I THINK NOT.” Folding her arms, Ellie knew she’d sounded a whole lot more certain than she felt.
He wrapped the sheet low around his hips and tucked in the edge as he moved closer, eyeing her jeans suspiciously. “For a woman who dresses in miner’s britches and breaks into strange men’s berths in the middle of the night, and makes up stories about phantom thieves, your sudden concern with propriety, madam, is ill timed. Put your hands up.”
Ellie scowled at him. “Well, you have one thing right. You are a strange man. But I still didn’t take your watch. Feel free to search me, though. I have nothing to hide. Besides, this is my dream. And…well,” she admitted, raising her hands, “you’re not exactly trollish.”
He didn’t spend long trying to puzzle that word out, but shimmied closer in his sheet and nudged her arms up in the air with the end of his pistol. “I suggest you hold very still. I’m surprisingly good with this gun.”
“Sure, sure. Nobody really gets shot in dreams.”
He muttered something to himself about nightmares, then, he touched her. A slow, one-handed slide down the length of her rib cage, past her hip and around her back.
She inhaled sharply.
From the tips of his fingers to the center of her being, something akin to an electrical charge zipped through her body.
Which was strange because he seemed immune, more intent on what she might be concealing beneath her jersey top. When his fingers reached the clasp on her bra, they stopped and explored for a moment.
“What’s this?” he asked, fingering the hooks and eyes.
“Not a watch,” she explained.
A droll smile quirked his mouth as he followed the outline of her bra around her rib cage, finding the underwire that ran up the side of her breast. His palm fell naturally against the soft cup and lingered there, testing the weight of her breast in his hand.
His gaze lifted to hers. A bead of sweat had broken out in that little cleft between his nose and upper lip. Hmm. Perhaps not so immune, after all. The steely cold barrel of his gun rested warningly against her throat. “Who are you?”
“You first.”
“Apparently, you already have the advantage. It was you who broke into my cabin, remember?” The tip of his gun traversed her chest and rested against her belly.
Ellie was too distracted by what the other hand was doing to mind much. “I didn’t break in.” She leaned close and whispered, “I’m not even really here.”
That elicited another grudging smile. “Oh,” he said, sliding a palm down the front of her leg, “you’re here. You just don’t belong here.”
She gave him a solemn nod. “Exactly. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
What had she been thinking to agree to this? Even in a dream. His touch was not rough or even angry. It was a slow perusal. A lazy exploration of a foreign object. It was as if he had never touched a woman before. But the expertness of his exploration made it clear that couldn’t be true. He rubbed the jersey fabric of her top between his fingers, frowning at it. Then he moved lower, his hand making the trip over her hip bone and down the back pockets of her jeans.
His search missed nothing. Not the square shape of the credit card she’d left in her back pocket, which he glanced at curiously, front and back, before asking, “Your name is Visa?” She replied with a snort. Nor the topstitched seam that ran up the inside of her thigh, which he explored with thorough fascination.
Ellie held her breath. She’d had some vivid dreams before but this one had them all beat, hands down. Her breath quickened and she held herself rigidly, eyeing his weapon. His touch triggered a wick of tiny explosions of pleasure under her skin—and completely against her will, she found herself beginning to sweat. Had Dane ever deliberately touched her this way? Ever taken more than a second to really look at her? She couldn’t remember now.
“I will admit,” he murmured, scanning the hem near her ankle with his fingertips, “you’d be hard-pressed to hide a toothpick under these.”
“You,” she began, clearing the frog from her throat, “act like you’ve never seen a pair of skinny True Religions before.”
That disconcerted frown appeared again. “I never talk of religion when I have my hands on a woman, skinny or not,” he replied, examining the tiny buckle on her strappy sandal. “And these are…shoes?”
“Very funny.”
He
