The quiet of the cottage held an edge of disappointment to it as Nixy dropped her purse on the recliner in her bedroom and slipped off her shoes. The touch of Kai’s lips against the back of her hand was like a promise branded to her skin. Except, it shouldn’t feel that way. There was no future for them. Being widowed a second time held about as much appeal as repeatedly slamming her hand in a car door. And the age gap between them made being left alone again a frightening reality.
No, it wasn’t reasonable to have anything more than a friendship with him.
Says the woman who is so weirdly attracted to him.
She unzipped her dress, slid it down her legs, and draped it on the chair with her purse. It must be those crazy dreams that made the lines between fantasy and reality blur. Although, after tonight, the older “real” version of Kai had become quite a bit more appealing. And that shirt he wore, dayum. Normally his eyes looked black, but tonight there had been a definite purple hue to them.
Argh, no. Keep things professional.
He’d eventually go back to Bezchi, and then where’d she be? She glanced at the photo on her nightstand.
“It’ll be just you and me again, babe.”
She headed into the bathroom and cranked the faucet to fill the tub, then tugged her girdle and undergarments off, leaving them on the tile floor. They’d be fine there until tomorrow. She climbed into the tub and sank down to recline in the steamy water.
Despite the awkward end to their evening, it had been a wonderful dinner. They’d talked about so much, and Kai had even given her a peek into his childhood. How sad he had never found his soul mate, though. A piece of their conversation surfaced, and she sat up so fast water sloshed over the side.
“He said phoenix.” But that couldn’t possibly mean the same thing as the creature from Earth mythology, could it?
No, that was ridiculous. Kyzel and Rol both resembled hawks or eagles, but that didn’t mean they hovered on air currents hunting rodents for dinner. And Fyad had a definite crowish look going, and she’d never seen him hopping around fresh road-kill or collecting sparkly things, that was for sure.
She relaxed back into the water. Phoenix must just a term for…people who lived in the desert and liked to eat spicy food. Fiery food. Yes, that was it, end of discussion. She wasn’t going to think about it anymore. In fact, after her bath, she was going to read until her eyes couldn’t stay open. Then she was going to fall into a nice deep sleep.
And she absolutely, positively would not dream.
Something about the dream had changed. The pond water was cool around Nixy’s ankles, and the sun was warm on her shoulders. Even the stones lining the bank were hard and cold under her butt. How come she’d never noticed the little sensory details before?
Because this time I’m only wearing my nightie.
She ran her hands over the smooth, silky black fabric of her favorite negligée. One she’d bought after Efrem’s death because she couldn’t bring herself to wear any of the ones he’d made love to her in. Some of the other widows in her support group had looked at her funny when she’d admitted that, but one thing she’d learned was that everyone grieved differently.
Anyway, the winery was beautiful this time. And since this was a dream, she could wear whatever she damn well pleased because no one was here to judge her.
A choked gasp came from behind, and she twisted partway around. “Kai.”
Of course he’d be here, in his usual younger dream form. But what wasn’t usual was his outfit. No shirt or Bezchian flying leathers covered the golden skin of his bare chest, as they did in real life. Just loose white pants riding lower on his hips than she’d ever seen….
Me-ow, Kai.
“Ni-Nixy?” His gaze traveled down to her breasts, and back up. “You look as lovely now as you did at dinner.”
Oh, dear. Her boobs were spilling out of the negligée, and all her body rolls weren’t being contained by her girdle. A burning heat raced to her cheeks and she turned back around to face the pond, crisscrossing her arms over her breasts. Not everyone looked as hot as him in their sleep clothes.
“No.” Kai stepped closer and kneeled at her side. “You are beautiful. I mean it.”
A small huff escaped her. “This is a dream, so you’re saying what I want you to say. Even I know that.”
Surprise flashed in his eyes, which up close like this were still the darkest purple imaginable. “What if I am saying what I want to say?”
“Well, you can’t be. It’s my dream, right?” And she’d prove it to him. She forced her arms to move, reaching up to slide her hands behind his neck, and draw him to her.
It was supposed to have been a slow, lazy kind of kiss. Instead, the moment she touched her mouth to his, a fire of need exploded inside, racing through her with wild abandon, and suddenly it was all tongues in a desperate dance of desire. She pressed against him, and he drew her onto his lap. There was no mistaking the hard length under her butt cheek for anything other than his erection. God help her.
Kai cupped his hand over her breast, tweaking her nipple. A shot of white-hot lust arced straight down between her legs. If there was any question about his intent before, it was gone now.
“God, Kai.” Don’t stop.
He pulled back with a growl, then kissed his way over her jaw and down her neck to her breast. All she had to do was arch just a little and…. The heat of his mouth closing over the hard bud drew a groan from deep inside her. And the way he sucked on it through the thin material had her rocking her hips against his thigh.
A flash of panic spiked in her gut. What was she doing? Things had gone too far, even for a dream. She wasn’t ready for this yet.
I need space…and air…and time to think.
She clasped her hands to either side of his head and force him to break the suction. Confusion clouded his gorgeous eyes.
“I’m sorry.” It was all she could manage to choke out, then she pushed him away.
A tumbling sensation sent her spinning into blackness.
Kai awoke with a hard jerk, as if he had been dream falling out of the sky. Only the soft touch of the mattress under his belly and the faint scent of cleaning soaps from the pillow under his cheek assured him he was not laying broken on the ground. Still, tremors wracked through him and he could not seem to get enough oxygen, no matter how hard he breathed.
“It was a dream. Only a dream.”
But his dream-self had physically responded to Nixy, desired her, and that was completely unexpected. Inappropriate. How could that happen if he was in the hotel penthouse, and she was nowhere near by?
I need to meditate; clear my mind.
He forced his eyes open and shifted his hips to alleviate the pressure of the hard thing pressing against his lower abdomen. Whatever was under him moved too, tugging at his groin. That was not a sensation he had ever experienced before. Had something creeped into his bed as he had slept?
He braced his hands against the mattress, levered his body up, and gazed down. There was nothing on the sheet. But his cock was fully extended, standing straight up, pointing accusingly at him. The evenly spaced fleshy bands of his pleasure rings fluctuated. None of these things had ever happened before. Not to him.
“No.” He drew his legs under him and sat back on his heels. Then he prodded at his erection with his finger, pushing it downward toward its normal position.
It bounced back up, bobbing as though laughing at him.
Panic knotted in his gut and his breathing became erratic. This was wrong, all wrong. A phoenix only responded like this in the presence of their soul mate. But Nixy was not here, so this must be residual from the dream. And she was not his soul mate anyway, so how had this happened?
He had to do something about his…condition…before his daily report to Uri, but what? He let his gaze dart around the room until the bathroom door caught his attention. A shower. Aye, a nice hot shower would relax him.
He crawled across the bed, stretching his wings out far enough to keep his balance. The second his bare feet connected with the short-pile carpeting, he stumbled toward the bathroom.
Wham. Crash.
“Ow.” He retracted his wings and glanced at the bedside lamp now teetering on its rounded side, shade askew. “Sorry. I will fix you later.”
After he had fixed his other problem.
He shimmied through the bathroom door sideways, so as not to bang his wings into the immovable door frame, then pulled the shower lever to the on position. The water flowed from the flat, silver device at the far end of the all-but-useless circular fixture called a bathtub.
Even after all the days he had been here, he had yet to figure out how to fit into the thing comfortably. The best he had managed was to dip one wing in at a time to clean them, then draw them in against his back as tight as possible and soak his body on his hands and knees. In this case, humans were fortunate to not have wings.
Perhaps he and Fyad should return to the Silverstar suite, where everything was sized appropriately for a Bezchian. Even Prime Advisor Rol’s displeasure dimmed at the prospect of taking a real bath again.
Steam flowed around him as he stepped under the miniature artificial rain shower, then gazed down at his still stiff-appendage.
Why is it not going down?
Maybe it needed help. He gave it a push with his finger, again. No, that did not work any better than it had the first time. More force must be required. He wrapped his hand around it and…. Jolts of pleasure had him sucking in a deep breath. Oh, sweet spring breezes, he had heard that cocks could be sensitive when aroused, but like this?
And if he moved his hand just so…. The ridge rings pulsated against his palm like living things, and his abdominal muscles tightened. He closed his eyes and a groan escaped him. What sheer bliss was this?
Nixy.
He opened his eyes and jerked his hand away as though it had been burned. It could not be her. She was not present.
Then explain this.
An anomaly, nothing more. One he could get control over, somehow. He glanced up at the rain disc. If hot water did not fix it, maybe cold water would. He cranked the lever to the other side and the water went from pleasantly hot to steal-his-breath freezing.
A roar of misery lodged in his throat even as his body contracted in a hard shudder. Stinging icy torment, that is what this was. He looked down and almost laughed with relief. Torture or not, his cock was relaxing, softening to its normal position. Clearly his body’s reaction had been caused by a dream only, not Nixy herself. What a relief that there was no chance this would ever happen when she was near him.
A prick of disappointment pinched at his heart, but he tamped it down and shut off the water. Such feelings served no purpose. He gave his wings a shake, expelling a fine spray of excess water onto the bathing room’s walls, then reached for a towel and wiped the nubby material over his body.
Now that he was back in control, he must prepare for his communications with Uri. He dressed quickly, then settled on the desk perch in front of the deep-space communicator. A moment later, it pinged a signal from the most esteemed.
“Greetings, Elder Kai.” Uri’s voice crackled over the tiny speaker, but no visual appeared this time.
It was not unusual to have audio-only on such communiques, even though he had expected a visual call. “Greetings, Most Esteemed.”
“What is your report?”
“The plan to befriend Ms. Vogel is moving forward. She responded positively to the bouquet, and we consumed a meal together at a public place. Also….”
Uncertainty gripped him. Sharing details of the evening seemed somehow wrong. Too personal.
“Also, what?” Uri prompted.
He ran his tongue over his suddenly dry lips. “I believe she is responding much better than we hoped. She has allowed me to infiltrate her dreams.”
The silence from Uri was worrisome, and as it lengthened, Kai shifted on the perch. The communicator box glowed a pale blue, indicating the connection was good, so why was Uri not speaking?
“Most Esteemed?”
“I am here.” Uri’s voice was monotone.
“Is there a problem?”
“I am not certain.” Uri sounded unsettled. “Proceed as you are, but, Kai….”
“Aye?”
“She is human and may think your overtures are more than platonic, so be careful.”
“Aye, thank you, Most Esteemed.”
The blue glow faded as the connection ended, and he hunched his shoulders. In his concern over telling Uri too much, why had it not occurred to him that his revered leader might be keeping something from him as well?