We’re in enemy territory now.
Chapter Eleven
I jolt awake, but the darkness is thick and swarming with shadows.
Familiarshadows.
Twisting in the rough-worn sheets that scratch against my skin, I shift between sleep and wakefulness. Or maybe I’m not truly awake at all. I must be dreaming, but it feels as though I’m conscious, because I can feel the prickle of gooseflesh spreading over my skin and the warmth pooling in my chest and lower.
Like a dream within a dream.
My heart is pounding, and a fine sheen of sweat covers my face. I glance down to the edge of the bed where the gathering darkness looks deeper than in the rest of the room. Swirling layers of midnight and onyx transfix my gaze as a figure emerges. Ethereal and magical, the presence is large, over six and a half feet and shaped like a man, but I’m not afraid. Not with him.
The shadow doesn’t move, but I can feel that deeply familiar, powerful stare watching me as I lie still, canvassing every inch of my bared body that has wrestled free of the sheets. But there’s no worry in me, other than a strange sensation of restless impatience.
“You’re here,” I hear myself say.
I’m always here.The words are multilayered, their gravelly cadence making my nipples peak beneath my thin sleep shirt, and my thighs press helplessly together. Unable to help myself, I skim my fingertips over my sides where my sleep shirt has ridden upward, the graze against my belly making me whimper.
“Why?” I ask breathily.
We don’t like when you’re afraid.
We?Dark wisps burst apart and then come back together, their presence almost as agitated as I feel inside. I’m hot and fevered... and by extension, they are, too. My fingers toy with the edge of my undergarments, and I sense rather than see the shadow move forward. If I squint, I can just make out features, though they dance in and out of focus.
I know it’s a dream, but something about it feels unusually intense.
“Show yourself,” I whisper.
Gleaming depthless eyes like shards of obsidian, slashes for cheekbones, and a cruel, hard mouth take shape. Moon-kissed locks frame the most mesmerizing face I’ve ever seen. His shoulders are broad, the contour of tattooed muscles over a powerful body, leading down to trim hips and...fuck. I swallow hard, my thighs instantly going slick.
Dream lover isnakedand wants me to see it.
An exhilarated laugh slips out of me. Of course he does. This ismydream. The flash of the features I’d seen definitely hadn’t been Roshan’s—Thank you, subconscious; no need to encourage infatuation with someone real—but the body is close to what I’ve imagined his to be. All stacked muscles, lean sinew, and long limbs. Not to mention the tool of sensual destruction between those thick legs that makes me liquid with desire.
Shadows graze over my ankles and slide up my calves. Inky tendrils touch everywhere, every inch of skin, every dip and every curve, making my body shiver with need. He knows exactly where to touch and by the time my shadow lover hovers directly over me, I’m a whimpering mess. My eyes flutter shut.
Look at me.The dark command reverberates over my sensitized skin, even as cool shadows slip under my shirt and flutter against my tight, aching breasts.
As I comply, the darkness coalesces into a dense shape, powerful arms bracketing either side of my quaking body. The shine of silvery hair, longer than mine, catches my eye again, but it’s gone just as quickly. Flickers of his brutally handsome face appear and disappear—winged eyebrows and midnight eyes staring down at me over a bold nose and thin but sculpted lips, bracketed by a jawline that could cut glass. He’s fucking beautiful. The air fizzles in my lungs.
For a moment, I wonder if this is truly a dream and not some lucid hallucination. Like the crone in the carriage... another bored deity toying with me somehow, but I can’t bring myself to care one way or another. I want more of whatever this is.
Boldly, I reach up to touch that granite jaw, but when I do, there’s nothing there but a phantom sensation of mist on my fingertips. Those thin lips curl as if my touch is pleasurable, nostrils flaring as he drinks me in with an intensity that leaves me breathless. A shadowed hand drifts upward to rest on my throat, pinning me in place. My entire awareness narrows to that evanescent point of contact.
Are you afraid, Starbright?
“No,” I say, the soft nickname at odds with the multilayered gravel of his voice.
You should be.
The echo is much too similar to the terrifying warning I’d heard in the alley behind the tavern in Coban, and I bolt awake for real this time in my new quarters, eyes flying open as I gasp for breath.
I’m alone in my tiny chamber, no corporeal male-bodied shadows in sight.
Fuck.
I can’t even get distracted in my dreams.
