Hunted Dreams by Elle Hill Page A

strong man, well-shaped head sprouting a half-inch of black curls. He wore a black suit this time, and his light brown skin gleamed against the brightness of his starched white shirt.
    The background noise swirled around them like mayflies, words buzzing and laughs stinging.
    “Who are you?” She meant the question to sound brave, even harsh. Maybe she succeeded.
    The man’s eyes wrinkled in confusion as he stared at her. She realized he couldn’t hear her over the gentle din. Couldn’t hear her? If he was the mastermind behind all these games, he obviously needed to work on his personal intimidation factor. And, well, being a little uglier would help.
    “Who is that?” she asked the man next to her, keeping her eyes on the big man opposite her.
    “I’m not sure why you insisted on inviting him,” the man said. Once again, his voice had lost its jovial sheen. She thought he might be looking at her.
    “Who is he?” she asked.
    “But you were always a stubborn little thing.”
    She threw her napkin back on the table and started rising. The man next to her grabbed her arm and yanked her back to her seat. Someone materialized behind her, or perhaps had always been there, and placed restraining hands on her shoulders.
    “You haven’t yet tried your food,” her faceless host hissed.
    At the other end of the table, the man had also tried to rise, and arms on either side of him kept him seated. His face shone with fury. Her breath caught. Was he, like her, a prisoner, then?
    “Let me go,” she said calmly to the man whose fingers painfully encircled her arm.
    “I promised you your favorite,” he said, each word dropping like chunks of ice. “Let’s feast, shall we?”
    “Let me go!” she yelled, yanking backward.
    The room silenced.
    The woman drew a startled breath and stopped struggling. She raised her eyes, and although she could see no faces, she knew they all stared at her in frozen silence. Even the man opposite her stared silently at her, his own struggle momentarily forgotten. She could hear her own breath as she raggedly exhaled.
    “Kitty Cat wants to start the feast,” the man said with a complete lack of inflection in his tone. His fingers burned coldly against her skin.
    A dark hand stretched out from around her and grabbed the top of the serving dish. It paused for a moment, or perhaps time slowed. The woman looked at the man opposite her. His nostrils flared and his eyes blazed, but he sat silently, seeming as oppressed as she by the silence and attention.
    A cold energy pulsed through the room while she foolishly clutched her butter knife. Not a foot from her, the dark brown hand suddenly snatched the cover from her plate of food.
    Screeching, she jumped and her high heels tap-danced on the wooden floor as she struggled to shove her chair backward. The person behind her held her in place while she bucked harmlessly in her well-padded chair.
    Before her, a small sphere lolled in a dark red sauce, errant honey-yellow strands painting garish patterns on the plate.
    Reed sat up with a gasp. What the— Where the hell was he? Before his muscles could fully tense, he remembered Berto, the Broschi, his new room. A whole new world.
    Apparently, one that came with its own set of freaky dreams. The first night’s dream—a snarling woman awaiting death with him—he could dismiss. But seeing the same woman in a totally different, and equally bizarre, nightmare? A strange woman, one he knew he’d never met, playing the lead in his dreams? How weird was that?
    He’d never been one to remember, let alone analyze, the stories his brain told once he fell asleep. These two dreams, though, while still fuzzy and random, loomed in his mind like actual memories.
    A dinner party? Hardly the most menacing setting. And yet . . . He recalled the jagged quality of the room’s darkness, the hissing sibilance of background noise, the terrified fury on the woman’s face. The horror on her plate.
    As he always said,