“Morysen,” he groaned with disgust, his kisses finding my cheek, the corner of my eye, my temple. “I should never have sent you there. What was I thinking?”
I knew he was an illusion conjured by my subconscious, but why should that mean I didn’t berate him?
“Yes, whatwereyou thinking?” I demanded, irritation breaking through the heady warmth of him wrapped around me and the slow burn of my arousal. “I’m furious with you for sending me away. I want a real kiss,” I added when he kissed down the other side of my face.
He drew back a few inches to look at me, and when topaz blue eyes locked on mismatched brown and violet, I felt the contact in my chest. My heart soared, flew. My breathing became unsteady. This felt too real.
“Is the kiss at all related to your fury at me?”
“Not one bit,” I replied, sinking my fingers into his hair and pulling out the tie until silken strands fell like a dark curtain around us, my free hand exploring the muscles of his back in a proprietary way.Mine.This man, infuriating as he may be, was all mine. “Kiss me anyway.”
“As my wife commands,” he agreed and brushed his lips to mine in a teasing whisper of a touch. I tightened my grip on his hair and realised that was exactly what he wanted when he smiled a moment before I took a true and deep kiss for myself. His groan travelled down my tongue and settled low in my body. I kissed him with a ravenous demand, my hunger endless yet matched by his greed for me.
For long, long minutes we lay there on the rooftop, surrounded by olive trees and sweet-perfumed flowers, hands making desperate reacquaintance with each other’s bodies, relearning what made gasps cut the silence, what made groansvibrate between us. Our kisses never ended, never slowed, only grew more frantic with each second that slipped past.
“Ameirah,” he gasped against my mouth, his hand on my thigh as I made room for him to settle between my legs, the fit of him against me divine. “Fuck, dearling, I missed you.”
I gentled my fingers on his hair, brushed through the strands with care, the aching emotion in his eyes making my chest hurt. “I missed you, too.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I can’t breathe right unless you’re at my side. There’s a constant ache in my chest, forever begging to be soothed by your presence. Every moment of every day, I think about you. What you’d say if you were with me, if you’d be smiling or issuing those delightful threats of murder. I delude myself into feeling the press of your hand against mine just so I can put one foot in front of the other and keep walking. But the fantasies are ghosts compared to the real thing. Your scent has already begun to fade, and what if we’re apart so long I forget your scent and—why are you crying?”
I didn’t have words for the swell of emotion in my chest. Instead of answering, I angled my face up and kissed him, slow and tender and sweet this time. I hooked my leg around his, aligning my core with the desperate hardness of him and rolling my hips slowly, the sheer fabric like whispers, like nothing at all between us. I felteverything,and I knew he did too when he bowed his head and screwed his eyes shut, his chest expanding with a rough breath.
“I love you,” I murmured. My throat was painfully thick with emotion, everything he’d said landing on my bruised soul like healing touches, kissing away the pain of abandonment. “I’ll postpone shouting at you until we meet in person.”
“Very generous,” he said in the same emotion-rough tone as mine, his palms splayed over my waist, one exploring higher until his warm hand cupped my breast. The other guided mythigh wider, baring me to him as he stroked the length of his cock along me.
My breath caught, a sharp throb coursing like fire through me.“Varidian.”
“Good, wife?”
I groaned. “You know it is. Don’t stop.”
“This, exactly this, is what I think about every sleepless night. Not just the cold of the bed beside me where you belong, but how much time we’re wasting apart when I could be hearing you gasp, when I could watch your chest heaving so beautifully, when I could watch your eyes turn heavy lidded. Fuck, just like that,” he breathed when the next roll of his hips made my eyes flutter. The sensation, the fire, the shivering pleasure of it was almost too much after a week apart.
“Varidian. Is this real?”
His teeth scraped his bottom lip, the next stroke of him through my heated flesh as good for him as it was for me. My underthings had soaked through so badly that my need coated him, too. “Nothing has ever felt this real, my love, my beautiful wife, my dearling Ameirah.”
“Careful, you’re beginning to sound obsessed again.”
“I am,” he said with a breathless laugh, kissing me once, twice, three times, like he couldn’t help himself. “I am thoroughly and unapologetically obsessed with you. Tell me I can touch you.”
“You already are.”
He groaned loudly, as if I was tormenting him. His head landed on my chest, and he remained there for a long moment, just breathing, soaking in the warmth of me as I ran my fingers through his hair. “You know what I mean. Ameirah.” When I only smiled, he said, a whine almost certainly in his voice, “Dearling, please.”
I grinned, a little trill of power going through me. I kissed the top of his head and said, “I do so love it when you beg, husband.”
His groan was deeper, guttural.
I caught his hand and placed it between my thighs, the slide of our fingers so slick even through sheer lace. “Touch me anywhere, everywhere, wherever you wish.”
“Since this is a dream,” he said, gravelly, “you can’t get mad at me for this.”
A tug at my underwear was the only clue I had before the delicate fabric ripped, and there was indeed a flash of irritation through my chest, but it was overcome by sensation and bright sparks of pleasure as his fingers made a thorough exploration. It wasn’t gentle or slow; it set me on immediate fire. My hips jumped off the now-warmed stone of the roof, my mouth parted, eyes locked on the wicked blue of my husband’s.
“You are so fucking beautiful,” Varidian groaned, his stare roving over every part of me he could see, returning always to my face as I gasped, moaned, and arched beneath him. “We should live here forever, locked in this dream, driven utterly mad by so much pleasure that our hearts struggle to take it.”
