Thunk.
“Take me,” I cooed, twining my leg around his, snaking my foot down his calf, and arching my back so that my breasts were thrust up at him. “Take me now. Make a dragon out of me.”
His eyes glittered in the darkness, the passion in them making them glow.
THUNK.
My eyes shot open even before I was awake. I lay in the hazy dark, my entire body tingling with the highly charged erotic dream I’d been having, wisps of it clinging to my brain and making it hard for me to distinguish reality from the dream world.
The dark room was lightened somewhat by the glow around an almost-shut bathroom door. I listened with my breath held.
Had I heard a noise from out in the main room? Or was it a remnant from the dream?
Part of my brain boggled that I had fallen asleep at all, given the events of the day and amazing revelations of the evening. The other part instantly wanted to return to Rowan with his strange eyes, delicious tongue, and tempting body.
Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.
“Right, that is definitely a noise,” I whispered to myself, and slid out of bed as silently as possible. I’m not normally a heroic person, but the idea of Mauritius Kim and his unwholesome buddy trying to harm Mrs. P had me snatching up the lamp nearest the door and whipping the cord out of the wall. As quietly as possible I slid open the door and peered out into the living room section of the suite.
It was dark and silent. Just as I was telling myself that I must have imagined it, I heard a faint whisper of a sound, almost so quiet it didn’t even register, the merest swish that wasn’t what one expected to hear from the room of a sleeping elderly lady.
“Mrs. P? Are you okay in there?” I asked, opening the door to her room, my lamp held high.
The room was just as dark as the outer one, and just as empty.
“Mrs. P?” I flipped on the light next to the door and frowned at the unoccupied bed. The sheets hadn’t even been rumpled. “Mrs. P, are you okay? Did your dinner disagree with you?” I tapped on the closed bathroom door, but after a moment of listening at it, I opened it and found that the bathroom, too, was sans one old lady.
“Well, hell, she’s given me the slip,” I said, going back into the bedroom, the lamp cord trailing behind me. That’s when I noticed that something was not right. Instead of sitting on the luggage rack, where I’d left it, Mrs. P’s suitcase was on the floor. “What the—” I started toward the suitcase, but at that moment, there was a sibilant hoosh from behind the curtain, and I knew without a doubt that someone had just opened the window from the outside. Quickly I glanced around, trying to find a hiding spot. Under the bed? Not enough room. The bathroom? Too obvious. The armchair wasn’t big enough to hide me, but next to the room door was a large wardrobe, its doors spread wide to either side like a giant wooden moth. Perhaps I could hide behind one if its doors long enough to ascertain who was breaking into the room.
The thought flitted through my head that a lamp wasn’t much protection against an intruder as I ran to the farthest wing of the wardrobe, but that evaporated into nothing when I scurried behind the door… only to find the space was already occupied.
Rowan must have heard the intake of my breath preparatory to screaming, because his hand was over my mouth before I realized what had happened.
“Quiet,” he breathed into my ear, his breath warm against my head in a way that had little shivers spreading across my back. “Someone is at the window.”
“I know,” I whispered back as he pulled the door flush against us. Unfortunately, the lampshade was too big to let it fit behind the door with us, which left my hand sticking out with the lamp gripped firmly in it. “It’s okay, though. I have a lamp.”
The light behind the opened wardrobe door wasn’t very bright, but it was enough to see the odd look he gave me.
A rustle of the drapes had me tensing, but before I could do anything, Rowan suddenly twisted around, pinning me against the wall with his body. For a few seconds, we were pressed together from knees to chest, and I was extremely aware that I was a woman and he was a man, and it had been way too many years since I’d entertained the carnal activities that had been uppermost in my mind right before I’d been awakened.
“Oh,” I breathed softly, unable to keep from taking a deep breath so that my breasts smooshed happily against his chest.