“Ex,” he amended.

“No.” She fought against the drugging pleasure, to wake up. She gave his hand a halfhearted push. “Stop it. I can’t keep my eyes open when you do that.”

“So don’t.” He smoothed his palm over her head. He liked how her voice got soft with drowsiness. He liked that she didn’t smell of fear any longer, that her scent was tinged with a lingering faint arousal. “Go to sleep,” he murmured.

“Gotta meet that deadline. Set an alarm.” She tried to struggle to her feet.

As she was rising off her knees, he hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her down on top of him. It wasn’t hard. She was off balance to begin with and wobbly with fatigue. She oophed and tried to push off him, but he wrapped his arms around her and trapped her in place.

“Lie down,” he ordered. “I’ll make sure we leave on time. Go to sleep.”

She collapsed on him like a house of cards. He pulled her head into a comfortable spot on his uninjured shoulder. “Quit giving me orders,” she yawned. Under the guise of shifting to get comfortable, she rubbed her cheek against his chest, wallowing in the sensation of warm, powerful male. It seeped into the cold cracks that ran deep inside her. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“Sleep,” he told her.

Just like that, from one moment to the next, she was asleep.

No one was around to witness when he experimented with pressing his lips against her forehead.

He decided he liked that too.

SIX

The bed shifted underneath her. Pia yawned and rubbed her nose. Why was the mattress so uneven and warm? Her eyes popped open. The room was full dark. All she could see were shadows.

She was sprawled on Dragos, their legs entangled. She stiffened and tried to push herself upright, but the heavy arms encircling her refused to let her go. And her head was pinned. She gave a tug. He had wrapped her hair around one thick wrist.

Gravel seemed to be lodged in her throat. She croaked, “You think I would try to run away again while you slept? I wouldn’t leave you when you were hurt.”

He unwound her hair and let go of the ends, smoothing it back. “I didn’t sleep.”

This time when she pushed onto her elbows, he let her, allowing one arm to loop across her waist. Not going to think about that nap. Not going to think about sleeping in his arms or how shocking it was that it felt so good. Whoops. She just thought about it.

“How could you not sleep?” she asked. “Did you feel too sick?”

“It’s not my usual habit, but I can go days at a time without eating or sleeping if I need to.” He kept his voice at a sedate pitch. The sound rumbled through her. “I have no intention of sleeping in the Elven demesne. Besides, all I needed to do was rest.”

“How do you feel now?” Too groggy to keep her head up, she sank down again and rested her cheek on his pectoral. Mmm. Satin skin over iron.

“Better. My shoulder feels like ice, but the pain has eased. I’ll be able to get up and move around, but I don’t think I’ll be able to shift until well after their deadline expires. The magic of their poison was well constructed.”

She ran light fingers over his injured shoulder. The area felt feverishly hot, much warmer than the rest of his body, not icy. “That doesn’t hurt?”

“No.” He captured her hand and brought it up to his mouth. She stiffened as he slipped her forefinger into his mouth and sucked.

Just like that the intense lust from the dream came roaring back. His hold on her waist shifted her until he brought them into better alignment, pelvis to pelvis. The evidence of his arousal jutted long and thick under his jeans. She groaned and tried to wriggle away. All she managed to do was rub their bodies together.

She choked, “Stop it.”

He took his time sucking his way to the tip of her finger. His dark voice brushed her like a lazy tiger rubbing against her skin. “Why? You wanted me in the dream. I wanted you. I have smelled your arousal since. Only a few hours have passed. We have time before we need to leave.” He licked her palm, a sensation that shot all the way down her body to throb between her legs.

She gasped. “What happened was in a dream!”

“So? We both still want it.” His lips moved to the delicate skin of her wrist.

The pulse at her wrist beat a frantic tattoo against his mouth. His tongue traced the vein. She was not just shocked but bewildered. He was such a sledgehammer kind of male, but this sensuality had a knowledgeable gentleness she didn’t know how to handle. She had to work to find her outrage again. When she did, it was whimpering in delight.

“The dream was a spell! It wasn’t real.”

“It was the truth,” he said. Long fingers began to tease their way under the hem of her shirt to trace along the skin at her lower back. “The beguilement brought you what you wanted most.”

Her skin prickled and she felt suffocated. She struggled hard to get free and meant it this time. For a moment his arms tightened on her as if he would refuse to let her go. Then his hold loosened.

She scrambled to her feet, collided with the coffee table and knocked something over. Wetness soaked the carpeting at her bare foot. She had kicked over the jug of water she’d used to sponge him clean.

She held out her arms as she went forward until she came to the wall. Her fingers slid along the smooth plaster until she found a switch. She flipped the switch and then stood with both hands braced on the wall, eyes squeezed shut against the sudden light.

Her face felt like it was on fire. Keith and the horrible mistakes she made. Ignoring her mother’s advice, opening up and sharing, all because she wanted to be in love and to be loved, she wanted to be trusted and to trust. All because she wanted a lover and a mate, a real home, a safe house, a place she didn’t have to run from, and dare she think it, maybe someday even children.

The muscles in her arms were too tight. She rubbed her damp cheek on her shoulder.

The couch springs protested. She felt rather than heard him come up behind her. An inferno of energy boiled along her hypersensitive nerves.

Dragos pressed his body to her back. He pressed his hands over hers, so much bigger and darker than the slender feminine ones that trembled underneath. Her distress bruised the air. He lowered his cheek to the top of her head.

His Court was at times a tumultuous place. Some were mated. Many were single. All the Wyrkind lived with a frank sensuality, and all too easily hot emotions ran to violence.

He took a female on occasion, but his couplings were always simple. It was straightforward sex with no complications. But he had been a witness to many other couplings that were much more complex. Hurt feelings, misunderstandings, jealousies, broken hearts, infidelities, passions—it all played out in a backdrop to Court life.

This was a complex female, no simple sex for hire. He considered what to do, examples of things he had seen, discarding one thing after another. Then he said in a quiet voice, “I don’t understand. Will you please explain to me?”

Damn him. Now he knew that saying “please” got to her, he was starting to say it. She shook her head.

He sighed. “I am old and I am often cruel and calculating, and it is not safe to be around me when I am in a rage. I do not apologize for what I am. I am a predator, and I rule other strong-minded predators. But I did not mean to distress you.”

She calmed as she listened to him. The horrible sense of exposure faded. He surrounded her with his body, and his energy engulfed her.

He didn’t understand. He thought the dream was just about sex. If it were only that simple. She leaned her head back and he moved so that she rested in the hollow where his neck met his shoulder.

She said, “The dream was manipulative. It was outside of reality. You might choose to do things in dreams that you might not choose to do when you’re awake.”

“But it was true?” His breath puffed the delicate hairs at her temple.

How strange that he was uncertain. He wore arrogance with much more ease. That shouldn’t be as charming as she thought it was. She really wasn’t right in the head.

“There was a truth in the dream,” she admitted. “It is not as obvious as just sex.”

“There is more to it than I thought.” She could hear the smile in his voice. He sounded . . . pleased.

“You’re glad about that?” she asked, unable to keep from smiling too.

“You’re complicated. I am not bored.”

She pulled one hand out from under his and covered her mouth. “I’m so happy I could entertain you, Your Majesty.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “So, what is this reality that is not as obvious as the sex in the dream? How does it connect to the arousal I have sensed from you?”

She reveled in the strength of those arms and decided to let herself enjoy being held. No analysis, second-guessing motives, no looking forward, no expectations. “Is that how I really feel? How much might be left over from the dream spell? You’re complicated too, and I’ve been pretty damn scared of you off and on today. And for me, attraction is one thing, but making l—” She drew in a sharp breath. “But sex,” she amended, “is quite another. I have to have a certain level of trust in someone before I can choose to be that vulnerable.”

“You trusted Keith,” he said.

She couldn’t keep from flinching. “Yes, I did. And he betrayed me. And that still hurts.”

“The beguilement from the dream has worn off,” he told her. “Whatever you feel is real, and what you choose to do about it is all your own.”

He pulled her hair to one side and put his lips to the bite mark at her neck. Her pulse fluttered like a butterfly and her breathing hitched. His arms tightened and then he let her go and stepped back. She turned around, disheveled and bewildered. Graceful bare feet gleamed pale against the neutral beige of the carpet, her toes painted a glossy red. She looked delicate and delicious and his groin tightened.

He ignored it. “We should go.”

She nodded, trying to tuck flyaway strands of hair behind her ears. “Yes, of course we should. How long did we rest?”

“Couple hours.” He turned away, fighting to control his reaction to her.

“There’s time to clean up, then. If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower and change. I won’t be long.” She hurried down the hall.

Dragos angled his head and watched her leave. He still didn’t like that image of her walking away.

Someday you will trust me. Then you will tell me what more there was to the dream and why you were so shaken. You will not be afraid of me and you will tell me all your secrets. And then you will be mine.

He smiled. She didn’t realize he was still on the hunt. Good. It was better that way.

In the bedroom, Pia grabbed the second new outfit she had bought along with underwear, a pair of blue jean capris and a lemon yellow stretch T-shirt with capped short sleeves and a scalloped neck. Only one more new outfit to go. At the rate she was dirtying things, she was going to have to do laundry or buy more clothes.

She closed the bathroom door, feeling silly as she locked it. Like that and the U.S. Army would keep him out if he chose to get in. She shook her head, started the shower, stripped and stepped in.

The warm water gushed over her head and body, soothing achy, tired places. She hissed when it hit her abraded knees. Working fast, she washed her hair with proper shampoo, sighing with relief as she worked conditioner through it and the ropy length became softer and more manageable. Then she soaped the rest of her body, rinsed, dried and dressed. She brushed her hair and pulled it back with a yellow scrunchie, threw the toiletries back into the shopping bag and stepped out of the bathroom.

Dragos had stretched out on the rumpled covers. He made the queen-sized bed look small and cramped. She ran into an invisible wall when she saw him. He lay on his back, eyes closed, one hand behind his head, the other resting on that long washboard stomach.

He had removed the bloodstained shirt and wore only his jeans and boots. The shoulder wound still shone white against the bronze skin. His ribs rippled under heavy pectorals and dark ni**les puckered against the cool air. He had washed too, the inky sprinkle of hair still damp on that truly inhuman chest. His head was damp too. She caught the scent of clean male.

As with every room he entered, he owned the bedroom just by being there. She shivered and rummaged for her last clean shirt, a long-sleeved button-down. After she tore off the tags, she put it on and wore it like a jacket, since the hoodie had had such a short life span.

His presence was too overwhelming. She could not bring herself to sit near him on the edge of the bed. Instead she crouched to slip on anklet socks and her tennis shoes. Her gaze darted from Dragos to her various belongings scattered around the room. She looked at her backpack with the documentation for three new identities and almost a hundred thousand dollars. Then she looked back at the supine male.

“Are you ready?” she asked. She sounded as winded as if she had run a marathon. She went around the room and collected her belongings, stuffing them into another shopping bag.

“Yes,” he said. He took a deep breath and sighed. It was an awe-inspiring sight. She licked her lips and tried to think of other things. “You don’t need those other identities,” he told her. “I like the name Pia Alessandra Giovanni. It suits you.”

Shit. Three very expensive well-constructed identities down the toilet. And the others were back in New York. “I can’t believe you!” she exploded. “That was my stuff! You had no right to look at it.”

“Of course I did,” he said.

How did he manage to come up with that? She threw one of the shopping bags at him. He must have been watching her with his eyelids slit. In a movement that looked lazy yet was very fast, he caught the bag with one hand. “I bet you counted the money too!” she snapped.