“Are you doing this to me? Making me feel this way?” It would be inexcusable if he was.
“No,” he answered, but his wicked grin was back. “I can cast an illusion that might terrify or please, but I cannot make you feel anything.”
“You can do more than cast an illusion,” she said. “I’ve seen it.”
“I can sense the rapid beat of your heart.” He circled her in a blur of movement. “And I can sense your emotions. Your dream is thick with them. Shall I describe what you feel?”
The room flashed white again, and it occurred to her that each lightning strike was her desire, crackling in the air around them.
“Well, scared. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out,” she mumbled.
He bent his head to her ear, the line of his jaw just touching her temple. Goose bumps roared across her flesh from the point of contact.
“Bright. Wild. Fearless.”
Layla trembled. “I’m terrified.”
“Of what is going on around you, yes. But not of me.”
He remained motionless, standing beside her, waiting. Shadow magic buzzed the air between them, simmering with energy on her skin. And still he waited.
This was a choice, she understood that much.
She’d been responding to Khan from the moment she met him. Khan said he’d been looking for her. Maybe she’d been looking for him, too. Nothing, no man, had ever made her feel like this.
So. Stay on safe ground, or leap?
Lightning struck again. She chose the storm.
She put a hand to his chest for balance, raised herself on tiptoe, their gazes meeting for an electric second, and then she kissed him.
She got his upper lip mostly, full, taut, just at the parting dimple, but then he opened his mouth to adjust in a hot, rasping slide she felt all the way down her body. His arms came around her, gathering her into a tight squeeze that compounded the urgency of the terrible, building pressure between them. The kiss seared reason from her mind. All sense of place, time, even gravity fell away, so that there was only her, now gripping the roots of his hair, and him, stroking her lips with his, her tongue with his. The ache in her abdomen tightened into a fierce, wet knot of bliss-pain. You and I. Yes. She got it now. The air rushed around them, silky and sensuous in texture, somehow gliding against her skin as if she were naked. And in a way, she was. His kiss stripped her of all pretense and denial.
“Is this how it was?” She was shaking. Or he was. Or maybe it was thunder.
“Very much so.” He shifted his hold so he could look into her eyes. Around them the colors of the warehouse room churned. His expression was near savage with triumph.
She understood that, too. The dream flashed bright white again.
Layla shifted, grabbed his wrist, and dragged his hand to her breast. She pressed to show him what she wanted, and he laughed against her mouth. Reckless, she thought, but couldn’t bring herself to care.
The cloth under his palm dissolved and she was naked in his arms, burning under his hands.
“Khan?” she gasped in shock. This was moving way too fast.
“It’s your dream. You did that all by yourself,” he said. He drew his thumb across her peaking nipple, then grazed his hand down to the curve of her hip, her thigh, to draw her leg up around him. To bring and tilt her closer.
And here she’d thought a dream would be safe . . .
The air charged again, flickering with a brightness that highlighted the man holding her.
. . . when in a dream she really didn’t care about safe.
She grazed his neck with her mouth, mumbling, “At least be naked, too.”
And his apparel evaporated into smoke, wisping away from his body.
“How can you doubt your power?” He drew her closer.
None of this was really happening . . . was it?
Layla’s mouth dropped to his chest. She curled her tongue around his nipple, her body straining under his hands. She stroked her cheek against the plane of his muscle. Licked the ridge where muscle met bone.
“Khan, please . . .”
“Yes?” And his hold on her thigh shifted, his hand stroking higher to somewhere infinitely more intimate.
She gripped his shoulders as her heart raced. Her fingernails dug into his skin.
The sensations were building, his hands working a magic that burned color from her sight, that propelled her up and up, toward an exquisite peak, so high . . . that Layla woke gasping for air.
Where was he?
Gone.
Or rather, she was.
Disappointment mingled with her need, a bitter combination. She sat up, covers tangled around her legs. He’d been there, right?
And he’d touched her. Or started to. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly.
“Khan?” she gasped. Don’t leave me like this.
She braced herself on the mattress as the top sheet and cover slowly slid from the bed. Her breath came quick, but it was enough to keep her mind sharp.