“G.G.,” she began, but paused when he suddenly took her hands in his.
“I’m sorry,” he said glumly. “I know I have to do something about this. I’m becoming obsessed with you to the point that I’m afraid of what I’ll do. Every night when I pick up H.D. I’m fighting the urge to drag you into my arms, strip you naked, and explore every inch of your beautiful body with my tongue.”
Ildaria swallowed, her body responding to the image.
“The only thing stopping me is that you’re my employee, an immortal, obviously not interested, and could easily kick my ass for even trying to kiss you. Never mind the sexual harassment suit,” he added with a wry grimace. “It’s gotten so bad that last night I spent most of my time at work fantasizing about how I could do that for real. Seriously,” he insisted when she blinked in surprise. Then he squeezed her hands almost painfully before dropping them and whirling to stride several steps away. His voice thick with shame, he confessed, “I was actually fantasizing on a way to do it. I thought maybe if I got my hands on blood from someone with Rohypnol in their system, I could knock you out, drag you to my apartment, and chain you to my bed and—” He bowed his head in shame. “I’m losing my mind, Ildaria. I can’t stop thinking about you, and the more I think about you, the more I want to—”
G.G.’s words stopped abruptly as he turned to look at her.
Ildaria stared back, slowly realizing that her view of him had changed. She’d been standing just moments ago, but now was flat on her back. Glancing down, she saw that she was lying on a bed in the middle of the club room, naked and chained. Judging by the slack-jawed expression on G.G.’s face now, he hadn’t put her there. But his admission had. It had turned her on when he’d talked about having her naked and chained to his bed, and her subconscious had changed the dream situation to suit.
“God, I’m turning into a sick bastard,” G.G. breathed, moving toward the bed.
“No. You’re not,” Ildaria whispered. Her heart was thundering in her chest. Her subconscious might have put her there, but that didn’t mean she was comfortable being naked and staked out. In reality, she was equal parts excited, anxious, and embarrassed to be in such a position. But mostly she was uncomfortable. Ildaria wasn’t used to being powerless. Not anymore. She hadn’t felt this helpless since—
The brush of his fingers on her calf sent tingles of sensation up her leg and made her thoughts scatter.
“Goddamn, you’re beautiful,” he breathed, his gaze sliding over her with awe.
She found herself holding her breath as he examined her, and then it left in a sigh as he continued along the side of the bed, trailing his fingers up her leg, hip, and stomach. A moan slid from her lips, though, when they crested her breast and brushed over the nipple. It immediately went hard, need pushing her anxiety and discomfort away.
“G.G.,” she breathed, wanting to tell him they were sharing this dream. Wanting to tell him that she wanted him too, but her voice deserted her when he suddenly dropped to sit on the side of the bed and bent to claim her nipple with his mouth.
Pressing her head back into the pillow, Ildaria moaned, her body arching upward invitingly, her wrists pulling at the chains restricting them as she tried to reach for his head. He sucked her nipple into his mouth and lashed it with his tongue before grazing it with his teeth as he let it slip from his mouth.
“Mm,” he murmured, his lips trailing down her breast to the valley between them. “You smell like muffins.”
Ildaria’s eyes popped open, surprise pushing some of her desire aside. Muffins?
“Vanilla and spice. Delicious,” he announced and then his tongue swiped up her second breast and lashed the nipple there. “I love muffins,” he growled before claiming that nipple and suckling it into his mouth now.
Ildaria groaned, promising herself she’d make him muffins as he began to nip and lash at the hard bud, sending bolts of excitement through her body. But then he released that as well and breathed, “You’d hate me if you knew I did this to you in my dreams.”
“No,” she gasped, shaking her head on the pillow as his lips moved over her stomach, sending it rippling.
“Yes, you would,” he said, sounding sad, one hand shifting up to cover her breast and squeeze lightly, the other fanning out over her hip before sliding to her upper leg. “But I swear I wouldn’t drug you or chain you up in real life. I’m losing my mind over you and I know it, but I haven’t completely lost it yet. I’ll do what I have to, to keep you safe. I’ll get away from you, go back to England and—”
“No!” Ildaria protested with horror.
“Shh. You’re just a dream. If you were real you’d be glad,” he muttered and then made sure she didn’t protest further by covering her mouth with his in a hard kiss.
Ildaria resisted for all of a heartbeat, and then gave in and kissed him back. She would tell him after. Immortals did not faint during dream sex. She would tell him afterward that this was a shared dream. She’d tell him that he wasn’t losing his mind, or that if he was she was too, and it was only because they were possible life mates. And then she’d beg him to agree to be hers. She wouldn’t even ask him to turn. She just needed him to be hers. She just—
Her thoughts died as his hand slid between her legs and her body responded, pushing everything but the feel, taste, and need for him from her thoughts. God, she wanted to touch him, Ildaria thought and then the chains melted away, freeing her to touch him.
G.G. moaned into her mouth when her hands slid around him and ran over what she could reach of his back, but he didn’t stop kissing and caressing her until she began to tug at his shirt. Breaking their kiss, he nipped at her lower lip and then retrieved his hand from between her legs and stood to quickly undo the buttons of his dress shirt.
Ildaria watched him, panting, her body aching. A small sigh slid from her lips when the shirt was open and he began to shrug out of it, his tattoos shifting with the movement. He was so beautiful, his chest wide and rippling with muscle. Ildaria had never thought much of tattoos in the past, but had to admit G.G.’s were beautiful, a pattern of black whorls and curved thorns that ran around his upper arms to his shoulder, leaving his chest un-inked. She knew from past dreams that the same pattern ran down his muscled back, following the length of his spine. They looked beautiful on him, and she thought it would be a shame if he were turned and lost them.
Movement distracted her from her thoughts, and she focused in on G.G. as he walked to the foot of the bed. He was watching her as he went, his gaze intense, and she stared back, suddenly holding her breath when he paused between her spread, still chained feet.
“Beautiful,” he murmured and then knelt and placed a kiss on the instep of first one foot and then the other. He began to move up her legs then, licking and nipping at each ankle, and then her calf, crawling onto and up the bed as he went. When he licked and nipped at her inner knees and she gasped, shifted and gave a startled sound almost but not quite a giggle, a smile claimed his lips and he raised his head to look up her body to her raised head.
“Ticklish.” The word was a soft rumble in the silence, but he moved on, kissing and nibbling up her inner thighs, moving so slowly Ildaria thought she’d die from the anticipation of his reaching her core. But he surprised her there, bypassing the aching spot altogether and letting his lips travel to her hips and her stomach instead.
Ildaria moaned in disappointment and then gasped and arched as his lips found her breasts and feasted on first one and then the other. Rasping each nipple, nipping, and then suckling, before lifting to claim her mouth. Groaning, Ildaria kissed him back, her suddenly free feet sliding up the bed so that her knees rose to frame his legs and then she used them to lift her hips against his as he ground into her.
G.G. murmured something she didn’t catch as he broke their kiss, and then raised his upper body as if doing push-ups, and watched her face as he ground his lower body against hers. Ildaria tried to meet his gaze, but her eyes kept closing and her head was starting to twist on the pillow as the pressure inside her built.
“So goddamn beautiful,” he breathed and then suddenly slithered back down her body, pressed her thighs open and buried his face between them to taste her.
Ildaria cried out at the first rasp of his tongue, her body jerking in response, and then tangled her hands in the sheets on either side of her and held on for dear life as he went to work driving her crazy. He did things with his mouth and tongue that had her eyes rolling back in her head, and brought a long ululating sound of need chorusing from her mouth.
It wasn’t the first time he’d done this in their shared dreams, but every time was both a revelation and a struggle. While her hips were thrusting up into the caress, her legs were trying to press closed but being held open by his big hands, and her head was thrashing, shaking back and forth in what might have been taken for denial even as her whole body fought toward the release she knew was coming.
When it hit, she screamed, her whole body convulsing, and her mind briefly insensate with the power of it so that she wasn’t sure she would have been able to give her name if anyone had asked what it was. When she finally regained some of her senses, G.G. was over her, completely nude though she had no idea if he’d stripped or just wished or imagined the clothes away in this shared dream, and then she didn’t care as he was thrusting into her.
Ildaria cried out, her arms and legs wrapping instinctively around him as he filled her. Her body beginning to quiver again as he withdrew and thrust forward over and over. This time when she found her pleasure, he was right there with her, roaring in triumph as he found his own. He collapsed on top of her, and just as quickly tried to roll away, but she held him in place, enjoying his weight on her, holding him as they regained their breath.
Ildaria hadn’t forgotten that she had to talk to him, explain about the shared dreams and tell him that they were life mates. But she waited a few moments for their breathing to slow, and then just as she opened her mouth to speak, the phone rang.