He looked up, his head tilting. “Kaelia. How did you get here?”
Confusion tangled my thoughts. I looked at the stardust on my palms, sparkling like remnants of another world.
“I… I walked,” I managed, feeling the ground waver beneath my bare feet. “How else would I get here?”
“You are asleep, Kaelia,” he said with a shake of his head. “Mortals do not wander here. This is a private sanctum. This is my mind’s creation.”
The dream seemed to bend around him as he moved toward me, trees leaning into his path.
I swallowed hard, retreating a half-step, though the ground seemed to give way beneath me. “This… this is not real. You are not real.”
He smirked, a dark curve of his mouth that made every muscle in my body tighten. When he finally stopped, the distance between us thinned until the heat of him brushed across my skin.
“Were you thinking of me, little flame?” he murmured.
“Yes,” I whispered honestly. “But that does not explain how I am here.”
“Such a dangerous mind you have,” he said, his voice soft and dark. His fingers latched onto my wrist and tugged, pulling me until I collided with him, chest to chest.
The heat of him seared through the thin fabric of my nightdress, sending a tremor from the tips of my breasts to the end of my toes.
His gaze dropped, pinning me where I stood, as his hand found the soft swell of my breast. His thumb circled the sensitive nub through the silk, drawing a helpless moan from my throat.
“If you wanted to see me, little flame,” he breathed, lips brushing the shell of my ear. “You only needed to ask.”
His face moved an inch from mine, so close that I could see the fracturing of light in his glacial eyes.
Our breaths mingled as we both subconsciously inched closer.
The kiss felt inevitable, like the charged moment before lightning strikes the earth.
His mouth crashed into mine, hungry and commanding, and my world tilted on its axis. My resistance shattered like thin ice, my body arching into him with a hunger I despised but could no longer deny. My lips parted, answering his tongue with a fire of my own, feeding the bond even as my mind screamed for me to stop.
His arms tightened around my waist, crushing me against him. My fingers tangled in his dark hair, dragging him deeper into a kiss that felt like a devouring.
He groaned, a low, guttural sound that vibrated through his chest and into mine. One hand slid into my hair, angling my head, deepening the kiss, his tongue caressing mine.
The dream around us bent and blurred.
We stumbled, Talon twisting to take the brunt of the fall. We landed with a soft thud on the plush emerald grass, stardust drifting down around us like silent witnesses.
The kiss never broke. If anything, it became more frantic.
I rolled over him, straddling his hips, my nightdress ghosting across his abdomen. His hand slid from my hip to my waist to my ribs, leaving a trail of fire in its path. My palms mapped the lines of his shoulders, the muscle shifting beneath the thin cotton of his shirt.
“You are mine,” he growled against my lips. “Say it.”
“I cannot,” I gasped, my head falling back as his lips found the sensitive skin of my throat. “Talon, please…”
“Please what?” He bit softly at my collarbone, and I arched my back, a low sob escaping me. “Please stop, or please never let you go?”
Every touch was a step deeper into a terrifying abyss. We were on the brink, teetering on the edge of something irreversible.
Then, as if the city itself could see us, pain detonated in my chest.
It was as if a hook had been driven straight through the center of my chest and yanked backward with brutal force.
My lungs seized, a gasp tearing from my throat that broke the kiss. My hands shoved against his chest, not to escape him but to escape whatever invisible force had seized me.