She flailed, trying to writhe free of the icy shards impaling her.
Better to fall than be a warlock’s slave.
‘Then fall, bitch.’
Her heart seized, shuddered, stopped, as her frozen body spiraled away from her, lost. She’d read that falling in a dream wasn’t so bad. But if she hit the ground…
Hands holding her again. But not the same. Long-fingered but not elegant—calloused instead, and rough.
She reveled in the roughness that broke the cocoon of ice, though the shards corkscrewed deeper. At least she would die free of the ash-hole’s influence.
“You will
not
die.”
That rough, hot voice, so close. A mouth—rougher, hotter—clamped over her frozen lips. And fire poured into her lungs.
No, not fire, his breath.
Those rough hands on her chest, bearing down, cracked the ice. Her heart slammed up to meet his touch—
—And she sucked in a huge breath, choked, and coughed out a couple pint glasses of icy water.
Torch rolled her to her side, letting the water spew across the tiles. She stared down with tear-filled eyes as the water poured from her lips, stinging her teeth with cold. The puddle smoked like dry ice…and vanished without a trace.
She sobbed and coughed again, but nothing else came out.
Though the chill inside her remained.
“What—” she gasped.
“The warlock.” More gently, Torch eased her onto her back again. He smoothed her hair. She half expected her dreadlocks to be soaked, but he tucked the coils back and touched her cheek with dry fingers.
Rough… Hot…
She shivered when he stared down into her eyes.
“How do you feel?” His voice was pitched only one note off a demand.
Her teeth chattered. “Cold. So cold…”
With a muttered curse, he rose from the bed.
Her clattering teeth cut off the protest she wanted to make at his abrupt withdrawal. If he hadn’t come when he had…
She didn’t want to think someone could kill her in a dream, but maybe she just had to accept that everything she wanted to deny was all too real.
She wrapped her arms around herself. The gaping boat-neck t-shirt she’d brought to sleep in felt like tissue paper for all the protection it provided, and the big bed felt not so much luxurious as empty. She’d thought that when she’d reluctantly and exhaustedly crawled into it, and it felt even worse now.
Torch reached behind him and stripped his snug t-shirt over his head.
Oh…
He kicked off his boots and fingered the zipper of his jeans.
A glimmer of warmth—like the opal catching a hint of sunlight—zinged through her.
The powerful muscles in his chest bunched as he bent to shuck his jeans and socks, as if doing so was such hard work.
Something was hard anyway…
“Ignore the cock,” he said.
Kinda hard when it was so hard.
He took one stride back to the bed and flicked back the covers. “Roll the other way.”
“I…” Her breath stuttered. “I don’t have to listen if I’m ignoring you.”
“Not me. My cock. Two different things. Sort of.” He slid one knee up onto the bed, watching her.
She didn’t tell him to leave.
“You’re making me shy,” he said softly.
She rolled away from him, though the sight of him—all flexed muscle and shining tattoos—was burned into her brain.
She almost rolled back when his weight sank the mattress toward him.
“Damn,” he murmured. “I forgot how soft this mattress is.”
How could he not want to sleep here, in this glorious, crystal room with its stark, stunning view? Not to mention the kingly bed.
Maybe it felt too big and empty to him too.
She clenched her jaw to hold back another chatter. And another sob.
His long arm wrapped around her from behind and pulled her into the concave curve of his body. The numinous markings in his skin were brighter than ever. “Take a breath,” he whispered. “Slow.”
She tried, but it was more of a hiccup.
“Again,” he urged. “With me.”
He inhaled, his chest pressing hard to her spine. When he breathed out, it was like summer.
She closed her eyes as the hot, slow gust on the back of her neck and let out her own shivering breath.
“Good,” he murmured. “Again.”
The heat of his body sank deep, his breath surrounding her. He felt like a campfire, pushing back the cold and darkness. The lingering shards of ice melted. Whatever Ashcraft had done was gone.
Almost.
Still she felt the icy needles around her heart. So close. She could have died.
It was just fear, she knew. Or hoped. But she’d learned to hide her fear, and she didn’t like it coming back now. She hadn’t felt this small or helpless since she forced herself to forget New Orleans. She wore bright skirts over her big hips just to show her boldness. But now…
Would she ever forget drowning in the desert?
She rolled within the circle of Torch’s arm. In her squirming, the covers fell away but she barely noticed. The heat of his body almost scorched her.
And she wanted to get closer, close enough to burn away even the memory of Ashcraft’s nightmare invasion.
She stared into Torch’s eyes. Though the room was lit only by the soft, steady glow of the rope lights above their heads, flames flickered in the velvety violet of his eyes. Mesmerizing…
“Better?” he asked softly.
She reached down between their bodies. “Getting there.”
Chapter 7
His cock jumped in her hand.
Not as much as he jumped. She bit back an inappropriate giggle.
Every muscle in his body clenched. “Anjali…”
“You’re naked in my bed,” she pointed out.
“My bed,” he said through gritted teeth. “And this isn’t why I came here.”
To her horror, her eyes welled up again. So weak… She flinched away. “I didn’t mean… I shouldn’t have.”
He clamped his hand over hers and brought it to his chest. “Only if you wanted to.”
She blinked her wet-spiked lashes and glared at him, fisting her hand over his heart. “Why else would I have?”
“For the same reason you slept with Ashcraft. Because you’re using me.”
She tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn’t let her go. When she struggled harder, he pinned her to the bed with one heavy thigh over hers, his forearm across her upper chest.
“Why do you want me, Anjali?” His question and the lightning gleam in his gaze were more ruthless than his weight. “Because I just saved your life and you owe me? Or because you’re going to betray me to the ash-hole warlock?”
Guilt and fury tangled in her, making her heart pound against his blocking elbow. But somehow that only seemed to drive the icy crystals further in. “What do you want me to say? Thanks for saving my life? Sorry for trying to kill you last time?”
“Tell me the truth,” he snarled. “We’re not fated mates, trapped by some blood curse, so why do you want me?”
“Because I’m scared,” she shot back. “And lonely. Because I could have died without having a single friend left. Because I can still feel his cold touch, and I can’t believe”—she laughed harshly—“despite everything that has happened, I can’t believe I thought for even a second that maybe I’d found someone who cared for me.”
Their earlier matched breathing was still synchronized, but this time in heaving pants as Torch stared down at her. His eyes widened, as if he saw more than even she’d said, and her pulse raced, fire and ice burning toward her core. Which would win…
“Let me up,” she said sullenly.
“Oh, I’ll take you up,” he said.
He dropped his mouth down to hers.
Before, he’d given her breath. This time, he stole it. All of it, greedily, as if he could turn the air from her depths into gold coins to fill a treasure chest.
And she stole it back, forcing her tongue into his mouth like a siphon.
He gasped, flooding her with heat and air.
And the fire blazed up between them.
She skated the hand he’d clenched to his chest up over his pecs to his hair and tangled her fingers in the spiky, dark blond strands. He slid the arm that he’d angled across her chest behind her back, arching her up toward him.
They all but devoured each other. And still she couldn’t get enough. She raked both hands down his back, feeling the width of muscle writhe at her touch. The tattoos had no texture, but somehow she felt them, like a shift in temperature or a faint buzz of electricity. The ichor, swirling under his skin. She sank her fingers into the taut globes of his ass and tugged hard.
As heavy as he was, he moved like he was on ball bearings—if only two balls—easily swinging at her insistent grip to center himself between her legs.
She hadn’t bothered with underwear, but the long hem of her t-shirt bunched between them, a tissue paper barrier, but a last warning nonetheless.
She yanked it aside.
“Ah, fuck, Anjali…” he groaned.
“Yes,” she moaned. “Yes, fuck.”
The cotton parted down her chest with one gesture of his taloned finger, and a whisper of cooler air tricked across her bared skin.
That was on purpose, she thought hazily. He wanted to remind her what he was.
As if she could forget.
He stared down at her, and now the aurora borealis flames in his eyes were a raging conflagration.
“You want this.” His words were somewhere between a question and an oath.
Maybe an incantation.
But she was done with words and secrets and lies.
This was body to body, nowhere to hide.
She clamped her heels behind his ass and lifted her hips, splaying her knees to show him everything.
Though his hand went to her offering, his gaze was locked on hers.
“Tell me what you like,” he demanded.
No words
, she wanted to tell him. But a needy moan leaked from her lips when he circled his thumb around her clit, inexorably closing in. He pressed harder on the soft folds of her labia, forcing the shy nub of flesh into a pouting pearl.
Lightning branched through her, igniting the last shards of ice. As he circled faster and firmer, the lightning caught and held, pulsing brighter and brighter. He dropped his head to her breasts, his hot breath feathering across her skin. Her nipples pointed straight up, gleaming red like twin warning lights to low-flying airplanes to stay away.
Of course, Torch was no low flyer.
As his thumb teased her clit, his tongue swirled across her left breast, a lazy ascent on some updraft only he could see. She clutched at his hair, as if those fine strands would keep her aloft. When he reached the peak, he sucked her nipple between his teeth and tongued the pebble. The rough-velvet caress made her suck in a harsh breath, driving her breast higher into his mouth.
He suckled the swollen flesh, his other hand plucking at her right nipple until the lightning burned a jagged triangle between her crotch and her breasts. Her core tightened, all of her zooming for the heights he promised.
Still circling her clit, he slid a finger inside her, stroking her from the inside. If there’d ever been ice in her, it was steam now, curling at his touch like her fingers, her toes, her damn hair. A second finger and then a third, and she went off like a fucking firecracker.
Maybe she screamed—an ooh or an ahh—but she was blind and deaf and dumb to everything except the explosion bursting along her nerves and his hands and mouth stroking her to the fiercest orgasm of her life.
She came down like a cloud of fireflies, drifting slowly and scattered.
His breath still gusted hotly across her sweat-damped skin, but he pulled the covers up around them with one hand, his other still buried inside her.
She realized belatedly that he hadn’t come. “Torch…”
He shushed her. “Go to sleep.”
She squirmed against his hand. “I’m not that selfish,” she insisted.
He curled his finger, and she couldn’t hold back a little mewl. “I’ll wait,” he said.
She wanted to protest again, but her eyes were drifting closed. She was too cozy to bitch. And the ice was gone, burned to nothing.
He pulled her into the curve of his body, just as he’d intended to all along. He murmured into the back of her neck, “So about the knife under the pillow…”
She bent her head to his breath. “I wasn’t going to attack you,” she muttered, eyes closed. “Unless you attacked me.”
“This didn’t count?”
“Well, technically, I suppose.”
His snort lifted her hair, and she couldn’t hold back a smile.
She drew his arm under her breasts. “If I dream again…”
“Dreams only,” he promised. “No nightmares.”
And since he’d said he’d never lie to her, she fell asleep.
***
Torch lay awake, cursing himself.
Why hadn’t he fucked her? It wasn’t like she hadn’t offered.
Rave’s accusations and warnings flittered around his head like annoying mosquitoes that even his tough dragon hide couldn’t repel. She was a witch. She was Ashcraft’s minion. She would betray him.
But she hadn’t stabbed him. And he’d been waiting for it.
Maybe if he
had
let himself fuck her…
Damn, he’d missed his chance to prove her innocence.
By taking her innocence.
He snorted softly, the sound echoed by the dragon in his head. He’d taken plenty, although—he twitched his hips uncomfortably—not enough for his satisfaction.
But he wasn’t going to wake her. He’d just close his eyes for a minute…
He woke with the rising sun filtering across his bare skin and Anjali’s hands following the same path.
Double damn. He never slept this long, never slept with a woman, ever. He couldn’t believe the dragon hadn’t roused him.
It
was plenty roused, preening under her touch, almost purring.
Hopefully it would’ve let him know if she went for the knife.
He stretched, kicking off the covers that had fallen to his naked thighs under Anjali’s stroking. His cock surged when she murmured a good morning. To him or his erection?
Her breath teased him, but it was her hungry gaze that really got him going. In the cold slant of desert light, there was no reason for her to do this.