She nodded. "I've always been a vivid dreamer."

He let it go, wanting to know what else she'd seen.

"This grave, it's in a valley, and I see a steep cliff. It's covered in rocks that seem like they're going to tumble right into the sea. It's very harsh. Very beautiful."

Very much Ballyfionuir.

"In the distance, there's a weird stone thing. . . . I'm not sure how to describe it, but it looks like a doorway and it has something on it that reflects the sun. Like gold."

She cocked her head and watched his face. It felt as if he'd been plunged into an arctic pool. He was suddenly very cold.

"Do you know where I'm talking about?"

He knew. He knew it well. It was a place that drew him, a place he often found himself, sometimes with no recollection of how he'd come to be there.

"What is it? The stone thing I see?"

"It's a dolmen. They're ancient and as common as castles in Ireland."

"But what is it?"

"Depends on the myth you believe. But most likely they mark burial chambers. Doorways to beyond."

She paled and nodded. "Is there one in Ballyfionuir?"

"Yes."

"I had the sense-the feeling-that there was something behind me when I was looking at it, but you know how dreams are. I couldn't look back, so I don't know. I think, maybe it's a house or . . . I don't know, something bigger, but I can't say what."

"It's the ruins," he said softly, feeling the hair at the back of his neck stand on end. "It used to be a castle and stronghold, perched up on a cliff overlooking the sea. It was built centuries ago and has stood all this time. My grandmother remembers stories of when it was whole. Your ancestors lived there before one of the walls caved in and crumbled right down to the ocean. It took the kitchen and the oldest son of the time with it."

"Oh ..."

The breathed word shivered between them. He had a feeling of something momentous, something hovering just above them. It seemed the room dimmed, the lighting changed, became softer, though he couldn't explain it. The walls of her kitchen flickered-there was no other way to describe it. It was like seeing a home movie projected over the paint and cabinets. Distorted, out of place, but undeniably there.

"Now it's only ruins?" Danni said, her voice a cool breeze that blew through him.

He nodded. "There's a house just in front of it now. I've never thought it looked natural, the house standing in the shadows of the ruined castle. But they didn't ask me when they built it."

Danni stared at him, her gray eyes looking deeply into his own. The pull of her was tangible, the need for her so great he couldn't stop the hand that finally bridged the gap between them. The silk of her cheek felt hot against his fingertips. He stroked down the line of her jaw to her throat, trying to see nothing but her. Trying to lose himself in the stormy seas of her eyes. But the walls seemed to fade in and out, mocking his attempt to ignore them.

What was causing it? Did she see it, too? But he didn't ask. Asking would have made the gnawing worry in his gut too real or too ridiculous. He wasn't sure which.

"I've brought you something," he said, not realizing he'd intended to speak of it-to give it-until he heard his own words. But in the swirling mix of his confusion, he felt a pressure build. An urging that forced his hand in the same way it had from the start.

He thought, not for the first time, that somehow he'd become a pawn in his own life. A shell of the man he should be, moving mindlessly to an objective he didn't understand.

The walls around him took on a strange translucence, and for a moment he was looking out on the view Danni had just described. For just an instant, he felt the bite of the sea breeze, the salty spray of the surf. And then his fingers closed over the green box he'd brought from Ireland, and the walls were just what they should be. Staid and confining, locking him into decisions that weren't his own.

Chapter Nine.

DANNI felt the push of the air around them. It was heavy and thick, filled as if by sediments. She thought of an erupting volcano, spewing out ash so dense it masked the sky. The pressure of the air trying to turn was made foreign and gritty by the strange fluttering pieces of the bigger picture she couldn't yet see. Knowing it was pointless, she fought the turning, focusing just on the man beside her.

From his pocket, Sean pulled a small green box. It was what he'd been holding this morning when he'd watched her from the window of the store. It was embossed with knotted gold loops and spirals that joined in a symbol she'd never seen before . . . and yet, there was something familiar about it. It took a moment and then she realized-she'd seen similar shapes in the fanning pages of the Book of Fennore. Icy cold seeped from her scalp to her feet as she considered that.

With a brooding glance at her face, Sean thrust the tiny box at her. Again she was hit with his mixed messages. He gave it, but not willingly.

Her fingers shook slightly as she took the box and opened the lid. Inside, on a bed of white cotton, was a necklace with a fine chain of woven silver and gold. A pendant the size of an old coin hung from it. The mixture of silver and gold made an intricate weave around concentric spirals spun together without beginning or end. Again, she had that sense of familiarity and recognition. In her mind, she saw the lock on the Book, turning and spiraling endlessly. The pendant was the same.

A constellation of jewels glittered in between the strands of gold and silver. An emerald centered the piece, with sparkling diamonds, glowing opals, and bloodred rubies surrounding it. But there was no malice emanating from the necklace as there had been from the Book, only a strange jarring energy.

The walls of the kitchen continued to expand and thin around her like encapsulating lungs sucking in deep breaths. It felt like they shivered with anticipation as she stared at the necklace. They were waiting, but she didn't know why or for what. She fought the urge to look at them, struggled against the shadows moving just on the other side of the membrane.

She touched the knotted center of the pendant with the tip of her finger, and a stinging jolt seemed to race up her arm. It frightened and conversely soothed at the same time. "What is this?" she whispered.

"It's a charm," he answered in that smoky baritone, making the words seem much more than they were. "To bring you luck and keep you safe."

"Safe? Safe from what?"

He stared at her in silence, and she sensed he was sifting and filtering a myriad of responses. That he felt there were many things she needed to be kept safe from. So many things she should be fearing. Did he have knowledge of the Book of Fennore? Had he ever seen it himself?

The walls pulled and pushed at the thick air. Waiting . . . waiting.

"Just safe," he said, looking away. "It's a family heirloom. It's yours now."

"Mine?" she said, and the wall sucked in a gasp of pleasure.

"Yes. Put it on. It belongs to you."

"But where did it come from? How did you-"

"Do you want me to take it back, then?"

"No," she said quickly. "No."

The sighing walls pressed close as Sean gently lifted the fine chain, moved behind her, and clasped it around her neck. His fingers were warm against the sensitive skin of her nape, and the brush of them was as intimate as a kiss.

The walls pulsed with a dark need that terrified her.

When Sean returned to his seat, his brows were drawn, his eyes a strange golden green, a choppy pool of disquiet. He glanced past her as if something behind her had distracted him. She had the unsettling sense that he could see, that he could hear the insistent grating as the walls thinned and expanded. But that was impossible. She'd never broadcasted a vision to anyone else.

"I don't know when it was made," Sean was saying about the spiraled and knotted pendant. "I'm not sure it's ever been dated. But it's old. Very old."

It felt heavy around her neck, much more weighted than its appearance led her to believe. She lifted it with tremulous fingers, half expecting the precious piece to disappear like an illusion. But the moment she touched it another shocking bolt cut through her. Images rushed with it in a whoosh of jumbled impressions that stole her very breath. She didn't have time to make sense of any of it as it vandalized her senses.

"Are you all right?" Sean asked, taking her hand, bringing her back.

The walls warbled, and she felt that they would suck her into their swirling mass. She felt sick with the pull of it. Horrified by the lure behind it.

"Danni, what's wrong? What's happening?"

Sean's voice came from a great distance. She felt it as much as she heard it. She tried to answer him but managed only an incoherent sound that escalated her rising panic. Since the morning Sean had appeared in her kitchen, the visions had been hovering, just waiting to take her into their frightening embrace. And now this-this feeling that they would punch right through her walls and overtake life as she knew it.

Sean was standing now, pulling her to her feet. She was aware of him, the solid mass, the height and breadth of him, the seduction in those not quite green, not quite gray eyes. She wanted him to be real. Suddenly, fiercely, she wanted him to be something more than a sick twist of fate. She wanted to lean into him, have his arms around her, comforting, holding on to her. Holding back the frightening swirl of the air.

It wasn't fair, she thought. It wasn't fair that he'd come into her life this way. One more person she yearned for but couldn't have. Because even though he was a stranger, she did yearn to know more about him. To feel connected to him. She wished it could be different. Why did it always seem that everything she wanted hovered just out of her reach?

A sound echoed through her mind-a pulsating rush, a distressed groan. Destiny's train chugging up a forbidding slope. It grew louder, stronger. The air became thick and cloying, sucking at her sanity as it solidified over reality.

"Danni?"

She couldn't hear him speak, but she saw his lips move, his eyes fill with concern. He pulled her into his arms, staring at their surroundings with an expression that mirrored the fear inside her. She didn't know what was happening, but it seemed to happen to them both. Bean began to bark frantically. She circled Danni's feet and jumped to rest her paws on Danni's legs. She knew it, but couldn't make her body respond and offer comfort.

And then it seemed that the floor opened beneath her. There was no free will in her falling. No choice to obey or defy. She was simply there in the blackness, air and sound rushing past her. She clutched at Sean, both reassured and horrified to find him still with her. She couldn't bring someone into a vision, couldn't take them through the turning air with her.

But Sean wasn't like anyone she'd known before, was he?

Her own panic followed her down, down deeper into a darkness that seeped and spread. She accepted that this was not a vision. She couldn't isolate the reasons why it was different, but she felt them and she knew she was right. And still she fell-wildly pinwheel ing as she plunged through impenetrable darkness. She couldn't feel Sean anymore and she wanted to cry at the loss.

Then someone grasped her flailing hand. The grip was warm, strong, the hand holding hers big and rough. He pulled her into the circle of his arms, holding her tight as they plummeted. She couldn't see him, but she could feel the breadth of him and it reassured her. Sean.

She wasn't alone. She didn't understand it, but she wasn't alone.

The falling became something more jarring, more aggressive than gravity. It siphoned the air from her lungs, tugged at her shoes, sucking them off, flinging them away as it stripped her down to her skin. The wind whipped her, flayed her skin, burned even as the chill crept into her bones. She clenched her eyes, burying her face against Sean's bare chest, hearing Bean barking somewhere in the confusion. She couldn't catch her breath and her head felt light. She felt light.

There was no slowing. No stopping. No fear of the bottom.

There was simply-suddenly-nothing at all.

Chapter Ten.

IT wasn't dream; it wasn't vision. It was some hybrid of both that held her captive. Danni rolled over and snuggled beneath soft covers, unsure of where she was or how she'd come to be there. She was warm, though, and content.

She tried to open her eyes, but her lids were too heavy and the feeling of comfort too fine to disturb. Her pillow smelled of lavender and the sheets were smooth against her bare body. She was naked. The realization lit the first tiny flicker of apprehension. She never slept naked.

In bed beside her, something-someone-moved. She felt hot skin brushing hers as he rolled and spooned behind her. He was big. She could sense the weight of him, the length of the body pressed to her own. An arm circled her waist and pulled her tighter against him. His hand spread over her stomach and then slowly moved up.

Sean. She didn't question how she knew.

Again she tried to open her eyes, tried to surface, but it was no use. Was it a vision, then? Something only in her mind?

His hand cupped her breast, his thumb moving in slow, languid circles over the nipple. He seemed to come awake in the act, slowly, sensuously, like a giant cat stretching out the tightly coiled muscles of his body. She felt awareness travel through him, and he made a sound that teased her nerve endings and made her skin feel hypersensitive.

Slowly, slowly he began to kiss her back and shoulders, moving her hair aside to reach her neck. His hands slid possessively over the edge of her hip to the slope of her spine, up to her nape and around to the curve of her throat. She felt the swollen heat of him hard against her bottom and she pressed into it, wanton, urgent.

He shifted, rolling her onto her back, and gently pinning her with his weight. His touch became demanding. He pressed his mouth to hers, hard and soft, like hot silk binding an unyielding force. She wanted to wrap her body in his kisses, wear them beneath her clothes during the hours of day when this would all be just a memory-a fantasy that hadn't really happened. His hands roamed over her as if she was his to have and to hold, the span of his fingers reached from hip bone to hip bone, his lips following every intimate stroke.

"Touch me," he said into her mouth as he caressed the flat of her belly, moving ever down to torment her with the seductive flick of his fingers. Boneless and compliant, she did as she was told.

She stroked him, eyes still sealed, inhibitions somehow locked away with her sight. A shadowy part of her mind knew this wasn't right, it couldn't be happening. But the rest of her didn't care as he dipped and circled, rubbed and toyed with her, all the while drugging her with deep, slow kisses.

When she thought she might scream from the building tension inside her, he shifted, spreading her thighs with the slide of his hips. His body was hard and muscular, gloriously defined. She felt what she couldn't see, exploring ridges over his abdomen, the tight bulge of his chest, the hard bunching of his arms.

She spread herself for him, trusting him completely as he pushed deep inside her and held. He filled her with every inch of himself, leaving no room for doubts or fears, no place for identity. She no longer knew where he ended and she began. She no longer cared. Loneliness, something that had been a part of her forever, ceased to exist.

Then he began to move-measured, sensuous strokes that brought friction and heat and a rising excitement she couldn't contain. She was making sounds, ragged, erotic sounds that she'd never known herself to make before.

He whispered in her ear, words of encouragement, dirty words that made her hotter, wilder. Yes, she told him, yes she'd do whatever he wanted. And she would. In her blindness, she was willing to give up the control she always fought so hard to maintain. She was a vessel, begging to be filled with whatever he chose to give her.

His tongue brushed against her lips, mimicking the deliberate slide of his body. She wrapped her arms tight, not satisfied with merely the weight of him. She wanted to flatten herself until she was part of him. Her ankles locked at his back and she met him thrust for thrust. Doors to the hollow places she'd kept sheltered vanished, letting in the heat and building need he created. Like sunshine through open shutters, Sean chased back her fears, her isolation, and illuminated her darkest corners.

Still she was blind, depending on her heightened senses to guide her. Depending on Sean and his wicked touch, his demands, his rhythm. He caught her earlobe between his teeth and gently nipped before whispering a command that unleashed the pent-up excitement inside her. She climaxed with a force that rocked her body, pushing her hips up to meet his. Her fingers clutched the hard muscles of his shoulders as he braced himself above her and drove into her. And then he came along with a powerful thrust and a groan that filled her with triumph and sent her over the edge once again.

She kept him tight in her hold as his stiff body relaxed against her. He collapsed, rolling her with him so they were still connected, still linked by the hardness inside her. Unbelievably she was moving again, rousing him before he'd even yielded.

"I don't want to wake up," he said in her ear as he kissed her once more.

Neither did she. Not ever.

Chapter Eleven.

"SEAN, I'll be coming with my switch if you make me call you once more. I swear it, man or no', I'll be after your arse with it.

The shrill voice penetrated the dark cocoon that held Danni tight. She frowned and tried to block it out. Some part of her knew that to acknowledge it would be disaster; some part of her never wanted to acknowledge anything again but the comforting blank of her slumbering mind. She burrowed deeper in the covers, entranced by the languorous feel of her limbs, the sated weight of her body.