Pleasures of the Night(12)

The tantalizing smell of his skin filled the air around her, blending with the incense. Where they touched, they clung, their mingled sweat binding them closer together.

“Maybe if we come fast…?” she suggested shakily, trying to think of a point past this moment of vulnerability.

“Yes.”

Reaching beneath her, Aidan rubbed her clit in those maddening circles and began to shaft her cunt with long, measured drives. The sensation was incredible, the feeling of stretching and shrinking, of grasping and sucking, of being pumped with expert precision by a man who knew how to fuck so well, it made her mindless with lust.

Lyssa had no doubt she was in over her head. She didn’t have the experience to handle a man like Aidan. It was obvious in the way he mantled her body and rode it with absolute surety that he was in his element. She, on the other hand, could only lie there and take it, her entire body so sensitized that the feel of his pendant brushing across her back made her orgasm.

“So sweet,” he groaned, as she shook beneath him with a startled cry. “I’m coming…”

She felt his cock jerk inside her as he climaxed hard, flooding her with pulses of thick, hot semen. Blood roared in her ears, dulling her hearing, but slowly she became aware of his words, softly whispered in a language she didn’t comprehend. His tone was reverent, his embrace crushing.

As her knees gave out beneath her, he followed her down, shifting to lie behind her.

Still joined.

Still murmuring those beautiful, mysterious words with his lips pressed to her skin.





Chapter 3





Aidan lay on his back and looked up at the starry night sky through the oculus. Outwardly he was calm and sated. Inside he was shaken to the core. He didn’t know how to process the feeling of connection he felt with the woman curled up at his side.

As he’d slid inside Lyssa’s lusciously tight body, the connection had been more than a dream, more than sex. He’d tried to make their joining no more than physical pleasure. He had turned her over, faced her away from him, and none of it had worked. The unrestrained anxiousness he felt around her hadn’t dissipated with his orgasm. Now it was worse than ever, accompanied as it was by the knowledge that he would have to leave her, and once he did, he would never see her again.

His eyes closed on a ragged breath. She’d made love to him, not a fantasy. Not the Captain of the Elite. Not a Guardian with a lascivious reputation. Just Aidan Cross.



In all his life, he was certain she was the only woman to have ever done so.

The effect that knowledge had on him was startling. He’d been as lost to the sex as she was. He, a man who’d fucked literally countless women, had just had a sexual encounter unlike any other.

“So tell me.” Her warm breath gusted across his skin. “What are these things you say I don’t understand?”

“Lyssa…” He heaved out a sigh, and looked down at the top of her head. How could he tell her enough to keep her safe, but not enough to anger the Elders?

“Uh oh.” She rose to look at him. “Let me guess. You don’t date seriously, you’re not looking for a girlfriend, no attachments. It’s just sex.”

It wasn’t, but he could never tell her that. Instead he said, “I’m a Dream Guardian.”

Her brows rose. “O-kay…That’s a new one.”

“The beach, this tent, your clothes, even the darkness—they are inventions of your mind.”

“’Kay, I got that.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not what?”

“I’m not a figment of your imagination. You can alter my appearance to suit your desires, but that’s the extent of your control over me. You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to.”

“Yeah, I figured that one out already.” Lyssa pursed her lips in thought. She offered a shaky smile. “So you’re not a tall, dark, and handsome, drop-dead gorgeous sex god?”

Aidan’s lips twitched with a withheld smile. “What color is my hair?”



“Black.”

“All over?”

Lyssa ran her fingers through his chest hair, then dipped lower to cup his balls. “Yes. All over.”

“And my eye color?”

Her eyes narrowed, then she leaned closer. “I’m not sure,” she said finally, in a low, hesitant tone. “They look dark. I think the light’s not good.”

He reached out and caught her hand, then dropped it as if it burned him. That was her first sign that something was wrong. She saw his hands clench into fists and wondered what the hell was going on. “The lighting is fine.”

“So I take it, that’s not how you look?”