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    Lake of Dreams
    Lake of Dreams
    Lake of Dreams
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    Lake of Dreams

    By LINDA HOWARD

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Dreams and reality collide—with potentially deadly consequences—in this stunning novella from New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard, available for the first time as a standalone ebook at an unbeatable price!

    House painter Thea Marlow hasn’t been sleeping very well. Her nights are plagued by dreams, the setting by the water and the mysterious man who appears in them always the same. But the outcome of the dream changes nightly: sometimes the man loves her...and sometimes he kills her. Desperate for some much needed relaxation, Thea travels to her family’s remote country lake house. Imagine her surprise when a knock at the door reveals the man from her dreams...who happens to have just rented the house next door.

    So will he love her—or will he kill her?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPocket Star
    Release dateMay 2, 2016
    ISBN9781501131028
    Lake of Dreams
    Author

    LINDA HOWARD

    Born in Newport, Rhode Island, I grew up in neighbouring Middletown with parents who lived to be on the water. After graduating from Middletown High School in 1984, I attended the University of Rhode Island where I double majored in journalism and political science. I graduated in 1988 and went to work for a small community newspaper, the writing equivalent of boot camp. We worked like dogs for almost no money, but we had a lot of fun and learned so much about writing, editing and life.    I lived in Rhode Island until I was 26 when I did something I had vowed to never do while growing up in a Navy town—I married a Navy guy and moved from the smallest state in the U.S. to Rota, Spain, where he was stationed. To say the change in my life was dramatic is putting it mildly! We had the time of our lives in Spain from 1992 to 1995, where I also earned a master's degree in public administration through a program offered to the military by the University of Maryland. Our daughter Emily was born there three months before we returned to the states.    After we moved to Rhode Island in August 2002, I started to get more serious about the book but still wasn't able to get very far. A year later, in November 2003, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The next nine months were a roller coaster ride, during which I turned to the book more and more often, seeking an escape from the nightmare of my mother's illness. By early August 2004, I had four solid chapters that my mother was the first to read. I made her cry, she said. She died on August 31, 2004.    Something that had lain dormant for years kicked into gear in the aftermath of my mother's death. I asked myself—what are you waiting for? What meaning will it have to finally write that book if you wait until neither of your parents—the two people who always said you had it in you—aren't around to read it? I firmly believe my mother is sending me these amazing characters who continue to pop up out of nowhere and lead me on one great adventure after another. How else can I possibly explain the incredible things that have happened in the years since she died?    I finished Jack's book, "Treading Water," on May 18, 2005, and published it along with its two sequels, Marking Time and Starting Over, in late 2011. (Read more about The House That Jack Built.) I've finished a few since then, including "Line of Scrimmage," which was the first to be published in September 2008.    I finally sold to Sourcebooks Casablanca in late 2007. Line of Scrimmage was my first published book in September of 2008. Love at First Flight followed in July of 2009. In early 2010, I sold Fatal Affair to Harlequin's new Carina Press digital-first imprint. Fatal Affair was released in July 2010, followed soon after by Fatal Justice, Fatal Consequences, Fatal Destiny and Fatal Flaw. Fatal Attack will be out in November 2012 and the early books in the series will be released in mass market paperback through Harlequin's HQN imprint beginning in the fall of 2013. Going back to 2010, authors were getting more and more excited about the opportunity to publish direct to readers via Kindle, Nook, Kobo and later the iPad. I decided to test the waters and published True North in November 2010 and The Fall in December 2010. Everyone Loves a Hero was released from Sourcebooks in February 2011, and I followed that with the release of the following books in 2011: The Wreck, Maid for Love, Fool for Love, Ready for Love, Georgia on My Mind, Treading Water, Marking Time and Starting Over. Many of these books had been written for years and were waiting for the right avenue to get to readers.    When people ask me what led me to the decision to self-publish, my reply is always the same: "No one was interested in these books except my readers." And boy have they shown me the love for my self-published books! The McCarthy's of Gansett Island Series, which now also includes Falling for Love, Hoping for Love, Season for Love and soon, Longing for Love, has turned me into a bestselling author on Kindle and Nook. The success of that series also led to the recent sale of my Green Mountain Country Store series to Berkley publishing. Watch for the debut of that series in 2014. Readers can also look forward to much more from Gansett Island, much more from Sam, Nick and the Fatal Series gang, and another book in the Treading Water series called Coming Home, which I hope to have out by Christmas 2012. It will pick up Reid and Kate's story from Marking Time ten years later—a story readers have asked me to write. 

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    Reviews for Lake of Dreams

    4/5

    41 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      What a neat story! I really enjoyed the mystical aspect of Richard and Thea's relationship. It created emotional intimacy right from the start, making this novella a very satisfying read.
    • 5/5
      Cute book. Not too Long and a nice twist when you least expect it
    • 4/5
      This quick read was a good one. It held some heat, some fear, and a lovely end.
    • 4/5
      It was completely different from most books but was interesting and entertaining
    • 4/5
      It keeps you wondering, has little surprises you don't expect, characters are likable and it's not something you come across every day. If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star @novelstar.top.
    • 4/5
      Lake of Dreams by Linda Howard is a 2016 Pocket Star Books publication. I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher, as an XOXpert, the official street team of XOXO After Dark. Lake of Dreams was originally published way back in the mid-nineties, but is now available in digital format. This book is a short story/novella length paranormal romance centered around Thea, a woman haunted by vivid dreams, alternately sexual or nightmarish, in which her dream lover expertly makes love to her, or he becomes the villain and kills her. The dreams are becoming more vivid and more frequent, so Thea decides to spend some down time at her family’s lodge. But, when a neighbor who introduces himself as Richard, stops by for a visit, she recognizes him as her dream lover. Is he literally the man of her dreams or is he dangerous? For the modern reader, the instant connection with the couple may seem outmoded. However, since this is a such a short story, try to stick it out, because there is an explanation for that as the book progresses. Linda Howard is best known for her romantic suspense novels but has made a few forays into the paranormal realm, too. This story, at least in my opinion, has a sinister quality to it, since, like Thea, we do not know if should trust Richard or not. I often like the hero with a dark past or one that seems a little dangerous, at first. Again, stick with the book, and I think you can see how the author’s method was actually pretty clever. I enjoyed the dream like quality of the story, and felt the author did a great job of creating that atmosphere of having just woken from a vivid dreams that felt so real, but left you feeling somewhat disoriented and unsure if it was real or not. The theme throughout the story is trust, mostly the lack of trust Thea has in Richard. But, as we all know, love can exist without trust, but it seriously complicates matters, and most certainly has consequences. Only love can transcend time, cross over between life and death in order to finally take hold of something that has remained just outside of its grasp for so long. Without trust, love will struggle to maintain it's strength, and until it is firmly established, it can’t grow to its full potential. Overall, I was happy to discover this lost, and perhaps slightly misunderstood, little gem by Linda Howard. I am seeing several of her backlisted titles reissued in digital format and couldn’t be happier to discover some of her lesser known works and enjoy re-reading some of my favorite titles by one of my favorite authors.

    Book preview

    Lake of Dreams - LINDA HOWARD

    HIS EYES WERE like jewels, aquamarines as deep and vivid as the sea, burning through the mist that enveloped him. They glittered down at her, the expression in them so intense that she was frightened, and struggled briefly in his grasp. He soothed her, his voice rough with passion as he controlled her struggles, stroking and caressing until she was once more quivering with delight, straining upward to meet him. His hips hammered rhythmically at her, driving deep. His powerful body was bare, his iron muscles moving like oiled silk under his sweaty skin. The mist from the lake swirled so thickly around them that she couldn’t see him clearly, could only feel him, inside and without, possessing her so fiercely and completely that she knew she would never be free of him. His features were lost in the mist, no matter how she strained her eyes to see him, no matter how she cried out in frustration. Only the hot jewels of his eyes burned through, eyes that she had seen before, through other mists—

    Thea jerked awake, her body quivering with the echo of passion . . . and completion. Her skin was dewed with sweat, and she could hear her own breathing, coming hard and fast at first, then gradually slowing as her heartbeat settled into its normal pace. The dream always drained her of strength, left her wrung out and boneless from exhaustion.

    She felt shattered, unable to think, overcome by both panic and passion. Her loins throbbed as if she had just made love; she twisted on the tangled sheets, pressing her thighs together to try to negate the sensation of still having him within her. Him. Nameless, faceless, but always him.

    She stared at the dim early-morning light that pressed against the window, a graying so fragile that it scarcely penetrated the glass. There was no need to look at the clock; the dream always came in the dark, silent hour before dawn, and ended at the first approach of light.

    It’s just a dream, she told herself, reaching for any possible comfort. Only a dream.

    But it was unlike any dream she’d ever had before.

    She thought of it as a single dream, and yet the individual episodes were different. They—it—had begun almost a month before. At first she had simply thought of it as a weird dream, singularly vivid and frightening, but still only a dream. Then it had come again the next night. And the next. And every night since, until she dreaded going to sleep. She had tried setting her alarm to go off early, to head the dream off at the pass, so to speak, but it hadn’t worked. Oh, the alarm had gone off, all right; but as she’d been lying in bed grumpily mourning the lost sleep and steeling herself to actually get up, the dream had come anyway. She had felt awareness fade, had felt herself slipping beneath the surface of consciousness into that dark world where the vivid images held sway. She’d tried to fight, to stay awake, but it simply hadn’t been possible. Her heavy eyes had drifted shut, and he was there again . . .

    He was angry with her, furious that she’d tried to evade him. His long dark hair swirled around his shoulders, the strands almost alive with the force of his temper. His eyes . . . oh, God, his eyes, as vivid as the dream, a hot blue-green searing through the clouds of mosquito netting that draped her bed. She lay very still, acutely aware of the cool linen sheets beneath her, of the heavy scents of the tropical night, of the heat that made even her thin nightgown feel oppressive . . . and most of all of her flesh quivering in frightened awareness of the man standing in the night-shadowed bedroom, staring at her through the swath of netting.

    Frightened, yes, but she also felt triumphant. She had known it would come to this. She had pushed him, dared him, taunted him to this very outcome, this devil’s bargain she would make with him. He was her enemy. And tonight he would become her lover.

    He came toward her, his warrior’s training evident in the grace and power of his every move. You tried to evade me, he said, his voice as dark as the evening thunder. His fury rippled around him, almost visible in its potency. You played your games, deliberately arousing me to the mindlessness of a stallion covering a mare . . . and now you dare try to hide from me? I should strangle you.

    She rose up on one elbow. Her heart was pounding in her chest, painfully thudding against her ribs, and she felt as if she might faint. But her flesh was awakening to his nearness, discounting the danger. I was afraid, she said simply, disarming him with the truth.

    He paused, and his eyes burned more vividly than before. Damn you, he whispered. Damn both of us. Then his powerful warrior’s hands were on the netting, freeing it, draping it over her upper body. The insubstantial wisp settled over her like a dream itself, and yet it still blurred his features, preventing her from seeing him clearly. His touch, when it came, wrenched a soft, surprised sound from her lips. His hands were rough and hot, sliding up her bare legs in a slow caress, lifting her nightgown out of the way. Violent hunger, all the more fierce for being unwilling, emanated from him as he stared at the shadowed juncture of her thighs.

    So it was to be that way, then, she thought, and braced herself. He intended to take her virginity without preparing her. So be it. If he thought he could make her cry out in pain and shock, he would be disappointed. He was a warrior, but she would show him that she was his equal in courage.

    He took her that way, pulled to the edge of the bed and with only her lower body bared, and the mosquito netting between them. He took her with anger, and with tenderness. He took her with a passion that seared her, with a completeness that marked her forever as his. And, in the end, she did cry out. That triumph was his, after all. But her cries weren’t of pain, but of pleasure and fulfillment, and a glory she hadn’t known existed.

    That was the first time he’d made love to her, the first time she’d awakened still trembling from a climax so sweet and intense that she’d wept in the aftermath, huddled alone in her tangled bed and longing for more. The first time, but definitely not the last.

    Thea got out of bed and walked to the window, restlessly rubbing her hands up and down her arms as she stared out at the quiet courtyard of her apartment building and waited

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