CHAPTER 5

ELARA

~~~~~~

He stared at me.

A face I didn’t recognize, and yet those eyes. Those golden eyes. I knew them. I will always recognize them in a room full of thousands.

It was as if the creature from my dreams had simply borrowed a human face. Or maybe my mind had given him one on purpose, to make it easier to want him. To ease the guilt of how much I enjoyed what he did to me in those dreams.

Either way, I wasn’t complaining.

His hand moved to the front clasp of my bra. He brushed the fabric aside slowly, his palm curving around my breast like he already knew its shape. My eyes fell shut and breathing became a foreign thing, something I had to remind my lungs to do. My head tipped back on its own.

When his fingers grazed my nipple, a sound escaped me before I could stop it.

He latched onto my nipple, sucking hard, pulling a gasp and moan from him me. At the same time, he traced the shape of my ribs, my flat stomach, and my hips with his palm, which burned my body.

God! How I love what his hands does to my body… how well he seems to know my body. I loved the way his large hand gripped my waist, how he took his time with my body as though he is trying to memorize it.

When he transferred his attention to my other breast and closed his mouth over my neglected nipple, I moaned again, my hand clutching his head, pulling him even more closer to my breast.

Releasing my nipple with a pop, he looked up at me from beneath heavy lids, those golden eyes dark with hunger that made my thighs press together without a single thought from my brain.

“I’m going to taste you now.” He growled, dragging his tongue slowly across his lower lip. “I can smell how much you want this, Elara. And it’s driving me insane.”

I stilled.

He had spoken. Real words. A real voice, not the soundless hunger of the creature in my dreams, not the silent stare of the one locked away in the containment.

He had spoken before or at least, I thought he had.

Yes, one time, I had assumed they said the word ‘mine’ to me, but for the sake of my sanity, I brushed it away, and chose to believe that my mind was just messing with me.

His lips pulled me back.

He started at my cleavage, dragging slow kisses upward, along the column of my throat, up to the curve of my neck, until his mouth found that spot just behind my ear. And then he stayed there. Nipping. Sucking. Taking his time like he knew exactly what it would do to me.

He did know. That was the unbearable part.

Heat pooled low in my belly. I felt myself growing slick, felt my hips begin to move on their own, rolling, searching, pressing shamelessly against his thigh that rested between my legs. I needed friction. I needed something, anything to relieve the pulsing ache between my legs.

He pulled back abruptly from my neck, and I nearly whimpered at the loss.

His hands found the button of my jeans. He worked it open without hurry, then stripped both my jeans and my black lace panties down my legs, leaving me bare.

He squatted and settled between my thighs, and for a moment he simply stayed there without moving, his face lowered, eyes closed, breathing me in like I was something he had been starving for.

A growl rolled out of him. Deep. Satisfied. Hungry all at once.

His fingers parted me gently, and then his tongue swept through my folds in one long, devastating stroke.

“Fuck!”

The word tore out of me before I could swallow it. My back arched off the surface beneath me, my fingers gripped the edge of the table as he worked me with slow, rolling licks, unhurried, maddening, tracing every part of me except where I needed him most.

He circled my entrance, teased it and pulled away just before I could chase the feeling.

The tension coiling in my stomach became almost unbearable. Too much and not enough, all at once.

When his tongue quickened, the pleasure became too consuming, and my hips jerked back instinctively, retreating from the overwhelming feeling of his tongue.

His hand clamped down on my thigh.

I felt it before I processed it, the warning pressure of his grip, the deliberate graze of his claws against my skin. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to remind me.

His grip was followed by a deep growl.

That growl.

It didn’t just reach my ears, it moved through me, a deep vibration that shot straight up my core and radiated outward until my toes curled. My grip on the table. I was close. Embarrassingly, desperately close, and he had barely even_

He pulled his tongue away without warning.

Before the loss could register, he thrust a finger inside me.

I cried out, loud and unguarded, my hips bucking hard against his hand. The sound that left me didn’t belong to the composed version of myself I preferred to be. But that version of me had stopped existing approximately ten minutes ago.

He curled his finger slowly, finding something inside me that made my vision blur. His thumb settled on my clit, and I felt the pressure build so fast it frightened me.

“Mine.”

He growled, rubbing my clit.

“Even though you don’t know it yet, Elara_” another deep curl of his finger, “_you are mine.”

I didn’t care. I genuinely, completely did not care.

Sure. Fine. Yours. Whatever you need, just don’t stop.

His finger thrust deep again and my back left the wall behind me entirely, a broken cry ripping out of my throat. I was beyond embarrassment now, beyond anything that wasn’t the tight, unbearable coil of pleasure winding itself to breaking point inside me.

Then his thumb lifted from my clit.

I almost sobbed.

His tongue replaced it.

Oh God!

While his finger drove into me faster, relentless, focused, impossibly deep, his tongue flickered against my clit in quick, devastating strokes, then wrapped around it and sucked.

My thighs trembled on either side of his head. My hips rolled into him shamelessly, chasing every flick, every pull, every_

I was right there. Right on the edge, my whole body drawn tight as a bowstring, my folds pulsing with a need so acute it had become its own kind of pain_

He withdrew his finger.

I barely had time to feel the loss before his hands gripped my ass, tilted my hips up sharply, and drove his tongue inside me.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

“Fuckkk!”

The word tore from my throat in a long, ragged cry, my voice breaking, turning hoarse before it even finished leaving my lips.

He didn’t slow down. Not even slightly.

His tongue worked me with a kind of focused relentlessness that stole every coherent thought from my head, drove every sensation to a single burning point. And when he sensed it, that I was about to cum, that final trembling moment when my whole body pulled taut, he sealed his mouth over me entirely.

And sucked.

The scream that left me didn’t sound like my voice.

I shattered. Completely, helplessly, embarrassingly, my body writhing beneath him, wave after wave crashing through me so hard my vision went white at the corners.

It was the most devastating, all-consuming release of my life, and he stayed with me through every second of it, mouth still working, drinking me in like I was something precious, something he had every right to take.

The last thing I felt was his hands on my thighs, holding me together while I fell apart.

~~~~

My eyes snapped open.

The ceiling stared back at me.

I was drenched in sweat, my heart slamming against my ribs like it was trying to escape. My body ached in places it had no business aching, a deep, bone-level exhaustion that felt earned in a way it absolutely shouldn’t have been.

I lay there for a long moment, chest heaving, waiting for my breathing to remember how to work.

A dream.

The best orgasm of my entire life, and it hadn’t been real. My body hadn’t gotten the memo though. Every nerve in my body still hummed. The ache between my thighs was embarrassingly genuine.

I pressed the back of my hand to my face and stared at the ceiling.

“You’re awake.”

I turned my head sharply to the left.

Jade stood in the doorway, a steaming mug cradled in both hands, watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

“What happened?” My voice came out hoarse than I intended. I pushed myself upright slowly, my arms trembling faintly with the effort.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

He stepped fully into the room and held the mug out to me. The warmth of it seeped into my palms the moment I took it.

“You fainted in the confinement again.”

My brows pulled together. I reached back through the fog of the last few hours, trying to remember what happened but my memory failed me.

The confinement. The creature. And then those hands, catching me before the floor could. That was all I could remember.

“What time is it?”

“Seven in the evening.” His eyes moved over me. “This is the second time you’ve fainted in forty-eight hours, Elara. You need to leave this lab and see a real doctor. A hospital. People who can actually run tests on a living human being.”

I don’t feel sick.

“I’m fine,” I said.

I set the mug on the bedside table and swung my legs off the bed, ignoring the way the room tilted slightly when I stood.

“Were you here the whole time?”

He nodded. “Janet was here with me. She left not long ago.” A pause. “She’s losing her mind, if you want to know the truth. Your fainting spells are scaring her.”

I stifled a yawn, rolling my shoulders, and took stock of my body the way I always did after waking up wrong.

The ache between my legs made itself known immediately.

Right!

An unresolved dream orgasm, courtesy of a golden-eyed man who didn’t exist and somehow knew my body better than anyone real ever had.

I kept my expression perfectly neutral. “I need to take a shower.”

I didn’t add the second half of that sentence out loud. I didn’t need to. There is no way I’m having a shower with him still in my apartment.

Jade caught it immediately.

“Uh.” He cleared his throat, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck, that small, self-conscious habit of his. “Right. I made dinner, by the way. In case you woke up hungry. So…you know. It’s there. After your shower.”

The slight awkwardness in his voice almost made me chuckle.

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. “For staying. And for the food.”

He nodded, turned to leave, then stopped in the doorway like something had snagged him.

“Take care of yourself, Elara.” He whispered. “Please.”

I smiled, small and tight, the best I could manage. “I will.”

He held my gaze for a moment longer than necessary, then nodded once and walked out. I stood still and listened to the sounds of him moving through the apartment, gathering his things, until finally, the soft, definitive click of the front door.

I exhaled.

Then I made my way to the bathroom, peeling off my clothes as I went. I walked past the floor-length mirror without looking, my mind already drifting toward hot water and silence and_

I halted for a second, my head tilting before I slowly walked back to the mirror.

Air left my lungs.

A dark bruise bloomed on the side of my neck, a hickey, deep and unmistakable, exactly the spot his mouth had been. And at my waist, faint but undeniable, the pressed outline of fingers. A large hand. His hand.

I stared, confused.

Dreams don’t leave marks.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​