Pleasures of the Night

  She rolled over and bared a taut, sweetly curved ass that made his balls draw up tight. The dark gold curls between her legs were trimmed almost to the skin, revealing pale pink folds that glistened with her desire.

  His eyes slid closed on a deep breath, every muscle tense with expectation and deep longing. It wasn’t the erotic display that most affected him. It was her trust. His heart was racing, his breathing as erratic and uncontrolled as his mood. As if he were standing on a precipice, knowing he was going to fall, but unable to fight it.

  When was the last time he’d been in heat like this? When was the last time he’d wanted a particular woman this badly?

  Aidan hoped like hell his emotions were simply set off-kilter by his new assignment. He hadn’t had sex since he’d met Lyssa. There just wasn’t time with all the work he had, and when he did find a free hour or two, he’d spent it thinking about her. Perhaps he’d shocked his system by going without. That had to be what the problem was. He’d been fucking women for centuries. It shouldn’t be any different this time.

  “Hurry,” she breathed.

  He opened his eyes to find Lyssa looking over her shoulder at him. His throat tightened at the sight of the graceful curve of her spine and her slender waist. She was so beautiful, in a way that appealed to him keenly.

  Gripping her hip with one hand, he aimed his cock at her slick opening with the other, rubbing the throbbing head across her slit.

  “I-I’m nervous,” Lyssa admitted, every nerve ending focused on her pussy and the cock ready to slide into it. Perspiration swept across her skin. She quivered as he began his entry, the thick head spreading her wide.

  “Don’t be,” he rumbled. “I’ve got you.”

  Aidan entered her slowly, too slowly, working his way inside her, advancing, retreating, making her achingly aware of every inch. His progress was agonizing, teasing, driving her mad until her arms started to shake, forcing her to sink into the scarves. The change in angle tilted her hips upward, allowing him to feed her more of that magnificent cock. She whimpered.

  “That’s it.” His voice was rough, dark velvet. “Let me have that pussy.”

  “Let me have that cock,” she countered, breathless, her eyes closing and her hands fisting into the fragrant silk. She was panting, her hips writhing, but he held her tightly and kept to his leisurely pace. “Ah, god…you feel amazing.”

  Never in her life had Lyssa been more aroused. She was so wet, so hot. She doubted she could take a man of his size if she wasn’t.

  “Oh, Lyssa,” he crooned, one hand stroking the length of her spine, making her arch like a cat. “You’ve got the tightest, juiciest, hungriest cunt I’ve ever fucked.”

  “Aidan.” She shuddered violently, his coarse words spoken in that luscious brogue making her cream. The extra lubrication allowed him to slide deeper, making them both gasp. Regulated breaths were out of the question. They were both too far gone, their focus so completely arrested by the place where their bodies joined.

  She liked dirty bedroom banter, had fantasized about it, but it took a highly confident man to be so open. Until now, she’d never found one.

  Finally, Aidan sank in to the hilt, his tight, heavy balls resting against her clit. He withdrew and pumped forward, the smacking of his sac against her slick flesh forcing a deep moan from her.

  Her voice came slurred with pleasure. “You’re so deep.”

  And he was; every crevice of her pussy was stretched to hold him, sheathing him like a custom-made glove. There was no way to ignore how perfectly they fit together.

  Aidan paused with one hand at her hip, the other at her shoulder. His chest rose and fell in great bellows against her back, which drew her attention to his quivering thighs. She felt as if she were rattling apart. It appeared he felt the same.

  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?”

  “No.”

  A shudder moved through her. She’d just made love to a man she couldn’t see. It was so bizarre, she didn’t know how she was supposed to feel. “What does a Dream Guardian do?”

  “It depends,” he said, his voice rough. “There are a lot of us, and we’re divided into certain specialties. Each Guardian has their strengths. Some are tender and offer comfort to those who grieve or are deeply saddened. Others are playful and fill in dreams of sports heroes or reality television shows.”

  “I suppose you’re one of the tender ones,” she guessed, remembering his compassion and caring, and finding peace in that. She didn’t know what he looked like, but she knew what type of man he was, and that’s what really mattered.

  Aidan stiffened beneath her.

  Her brows rose. “What?”

  “I’m Captain of the Elite Warriors,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  I keep the bad guys away, he’d told her that first night. But he’d been kind to her. Tender.

  “What’s an Elite Warrior?”

  “I’m assigned to protect Dreamers who have recurring Nightmares.”

  “Like a bodyguard?”

  “More like a military rescue.”

  “That’s why you’re so big.”

  He stared at her intensely. “I’m a large man, yes, but I don’t know what you see when you look at me, Lyssa. Your dream is fabricating my appearance. Dreamers can’t see Guardians. Your subconscious fills in the gaps.”

  “Oh.” Lyssa sank deeper into the scarves. “Why do I need an Elite Warrior in my dreams? I don’t have nightmares.”

  “The door you built is a formidable one. We had to come in, and I’m the muscle.”

  Her short laugh held no humor. “That’s why you came back tonight? Because I wouldn’t open the door to the other…Guardians?”

  “Yes.”

  Her stomach knotted. She had totally believed that line about him worrying about her. “Why do they want to come in here so bad? There’s nothing to see.”

  Aidan sat up and rested against a pile of pillows. Aside from the silver chain and stone pendant he wore, he was unabashedly naked. The most luscious masculine animal she had ever seen. Even as she applauded her imagination, she mourned that he wasn’t real.

  His male perfection was all in her head.

  “Nightmares are real,” he said. “Just not in the way humans have come to see them.”

  “Huh?” She waited for him to speak, and then listened with damp palms as he explained abbreviated space, space-time, and planes of existence in a voice devoid of inflection.

  Since the Nightmares had discovered the human subconscious through the fissure created by the Elders, the battle was never-ending. The dreams created in the human mind had given Nightmares a new power source on which to thrive. Fear, fury, misery—these were easily aroused through dreams, and fed them so well.

  “Too many times I’ve seen the dark circles under human eyes, the slumping shoulders, the weary shuffling stride.” Aidan’s hands fisted rhythmically in his lap. “Over the years the Elders have tried to close off the tiny crack between the Twilight and your world, but there’s no way, Lyssa. We can only do damage control.”

  And here she’d thought she was an expert on dreams after a lifetime of struggling with hers. How little she knew.

  “We fight back as best we can to protect you,” he continued. “We’ve become phantasms, taking on the form and nuances of each individual subconscious.”

  Lyssa considered everything carefully, and then asked, “Why do I have to know all this? I’m assuming most people don’t?”

  “Most people don’t,” he agreed. “But you’re stronger than most. You recognize all guises, and you can keep us out if you want to. I’ve been asked to convince you to open the door. Since you understand that this is a dream, which is rare, but not unheard of, I decided to give it to you straight.”

  “They just want to come in, look around, and see if there are any Nightmares lurking in here? Isn’t that your job?”

  Aidan was silent a moment, then, “They’re looking for someone, Lyssa. They’re not sure who they’re looking for, but there are certain traits that raise alarm. You bear some of the traits. I worry that too many years of searching have made them overzealous. I want you to be careful when they visit with you. I would prefer that you reveal as little as possible without appearing suspicious. I’m telling you this because I want you to be prepared.”

  She nodded. “Okay. We should come up with a secret signal or something. If I start talking too much, you can warn me.”

  “Lyssa…” He inhaled sharply.

  Her stomach churned when Aidan didn’t say anything further, which said so much.

  He wasn’t coming back.

  “I see.” She’d felt his expertise in his touch, had tasted it in his kiss, would have been fucking him blind right now if she hadn’t needed a few minutes to recover. The man knew his way around a woman’s body. “Is seduction part of your job, too?”

  His jaw tightened. “Sometimes.”

  She winced at the sharp pain she felt in her chest. “A lover and a fighter.”

  “A warrior,” he corrected grimly.

  “A man of many talents.” Blowing out her breath, Lyssa rolled away from him and crawled to the edge of the bed, hiding her quivering lower lip. “Go ahead and tell them I’ll let them in.”

  She felt him move behind her, and then his large hands were on her shoulders. A moment later his lips were pressed to her skin. She jerked away and left the bed entirely, wishing there was a robe or something to cover herself with. To her surprise, one appeared on the chair by the door, and she caught it up before she stepped outside…

  …where the sun was shining on a sandy beach. Frozen in place with surprise, she was galvanized into movement when she heard Aidan approaching.

  She pictured a thatched-roof bar a little ways up the beach and strode toward it rapidly. She needed a drink. Bad. “I think I’ve got the hang of this dreaming thing. Thanks for your help.”

  “Perhaps it was fear that held you back,” he said behind her, following. “At some point the Nightmares must have really frightened you. You chose the safety of darkness and the door over your dreams.”

  “Good to know. Guess I’m cured.” When he materialized before her, she screamed and jumped back. “Damn it, you scared the shit out of me! Don’t do that.”

  Aidan’s dark gaze roiled with powerful emotions she couldn’t identify. “Don’t turn away from me after what we just did.”

  The simple statement started a quiver in her belly that expanded into a full-fledged shiver of awareness. All she wanted in the world—this one and her own—was to step into his embrace and feel safe while she sorted this all out in her mind. But she was feeling things she shouldn’t be. Longing, possessiveness, desire…it would only get worse the longer he stayed. “What do you want me to do, Aidan?”

  Something hot flickered in his eyes when she said his name. “Come back inside. We still have time.”

  “No.” Her voice was shakier than she would have wished. Despite the short length of their association, he had been her comfort, her rock to lean on. Losing him was going to be painful. It already hurt. “It would be better if you just left.”

  “Why?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  “I’m not into pity fucks.” She actually heard his teeth grind, and she was glad. Her emotions were all out of whack; it was only fair that his should be, too. “I’ve been protecting myself just f
ine over the last however-many years. I don’t need you to screw me into the Twilight, or whatever the hell it is you do.”

  His nostrils flared. “You’re upset. I sympathize. But you know that’s not the reason we had sex.”

  “I do? Hmm…” She turned around and pictured her hut bar in the opposite direction.

  “Lyssa—” His grip stopped her so fast, she was yanked to a halt.

  “Lyssa! For god’s sake, wake up!”

  Violent shoving brought her to the awareness of her mother’s voice and her taupe-colored living room.

  “Okay, okay,” she muttered, rubbing her eyes.

  Her mother hovered over her. “Christ, Lyssa! You scared me to death.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve been asleep for almost twenty-four hours without moving a muscle. I had to check on you every hour or so just to make sure you were breathing!”

  Closing her eyes, Lyssa sighed and stretched, finding every muscle sore from hours of being in the same position.

  “I slept in your bed last night because I was afraid to leave you.”

  Her mother had fussed and poked at her most of her life, searching in vain for a physical cure for what Lyssa had always suspected was a mental ailment.

  “I’m okay, Mom.” And for the first time in years, she really felt as if that was true. She wasn’t sure why she felt that way; she just knew that she did. Like something was settled or resolved. A long-standing question answered. “What time is it?”

  “Just after eight.”

  “Ugh!” Tossing off the chenille throw, Lyssa stood with a grimace. “I’m going to be late for my first patient if I don’t get going.”

  “How the hell can you even think about going to work when you were a vegetable only a minute ago?” The effect of the chastising hands on her mother’s hips was ruined by bed-head.

  “Work’s all I’ve got left, Mom. I’m not letting that go to hell along with my health and my love life.”

  “I’m calling your doctor and telling him he needs to run more tests.”

  Lyssa was already halfway up the stairs. “No way.”