Infinite Us
By Eden Butler
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release
Date: May 23, 2017
Love is
timeless…
Nash Nation
loves zeroes and ones, over-sized monitors and late office hours. He’s too busy
taking over the world to make time for relationships—that is, until his new
neighbor Willow O’Bryant barges into his life, and now Nash can’t shake the
feeling that this isn’t the first time she’s interrupted his world.
Then, the dreams
start. And in the dreams—memories.
Memories of a
girl named Sookie who couldn’t count on love or friendship, never mind forever.
Memories of a library and a boy called Isaac and secrets made in private that
destroyed his world.
The memories
seem real, but who do they belong to?
When Nash and
Willow discover the truth, life as they know it unravels.
The bridge
between this life and the next is shored up by blood and bone and memory.
Sometimes, that bridge leads to the place we’ve always wanted to be.
It was the dream. The waking dream again.
There was something tied up in that dream—a memory, the life I
knew but had never lived. That was the only explanation.
The dream crawled inside my skull like a centipede. It stayed
there, burrowed itself so deep inside my brain that imagination got squashed.
Nothing was fantasy anymore. What had been figments of my imagination had grown
to something real, something I couldn’t beat away. Something I couldn’t ignore.
It stayed with me during the investors’ meeting, as Duncan
talked about projections and media outreach. He spoke and I watched his face,
focused like I understood the meaning behind the noise, the unrecognizable
words his mouth made. I knew he was expecting me to weigh in with some
technical spin, but it was all I could do to keep from completely drifting
away.
Lucky for me, he liked the sound of his own voice. Even Duncan
and his slick CEO arrogance didn’t distract me from the dream. The sound of his
pitch, that salesman shine he thought might impress the investors didn’t do a
damn thing to erase what I’d felt. What I’d seen. What I remembered.
The dream stayed even as his nagging turned into a whining drone
that made my teeth ache.
“What the fuck was that? You just tuned out. You weren’t engaged
at all.”
No. I hadn’t been. Still wasn’t as I fed him some bullshit about
a migraine.
“I’ll catch you later, man. I gotta jet.”
He didn’t buy my excuse. Duncan’s eyes narrowed and I swear I
felt his stare hot on my neck as I moved out of his office and stood waiting at
the elevator. Wasn’t much I could hide from him through that glass wall so I
kept my head down, wondering how I’d gotten messed up with that asshole in the
first place.
Ah. Right. I had a program and no cash. Duncan had deep pockets
and was looking for someone’s coattails to ride. One plus one is always two.
Didn’t much care if he bought the migraine excuse. I felt
something right at the base of my skull. A pressure, a dull ache, but I wasn’t
sick. I was high.
My brain went into autopilot as I left Manhattan, grabbing the A
train to get me to downtown Brooklyn. And the whole way home, with the rocking
of the train, the funky smell of the city getting fainter with every stop, and
the even worse body odor of all the compressed bodies, the ache in my head grew
the closer we came to my stop, that weird memory nagging at me.
That shit wouldn’t let me be.
Over and over in my head, as I huddled tight behind my jacket in
the still chilly weather, the memory came clear as a raindrop.
Me and her. Me and the woman I didn’t know. Me as a man I’d
never been.
The smell of roses. The thick hint of dust and coffee.
The feel of worn book bindings and the scrap of metal chairs on
wood floors.
The taste of honey on my tongue.
The woman wrapped around me, holding tight, like I was her
lifeline. Her red hair between my fingers, her nails pulling at my collar.
Feeling needed. Feeling free.
A gust of wind blew off my hood, had my eyes watering as I
jogged the rest of the way toward my building, barely acknowledging the people
grouped around the front entrance. But then the sound of kids screeching cut
into my brain, and I finally noticed that Old Man Walker was handing out Jolly
Ranchers from the top step; for his grandkids and the others bouncing around,
he couldn't get the wrapped candy out of his pockets fast enough.
In that small chaos, compounded by an arguing couple from 3C
coming out of the elevator, brushing past the cluster of kids in their red and
green puffy coats and their sniffling noses, heels clicking on the tile floor
and crackling over the candy wrappers littering the hall, I forgot about the
dream. If only for a second.
Until I saw Willow at the mailboxes.
She didn’t look much like the woman in my dream. Her hair was
not red, but light brown. The redhead’s had been thick and bone straight.
Willow’s was wild, all over the place, as though she could never get it under
control.
The woman in my dream had been thin with barely a hint of curve
to her shape. Elegant, graceful like a ballerina. Willow was all dips and
bends, luscious, her legs strong with well-defined muscle, and a wide, wondrous
ass.
Suddenly the rest of the world receded and there was nothing but
the movement of Willow’s hair as she dug the mail from her box, the rhythm of
her limbs as she swatted at that thick mass of hair, the swoop of her jacket
hem against all those round, perfect curves as she turned, her attention on the
envelopes in her hand.
The smell of her skin, the jasmine in her hair, seemed to billow
around me as I stood motionless in the lobby. She was everywhere, familiar and
yet unknown. A stranger/not stranger I had held at arm’s length, but still far
more real than my dream, than the memory it was trying to evoke.
Willow stopped short as she noticed me, pausing with the mail
held against her chest, a frown appearing on her face. I knew that expression
from the last time I saw her, when I lied and told her I didn’t want her, when
I had spoken promises that even then I knew I’d never keep.
“Nash.” There was a bite in her voice, the clip of my name, as
if she was trying to sound disdainful, yet her voice still held an undertone of
something that, if it had a flavor, would have tasted like honey.
And then the dream, that sweet, stinging memory crashed over
me. Déjà vu and fantasy and shit I did not understand hit me like a fever,
and I was lost. The redhead kissed my neck. The hint of her soft, liquid
tongue against my skin, tugging on my ear, wanting me with a fierceness no one
ever had before, overwhelmed me, and I had to close my eyes to keep from being
dragged under.
“Nash?” Willow’s voice reeled me back in, and I opened my eyes
to see her sweet, concerned expression and the curve of her mouth, the fullness
of her bottom lip.
Then Willow... she took the back of her hair in one hand,
twisting it into a knot—the smallest gesture that I’d seen her do a dozen
times—and suddenly I realized: the woman in my dream had done the same thing.
The same motion, the same movement. Just like Willow.
A sharp intake of breath—that was me. Willow had backed up a
half step, her face confused, conflicted, and despite what I’d said before, I
reached out and slid my fingers tentatively to touch her face, guiding her chin
up so I could look into her eyes.
“Nash…”
She made the smallest noise, something that sounded like moan
and laugh at the same time. It transformed, deepened to a growl when I kissed
her. Yet even as my mouth found hers, as my tongue slid along her lip, begging
an invitation, one thought consumed me, something I didn’t believe was left
over from my dream. One thought that made me brave, made me hungry: this
woman belongs to me.
Eden Butler is
an editor and writer of Mystery, Suspense and Contemporary Romance novels and
the nine-times great-granddaughter of an honest-to-God English pirate. This
could explain her affinity for rule breaking and rum.
When she’s not
writing or wondering about her possibly Jack Sparrowesque ancestor, Eden
patiently waits for her Hogwarts letter, edits, reads and spends way too much
time watching rugby, Doctor Who and New Orleans Saints football.
She is currently
living under teenage rule alongside her husband in southeast Louisiana.
Please send
help.
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