“Go on,” she encouraged, rapt with attention.
“It is a gift that has been passed down through my mother’s line.Her sire had the same gift, but his strength was in dreamwalking.”
Taylor froze.“Dreamwalking?”
“Tev,” he murmured.
“And…you can do this as well?”
He hesitated just long enough to make Taylor’s heart race.“Tev.”
“Did you…have you entered mine?Is that why I dream about you every night?” she asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.
Vikan approached her until he was close enough that he could reach out and touch her face.“Once.”
Taylor’s breath hitched.“When?”
But she had a feeling she already knew when.
“When we sat on the shores ofLopitaxtogether,” he answered, confirming her suspicions.It had been the only dream in which he’d rebuffed her sexual advances, when she’d sensed somethingoff.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.But she had to know.“Why did you…why did you deny me?For everything I know about your Instinct, you could have had sex with me and yet you didn’t.”
“Because it wasreal,” he told her, reaching out to hold her steady, so that she wouldn’t have to tread water.His touch made her skin sensitive.“I was coming to you as myself in the present, not as the male you will come to know.”
Her head swam, but in a strange way, she knew exactly what he was saying.
“I would not take advantage of you that way, female,” he told her softly, bringing the pads of his fingers to caress the top of her cheekbones.His touch was gentle, though his hands were roughened.
“You truly believe that I’ve been seeing visions of our future, don’t you?”
His eyebrows furrowed.“Of course I do.Do you still deny it yourself?Even after everything you know?”
“I…I,” she paused, licking her lips and tasting the strange Luxirian sea.“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
“What will it take for you to accept this?” he asked.“Accept us?”
“There are too many variables to even think about before there ever can be an ‘us,’ Vikan,” she murmured.
Instead of his expression tightening at her words, he looked…slightly smug.“At least you admit that there could be.I am a driven, stubborn male,luxiva.As long as there is hope, we can overcome any variables there might be.”
Taylor gave an unexpected, nervous laugh before sucking in a breath when his hands drifted across her bare shoulders.
“You’ve been touching me a lot today,” she noted.
“Do you mind it?” he asked, cocking his head to the side, never lifting his touch.She didn’t answer because she didn’t want him to know the truth: that she liked it very much.“We decided to start anew, did we not?Part of that means I will no longer deny my instincts when it comes to you.And Luxirians crave to touch their females.”
For once, Taylor didn’t correct him when he called her his female.She wouldn’t dwell on why she didn’t correct him.
“Do you mind it?” he asked again, true to his word that he was a driven, stubborn male.
Taylor huffed out a breath, knowing he wouldn’t let it go.Perhaps she was learning about him, after all.
His fingers fluttered over the pulse in her neck, so he felt the way her heart sped up.It was…unexpectedly intimate, especially when his eyes sought hers as he did it.
“No,” she whispered.“No, I don’t mind it.”
TWELVE
