Read In Your Wildest Dreams for Free Online Page B

she’d just met. Desire had taken over, becoming the biggest part of her, that quickly. God, she didn’t even know his name.
    Thank goodness she’d found the strength to spill the truth and stop the insanity of his hands, creeping up her body. It was the first time, and the last time, too, she promised herself. She needed to get back on track and think about Tina. Her sweet, impulsive, go with the flow sister.
    Tina, Tina, Tina.
    Sometimes Tina seemed far younger than her twenty five years, but sometimes Stephanie felt older than her thirty—widening the age gap between them even more. Once upon a time, they’d been close—when Tina was little, the baby sister whom Stephanie had coddled and cooed over, passed clothes down to, helped with homework. But somewhere along the way Tina had begun to suffer from the belief that Stephanie was the family’s golden child, the achiever who garnered all the praise, and that Tina was the neglected daughter, always coming in second place.
    The truth was, Tina never worked as hard as Stephanie. She lacked ambition, made poor choices, and following her last boyfriend down here was just one example. Tina had refused to see that part of Russ’s decision to accept a job in a new city was because he wanted to break up—even Stephanie had detected that, yet Tina hadn’t.
    Now, though, Stephanie couldn’t help wondering if things would be different if she’d been more supportive and less judgemental. If she’d been more constructive, rather than just criticizing. She’d thought the bartender had acted superior tonight, but had she unknowingly acted superior to Tina all these years?
    Despite the fact that they’d not been close for a while now, Stephanie could scarcely imagine her sister out there somewhere selling her body. What must it be like? What had driven Tina to such a place? Her phone calls had been so cryptic, simultaneously cheerful and sad. Where was she right now? Having sex with a stranger? One of the rich, smarmy men Stephanie had met tonight? Or…she closed her eyes, unable to even give words to her worst fears, that something had happened to Tina, something awful. She couldn’t possibly give up her search simply because she hadn’t gotten any leads tonight—no matter what the unhelpful, know it all bartender said.
    And as for what has occurred with him, it was an aberration that was all. An aberration best forgotten, put away somewhere in the back of her brain where she files anything that threatened her sense of control. Where she’d apparently buried all her encounters with passion.
    It was vital she have full control over herself if she were to find Tina. And ig the bartender wouldn’t help her, she had no choice but keep looking for her sister in the same circles she had tonight. It seemed the only way to bring Tina home.
     
     
    You float on dark bayou water, your skin moist with the humidity hanging heavy in the air. A heron calls in the distance and you hear the deep, plunging splash of a caiman tumbling in from the marshy bank. The musty scent of arrow arum wafts past as tall cypress trees rise up like arms to hold you. You are home.
     
    But you see a new shape on the landscape, pale and curvaceous. A woman. Naked and lovely, soft white skin that strikes you as vulnerable in such a harsh environment. She is marked by the only real color in the gray-and-green film of the bayou—a pink hibiscus juts from her hair, the large petals shading her face.
    Although when you look closer, trying to see more clearly, she somehow blends with the trees and foliage, hidden, gone. And in that silent moment you understand that vulnerable is the last thing she is. She is a chameleon in the forest, using her defenses with confidence and ease.
    You scan the moss-draped banks, searching the low, gnarled branches and cypress knees, before catching sight of her once more, a vision of beauty tucked into your world as naturally as if she'd always been lurking, waiting to make