‘‘Let me see.’’ He tilted her hips up. ‘‘Are you ready?’’
His fingers glided from her knees along the tender skin on her inner thighs to the dampness there. With a delicate touch, he opened the lips and dabbed a touch on her clitoris. ‘‘I love your scent, so rich and female. The first time, it was your scent that called me to you.’’
Horrified, she tried to draw her legs together. ‘‘I bathe every night.’’
‘‘I didn’t say you smelled. I said you have a scent that calls to me.’’ His nails skated up and down her thighs, pushing them apart again . . . and they were sharp, almost like claws. Almost a threat. ‘‘Not to any other man. Only to me.’’
‘‘
Are
you a man?’’ The question slipped out, and she regretted it. Regretted injecting reality into the dream.
‘‘I thought I had conclusively proved my manhood to you. Shall I do it again?’’ The hint of warning was gone; he sounded warmly amused, and the finger he pushed inside her was long, strong . . . and clawless.
The impact made her fling her head back, and when he pushed a second finger inside, her hips moved convulsively. ‘‘Please. Lover. I need you.’’
‘‘Do you?’’ Slowly he pulled his fingers back, pressed them in, pulled them out . . . and as he pressed them in, he pinched her clit between his thumb and forefinger.
She screamed. She came. Orgasm blasted her away from this cold, bleak mountainside and into a fire pit. Her thighs clamped around his hand. Red swam beneath her closed eyelids. Heat radiated from her skin.
He laughed, one compelling stroke following another, feeding her madness until she collapsed, shivering and gasping, too weak to move.
He covered her with himself.
‘‘I can’t,’’ she whispered, and her voice shook. ‘‘Not again.’’
‘‘Yes, you will.’’
‘‘No. Please.’’ She tried to struggle, but he stretched out on top of her. Her head was buried in his shoulder; obviously, he was tall. His body, heavy with muscle, pressed her into the cot. His flesh was cool and firm. His shoulders, chest and stomach rippled with vigor, and his heart thrummed in his chest.
Power hummed through him, and he easily held her as he probed again . . . but not with his fingers.
She was swollen with need, and his organ was big, bigger than both his fingers. As he worked himself inside her, she whimpered, her body gradually adjusting to the width, the breadth, and all the while the aftermath of climax made her inner muscles spasm.
He held her wrapped in his arms, clutching her as if she was his salvation.
And she embraced him, her arms gripping him against her chest, her legs clasped around his hips, giving him herself, absorbing . . . absorbing all his ardor, all his need, knowing this was a dream and wanting nothing more.
When the tip of his penis touched the innermost core of her, they both froze.
Darkness held them in a cocoon of heat and sex and emotions stretched too tight for comfort.
Then their passion flashed bright enough to light the night.
He pulled out and pushed back in, thrusting fast and hard, dragging her with him on his quest for satisfaction.
She held on, rapture flowing through her with the heat and intensity of lava.
The tempo built and built until above her his breathing stopped. He gathered himself, rising high above her, holding her knees behind him . . . then plunged one last time.
Ecstasy exploded her into tiny fragments of being. She came, convulsing with pleasure, until she was no longer an austere, lonely workaholic, but a creature of joy and light.
Unhurriedly, he dropped back on top of her, bringing the silk sheets and sleeping bag up to cover them. Reaching down to the floor, he pulled a large blanket over them . . . but no. She touched it with her hand and discovered fur, thick and soft. A skin of some kind, then.
Had he taken her on a trip back in time, back to a century where a man brought the woman he desired proof of his hunting prowess? Wasn’t that a better explanation than madness?
As the perspiration cooled on their bodies, as their breath and heartbeats returned to normal, she realized—nothing had changed. She reclined on her narrow cot in her tent at the foot of
Mount
Anaya
. The darkness still pressed down on her; the sense of wrong in this place still oppressed her. Tomorrow she would rise. He would be gone. And she would go to work, another day spent in hell. And she wept.