“It was the truth,” he said. Long fingers began to tease their way under the hem of her shirt to trace along the skin at her lower back. “The beguilement brought you what you wanted most.”
Her skin prickled and she felt suffocated. She struggled hard to get free and meant it this time. For a moment his arms tightened on her as if he would refuse to let her go. Then his hold loosened.
She scrambled to her feet, collided with the coffee table and knocked something over. Wetness soaked the carpeting at her bare foot. She had kicked over the jug of water she’d used to sponge him clean.
She held out her arms as she went forward until she came to the wall. Her fingers slid along the smooth plaster until she found a switch. She flipped the switch and then stood with both hands braced on the wall, eyes squeezed shut against the sudden light.
Her face felt like it was on fire. Keith and the horrible mistakes she made. Ignoring her mother’s advice, opening up and sharing, all because she wanted to be in love and to be loved, she wanted to be trusted and to trust. All because she wanted a lover and a mate, a real home, a safe house, a place she didn’t have to run from, and dare she think it, maybe someday even children.
The muscles in her arms were too tight. She rubbed her damp cheek on her shoulder.
The couch springs protested. She felt rather than heard him come up behind her. An inferno of energy boiled along her hypersensitive nerves.
Dragos pressed his body to her back. He pressed his hands over hers, so much bigger and darker than the slender feminine ones that trembled underneath. Her distress bruised the air. He lowered his cheek to the top of her head.
His Court was at times a tumultuous place. Some were mated. Many were single. All the Wyrkind lived with a frank sensuality, and all too easily hot emotions ran to violence.
He took a female on occasion, but his couplings were always simple. It was straightforward sex with no complications. But he had been a witness to many other couplings that were much more complex. Hurt feelings, misunderstandings, jealousies, broken hearts, infidelities, passions—it all played out in a backdrop to Court life.
This was a complex female, no simple sex for hire. He considered what to do, examples of things he had seen, discarding one thing after another. Then he said in a quiet voice, “I don’t understand. Will you please explain to me?”
Damn him. Now he knew that saying “please” got to her, he was starting to say it. She shook her head.
He sighed. “I am old and I am often cruel and calculating, and it is not safe to be around me when I am in a rage. I do not apologize for what I am. I am a predator, and I rule other strong-minded predators. But I did not mean to distress you.”
She calmed as she listened to him. The horrible sense of exposure faded. He surrounded her with his body, and his energy engulfed her.
He didn’t understand. He thought the dream was just about sex. If it were only that simple. She leaned her head back and he moved so that she rested in the hollow where his neck met his shoulder.
She said, “The dream was manipulative. It was outside of reality. You might choose to do things in dreams that you might not choose to do when you’re awake.”
“But it was true?” His breath puffed the delicate hairs at her temple.
How strange that he was uncertain. He wore arrogance with much more ease. That shouldn’t be as charming as she thought it was. She really wasn’t right in the head.
“There was a truth in the dream,” she admitted. “It is not as obvious as just sex.”
“There is more to it than I thought.” She could hear the smile in his voice. He sounded . . . pleased.
“You’re glad about that?” she asked, unable to keep from smiling too.
“You’re complicated. I am not bored.”
She pulled one hand out from under his and covered her mouth. “I’m so happy I could entertain you, Your Majesty.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “So, what is this reality that is not as obvious as the sex in the dream? How does it connect to the arousal I have sensed from you?”
She reveled in the strength of those arms and decided to let herself enjoy being held. No analysis, second-guessing motives, no looking forward, no expectations. “Is that how I really feel? How much might be left over from the dream spell? You’re complicated too, and I’ve been pretty damn scared of you off and on today. And for me, attraction is one thing, but making l—” She drew in a sharp breath. “But sex,” she amended, “is quite another. I have to have a certain level of trust in someone before I can choose to be that vulnerable.”
“You trusted Keith,” he said.
She couldn’t keep from flinching. “Yes, I did. And he betrayed me. And that still hurts.”