I can’t stop myself from wanting her, and I don’t even know her name. Or if she even exists…
Kaylia Thomas has a secret. She can do something no one else can. She can travel in her dreams. Sometime she even meets other people…
Dylan Weston has it all. He’s the richest boy in town and a star athlete with a bright future. But he has a secret. He was only sixteen when the dreams started. He would wake to find a beautiful girl standing above him. Like him, she seemed lost in the desolate words they would visit together in his sleep.
Now it’s two years later and he’s the prize catch of an Ivy League football team. He’s just starting his freshman year when he sees her – the girl from his dreams. She’s a fellow student at the prestigious university. And she’s real.
Kaylia resists facing the truth about their connection, but Dylan won’t give up. He’s not the only one drawn to the quiet beauty though. When he rescues her from a group of rowdy sports fans after a game, it triggers something in him that his been long repressed. A family curse that once awakened, can only lead to blood.
Is Kaylia his true love? Or is she the key that unlocks the curse that will be his undoing?
*The Key is the first story in the Heartfire Books, a paranormal romance series from first time author Celeste Davis. It has been completely rewritten and expanded in anticipation of the third book in the series – coming soon from Celeste Davis and Pincushion Press*
Kalia’s heart was beating so fast, it felt like it was a horse that might gallop away from her. He was here. And he was demanding that she talk to him, that she admit what was happening.
God help her, she wanted to talk to him too.
She wanted everything in the dreams to be real. The long walks. The handholding. The kiss.
Especially the kiss.
Everything inside her warned that there would be consequences if she gave into that desire. That this was not a free gift. She didn’t know if it was just nerves, or a lifetime of being the odd girl out, but her internal warning bell was clanging and it was loud.
She let herself look at him, silencing the voice inside her that told her to run. She just… looked. Her eyes drank him in like the tall, cool drink of water that he was.
Lord have mercy the boy was fine.
His eyes were the same as she remembered, his shoulders just as broad. His hair was shorter, cut for the upcoming football season most likely. She missed the tousled curls he’d worn the last time she saw him. It softened him somehow. Now he looked… hard.
Determined.
He was staring at her, begging her with those deep blue eyes to say the words that would make this all real.
Too real.
Once she said them out loud though, she wouldn’t be able to take them back. It was a line in the sand and she realized with a sense of inevitability that nothing would stop her from crossing it. Maybe this was fate. Maybe it was magic. Real magic, not the kind you read about in fairy tales. Either way, she couldn’t fight it any longer.
She sighed, unable to resist the entreating look in his beautiful eyes.
“Your hair is shorter.”
He smiled at her with such relief that it almost made it worth it when they both ended up in the loony bin.
Almost.
“Yours too.”
She ran her hand through her new haircut distractedly.
“Yeah, well my Gran cut it. She wanted to make the cut last until I went home again for Thanksgiving break.”
He was just standing there, staring at her like a kid on Christmas morning. Then he held out his hand expectantly. She looked at it as if it were a snake that might bite her.
“I’m Dylan.”
Dylan. The name suited him. It was unusual. Pretty almost. But strong.
She sighed, ignoring his hand.
“Look, this isn’t a good idea. We should just act like none of this ever happened. Otherwise we are basically admitting that we are insane.”
“Like I said, maybe we are. I’m okay with that.”
He was still grinning when he said it. She sighed again, feeling like she was speaking to a slow-witted child. Except he wasn’t, was he? He was a big, beautiful looking young man. An Adonis really. How could he be here talking to her when she’d conjured him up out of loneliness all those years ago?
He was supposed to just be her imaginary friend dammit.
“Come on, just tell me your name. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal-”
She lowered her voice, whispering at him as she started walking around the outskirts of the game again.
“The big deal is that stuff like this isn’t supposed to happen.”
“Yeah, it’s weird. But it’s good weird, you know?”
She stopped and stared at him. He was so handsome. So big. So actually there in the flesh that she had to resist the urge to reach out and poke him.
“I guess.”
“So, what’s your name? Otherwise I’m going to have to call you dream girl.”
She sighed again and stared at the hand he was once again holding out. Patiently waiting for her to accept it. She reached out and slid her small dark hand into his.
“Kaylia. I’m Kaylia.”
He smiled at her and clasped her hand. A jolt shot through her. He jerked as if he felt it too. It was like an electrical current that seared her, straight to the soles of her feet. She let go abruptly, reaching up to touch the top of her head.
Her hair was sticking straight up.
Dylan’s was too.
He smiled sheepishly as if that were a totally normal reaction to a handshake.
“So… Can I buy you a cup of coffee Kaylia?”
Celeste Davis has been fascinated by the paranormal since a young age. She has studied various forms of magic and astral projection starting in her teenage years and still frequently travels at night!
Her new series of books will explore different dark worlds, and the things that remain hidden. Part the curtain and see what lies beneath!
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