Chapter Eleven
Time evaporated into a pulse of techno music, abundant drinks, and heightened senses. Our laughter turned to teasing and flirtation, Cute Guy got cuter, and the next thing I knew, I was on my back, in my bed, with him between my legs.
His rampant-puppy lovemaking confirmed his inexperience, but I didn’t care. It felt good to be worshipped by his lips, his hands and eager body. My limbs tingled with excitement, my mind was free from turmoil, and my core thrummed with an ecstasy I’d long forgotten.
The glow of his eyes turned a vivid shade of violet as we climaxed together, pushing the moment to physical and mental oblivion.
Hell, sex whilst on Q was delicious. I remembered why taking it had been so damn addictive.
Over the years, the number of guys I’d been intimate with whilst under the influence could’ve been deemed shameful.
It had become its own addiction caused by another.
At first, the closeness and intimacy were what I’d craved, but years later, after I’d sobered up, I realised the sex was compensation for the loss of my Damson.
Subconsciously, the regret had started as far back as when I was eighteen.
I pushed the thought away as the height of rapture eased. Sleep quickly swept in, only for me to wake hours later in purple-tinted darkness. I glanced across my pillow. Cute Guy lay beside me deep in slumber, and I tried to get back to sleep.
When a humming voice floated through the silence, I opened my eyes and sat up, wondering if what I was hearing was real. A familiar sensation akin to déjà vu washed over me as I registered the softer tint of the night lights trickling in from the lounge; the floral fragrance of lilac wine…
Slipping from my bed, I grabbed a vest top and a pair of knickers and dressed quickly. I knew who was there, who was lounging at my dining table. This was a dream but, somehow, it was playing out a little differently than usual.
As I crossed the threshold into my lounge, the humming stopped, and a tenor voice drawled from the table, “Remi. We need to talk.”
I peered at the silver-haired God who audaciously sipped wine from one of my wineglasses. Dressed in his dark suit with ornate silver stitching, he wore the same suave expression that relentlessly irritated me.
Narrowing my eyes at him, I grumbled, “You always need to talk. Maybe you should get yourself a therapist.”
The Damson God chuckled. “Someone has a sharp wit about them tonight. Perhaps it’s an effect of all the Q roaring around your system.”
I ground my teeth together, ashamed of myself for stooping so low; angry at him for bringing it up. At least my shoulder didn’t hurt anymore. But then again, this was a dream. Could I feel pain in a dream? Surely only emotions plagued the mind during such a time.
“If you don’t want people to feast off the drugs your planet provides,” I bit back, “perhaps you shouldn’t have created them.”
“I didn’t,” he hummed, clearly amused. “That was my darling Dyana’s design. Being the deity of harvest and fertility, she created it for my Damsons, and my Damsons alone.”
Incredulously, I laughed. “So, in all your wisdom and godly good-doings, you’re telling me, you and your besties never intended Q to be used as a life-saving medicine?”
“No.” He smirked. “Consuming too much in any form will cause the same detriment as The Quoram Effect. Your doctors and scientists simply haven’t worked that out yet.”
Baffled, I gaped at his smugness. “But it causes no ill effects to Damsons?”
“That is correct.”
I shrugged. “I guess I’m entitled, then.”
“Oh, Remi. You’re not technically a Damson, are you?”
Fire roared upwards, swamping my body with a furnace of heat. And to add insult to injury, in his usual, irritatingly calm manner, he chuckled. “I see that statement has riled you.”
I growled—literally growled. Rage fizzled across my shoulders, my heart pounding with the icy pulses of resentment.
I wanted to wake up, but I was trapped in this dream until Mr Make-Me-Feel-Like-Shit won the conversation with a show-stopping comment that would probe my thoughts for the entire day that followed.
Huffing, refusing to bite, I strode to the table and poured myself a glass of wine.
“What I’d like to know—”
Here we go again. I rolled my eyes, slugging back half the glass.
“—if it riles you so much, why is there a man, who I’d like to point out isn’t your Damson, currently in your bed smothered in your pheromones?”
Almost choking, I wiped my mouth with my right arm, noticing the area around my wrist was pulsing with a silver glow. “As you clearly have not absorbed any of my comments from our previous conversations—”
“I assure you I have.”
“—my Damson rejected me nine years ago. And there are no rules against me taking another consenting adult to my bed.”
“This isn’t about the law of society, Remi. This is about the law of the heart. Of the soul.”
“Torz doesn’t love me like that!”
“So, you admit that he does love you.”
The charming, godly figure swirled the lilac liquid around his glass, the smirk plastered across his face triumphant. When I didn’t answer, his strange violet eyes flicked my way, satisfied with the gape locked in place on my lips.
“I…” I’d never considered the idea that Torz held anything deeper than friendship for me, but friendship was a form of love. Would that grow? Would that develop into something more for him, like it had for me? But surely, I would’ve known. I would’ve sensed it.
All I’d ever been to him was his friend, his colleague, his loyal lieutenant.
Gods, who was I kidding? I was his fucking Damson.
No, no!
“Stop messing with my head!” I slammed the glass on the table, sloshing the liquid over the sides. “Why are you so damn obsessed with my failed relationship with him?” I stomped over to my standard place during these dreams—by the curved window.
“Failure is only an outcome if one tries, Remi.”
I stared across the vacuum outside, at the tiny windows on the other side of Delta Ring, wondering where Torz was, if he was asleep, if he was wide awake, trifling through solutions to solve the dilemma he was facing.
With the Q in my system, I was numbed to our connection—I couldn’t sense him in this state.
It had been another reason why I kept using it all those years ago.
“I need to move on,” I muttered.
The deity released an exasperated sigh, drawing it out incessantly. “Then perhaps, Remi, my dear, you should.”
It wasn’t something I expected him to say. A part of me was horrified by his quick resolution. And when warm hands rounded my waist, a flash of dark hair catching in the window’s reflection, I questioned if this wasn’t a dream after all, and I was still high.
Tender, moist lips trailed down my neck and across my shoulder. I was disgusted at myself for not learning Cute Guy’s name. He was young, but he was sweet, and from what I could remember from earlier that evening, he was smart and made me laugh.
Gods, have I even told him my name?
Closing my eyes, I leaned back into his warmth. “My name’s Remi, by the way.”
Nudging my ear with his nose, he chuckled. “I know what your name is. It’s carved across my soul.”
Every muscle froze.
That voice…
Those words…
My heart palpitated, afraid I was imagining who was standing behind me. But how could he be here?
With desperation seeping through my bones, I turned to find eyes so familiar dancing in a storm of brown and caramel and green. A sultry desire poured from them as he tucked a piece of hair behind my left ear before trailing his hand down the column of my neck.
“I love it when you wear your hair down.” He smiled, his gaze searching my face with a tenderness ten times more fervent than I’d ever witnessed from him. “You’re more beautiful than you give yourself credit for.”
Pfft. Torz would never say that.
Would he?
“Shut up!” I pushed at his chest, confused…no, terrified with what was happening. I’d never had a dream like this before. It felt so real. I could feel the warmth of his breath, the heat of his hands. And those hands reached for me again.
“Rems.”
“No.” I knocked them away. “Get out of my head!” My eyes frantically searched the room behind him, unable to find the deity adamant to bring me to my knees—the interfering god who wanted me to accept he was right, that I needed this man standing in front of me.
But didn’t I know that already?
“Rems.” Torz cupped my face, bringing his lips so close I could taste them. “You need me. I need you.”
I quivered, allowing those soft, warm lips to touch mine. I savoured the two seconds of heaven, but a part of my mind screamed, and I pushed him away, only for him to stop my hands with his, eyes flaring with a mixture of confusion, anger, and heated longing.
Every time I pushed, he blocked my aim with his forearm. Every time I stepped forward, he took a step back, never once breaking eye contact. Never once backing down.
His growing smile doused me with a frustration that brimmed on hunger, and, oh fuck! The temptation…
The back of Torz’s legs hit the table, and he caught my advancing left fist, then my right.
The strength of his arms pulled me into him, and my breath hitched as he peered down at me with a hooded twinkle in his eye.
His warmth radiated through my vest top, the hardness of his abdomen pressing into mine with defiance.
“Do you ever stop fighting?” His gravelly tone lit a fire within me, and in one swift move, he swung me around and leaned in, my ass now on the glass table, my bare legs straddling his hips.
I’d never felt dominated by him before, but right now, his presence prowled over me with a formidable power that both scared and excited me. Heat pooled between my legs, a coil of want tightening deep inside me, and I knew…I knew I had to have him.
“For you?” I locked my eyes with his, my fingers reaching round his neck and clasping his hair. “I’ll never stop.” Pulling his face to mine, I devoured his lips, groaning as he opened his mouth, plunging his tongue into mine.
His hands groped my hips, yanking them to the edge of the table, meeting his covered arousal with a force that made me gasp.
He teased and rubbed, and I panted for air, my head lolling backwards, leaving his lips to kiss and suck at the skin of my neck.
His left hand scaled my torso, lifting my vest top and sweeping his thumb over the swell of my breast. A tingling lay in its wake, heightening every sense, every emotion, every breath.
I cursed on a whisper as my muscles gave out, my back becoming flush with the cold surface of the table.
Torz’s lips travelled lower over my now exposed breasts, and I arched into him, powerless under his touch.
The warmth of his fingers trailed over my hip, slipping the fabric of my knickers down my thighs, and my hips bucked and writhed as those torturous lips moved closer to where I wanted them.
Hissing back a moan, I threaded my fingers through his thick hair. “Don’t stop,” I whispered, well aware I had fallen promiscuously into the lustful abyss of this dream.
It was all in my head—I knew it was—but I didn’t want it to end.