Dream Weaver (Dream Weaver #1) Read Free Page B

love you, Uncle Adrian.”
                  “Love you, too, Emari,” he said, his voice sank deep like a distant fog horn muffled by banks of fog.
                  I hugged Celeste and thanked her for dinner, and headed the ‘so far away’ eleven point two miles home.
     
    *              *              *
                 
                  My stalker remained silent, but the biting chill of unfinished-ness ate at my stomach. Despite the silence, Jesse continued to meet me at my car in the parking garage every day and walk me out at the end of every shift. Ever a song in his mouth.
                  This year’s Black Friday was one of our busiest and shoppers had yet to slow down. The first week of December found us just as busy as our most profitable day. Check out lines backed up down the aisle, racks were rifled and associates buzzed and scrambled like bees in the hive of commerce.
                  Trips to the stockroom were customary in retail, especially during the Christmas season. So when a fussy mother insisted on a fussy dress for her fussy little daughter, I didn’t think twice about it. I’d made dozens and dozens of recon missions to the small room tucked in an obscure corner of the children’s department. Why should today be any different?
                  Tightness snaked its way up my spine as I gathered up the dress and turned to leave. My gaze fell on the LP observation nest and the heavy dark curtains that blocked it from the rest of the room. My heart jumped to my throat and that snaking feeling crawled up my spine once again. And I knew. Without doubt. He was there. Panicking, I lurched for the door but a shadow like the dark of night dropped in my path. Before I could scream, before I could raise a hand in defense he was on me. His hand crushed my lips to my teeth and he bulldozed me deeper into the room, then into the furnace room in the back. Tears welled in my eyes as I stood face to face with my nightmare. Dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes—and through those dark eyes, a dark and sinister heart.
                  His coarse finger scorched a trail down the soft skin of my arm. His arms, a vice around my own; arms full of rage and violence. My world became pain in his hands. Crushing me. Beating me. His cruel mouth whispered things my brain refused to translate as human. His breath, putrid with the stench of alcohol and cigarettes, curled into my nostrils as he forced his mouth upon mine.
                  And then, we heard her voice—the sound that brought me more terror than my worst nightmare, more than the man who ensnared me. “Sweets? You in here?”
                  “One sound, and I will become your worst nightmare and no angel will save you,” he hissed in my ear as I imagined his hard savage hands on my girl, my Ivy.
                  We became statues of ice tucked away in the darkness of the furnace room. “If you so much as breathe too loud, I will snap your neck. And your little amiga will be next. Understand?” His breath blazed hot and revolting against my face. Fresh tears of panic doused his hand and I prayed for him to please, please leave my Ivy alone.
                  The furnace room door rattled and my chest heaved in fear.
                  Locked.
                  Ivy’s footsteps retreated, replaced by the echo of silence as she pulled the door to the stockroom closed behind her. I slumped, grateful for the one prayer God chose to answer.
                  She was safe.
                  I was not.
                  No one remained to save me—no knights in shining armor, no fairytales with the happy endings so requisite in romance novels. Dreams don’t come true. Prayers rarely answered, with or without the precise formula of faith. At least not for me. My