As she laywith Triumph in the growing darkness, the food ignored for now, she drifted into a doze. Reality mixed with memories and dreams. The soft sounds from next door, a door opening and closing, stirred up the past.
She was in Guillermo’s mansion in Buenos Aires. Her high heels clicked down the marble hallway toward their bedroom, the sound low and echoing hollowly. As her hand reached for the door handles to the suite, time slowed to a crawl.
Suddenly, she was inside, the door clicking closed behind her, and the shadowy figure of Guillermo, in his white suit over his black dress shirt and white tie, passed in the hazy background behind her in the mirror. A mirror that didn’t exist in their suite but had appeared in her dreamworld to help her see what happened behind her.
She wore the blue dress from their engagement dinner. The neckline plunged, framing the huge crucifix hanging between her breasts. The skirt barely hid her mound and tightly hugged the cheeks of her ass.
The shadowy figure stood behind her, his hands gripping her upper arms, his dark head bowed to allow his mouth to make contact with the curve between her shoulder and neck. Teeth bit, bruising her flesh. She winced.
Some sound, one she registered but couldn’t discern, helped her drift out of the dream.
Triumph’s warm breath whispered in her ear. “Shh,” he murmured. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. Sleep.”
It was impossible not to accept his suggestion. Snuggling deeper into his chest, she let sleep claim her again.
Almost immediately, she was back in the dream.
Something had changed, and confusion swept through her as the figure behind her morphed.
His wiry build shifted to broader shoulders. The bruising grip loosened and moved languidly up and down, the palms smoothing across her skin from shoulder to elbow, then back again.
His hair lightened from black to brown, and it lengthened into a sexy, shaggy mop. Her arm rose to thread through the strands, and she marveled at its softness rather than the crispy, perfectly styled cut Guillermo sported.
The teeth retracted, replaced by gentle suckling against the skin, and she tipped her head to the opposite side, allowing him more room.
She felt herself grow wet as desire stirred. Her thighs clenched, and she heard a sigh escape her lips.
Why? Shame flooded her for wanting someone to simply take over, but she couldn’t deny the slickness between her thighs.
The man in the mirror stepped impossibly closer, his hardness nestling between her ass cheeks. Even his size there felt different.
He whispered against her skin, but it was too quiet to make out. More curious, the words were in English. How she knew that was unclear, but whatever was said soothed her jagged edges, allowing her to slide deeper under his erotic spell.
As he worshipped her neck, his hands drifted to the neckline of her dress, his fingertips tracing the border of the material and her skin from her throat to just above her navel, then drifting down her hips to tease back and forth across the hemline of the skirt and the tops of her thighs.
Only then did his head rise. His reflection revealed Triumph instead of Guillermo, and her eyes dilated with pleasure at the lust in his gaze.
It was the thunder that woke her, a soft, distant rumble over the mountains. The rain’s pace had increased, the strikes of the droplets hitting heavier but still lulling. She hung in the limbo between asleep and awake, registering the warm male she snuggled up to.
“No dreams this time?”
Embarrassment stained her cheeks. She avoided answering the question by apologizing. “I’m sorry if I woke you earlier.”
“You didn’t. You whimpered a little. More restless than anything.”
The swallow she attempted locked up her throat, making it feel as if it were folding in on itself. The flash of pain broke the last of the dream’s hold on her. “I dreamt of Guillermo. It wasn’t a specific night, but it was gearing up to be bad, so I’m glad I woke myself up. When I fell back asleep, the dream started back up, but it was… different.”
He snuggled deeper into the mattress, and by default, she snuggled further into him. There was hesitancy in the silence, almost as if he were preparing to open his mouth and say something he wasn’t quite sure about.
Finally, he said, “When Tilly had nightmares, she would tell me what she dreamt. It was the only thing I knew I could get out of her. She said it was because the nightmare could never be worse than the real thing she experienced.”
“Most people would say the exact opposite. Nightmares make you relive those experiences, and they linger like ghosts.” Her palms moved to rest on his chest. The steady heartbeat and even breaths chased away the last of the panic. “We had just returned to our suite from being out. I was wearing the infamous blue dress.”
“He hurt you.”
“He did,” she admitted. “Afterward, he left me alone for two days. Something told him he might have gone too far because he actually called in his surgeon. I’m still not sure what all they had to do, but let’s just say I was on a liquid diet for a month.”
“That’s why you pick at your food.” She looked up at him. “I noticed. You eat, but you also do a really good job of moving the food around on your plate. Very little actually gets in your mouth that’s solid.” Lips touched her forehead, and they stayed there. “He better hope I never get near him,” Triumph mumbled.
