A pressured grunt escaped her mouth, and she slapped her palms on either side of her head as if she were trying to keep her brain from bursting out her ears. He was in front of her, his hands over the top of hers, before he even told his body to react. Where their skin touched, he went cool and began to sting—only sting wasn’t the right word. The sensation was a cross between a sting and an itch and something surprisingly pleasant, something similar to what he’d felt when she accidentally touched his scar in the hospital. He closed his eyes, feeling the sensation move up his arms, across his shoulders, and down his torso. A shiver rippled through him. What was going on? Whatever it was, he liked it and so did she.
She stilled, simply standing beneath his hands, and moaned a sound not of pain, but of pleasure. The type of sound he could imagine her making as he pushed himself into her—
Whoa. Where did that thought come from?
“Why are you so hard to resist?” She spoke in a sexy groan that went straight to his dick.
“Why resist?” What? Was he flirting now?
“You know why.” Her voice went sleepy sensual, and she moved the few inches into his body, leaning against him and trusting him to support her. “I’m so tired all of a sudden.”
“No, I don’t know why.” He held his breath and spoke through his clenched molars. “Is it the scars?” He’d never cared what anyone thought of his face until her.
“Scars? No, silly. They are beautiful. I’ve loved them since my first dream of them.” She yawned, and he felt more of her body weight leaning against his. He removed one hand from her head and wrapped it around her waist to support her in case she full-on zonked out. “I just wish… Oh, Xander, I wish you weren’t…”
An asshole. Your father’s son. Ugly. A piece of shit.
“…my uncle.”
“What?” The word exploded out of his mouth, loud as a cherry bomb in the dead of night. He ripped his other hand from her head, severing the sensation that felt so wondrous.
She nodded against his chest and wrapped both her arms around his waist. “I’m so tired. I could fall asleep…just…like…this.”
He pried her off his chest to look her in the eyes. Her lids were at half-mast, her eyeballs floating upward, not quite focused. “Wait, wait, wait. You think I’m your uncle?”
“We’re family. Gran and your dad are married.”
The simplicity—the stupidity—of her assumption shocked him. His mind rewound to their conversation in the hospital. Fucking damn. It was right after she found out about Gale and his dad that she pulled away from him and started acting weird. No wonder. She’d thought he was her uncle. Thank Christ that could be straightened out. He’d been on the verge of going into full-on creepy-stalker mode, sneaking around just to check on her.
“I’m not Gale’s son. My mom died after I was born. Dad and Gale got together sometime before I turned a year old. I think your mom was eleven or twelve when they got together. That was why all of a sudden you didn’t want to have anything to do with me?”
She yawned. “I think I need to lie down.” Her lids fell, and she melted against him.
“Why are you so sleepy?” Even as he asked, he understood. It was the same as in the hospital. There was a pattern to this. A pattern only his father—the world’s most renowned dream researcher—would be able to explain.
*
Isleen floated in that sweet spot between reality and waking. The only thing penetrating her sleepy haze was the scent of warm graham crackers and autumn leaves. It was a scent she was familiar with, one she loved. It was the scent of all her favorite memories. It was the scent of Xander.
A predawn haze of gray lit the room, touching everything with its soft color. Her head was pillowed on his shoulder, her face pressed against his neck, her body encased in the security of his arms, and he had one of his legs tossed over her thighs. Not since she was a little girl—too naive to know pain existed in the world—had she felt this absolutely safe.
Something strange seemed to happen whenever she was near him. The sheer power of his presence salved the wounds of her past and shaped her into the strong and capable woman she was meant to be. The real her. The person she would’ve been if she hadn’t endured so much horror. The person she’d only had a chance to be in her nightly dreams of Xander. And weren’t those dreams doozies?
Memories of him from her dreams flooded her mind, heating her body. Their nightly escapades had always been vivid and oh, so intimate. Her female parts wanted to nestle and squirm in closer to him, to satisfy the longing building from the mere memories of dreams, but she was already as close as she could get with her clothes on. Just what would happen if her clothes were off? Didn’t that bring to mind explicit, tripleX-rated thoughts?
From her dreams, she knew what lay underneath his clothes, knew he was spectacular. Everywhere. And the hard length of him moving inside her, filling her so deliciously… It was a miracle that a body could feel so wanting and wonderful at the same time.