Reality caught us hard.
Stone walls, iron bars, and black sheets.
I couldn’t get my bearings as I glanced around the cage where all of this had started. Everything was the same but also...couldn’t be more different.
I groaned as Lucien shifted behind me...insideme.
My eyes flew wide as I looked down to his arm lashed around my waist, pulling me against him as we lay on the mattress. Our clothes were still mostly on—my nightgown pushed up my legs and his trousers pushed down to his hips.
Unlike in the fantasy where we’d been naked and Lucien took me on all fours, here we were partially dressed and spooning.
“What...?” He cleared his throat, his cock twitching inside me. “How...?” He didn’t finish either of those questions as we fell silent and took stock of how this had happened.
I had no answers to the thousand questions of what was happening to us. I tried to speak but only managed a shaky whimper.
My body felt deliciously alive, and the terrible weakness was mostly gone.
The ice was back where it belonged, encasing my heart with wintery potential.
I caught snippets of his thoughts as he tried to unriddle what all of this meant.
I shifted, making Lucien groan behind me. His arm tightened, pulling me flush against him. “We’re still...connected.”
His hand slid down my stomach, possessive and gentle at the same time. “I have no idea what we just did or how, but...I feel as if I’d just had the best medicine of my life.” The tiniest flames danced around his fingernails, flickering against the white of my nightgown. “The fire is back. I don’t feel so pathetically weak anymore. And—” A huge yawn cut him off just as a wall of heavy exhaustion smacked into me.
The sedative afterglow of multiple orgasms turned into theworst sort of anaesthesia.
I tried to fight it.
Tried to stay awake.
We needed to untangle ourselves and run, but...my eyelids grew too heavy.
I had just enough energy to tap Lucien’s scorching arm and mumble, “Now what’s happening? I can’t keep my eyes open. I—”
Too late.
The darkness stole me.
Chapter Fourteen
I WOKE WITH A VIOLENT JERK, my entire body burning as if I’d been thrown into a bonfire.
My eyes flared wide, narrowing against an unfamiliar room.
Where the hell am I?
For a second, I had no memories, no bearings, but then Rook mumbled in her sleep, and everything slammed back.
Brimstone. Leaving Whisper. Rook being shot. Unable to stomach food. And then...sex. Mental and physical sex that led to both of us passing out as if we’d been drugged.
Glancing down, I traced my fingers from her belly to her breast, cupping her through her nightgown. I shuddered with vicious gratitude because...she was cold.
Wondrously, freezingly cold which meant...it hadn’t been the craziest dream of my life.
Pulling her tighter against me, I buried my face in her neck and breathed her in—frost and sex and that faint trace of winter honey that was uniquely her.
The agonising ache in my chest eased a bit.
