Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
Nothing?
What the hell did he mean—nothing?
“Oh, it was definitely something,” I insisted. “You cried out my name.”
“No.” Lash shook his head, every muscle tight, every movement tense.
Was he calling me a liar or simply in denial? It was hard to tell.
Either way, I knew what I’d heard. There was no mistaking the deep sound of an alpha’s growl as he cried out your name. I would have heard it even if I’d been asleep.
But I hadn’t been.
I’d woken up just seconds before…jolted back into consciousness by my very own vividly erotic dream. One where Lash played my pussy with his fingers like a maestro, while I struggled to keep a grip on the goddamn monster hiding in his pants.
It had been a wildly erotic dream. The most raw and realistic I’d ever experienced. I’d even woken up with his name on my tongue. Though fortunately, my moans had been soft and subdued in comparison to his.
“Um…Yeah, you did.” I assured him. “And it sounded like you were?—“
Faster than I could blink, Lash lunged forward. He covered my mouth as he pressed my spine flat against the stone wall…just like he had in the dream. Except this time, it was his palm cupping over my lips instead of his mouth.
But the same intense fire burned his eyes—raw and strong and darkly passionate.
A shiver ran through me at the sight.
“Stop talking,” he hissed.
Sure.
No problem.
What was a problem, though, was just how aware of his body I was, and how impossible it was to ignore the feel of his fingers pressed against my lips. How I couldn’t seem to pry my gaze away from his.
“Murmph,” I mumbled against the steely grip of his hand. Reluctantly, he eased his hold enough for me to speak. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”
His eyes flashed fire. “I’m not embarrassed.”
He sounded offended, like he hated the idea of being subject to the same messy emotions as the rest of us.
“Then are you worried about the guard?” I asked. “Because I don’t think sound can make it out of here. That stone is pretty thick.”
“I don’t give a shit about Silvan.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Why was he still pinning me to the wall? “If nobody heard us, then?—“
“Us?” I didn’t think it was possible, but Lash’s gaze grew even sharper. “What do you mean, us?”
Shit.
“Nothing,” I rushed to say, shaking my head. “I just...uh…”
My mind spun, desperately searching for a believable excuse, but it was too hard to think with Lash’s body pressing against mine…especially after everything I’d just dreamed about us doing.
The reminder was enough to flood my face with heat. I dropped my gaze, trying to recover what little dignity I had left, but it was too late.
“Felicity.” He growled my name. Fucking growled it. It was the sexiest damn sound I’d ever heard.
I couldn’t resist the call. My eyes snapped back up to the beckoning darkness of his magnetic stare. “Yeah?”
“Why did you say nobody heard us?”
I could have lied, but what was the point? As soon as the sun rose outside, I was as good as dead. Pride wouldn’t save me.
“Fine.” I gave in with a sigh. “I might have had a sexy dream about you, too.”
The creases around Lash’s eyes deepened as he slowly shook his head.
“No,” he groaned, and this time it was clear that while he believed me, he really didn’t want to.
I understood…at least partially. It wasn’t as if I’d asked to spend my last night on Earth dreaming about doing hand stuff with my kidnapper. But it was just a dream and, honestly, not even a surprising one.
“You can’t be that shocked,” I said. “You’re the one who planted the seed in our heads, talking about dirty dreams all night. It was almost inevitable we’d both wake up hot and bothered.”
But apparently, Lash didn’t agree with that line of reasoning. His hold on me seemed to tighten with every word I said.
“Tell me what you dreamed.”
Oh God. My cheeks burned so hot they stung. “That’s none of your business.”
But Lash didn’t care. He pulled me a fraction of an inch closer, making it clear that he was making a demand, not a request. “Tell me.”
My throat worked, trying its best to swallow down the choking sense of shame that was clogging it up.
“I already told you,” I insisted. “It was just a normal, everyday sex dream. Nothing crazy.”
Well, that was a lie. A big one…and Lash could tell.
His eyes narrowed to void-black slits. His lips pressed together, forming a hard, flat line of ire. He wasn’t screwing around. Suddenly, I realized the consequences of not telling him the truth were far more frightening than any potential embarrassment.
“You want all the dirty details? Fine, you perv.” I drew in a steadying breath.
“We started off kissing. You had me pinned up against a wall, but then you carried me over to a pile of animal skins on the ground. We took off each other’s clothes, and I grabbed your, um...
little alpha.” I shot a pointed look down toward his crotch.
“Which my imagination was very generous with, in case you were wondering.”
A low rumble of warning started deep within Lash’s chest.
Apparently, he hadn’t been wondering.
“Right,” I continued. “Well, then you returned the favor, so to speak, and I woke up half a second before crossing the finish line. Which was frustrating as hell, just so you know.”
If my subconscious mind was going to betray me with passionate dreams about mortal enemies, the least it could do was let me finish.
“And you woke up, calling out my name?” he asked.
“Yeah.” There was no point lying about it. “Only a few minutes before you cried out mine.”
For a long moment, Lash was silent. I could only watch as the muscles along his jaw tightened and twitched before he finally opened his mouth again.
“Where were we?”
“I don’t know. Some cave.” I shrugged, ready to stop the description there.
But then the scene started to replay in my head, the details coming to life as vividly as in a movie.
“The cave was bigger than this one…and high up. When I looked out of the opening, I could see for miles over the top of the forest. All the way out to the ocean. Honestly, it was beautiful.”
But Lash didn’t agree.
His face fell, his expression going slack as he slumped back on his haunches. I watched as, like air rushing out of a balloon, he deflated right in front of me—shoulders dropping, fists falling open, gaze shifting down to the cold stone floor. A whispered curse flowed from his lips as he exhaled.
It was strange to see an alpha look so defeated.
Very strange. After chomped fingers and boots to the crotch, this was what broke him? This?
A massively toned-down description of a horny dream?
It didn’t make any sense.
Unless…
“You’re not worried that this was one of your weird mating dreams, are you?”
No, that was ridiculous. Absolutely nuts. So far off the deep end that it wasn’t even worth considering.
So why wasn’t Lash saying any of that?
Why wasn’t he saying anything as he lifted his head back up and stared at me with his hard black gaze?
A cold chill ran up my spine.
“Please tell me that’s not what you’re worried about.” If I sounded a little desperate, it’s because I was. Every second of silence that ticked by felt like a hammer pounding nails into my coffin. “You can’t be serious.”
But he certainly looked serious. There wasn’t a spark of humor in his unblinking eyes. “We shared the same dream, Felicity.”
Now I was the one shaking my head and making denials.
“No, that can’t be true.” I searched my head, frantically searching for a rational explanation. “They might have been similar, but they couldn’t have been exactly the same.”
But Lash was adamant.
“It was the same damn dream,” he growled, moving in dangerously close. Instinct screamed at me to shift away, but where could I go? My back was already pressed against the wall. “The cave. The moonlight. The way we…touched each other.”
Tension threaded through every low, rumbling note of his voice. Hummed in the air around us. Crackled in the slight space between our bodies.
I desperately tried to push away the memory of his touch. How amazing it had felt. How perfect…almost like it was meant to be.
Don’t be ridiculous, I internally chided myself.
It was just a dream. Nothing more.
We’d both fallen asleep in a cave, so we’d both dreamed about one. After walking under the moonlight all night, that part wasn’t surprising either. And as for the hand stuff…well, that one was harder to explain away.
Harder, but not impossible.
After all, we had spent the whole night practically manacled together.
So…What?
Did I really believe that after an evening of light bondage, both our sleep-deprived minds had made the shared leap to mutual masturbation? It seemed unlikely. But was it any more absurd than the idea that ancient goddesses had suddenly decided Lash and I were destined for each other?
And what would be the point of binding us together anyway? I only had a few hours left to live. What fate could we possibly share? It didn’t make any sense.
“I’m just saying—“ I started.
That’s as far as I got.
Before I could draw in another breath, a violent rumbling filled the cave. Both Lash and I snapped our heads toward the sound.
The far wall was moving, slowly inching to the right.
No—not the wall. The door of the prison cell.
It was opening.
A razor-thin sliver of blinding white light cut through the gap, growing wider with each passing second.
“Oh shit,” I cursed, realizing I was wrong. I didn’t have hours left to live, after all.
My time was up. It was later than I’d thought. Morning was here, and as promised, Nelissa had come with the light.