Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 Read Free Page B

she might have to disembowel both men. And Rhys, for good measure.
    It was a skill she was supposed to be learning in blade work, after all. She needed practice.
    “I don’t want to talk about Hayden,” she said. “Though if you have any news of my sister, that you can share.” It stood to reason that, if Maggie and Hayden had woken the same night, their younger sister Allyson was a potential dreamer too. But all the resources of the Somnium hadn’t been able to locate Ally. If she maintained her itinerant habits, her nightmares would never have a chance to manifest, but that didn’t mean Maggie and Hayden weren’t worried about her.
    “I got nothing about Allyson,” Zeke said. “Somebody would have told you.”
    “Unless I didn’t have clearance.”
    “You don’t need clearance to find out about your own family.”
    She just needed people willing to talk to her. Which she didn’t have. Rather than point that out, she changed the subject, twisting enough to see him. “Are you going to get in bed?”
    “Wonder what’s keeping Heather anyway?” Zeke checked his alarm clock again. Their door guard had arrived before they’d started squabbling over bedtime. The guard was prompt. Heather, their chaperone, usually was. If she’d been on time tonight, maybe they wouldn’t have argued.
    “You’re the one who said we didn’t need a chaperone,” she reminded him.
    Zeke slid across the mattress toward her, his expression the opposite of romantic. She squeezed her eyes shut. When he grew close enough that she could sense his body heat, he stopped.
    Every sleep period, they went through this. The tangible shivered inside her, luring her toward him. Pulling her skin against his, insisting she touch him everywhere she possibly could.
    Maggie pressed her thighs together and refused to make a sound. God, she needed to touch him. Did he know she still felt this way? First, she’d rip off his boxers. Then, she’d lick and fondle every inch of him before wrapping her legs around his hips and screwing him out of her system.
    A tangible, she’d been told, created intimacy where none existed. All she knew was she wanted him so damn much it hurt.
    She heard him inhale and exhale, as if the tangible sensation irked him. The truth was, tangibles had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with alucinator level. It flickered through her backside, her bare arm, a faint suction her imagination sexualized. She wanted to feel it everywhere.
    Zeke would resist until it ebbed and then thread his fingers through hers. It was their only contact that didn’t involve him hurling her to the padded floor during hand-to-hand combat class.
    “Maggie.” His voice sounded husky, but he often got husky at the end of a long day. “You gotta lie on your back. We’ve discussed this.”
    “Just spoon me,” she dared him. Wrap your arms around me. Hold me. Since they weren’t in the dreamsphere, he couldn’t hear her mental speech.
    His hand caught her shoulder. Cloth between them—the tangible didn’t sharpen. He shook lightly. “I don’t like to sleep on my side. Roll over.”
    The tangible kept them physically linked while they slept. The chaperone kept them physically apart while they were awake. So the story went.
    Where was the chaperone?
    Maggie flopped onto her back. Her shoulder wedged against his chest. He inhaled quickly, as if the contact startled him. Her hip brushed his…
    He slid away before she could tell what part of his body had been so hard. Bone or muscle, no doubt. The man was cut like glass. Most alucinators had better padding, their muscles functional yet less cinematic.
    Zeke didn’t eat enough, for one thing. He forgot meals, and his metabolism was like a teenager’s. Maggie tried to keep him in sandwiches, but he complained that she wasn’t his fucking waitress and if she was so fucking worried about sexism, why the fuck was she serving him food?
    Because she hoped he’d be less fucking