Chapter Seven

Monday rolled around, and I went to my morning class with a thundercloud stuck in my head. For someone like me, it was nerve-racking. No matter the heavy crap going on in my life, I always saw rainbows in the sky, even if they were faint. But today, the dread was literally pressing down on my shoulders. My neck and head were pounding.

What's going on with me?Maybe stress or lack of sleep. I didn't know, but I had to cancel my office hours.

I headed home, needing a big aspirin and a dark room.

I parked my old red Jeep in the driveway. Leo wasn't here, which I knew because he either parked along the street, wherever he could find a spot nearby, or out front where my car was now.

This morning, I'd left a reminder for him to say hi to our tenant, who, from what I could tell this morning, had not stayed in his room last night. Strange, but whatever.

I entered the front door, leaving my laptop case and purse next to the coatrack in the foyer. "Hello? Draco? Leo?" I called out.

I didn't hear a reply, so I checked Leo's office out of habit. Empty. I went to the guest room and knocked on the door. No one responded, so I opened it to see if there were any signs of our renter.

Draco stood next to the bed, naked with a towel in his hands, drying his face. Drops of water clung to his lean hard chest, arms, and abs. A patch of black hair circled his long, thick cock.

My breath stuck in my lungs. Jesus, he was beautiful.

His hands lowered to blot his chest, and his pale eyes locked on my face.

"Oh shit. Sorry." I turned away. "I didn't think anyone was here." I closed the door behind me, my cheeks burning hot. Shit. Shit. Shit. That was so embarrassing.

I made my way to the kitchen, praying he only thought I'd caught a quick glimpse instead of a juicy eyeful.

Head still pounding, I went for some aspirin in the cupboard and poured myself some milk. Now my heart was pounding, too. I'd seen naked men before, but none had ever given me an adrenaline rush.

Or made me forget my manners.I couldn't believe I'd just stood there drooling.

"Piper." Draco's deep voice came from behind me.

"Jesus!" I jumped in place.

"I did not mean to startle you. Do you have any coffee?"

I scrambled to compose myself, too ashamed to turn around and face him. "Coffee. Sure. Lots of coffee." I grabbed the grounds and fumbled with the filter. "I'm really sorry about barging in." I scooped some grounds into the maker and added water to the tank.

"I have pants on now if you want to look at me."

Oh God.I did not want to face him, but now he lived here, so it wasn't like I'd be able to avoid the man.

I slowly turned around, which was a mistake. He had on jeans, but that was it. His bare chest was still damp, droplets of water catching the light on his beautifully muscled pecs.

My stomach did the wave as I pretended not to notice. "I know you're only staying a short while," I rambled nervously, "but if you plan to buy groceries and want to cook, I can set aside space in the fridge and show you where everything is. You'll have to clean up after yourself immediate—"

"I do not cook."

"Oh."

"If I am hungry, I will eat out. I only asked for coffee because you are here, and I wanted an excuse to speak with you."

My heart raced faster. This man put every inch of me on edge. "Something wrong with the room?"

"Besides the lack of privacy, no." He came closer. "I am wondering what more you know about this house. Have you found any records left by the previous owners? Any books, diaries, or objects?"

"No. Why?"

He rubbed the dark stubble on his chin, producing a bristly sound. "Do you recall when I said there are people looking for me?"

Honestly, I'd been trying not to think about it. It bothered me that I'd let him stay here.

I nodded.

"What if I told you I do not know why?" he said.

He had people after him, but he didn't have a clue what they wanted? "I'd say most people know exactly what they've done."

"You assume I've done something wrong, but I do not know these people, apart from the fact they held me prisoner for the last thirty years."

I frowned, trying to work out his comment. He wasn't much older than thirty, so that meant he'd been locked up his entire life? A little hard to believe. "And you only now got free?"

"More like I woke up from a very long sleep."

I raised a brow. "Sounds…impossible." Insane, actually.

"Yet somehow it happened, and I want to know why. Who would lock up an infant with the intent to keep him asleep until he dies of old age?"

My mouth flopped open for a moment while I attempted to figure out what he wanted to hear. His words were insane, and I suddenly didn't feel very safe. Whatever irrational calmness I'd experienced earlier had disappeared.

"They won't stop until they have me back in that basement," he added, "where they will fill me with drugs again. My only reason for being here is to understand why."

"The situation sounds very upsetting," I said, trying not to set him off. "But can I ask what this has to do with the house? Or me?" Maybe I could figure out an angle to get him to leave. I'd give back his money if I had to, but I did not want him here. I never had, which only added to my confusion and fear since I'd let him in. Nothing made sense.

"I do not know how this house ties in," he said. "Was hoping you could help with that. When I escaped my captors, I stole a large sum of cash from them. I used the funds to bribe a neighbor to let me stay with him until I built up my strength and, well, let's just say I took the time to familiarize myself with the world. The real world. During those months, I began having dreams. Real dreams. They led here."

A dream led him to my house?I stepped back. He had to know how crazy he sounded.

He added, "I'm not here to hurt you, Piper, but there must be a reason I kept dreaming of this place."

Fuck if I knew. "Draco, your situation sounds…difficult." And you sound crazy. "But I can't help you, so I think it's best if you just—"

"You are a historian, yes?" His gaze grew more intense.

So he'd looked into me. "I teach history, but I'm not—"

"Have you ever asked why you are drawn to ancient Greece, specifically the Minoans?"

A person didn't need a reason to like what they liked. In this case, I found it fascinating how they knew things other cultures wouldn't figure out for thousands of years. Even the Maya and Egyptians, who were masters of astrology and engineering, didn't quite measure up during this time period. I often wondered if there had been more at play with the Minoans.

He continued, "What if I told you that I'd been held prisoner in Crete and that the entire time in captivity, I dreamed I was an archeologist digging up Minoan artifacts. And when I woke, I discovered that the people holding me captive had your last name. Spiros. What would you say to that?"

I would say that these were the ramblings of a madman, and that his reality was mixing with fantasy.

"Draco, I think you should go. I don't feel comfortable having you in my—"

He unexpectedly came at me, and I instinctively went into survival mode, trying to put distance between us. Where was the nearest weapon?

Before I could run for the knife drawer, he had me pinned with the length of his body against the kitchen wall. There was an unfeeling coldness in his eyes, mixed with an anger I couldn't understand.

I was about to beg him not to hurt me when his eyes locked on my lips.

Oh shit. Oh shit.Was he going to kiss me and make this a different kind of nightmare?

I balled my fist, preparing to hit him, but he grabbed my wrist. I was about to jerk away and knee him in the groin when my mind flooded with eerie images: dark clouds, pouring rain, and me strapped naked to a stone surface, facedown.

Draco stood over me, shirtless, gripping a flogger. He raised his arm in the air and then struck me between the shoulder blades.

I screamed, but not in agony. I loved it. My entire body lit up with sick pleasure. I wanted his cruelty. I was addicted to it.

"Again!" I yelled, as he grinned sadistically.

In the back of my mind, I knew this was the same man who came at me in the garden all those months ago. How had I forgotten it was Draco when I loved him so much? I would do anything for him. Anything.

His arm sliced through the air again, bringing the strips of knotted leather down on my back. My rain-slicked skin split open, and it made me come. The sweet hurt was a calming elixir to my darkest, sickest demons.

"Yes. More. Please more," I begged.

He lowered his mouth to my ear, his dark hair dripping on my neck. "You are a greedy little thing." He bit my earlobe and then stood up straight with a delighted gleam in his eyes. "I have given you enough attention for one day." He turned to leave.

"No! Don't go! Come back, Draco. I want more!" But I already knew he wasn't going to stay, and with his absence, the demons would take hold again, showering me with memories of the dying, of the screaming children, and of the trees withering under blackened skies.

"Oh, God," I whimpered. "Please come back." Draco was the only one who could stop the noise. I didn't care about the pain when he beat me. I'd take that a thousand times over reliving memories of the world, and everything in it, suffering in the most unimaginable ways. Draco had made me watch every moment. He'd said it was my job to remember.

"Why…" I sobbed. "Why are you doing this to me?" Hot tears poured from my eyes, mingling with the blood and rain pooling on the stone beneath me. "Kill me! End me."

He wouldn't, but I begged anyway, just as I had a hundred times before.

"Not until you remember!" he called out.

I blinked and was back in my kitchen, staring into those same pale eyes.

What the fuck had I just seen?

Before I could ask, my thoughts vanished like a wisp of steam.

I couldn't remember, but I knew I had seen something terrible.

Draco

I was new to everything in the real world: the feeling of sunlight on my face, the actual taste of food—sugar, fat, salt—and the sensation of taking a shit in a real toilet.

In my dreams, I'd lived a life doing things normal people did, which was part of the potion's features. But because I had been an infant when they locked me away, I lacked the experience to make my dreamworld truly authentic.

I dreamed of eating, but that food tasted like what had been described to me, and those descriptions meant nothing. I dreamed of fucking, but someone telling you, "It feels good, like floating on a cloud," didn't come close to actually coming. I comprehended what the modern world looked like, because my captors grew lazy years ago and would skip the Memory Book and instead turn on the TV, but the true colors of the trees and sky were a thousand times more brilliant than what I knew. My life and the world I grew up in had merely been plastic replicas of the real thing. And I was never meant to wake up.

But why do this to me?

I only knew my parents had been behind it, but unfortunately, the family who served them and held me prisoner—the Spiroses—were unable to provide further details. Mostly because they did not have any. They'd been compelled to watch over me, so they did just that.

How did I know?

One, I wasn't like anyone out here in the real world, and I was not referring to being imprisoned in a dream my entire life. I could see into people's heads and pull out their thoughts.

Two, I could make them do things. There were limits, but I surmised it was only a matter of time before I mastered this ability. In just a few short months, I'd already learned to use the tone of my voice to override a person's apprehension.

And finally, number three: before leaving Crete, I paid a visit to the man who'd watched over me. It was a risk, considering everyone on the island had been searching for me, but I had to ascertain what he knew. Why had this been done to me?

He didn't know. Even in the throes of death, he could not offer an explanation, which meant my parents had gone to great lengths to hide the reason for locking me away.

Yes, I killed him.

Did that make me an evil bastard? Maybe.

But what was worse? Robbing a person of thirty years of his life, filling his head and heart with love and a purpose that never existed, only to have it all shattered? Or to kill a man who was paid to carry out this cruel act?

He did not care about what he'd done to me. He did not care that he had no idea why. But he had cared about the money that showed up on his doorstep each month. I'd heard it in his thoughts before I ended him.

Then I'd found money stashed in a suitcase. Millions of dollars. Now mine to fund my search for answers.

Not that money could make up for what I'd lost. I loved Zarda. She'd meant everything to me. So had my family—my mother and father, my aunts and uncles, and my cousins. I even loved the family who cared for our home and cooked for us. But they'd all been a dream, just stories from a book.

To be clear, they existed in the real world—I obviously had a father and mother—but the versions I knew were made up. Especially Zarda.

When I tracked her down before leaving Crete, I discovered she was married with three children. The heartless bitch read from the Memory Book for extra money, telling me stories of our life together and of how much we loved each other. At night, she went home to her husband and real family.

If you are wondering, I did not kill her. I loved her too much to even show her my face or say a cruel word.

But trust me, the rage inside was real.

My pain was real.

My need for revenge was real.

But more than anything, I wanted answers, and I would not stop until I got them.

I moved my hand to Piper's shoulder, feeling her body shiver against mine as I pressed her to the kitchen wall. "Show me what you know, Piper. Why did I dream of you and this house?"

I immediately hit a barrier in her mind, like she was fighting to keep her thoughts well hidden.

How very interesting. Our little professor had secrets. With time, as my skills improved, I would find out what she was hiding. In the meantime, I decided to ask another question. "Show me what you know about this house."

Images began shuffling through her mind, most of them random—paint, blueprints, and the deed.

There.It was a record of the previous owner. He'd had a warehouse near the wharf and an office building downtown.

It wasn't much to go on, but it was better than nothing.

I dropped my hand and stared deeply into Piper's eyes. They were a stunning shade of hazel with deep green swirls around the irises. I could see myself fucking her someday, but right now, I had more important things to do.

"Piper, you will forget all about this. You will relax and let it all disappear."

Piper

Why am I standing against this wall?And why was Draco two inches from me, shirtless? I swallowed down a lump in my throat. "What's happening?"

He took a step back. "You were about to tell me why you purchased this house when you started feeling dizzy."

I was? I didn't remember, and it certainly didn't explain why this psycho fucker was standing so close.

"That is not very nice," he said.

"I didn't say anything." The dial on my headache turned up. "Oh, God." I pressed my hands to the sides of my head.

"My apologies. I am still new at this. I have pushed you too hard."

What was he talking about?

Draco leaned forward, putting us nose to nose, deepening his gaze. "You are all right, Piper. Breathe normally now, and the pain will go away."

I obeyed him, drawing a deep breath, and my pain cleared. "What did you just do?"

"A trick I learned for headaches. Forget about it."

Forget…I shook my head, trying to straighten out my thoughts. Draco stood a few feet away, shirtless and barefoot, wearing only jeans that hung low on his hips.

Why was he in my kitchen—Oh, right. He probably wanted to complain about me barging into his room like that. I was so embarrassed. I would have to put a lock on his door so he could have more privacy.

"Piper?" Leo appeared in the kitchen doorway.

My eyes dashed between Draco's calm face and Leo's angry gaze. Like a slap to the face, I suddenly realized how this looked.

"Leo, I-I…"

"Who the hell are you?" Leo growled at Draco.

"You must be Leo." Draco extended his hand and walked toward Leo. "I'm your new tenant."

They shook hands, staring each other down.

"My apologies," Draco said to Leo. "Piper appeared to be having a panic attack. I was attempting to help her."

Leo focused on me. "You okay?"

I wasn't sure. Draco said I'd had a panic attack, but I couldn't remember anything.

"Yup. Better now," I replied, not wanting to worry him. "Guess I couldn't breathe for a second there."

Leo's suspicious gaze danced between me and a shirtless Draco. Finally, Leo jerked his head to one side. "Pipe, can we talk? In private?"

"Sure." I slid past Draco, a hard chill sweeping over me as our shoulders brushed. I couldn't begin to explain what was happening with this stranger, and frankly I didn't want to know. I just wanted him out.

I left the kitchen, feeling Draco's intense eyes on me.

Leo and I went to his office. He closed the door behind us and leaned his ass on his desk. From the look in his eyes, I immediately knew something bad was about to happen.