Her belly still churned but now that she knew it’d only been a bad dream, her nausea abated slightly.
“Go back to sleep,luxiva,” he said. He was turned so that his bare back was against the wall on the ledge, but even still, rain poured down onto him.
“Come inside, Cruxan,” she urged, brows furrowing.
He hesitated and then said, in a dark growl, one so reminiscent of her dream that her breath hitched, “I cannot.”
She frowned but then realization made her freeze. Despite how the ending of her dream had changed, she felt arousal coat the insides of her thighs. Because she’d been aroused by the first part of her dream. Byhim. She’d been aroused by warm, heavy flesh, the flash of blue eyes, that languid, wicked grin.
Her cheeks flamed, brighter than the fire, and she squeezed her thighs together.
He’d scented it. It had become too overwhelming so he’d moved outside for fresh air, though the rain was icy and unrelenting.
“Who did you dream of,luxiva?” he rasped, his voice sounding almost as tormented as the picture he made.
Something in her chest tugged. Something that was restless inside her, wanting and needing to…soothehim. But why?
“No one,” she whispered, needing, instead, to keep that boundary, that wall between them. Even still, she pushed up from her warm spot on the floor of the cave and approached the entrance.
She shivered underneath his thick and heavy shirt. Her own tunic was still laid out by the fire. She’d switched them out before going to sleep and by the looks of it, it too was dry.
Even from inside the cave, she could feel the bitterness of outside. The biting chill.
“Cruxan,” she murmured, her eyes taking him in. He was soaked through unnecessarily. “Will you please come back inside?”
Even though she didn’t want to, even though she tried to fight it, she feltsomethingfor him. A knowing, perhaps. She wanted to know that he was warm and safe. It made her uneasy to see him this way.
“Only if you tell me,” he rasped.
She sucked in a breath. He sought a bargain?
Crystal frowned, but then said, “Then I have no choice but to join you out here.”
It was too dark to make out his expression, but she didn’t wait for it. She took a step out of the shelter of their warm cave, felt the icy sting of rain on her bare leg.
Then she heard a growl and, suddenly, Cruxan was up and steering her back inside, his hands on her shoulders. He moved so quickly, so fast for someone so large.
Surprised by their sudden proximity, Crystal could do nothing but look up at him. He was drenched, his dark hair inky, plastered to the sides of his neck, his shoulders. His broad chest was slick with the rain. The fire’s light glinted in his blue eyes, giving him an otherworldly appearance, like a warrior god from fantasy.
“You just answered me,” he murmured down to her, the torment gone from his voice, replaced with something that sounded an awful lot likerelief.
“What do you mean?”
“If it had been anyone else, you would have told me gladly,” he said. “Your stubbornness proved it.”
Highhanded male!
Her eyes narrowed and she couldn’t help but challenge, “Provedwhat?”
Cruxan grinned, though he was soaked to the bone. His hands drifted down her shoulders, down her arms, to her wrists, where he encircled them easily in his giant palms.
“That you were dreaming ofme.”
She snatched her wrists back, ignoring the tingling, pleasant sensation he’d left in his wake. Turning her back to him, she returned to the fire, needing space desperately.
“You’re full of it,” she returned, though the words were tinged in hesitation and not nearly as biting as she would’ve hoped.
By the flaring of his nostrils, she knew that her arousal still lingered in the air. His horns were straightened, she noticed. The sight made her nervous, but not in that panicked way she’d felt before.
