Dragon Bound (Elder Races #1)(32)

The muscles in her arms were too tight. She rubbed her damp cheek on her shoulder.

The couch springs protested. She felt rather than heard him come up behind her. An inferno of energy boiled along her hypersensitive nerves.

Dragos pressed his body to her back. He pressed his hands over hers, so much bigger and darker than the slender feminine ones that trembled underneath. Her distress bruised the air. He lowered his cheek to the top of her head.

His Court was at times a tumultuous place. Some were mated. Many were single. All the Wyrkind lived with a frank sensuality, and all too easily hot emotions ran to violence.

He took a female on occasion, but his couplings were always simple. It was straightforward sex with no complications. But he had been a witness to many other couplings that were much more complex. Hurt feelings, misunderstandings, jealousies, broken hearts, infidelities, passions—it all played out in a backdrop to Court life.

This was a complex female, no simple sex for hire. He considered what to do, examples of things he had seen, discarding one thing after another. Then he said in a quiet voice, “I don’t understand. Will you please explain to me?”

Damn him. Now he knew that saying “please” got to her, he was starting to say it. She shook her head.

He sighed. “I am old and I am often cruel and calculating, and it is not safe to be around me when I am in a rage. I do not apologize for what I am. I am a predator, and I rule other strong-minded predators. But I did not mean to distress you.”

She calmed as she listened to him. The horrible sense of exposure faded. He surrounded her with his body, and his energy engulfed her.

He didn’t understand. He thought the dream was just about sex. If it were only that simple. She leaned her head back and he moved so that she rested in the hollow where his neck met his shoulder.

She said, “The dream was manipulative. It was outside of reality. You might choose to do things in dreams that you might not choose to do when you’re awake.”

“But it was true?” His breath puffed the delicate hairs at her temple.

How strange that he was uncertain. He wore arrogance with much more ease. That shouldn’t be as charming as she thought it was. She really wasn’t right in the head.

“There was a truth in the dream,” she admitted. “It is not as obvious as just sex.”

“There is more to it than I thought.” She could hear the smile in his voice. He sounded . . . pleased.

“You’re glad about that?” she asked, unable to keep from smiling too.

“You’re complicated. I am not bored.”

She pulled one hand out from under his and covered her mouth. “I’m so happy I could entertain you, Your Majesty.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “So, what is this reality that is not as obvious as the sex in the dream? How does it connect to the arousal I have sensed from you?”

She reveled in the strength of those arms and decided to let herself enjoy being held. No analysis, second-guessing motives, no looking forward, no expectations. “Is that how I really feel? How much might be left over from the dream spell? You’re complicated too, and I’ve been pretty damn scared of you off and on today. And for me, attraction is one thing, but making l—” She drew in a sharp breath. “But sex,” she amended, “is quite another. I have to have a certain level of trust in someone before I can choose to be that vulnerable.”

“You trusted Keith,” he said.

She couldn’t keep from flinching. “Yes, I did. And he betrayed me. And that still hurts.”

“The beguilement from the dream has worn off,” he told her. “Whatever you feel is real, and what you choose to do about it is all your own.”

He pulled her hair to one side and put his lips to the bite mark at her neck. Her pulse fluttered like a butterfly and her breathing hitched. His arms tightened and then he let her go and stepped back. She turned around, disheveled and bewildered. Graceful bare feet gleamed pale against the neutral beige of the carpet, her toes painted a glossy red. She looked delicate and delicious and his groin tightened.

He ignored it. “We should go.”

She nodded, trying to tuck flyaway strands of hair behind her ears. “Yes, of course we should. How long did we rest?”

“Couple hours.” He turned away, fighting to control his reaction to her.

“There’s time to clean up, then. If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower and change. I won’t be long.” She hurried down the hall.

Dragos angled his head and watched her leave. He still didn’t like that image of her walking away.

Someday you will trust me. Then you will tell me what more there was to the dream and why you were so shaken. You will not be afraid of me and you will tell me all your secrets. And then you will be mine.

He smiled. She didn’t realize he was still on the hunt. Good. It was better that way.

In the bedroom, Pia grabbed the second new outfit she had bought along with underwear, a pair of blue jean capris and a lemon yellow stretch T-shirt with capped short sleeves and a scalloped neck. Only one more new outfit to go. At the rate she was dirtying things, she was going to have to do laundry or buy more clothes.

She closed the bathroom door, feeling silly as she locked it. Like that and the U.S. Army would keep him out if he chose to get in. She shook her head, started the shower, stripped and stepped in.