Mallory Rush - [Outlawsand Heroes 02] by Dead or Alive Read Free Book Online Page B

what had to be an illusion. The object landed in the porcelain sink and gyrated against a round gold circle. It was then that he noticed the spigot had an attachment that he pulled up and down; as he did so the gold circle went up and down too. It acted as a cork, he realized, but he'd never seen a cork such as this.
    "Noble? Noble, look—" He shook off her frantic grip on his wrist and went to the tub. He repeated the motions, amazed, stunned by what his eyes insisted was true but his reason insisted was not.
    Sweeping his gaze to what he had first thought an exotic chair with a slop jar housed in the seat, he saw that it also had a suspicious lever.
    "Why didn't I notice that before?" he asked himself aloud. Then to Lori, he said decisively, "I've allowed you to distract me too much as it is. Move away."
    She tried to block him and he thrust her aside, intent on confronting the throne in this delusive setting. He took a lurching step and his bare foot bumped the pile of devices he had thought to be aids for arousal.
    "Noble, please, you have to listen to me—"
    "Listen to you? To what shall I be listening? An hallucination? Yes. Yes, that's what you are." Dear God, please let all of this be exactly that. Let him be trapped in a bizarre delirium that had him fabricating the array of objects slithering like vipers around his feet, suddenly bearing no resemblance to sexual bed toys.
    That he had allowed her to put these foreign perversities on him... he shuddered.
    Noble swiped at his arm where she had put the cuff, feeling as if he had been violated by an obscenity of nature. Searching for something, anything that might give him a sense of reality, he spied his gun. With a desperate urgency, he bent to retrieve it. Only to encounter Lori's boot stamping down on the familiar metal before he could claim it.
    "My gun," he snarled at her. "Remove your foot from my gun."
    "I'm sorry, Noble. But I can't let you have your gun. Please, sit down, catch your breath, and try to relax while I explain everything as best I can."
    "Explain everything?" he challenged, his eyes wild and wary. "Yes, please do. Explain this." He kicked aside the tools of her nightmarish trade. Everything about him, even time, seemed to expand and contract while he struggled for a sense of balance. Whether it was seconds or hours, he didn't know, but at last he slammed his hand down on the lever attached to the ornate slop jar.
    No slop jar had a hole in the bottom of it. No slop jar made a sucking noise and contained a swirling pool of water that disappeared then re-surged as if by magic.
    "And explain this." He raced back to the sink, but his feet seemed to be moving in slow motion, taking forever to get him to the elongated stained-glass fixture above the basin.
    When he struck his fist against it, not only did the overlong light beneath shine too brightly to be a dull, flickering bulb, but the fixture itself lacked the properties of glass. The casing was too thin and had a texture unknown to him. It was attached to a wall, which was made of an equally strange substance. No paper covered the wood. In fact there was no wood to be seen at all.
    He put his fist through a thin, glossy white... he had no idea what this enigma was doing passing for a wall. Noble quickly jerked away from it and put his palm to the light source that could be no more real than the burning sensation it elicited. No, he couldn't really be burned. No more than he could bleed—though blood appeared to spurt from the opposite palm he slammed against the trick fixture until it shattered.
    "You're bleeding. Let me look at that and—"
    "Get away from me," he snapped. Knocking her hand away, he quickly retrieved the gun left on the floor. Training it on her, he said in a lethal whisper, "stay where you are, you demon of the dark, seducing me with your feminine wiles. I know where I must be. I am either trapped in a nightmare or I'm in hell. Whichever it is, leave me be."
    Backing out of the