Rising up through her core, it stretched out and Layla stretched with it, her body making an impossible arch as if she had bones and muscle where she’d never had them before. Her stretch was serpentine, sliding the sheets down from her nakedness as that movement roiled through to the tips of her fingers and toes – clawing them into the covers as if talons could have shot from her fingertips.
Layla’s arms came up as she arched onto the crown of her head, that amazing sensation coming to completion within her. The scent of bourbon and orange peels simmered off her skin in a hot mirage as she felt her insides boil, her hands sliding through her curls as she writhed with power – sensual and dark and bright all at once.
Easing up from the sheets in the most erotic maneuver she had ever performed, Layla came to sitting. Tightening her shoulder-blades, she felt muscles flex where muscles had never been. Every pore of her body felt attentive with pleasure. Breathing in her own powerful scent mingling with the musk of her men made Layla shiver, her head falling back as she sat upon her knees, her long hair caressing her ass in the most delicious sensation she had ever felt.
Layla bared her throat, able to do nothing but breathe as she devoured the eroticism. This body wasn’t the one she had known. Whatever had happened in that cavern had changed her as surely as her awakening in the art gallery had changed her before. When she could open her eyes at last, the day seemed brighter, sharper, every color more luminous. As if every gilded edge in her apartment had diamonds in the paint, making the world sparkle.
Her eyes open, her attention shifted to Adrian and Dusk. She saw both men staring, their lips fallen open, their bodies tense and faces wild with heat.
“Wow.” Adrian breathed, staring at Layla with gold devouring his bright aqua gaze.
“You said it.” Dusk gave a soft rumble, the thunder of his utterance vibrating the bed.
Rising, Layla watched them, her bound Royal Dragons. Their faces were eager at her nakedness and her power, and for the first time in her life she felt perfectly at ease being stared at. As she stood there watching them, she realized she could feel their lives breathing around her; wisps of thought, sensations of memory, pieces of dreams. Their emotions rolled through her, as if her Dragon called out to them and was answered.
Moving to the bedpost, she received her cobalt silk robe as Dusk held it out. His eyes were bright as he watched her but he said nothing, just nodded to the mirror by the bed. Donning her robe, Layla tied it loosely. New sensations rolled over her: the smoothness of the silk, the way it caught on her skin with tiny imperfections that rasped like a cat’s tongue.
Moving to the mirror, Layla found a new face staring back at her. Everything was subtly different. Her dark eyelashes were thicker, her lips a bit more sultry, her cheeks flushed. Her skin seemed brighter like it was lit from within, her cheekbones higher. Layla had always been striking, but now her face had a regal fierceness as she turned her head this way; it was beautiful and terrifying as she turned that way.
Like she could become a dream or a nightmare – like she could cause love or fear or maybe both with the right set of her jaw or flash of her eyes.
It was her eyes that had changed most. Once a pale jade, they now shifted colors as waves of heat rolled through her, changing her irises to a vivid emerald, then a marine blue, then to Hunter’s deep forest tones flecked with gold. The gold brightened, and by the time Layla’s heat calmed, her eyes were a dark forest green in the center fading to jade in the middle, with a vivid ring of bourbon-gold around the outside.
Turning, she regarded Adrian and Dusk, both watching her with expressions of amazement – when her stomach suddenly growled, ravenous. Moving to the table, set with a brunch spread of bacon and eggs, blueberry pancakes, and fruit, Layla sat and began heaping a plate, thrice as much as she would have normally eaten. Still lingering by the bed, Dusk and Adrian glanced at each other, then looked at her with twin smiles of amusement.
“What?” Layla asked as she bit a piece of bacon. “Can’t a girl eat breakfast?”
They laughed, both of them, bold and free. Layla brightened, chewing her bacon and feeling happiness rise all through her to hear them laugh together. Dusk’s rolling laugh shuddered the floor, ending in a basso chuckle that just flat did it for Layla, while Adrian’s perfectly elegant laugh of surprise was bright and winsome.
Layla grinned, munching with delight. Bacon, sunlight, and two ridiculously sexy men in her apartment, both shirtless.
Life doesn’t get much better.
Dusk was still chuckling as he came to the table, hauling out a chair and taking a seat. Shaking his head, his eyes glowed with brilliance as he grinned at her, then began pouring coffee. “You, woman, can eat whatever you want, whenever you want it.”
His innuendo was not lost on her and Layla grinned more, reaching for her coffee, which he’d of course mixed perfectly. Raising his eyebrows at Adrian, Dusk paused with the French press over another mug. With a far more easygoing smile than Layla had ever seen from him, Adrian waved a hand in acceptance and moved forward. Dusk poured and Adrian took the chair on Layla’s other side, shaking his head with a grin as lovely as Dusk’s.
“Eating bacon and making jokes.” Adrian laughed softly. With a nod of thanks to Dusk as he received his coffee, Adrian reached out, smoothing his knuckles over Layla’s cheek. “You have no idea how close to death’s door you were. And now, power like I’ve never felt rises in you and you go straight for breakfast just like a normal day.”
“Hey, I’m hungry.” Layla spoke with her mouth full. “Don’t interrupt a girl’s bacon and coffee.”
“I wouldn’t ever presume so much.” Adrian chuckled, giving her cheek one last stroke and then taking up his mug. Dusk was serving his and Adrian’s plates now, and for a moment, everything seemed so ridiculously normal between the three of them that Layla laughed. They both looked at her, and she shook her head. But then Dusk and Adrian looked at each other, and smiles stole around the edges of their lips.
“I never thought a woman could bring us together, Adrian.” Dusk spoke cheekily, sipping his coffee.
“Royal Dragon Binds have interesting powers, or so I hear.” Adrian spoke back with a dark humor, sipping his coffee and lifting an eyebrow at Layla.
“Hey,” Layla spoke around a bite of eggs. “As long as the two of you aren’t tearing each other’s throats out, I’m happy.”
“So are we.” Dusk murmured, setting his coffee down and gazing at Adrian.
Adrian gave him a nod, setting his coffee down also. Something important moved between the two brothers, something Layla didn’t quite understand but could feel. It was Adrian who finally turned to look at her with a complicated emotion as he laced his long fingers and sat back with his elbows on his chair, watching her. “You’ve been opened to more of your power, Layla.”
“You mean the change in my body and energy?” She asked, her mouth full of buttery croissant now. “And these sensations – like I can feel other people’s emotions and thoughts in the air?”
Adrian and Dusk shared a look, Dusk with his eyebrows raised pointedly.
“What?” Layla glanced between them.
