The rest of the day was spent in Bokkan’s company, even if we weren’t speaking. We ate lunch and dinner in the dining room. He had paperwork to do in his office, explaining that he had to finish working on his ledgers.
I’d asked if he had any books in English. He spent some time digging around in his library and came up with a thriller from an author I’d never heard of before.
While he worked, I read.
Then, we got ready for bed. I used the shower in one corner of his bathing room It was amazing. It felt like washing under a warm rain. When I re-entered the bedchamber, freshly washed, dressed in another one of Bokkan’s enormous shirts and my makeshift socks, and my wet hair braided, he was adding more logs to the fire.
That dipping sensation hit my stomach again. I knew he was building up the fire for me. It was a considerate thing to do. Something I hadn’t expected. I should have, though. In the short time I’d been around Bokkan, he was proving himself to be more than I expected.
I crawled beneath the fur blankets, curling up in a ball close to the center of the mattress. If tonight was anything like last night, I would need to stay close to Bokkan in order to remain warm.
Bokkan went into the bathing room, shutting the doors behind him. That confused me. Why hadn’t he shut the doors this morning? And why was he shutting them now? He had a right to his privacy, but his actions definitely confused me.
I was still mulling that over when I dropped off to sleep.
I felt like I’d only been asleep for a couple of minutes when rough hands grabbed me. I didn’t even have a chance to fight as I had before. There were too many of them pinning my arms and legs to the mattress. And they were so heavy.
When I opened my mouth to scream, coarse fabric was shoved between my lips and teeth and tied at the back of my head, tangling strands of my hair in it. I couldn’t even buck my body because there was a knee in the center of my back. Whoever was kneeling on me was putting most of their weight on me. I could barely breath. All I could do was whimper.
Black rimmed my vision as the hopelessness of my position overwhelmed me. There was literally nothing I could do.
Claws sank into the fabric of the shirt I wore and ripped it off my body, leaving me naked except for the socks I’d made. Strong fingers grabbed the backs of my knees and pried my legs apart, even though I tried to resist.
My vision faded further as my face was shoved into the mattress below me. I couldn’t breathe. Oh, God. I fought passing out. If I passed out, whoever had me could do whatever they wanted.
Judging by the number of hands on me, it was at least four daemons or imps.
When the fingers released my ankle, I didn’t think, I just reacted. I kicked out, my heel hitting something soft.
Upon impact, I opened my eyes and gasped. The phantom hands holding me were abruptly gone. I still wore the shirt Bokkan had lent me. There were no daemons or imps in the bedchamber. None of it had been real. Only a nightmare.
Well, there was one daemon, and I had wrapped myself around him like a vine. My arm was around his waist, my palm spread wide against the middle of his broad back. My leg was between his, my knee cocked so my thigh was pressing between his legs. Right into his balls.
I was clinging to him, and he was holding me in return. His bottom arm was bent and pillowed my head on his massive bicep. The other arm was draped over my shoulder and running diagonally across my back. His enormous hand cupped the cheek of my ass, and his fingers tucked beneath me between the mattress and my hip. He was holding me tightly, as though I were a teddy bear. I felt dwarfed but still safe somehow.
There was a firm hold around my ankle and calf, all the way up to my mid-thigh. It took me a moment to realize it was his tail. He’d wrapped his tail around my leg like a shackle, holding my leg exactly where it was between his.
What in the hell?
I tried not to move too much and wake him up as I looked around. I realized at that moment that he was on the edge of the bed. Which meant he had tried to keep space between us, andIwas the one who basically crawled into him.
What surprised me the most was that I hadn’t woken up during all of this.
Had he?
Surely not.
If he had, wouldn’t he have kept his back to me?
Though my body remained still, my brain was running a million miles an hour. I needed to move away, but I had no idea how to do it without waking him up. While I was trying to decide, he shifted, rolling more toward his back.
But he didn’t lose his grip on my butt or the hold of his tail on my leg, which meant I rolled with him and ended up straddlinghis thigh. With no panties on. His shirt was like a dress on me, but it had ridden up in the night, leaving my lower half bare.
My core slid across the smooth, bare skin of his thigh, and my shifting weight meant I settled deeper into his body. Deep enough that I felt the hard,hugelength of his erection against my hip. I blinked rapidly as I stared at his relaxed expression.
Bokkan was still asleep. Maybe male daemons got erections in their sleep like human men did, because his breathing was too slow and easy, and his muscles were too lax for him to be anything but deep in slumber.
I finally decided to slide off to the side and creep across the mattress until there was a foot or so of space between us. The furs on top of us had already trapped his body heat beneath them. I should be plenty warm enough, even though the fire had all but died in the hearth.
