He’d watched her reach for both of them in that place where reality bent and barriers broke and he hadn’t stopped it. He had encouraged her fantasy.
She squeezed her eyes shut, burying her face into the pillow. Gods, what kind of fool had she been?
No. Not a fool. Just lonely. Torn. Caught between two kings. Two very different males. One who saw her for her potential, embracing her fully. And one of them, placing her in a box of desire and she’d promised herself to the latter.
Her hand curled instinctively toward the ring still on her finger. A band of elegant white gold, sharp and glinting moonstone in the low light. A promise forged in blood and court strategy.
Even if the bond was gone.
Even if there was nothing left but cold silence between their souls.
It still meant something.
Didn’t it?
She wasn’t sure anymore. Not of anything. Not of what she wanted. Not of who she was when desire whispered in her chest, and she turned her face away from the man who would kneel for her and mean it.
Maris exhaled shakily.
She wouldn’t act. She wouldn’t break whatever fragile thread of honor still held her.
So she let her longing curl beside her in the dark. Let her shame nest in her chest, hot and aching.
And as sleep slowly pulled her under, it was not Kael’s face she saw in the dark.
It was Alarik’s.
Sleep did not come gently.
But when it did she slipped into the dream without the usual confusion. It was too sharp, too warm to be mistaken for anything but him. Moonlight fell over her bare skin like oil. She lay on a bed of velvet shadows, no walls, no ceiling, only dark and sea wind and him.
Alarik.
He approached without sound, barefoot, shirtless, his silver-pale hair tousled like he’d torn through a storm to get to her. He didn’t speak. Neither of them did. Words, they knew, would end this. Would snap the tether and dissolve the illusion or the truth, whichever this place had become.
But gods, his eyes.
Those violet-blue depths burned with hunger wrapped in worship.
His fingers brushed her ankle, sliding slowly up the curve of her calf, pausing as if to ask for permission that he already knew she’d give. She arched slightly, breath catching. Every nerve felt like it had been set alight.
She whispered to herself.
It’s just a dream. That’s all. Only a dream.
He didn’t take her with haste. He took his time.
Teasing. Exploring. As though he had spent centuries learning her body through stares, through dreams, through every almost-touch in the waking world and had memorized it all.
His lips found the inside of her knee first.
Her thigh.
Her hip.
Never quite where she needed, always where she craved.
She gasped when his mouth finally descended, and her fingers tangled in his hair. Her hips rose to meet him but he pinned her, resting a hand against her belly, grounding her to the dream and to him.
