The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters: Secret McQueen, Prequel Page 8

  Warning: Contains advanced concepts about human nature, life, death, sex and reality. Sometimes more than one at a time. Read at your own risk and keep one foot on the floor at all times.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for The Facilitator:

  Eternal Tranquility eased her back into facilitation, giving her calm and prepared patients with poignant memories, final moment fantasies that required very little ingenuity and departures delicately tinged with emotions.

  They made it clear she was a valued asset and that they’d treat her as such, giving her plenty of time to regain her equilibrium after the Taber experience.

  It would have been frighteningly easy to slip into that diva mindset…the one that expected such treatment and behaved accordingly, making demands matching her elevated status, pissing off people around her with her attitude and generally living down to her worst personality traits.

  But being Martine, she tended to do the opposite. Instead of demanding more perks, she stayed nearly silent. Instead of flashing her credits around, she spent hardly any of them and then only on necessities.

  And she always had something nice to say to the techs and nurses she interacted with during her work. She laughed with the guys who eyed her legs lasciviously, and gave a couple of nurses her code for the leather tunic they both admired.

  Life—and death—went on pretty much as usual for facilitators and clients.

  She told nobody that she’d begun dreaming, or that those dreams featured one person.

  John.

  She’d occasionally wondered how far the level of surveillance went on Eternal Tranquility employees. Of course there was security. And that would go double for facilitators, since there were very few of them.

  God forbid another company should try and woo her or her peers. It hadn’t happened up to now, so she figured security was solid. At what point security became intrusive-and-invasive monitoring was still an ongoing debate and probably always would be.

  But she’d been dreaming for several weeks now with no interference or questions. Thus she arrived at the conclusion that her routine well-being was indeed observed, but that the dreams either didn’t register or were no problem to those who watched her.

  They didn’t seem to be affecting her work nor was she dozing off in the middle of the afternoons. No, John’s increasingly regular nocturnal visits seemed to be something only she fully appreciated.

  And perhaps he did as well…she wasn’t sure yet.

  She did know she was finding the dreams…very pleasant.

  Sometimes they were too brief—a quick conversation, a smile or just some sort of warm awareness of his presence.

  Other dreams were more leisurely. He seemed to enjoy scenarios that were strange to her, such as a garden with unusual flowers and strangely carved statues. There was a small lake of fine sand, which fascinated her, as did the sharply tined rake she used to create designs. It was quite mesmerizing, and when she woke after that one, she almost reached for her comm system to see if she could order a tabletop version.

  Over the ensuing month, John became a fixture of her nights. Almost a part of her sleep—a part she eagerly anticipated. She carefully utilized her ability to compartmentalize, shutting the door on John and the dreams as she opened the one to her day and her work.

  She knew there had to be a connection, of course. As time passed she became more and more convinced that John knew a great deal more than he’d said up to now. But she kept those thoughts firmly tucked away. Her talent for shutting parts of her mind down made her the excellent facilitator she was.

  And now it helped protect the curious woman she was becoming.

  In her most private moments she acknowledged the fact she was becoming an enamored woman as well.

  Had John been real and standing in her bedroom, she’d have had him naked in five seconds and giving her the first of many orgasms in barely five more. He appealed to her on a psychological level, being intriguing, intelligent and humorous. All well and good.

  But it was what he did to her on a physical level that shocked her at times. It had been quite a while since she’d felt so aroused by a man. So alive and aware of her own sexuality.

  He had a way of looking at her, those stunning blue eyes filled with heat and what she hoped was desire. Because she was pretty damn sure that word could describe the way she looked at him. Either that or pass me a spoon because you’re dessert and I’m about to eat you right up. And lick the plate when I’m done.

  The whole lust thing was heating up, Martine realized. Probably not healthy or productive, having a bad case of screaming sweaty thighs for a dream man. In the nebulous sense of the word.

  The other annoying feature of her dreams was her total inability to initiate the topic of conversation. She’d tried more than once to ask John about that number he’d told her. About the odd coincidence she’d found in the data-storage division server.

  But, as was the way with dreams, her words wouldn’t come out right. And John blithely chatted on, ignoring her attempts to articulate questions. Then he’d do something like touch her hand or brush her cheek, or look at her in that way—and she was lost.

  She couldn’t help but realize the sexual attraction between them was growing. She hadn’t been naked with him since that first time. And she was starting to wonder if that was his doing or hers. Who was nervous about what might happen?

  She got wet thinking about it. Did dreams get hard-ons? Could they actually get down and dirty? The few brief moments Martine permitted herself to indulge in this train of thought passed rapidly. Then she shut it down. She wasn’t about to take the risk of doing any mental broadcasting of her newly enhanced sexual awareness. Guys tended to pick up on that sort of thing, whether it was pheromones or something else. Give a woman a hot night of sex and the next day men would follow her with their eyes, metaphorically panting. There was probably some scientific rationale for it, and doubtless it had been examined, explained and filed away in the annals of human sexuality.

  She didn’t know and didn’t care. She just wanted to make sure she kept her private thoughts exactly that. Private.