With Dire and Dragon in his DNA repertoire, Lucas hadn’t needed the Sabre’s contribution. It had been driven purely by another desire—the one that pushed him to live up to Aria. But nothing could change the reality of who and what he was. And the sooner he accepted that, and moved on, the better off he’d be.
He stopped just outside Betsy’s gate and asked the question that had been burning in him since traipsing through the swamp. “Why does Nikolai matter so much to you? You didn’t know the guy until he crashed Demeti’s party.”
For a moment, her eyes blazed at him. Then she swallowed and looked away. “I dreamed of him. Before the swamp.”
Ice traveled up Lucas’s spine. She’d dreamed of Nikolai? Jealousy twisted through him.
“Are you sure it was him?”
A muscle jumped in her cheek. “Black fog and red lightning. Pretty damned sure.” She met his gaze. “And he seems so attracted to me...”
No.Lucas didn’t want to hear that. Like what was between Nikolai and her might actually be real? “What does that mean?”
When she didn’t immediately reply, he opened the wrought-iron gate for her. As she stepped through, she shrugged.
“I have no idea. I wondered...”
“What?” he prompted.
She swallowed. “It could just be pheromones. I might be coming into my reproductive cycle.”
Lucas’s eyes widened. Although he didn’t think it was possible, his entire body ramped up another notch, as though the word “reproductive” meant he’d be jumping her bones in the foreseeable future. “Are you in your cycle?” His voice was so hoarse he didn’t recognize it.
She shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“But—that doesn’t explain him being in your dream.”
“No,” she admitted. “It doesn’t.” She walked past him and into the house.
Lucas stood there, holding the door open, while his brain attempted to re-engage with his body. Dressed in the latest fashionable leisure wear, Betsy greeted Aria and invited her to sit down for tea.
When he finally managed to get his legs moving, Lucas marched straight past the kitchen—ignoring Betsy’s invitation to him—and up the stairs.
Moments later, he was naked and standing beneath the icy-cold pulse of the shower. His skin steamed, but it did nothing to cool his ardor.
His mind and body were obsessed with Aria. Those luscious curves that belied the muscles beneath them. The way she moved—graceful and fluid, like the warrior she was. Her scent, spicy with undercurrents of brimstone and fire. Her firm and confident voice that resonated through him. The light in those remarkable eyes. The cocky way she held her head.
Lucas groaned and leaned against the shower wall. His fingers moved to the groove beneath his triceps, the tips dancing over the stiffened hairs until his entire body thrust into the air, desperate, throbbing with need. Then he dropped his free hand to stroke, faster and faster, his breath coming in panting gasps as he rode the wave upward, higher and higher—
Until he broke, erupting hot into the cold spray, over and over until his legs trembled and he leaned forward to turn the water as hot as what had come from him. As he pushed his face into it and let the spray wash it all away, the hollow emptiness within him ached.
Aria had dreamed of Nikolai before she’d ever met him.
He had no idea what it meant.
Because he was as trapped as her. He’d not dared to confess that Aria had paraded through his own dreams before she’d walked into his life. And before he’d had any chance to catch a sniff of any pheromones she might have secreted, reproductive cycle or not.
And he certainly couldn’t begin to fathom why Nikolai’s absence had left such a hole in him. He should be relieved the big guy was back with his people, where he could possibly be trained. But would they bother to do so? Once he was safely confined, why risk turning him free ever again?
He sighed, turned off the shower, and stepped out, reaching for a towel.
If all this was due to Fate, then she really was a bitch.
* * *
As Nikolai followed the Watchers down the stairs, he found himself missing Mai. If she’d still been with him, she would have been chittering softly to herself from beneath his hair.
Now he understood why she’d come to him in the first place and stuck with him through all the chaos. She’d been Cara’s eyes and ears all along. At least the little shrew had figured out how to stay safe from his storm of destruction, pressed directly to his skin instead of just his hair.
