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She shook her head fiercely. “I was never in his covenant.” She stopped abruptly before rattling off a few French curses under her breath. A brief look of disbelief touched her face before her teeth snapped together. Conall’s ears perked up, knowing she’d recalled something important.
Her teeth were still clenched tightly together, her accent much more pronounced, when she said, “I was never in his covenant but my mother was.”
***
Cassandre groaned when she opened her eyes and found herself staring once more at the blue-green waters of the beach.
After the dream, she’d awoken, late of course, and gone to the lab. It had been a slow day, and by six o’clock, she was leaving for her small, though eco-friendly, SoHo apartment. Despite the ridiculous number of hours she’d slept the night before, she barely managed to drag herself to her bed at nine o’clock and was certain it hadn’t taken more than a few seconds for her to fall asleep. The only question she now had was why was she dreaming about the beach…again?
“Because you’ve yet to learn what I have to teach you.”
She wasn’t one to be scared easily, that was Vivienne, but at that moment, Cassandre understood the meaning of “jumping out of one’s skin.” Her hand flew to her rapidly beating heart as her head turned to the sound of the voice.
Pale eyes and a perfectly formed face stared back at her. She blew out a relieved breath before cutting her eyes at him.
“Don’t do that again.”
He shifted ever so slightly on the bed, removing one hand from behind his blond head, and replied in an even tone, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me. You surprised me.”
Thin lips curled upward and he corrected, “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”
She shook her head and allowed her eyes to travel down his body. He was dressed differently this time. Instead of those fitted swim trunks, which she of course hadn’t minded, he wore loose pants that hung a bit low on his hips. His chest was still bare, though she didn’t quite mind that either. Her eyes flew to his face, and she could tell from the raised eyebrows that he knew what she was thinking.
Cassandre blew out a frustrated breath, tugged the thin sheet farther up her body, and stared ahead.
“Why am I still having this dream?” she muttered under her breath. “Better yet, why are you in it?”
Alexander’s laughter, like everything else that came from that man, was beautiful. It started out with a deep rumble, and erupted gracefully from his lips.
“Because you need me as much as I need you.”
If that had been said with any type of sexual reference, she would have jumped from the bed, and begun pinching herself—or so she told herself. But it was said pointedly, as if that were the only possible answer.
“And again, this is not a dream.”
Cassie sighed. She was going to wake up soon and when she did, she was calling her mother and asking her what repetitive dreams meant. Strange. Why did she think to call her mother over the dream? It wasn’t as if Evelyn was particularly superstitious. She’d probably tell Cassandre to stop being paranoid. Her mother, the practical one.
She turned to look at Alexander, “Yeah, okay. If this is not a dream, what is it?”
“This.” The word rolled off of his tongue as he lifted his hands to indicate everything around them. “This is my prison.”
Cassie couldn’t help it. She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and tossed the thin sheet from her body. Her toes were buried in the warm sand when she looked over her shoulder at him. “Some prison.”
She lifted her gaze skyward, hoping she would perhaps catch a glimpse of some exotic, extinct creature.
“Just because a place is beautiful does not make it any less of a prison.”
“Right,” she dragged that word out and shook her head. “So let me get this straight, you know, just so that I can tell my future shrink about this: I’m not dreaming, I’m in your home, which happens to be your prison, and your name is Alexander.”
“Yes.” The bed shifted. “What do you know of the druids?”
“Ah, shit,” Cassie murmured, shaking her head and running a hand across her face. And now the dream was beginning to make sense. Years after college, and she was still being tortured by her Classics course. It had been called “Celtic Lore” and she’d been bored, and because of said boredom, curious. She’d ended up taking the class, hating the professor who rushed through everything and didn’t seem to know much about anything, and had ended up with an A minus in the class. It wasn’t a bad grade, necessarily, but for the neurotic girl who got straight As in everything, it was unacceptable. “If this is my new way of coping with a grade that doesn’t even matter anymore, I seriously need help.”
