attention. Instead, his eyes were fixed on the soothing familiarity of the flame he’d created. He had always been able to find comfort in the heart of a flame. Corrine had known this. Everyone who had seen him sit for endless hours contemplating the eternal flames that burned in the fireplace of the Great Hall of his castle knew this.
“Let’s begin,” she said at last.
Kestra wasn’t even aware she had fallen back to sleep until strong hands caught her around the waist and pulled her sharply forward against a wall of solid flesh. He reached for her hair, skimming his fingers through it as if he owned all rights to do so. She tried to see him, but there was nothing. He was there, but brushed into a swirl of colors just beyond definition. She reached up in spite of herself and tried to bring his features into dimension with the touch of her hand.
She gasped when she realized she could feel the shadow of coarse whiskers against her fingertips. The shocking realness of the sensation started her heart racing as she jerked her hand away. Lunging back against his entrapping hands, she might as well have not been moving at all.
“Tell me who you are…”
Kestra froze at the sound of his voice, deep and rich with an exotic accent, something from one of the oldest of European cultures. She had traveled through enough of them to know one when she heard one, although she couldn’t place the precise origin of his inflections. She was aware of how much it seemed to suit him, the new detail falling perfectly into the mental construct that she’d been putting together slowly over the past six months.
Neither of them had ever spoken a complete word in all the months of these persistent, obsessive dreams, these ceaseless nightmares and the haunting captain who starred in them as he steered them. She felt terrified and fascinated all at once at the unexpected development.
The dimness cleared slightly and he drew her closer, as if she weren’t resisting at all, his hands beneath her ribs and his fingers pressing more firmly into her skin as he counteracted her opposing strength.
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded as she struggled against the violent impulses desperately riding her, telling her to hurt him in order to escape the force of his will. It wouldn’t be fair to harm him when he’d never been abusive with her. His most offensive act had been to make her succumb to the cravings of her own body, an act she had to admit was a reward as much as it was a torture. Still, she hated how easily he could sway and manipulate her.
“Because you refuse to leave me alone,” he responded, tension strung like overtaut piano wire through his words, just as it was strung through the solid bundles of muscle he held her against.
“Let go of me and I will gladly leave you alone,” she hissed through her teeth. “It’s your only choice. I’d just as soon tap dance on nitroglycerin than tell you anything about me!”
He laughed. It was a perplexing, utterly galling chuckle that made her face flame with fury. She despised it when she wasn’t taken seriously, laughed off as if she were some kind of joke.
“Tell me where you are,” he growled under a quiet, intense breath. “I must find that sharp tongue or die trying.”
Suddenly his fingers were sliding over her face. She jolted back, but no sooner had she jerked away than they danced over the sweep of her neck and spine, followed by the eerily close cascade of his hot breath. He had a way, a way only possible in dreams, of surrounding her like that. With sensation and unexpected contrasts. Contrasts that chased across her every nerve ending and dogged her resistance with single-minded sensual warfare.
“No…I won’t let you do this to me again!”
“True,” he said, his tone suddenly soft. His fingers stilled, his breath pooling into a heated cloud against the curve of her neck between her throat and shoulder. She felt vibration twanging through his entire body. It broadcast how much restraint he was using. Her memory of earlier, more unrestrained dreams filled in the blank information. “It does make it all the harder,” he said at last.
Kestra swallowed noisily, turning her head aside as her eyes burned with inexplicable emotion. He had just voiced the very feelings and frustrations she’d expressed to herself earlier. Of course he would. He was a construct of her mind. Her waking thoughts were following her into her dream.
But hadn’t she read somewhere, once, that the minute you realized you were dreaming, the dream lost its impact? That you tended to awaken shortly after? If so, why was she waiting around? Was she waiting for his accursed touch, so like magic and sparkling starlight as it played over her rigid, reluctant body? Was she wishing him into existence just so she could feel? Feel in ways she was so incapable of in her waking hours?
“No, Kikilia,” he murmured softly against her brow. “This time, it can be different. Tell me who you are, and I can show you what you are capable of when you are awake. Tell me your name, and I will find you and end this mutual torture once and for all.”
The request made her want to laugh in his face at first, but that was quickly followed by a prickling rush of chilling terror. There was not much in the world that frightened her, but his proposal struck that rare, eerie nerve of panic. It was so numbing that it took all her concentrated effort to utter the single word:
“Never.”
“She must tell you, Noah. Make her tell you,” Corrine urged, her panting breath falling against his cheek as she whispered in his ear. “I have brought you as close as I can for now. You must make her tell you, Noah.”
Kestra was aware of something changing in his intent and emotion. He was suddenly impatient, the feeling sweeping away all softness and coaxing sensuality.
“Why do you resist me so? Every night you fight until you are too weak to deny what you must acknowledge. It is a pain you do not need to suffer.”
“If only I would be more feminine, soft, and compliant, perhaps? I’m no lady? Well, you’re right. I don’t behave myself, I don’t talk softly, and I am not gracious. Six months of this manipulation and you still don’t know a damn thing about me. I would think I’d dream up someone smarter for myself.”
Again, that frustrating chuckle, as if the ruder and cruder she was, the more she delighted him. He was driving her mad!
“I have been clever enough to find my way around your quills so far, little porcupine,” he said, his voice low and dangerous all of a sudden. “It happens every night. Somehow, I know it will hurt you to remind you of that, but it is still the truth of the matter.”
It did hurt. It stung like lemon juice in a razor’s cut. Kestra growled with frustration until her head fell back and she was screaming. She resented that part of herself that succumbed to his seductions. So what if it were just a dream? She should be able to dictate what constituted an enjoyable dream!
And because she resented it, she hated him.
“Very well,” she hissed hoarsely. “Kestra. Kestra Irons. Now come and find me, you son of a bitch. Meet me in the real world and find out how far all this Eurotrash charm of yours will really go. I swear, if I ever set eyes on you in my waking world you will be centuries of sorry!”
She reached wide, swinging to slap him across the face. But the slap altered in the last minute and was actually a closed-fisted pop, square across his jaw.
Before this night, everything had always been so dreamy and ethereal, so compellingly sweet and soft. The punch was unbelievably
