Burning Skies (Guardians of Ascension #2)(22)
Author: Caris Roane

He shut the door and wasn’t surprised when Havily hurried past his desk to the opposite corner of the office near the windows. He watched her shoulders rise and fall rapidly.

Goddamn the breh-hedden. They were both held in a tight grip. Worse, the dreams had revealed exactly what she looked like naked, and that’s all he saw as he looked her up and down. He’d cupped her ass in his hands. She may be wearing a tailored navy wool suit, but he knew what her br**sts looked like, felt like.

His scrutiny stopped at tailored and wool. She’d come from Phoenix in late June where it was hotter than Hades right now. So she must have dressed for … Seattle.

Something about that made him smile, a little smugly perhaps. “Did you have a nice trip?” he asked, shocked again at the hoarse quality of his voice.

“Would you stop that,” she cried as she turned back to him.

“Stop what?”

“This whole room smells like a licorice factory.”

Ah, yes, the one defining quality of the breh-hedden, the giving of specific scents, male and female, meant only for the other, detected only by the other. She was, for him, the other.

“All I’m smelling is honeysuckle, Havily. When I’m around you, that’s all I smell. Fucking honeysuckle. Clouds of honeysuckle. A rain forest of honeysuckle.”

She shook her head and frowned. “You mean you don’t smell this sharp fennel scent?” She waved an arm about to encompass the room.

“No, not at all. Just you.”

He crossed the room to stand near the window. He looked down at the view below, as he often did, but drew no closer to her than six feet. Less separation and he’d take her in his arms, he’d kiss her, he’d force himself on her as he’d tried to do that last night at Endelle’s palace. Given her scent, she’d probably succumb, so shit.

He turned slowly to watch her. She faced the window now as well and was beautiful in profile, her nose a lovely curve, her lips parted. Her hair was an exquisite auburn; her complexion, a delicate cream enhanced with peach blush over her cheekbones. Her eyes were a light green like translucent jade. So beautiful. Once more, his groin responded. Okay, so maybe looking at her wasn’t a good idea, either. “So, again, why have you come?”

“I need you to stop the dreaming,” she blurted, her gaze skating to him then returning to look well beyond downtown, far out into Puget Sound.

Of all the things he had expected to hear, that wasn’t one of them. How the hell had she construed their nocturnal engagements as something he instigated? “You’re kidding, right?”

Her porcelain cheeks developed bright spots of color as she once more turned toward him, her shoulders pulled back, her chin high. “What does that mean?”

“I think you know what it means. You come to me in my dreams, vampire, not the other way around.”

Confusion once more flitted over her eyes, her beautiful light green eyes, the same color … yeah … as the banding on his wings, just as Medichi had once observed. She shook her head back and forth. “That’s not the way it is. You summon me and I can’t seem to resist. I’m here to beg you to stop calling me to your bed.”

His jaw shifted back and forth. He narrowed his eyes. “You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I awake and you are riding me … every damn time. Think about it, Havily. Isn’t that the way it always happens?”

She took a step back and dropped her purse as her hand flew to her chest. Her cheeks now flooded with color. “Warrior, please. The whole thing is distasteful and very wrong. I came to ask you to stop, not to have you throw the experience in my face. You have no idea how hard this is for me, to come to you, to ask this of you. I never wanted to see you again.”

“Of course not,” he muttered. “Not for perfect Havily Morgan to engage with a hedonistic captain of industry. You do know that my corporations provide millions of jobs around the world, don’t you?” Why the hell had he gone down this road, as though he needed to defend his choices? What did he care what she thought of him?

Her nostrils flared and her chin rose higher still. “You deserted your brothers-in-arms. I will never forgive you for that! How many ascenders, how many mortals have died because you couldn’t bear the war any longer? How many, Warrior Marcus? I swear I don’t know how you sleep at night.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I haven’t been sleeping very much lately, now have I, not when I’m awakened by a dream-nymph making use of my body.” He was such a bastard.

“A dream-nymph?” she cried. “Oh, how I hate you for saying that.”

Well, at least she’d started showing some sense.

“I don’t summon you, Havily. When I wake up, you’re with me, in my bed … sort of. You come to me, though I have no idea how you do it, or even where we are when we’re together.”

She shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re putting this on me. But it really doesn’t matter how it’s happening, I just know it has to end and I’ve come here to ask you to stop doing what you’re doing.”

“All I’m doing is responding to you.”

“But why have you done it all this time? That’s what I don’t understand.”

Because I loved having you in my bed, on top of me, your scent flooding my nostrils. “I could ask the same of you.”

“I thought it was some kind of weird dream state, a kind of fantasy. I thought my subconscious was living out what I refused to do in my conscious life.”

At that he smiled, but not kindly. “So this was your fantasy? You on top?”

She covered her face with her hands. More pink showed between her splayed fingers and crept toward her chin. He was pushing her, but that’s what a man did when a woman held up a mirror and the man saw his reflection but disliked what he saw. And yes, it made him a bastard.

His conscience kicked in. He hadn’t always been such a prick.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Look, why don’t you sit down and we’ll talk this through. We’ll figure this out together. And I’ll … try not to be so abrasive. This whole thing has kicked me out of stride.” He gestured to the black leather sofa flanking the long wall to the left of the door.

She nodded. “Fine.” She picked up her purse and crossed in front of him.

He noticed her immaculate makeup, the careful striation of eye shadow, eyeliner, the tweezed, arched brows. She carried Marc Jacobs. She looked sleek, fit, stylish. He would have gone for her in any dimension.