His libidinous gaze blazed into her soul. “There is no god here. I’ll see you tonight, dreamer.”
“Wait!” She fumbled for something to say as she leaned against the washer for support, clenching her knees together. “My name’s Addison. What’s yours?”
The growl that emanated from him was violent and held none of his previous lust. “I’ll not be fooled so easily. Until tonight,Addison.”
Chapter 10
Traeyr
Proof of the human’s desire thrilled Traeyr.
Her pheromones played his senses like instruments lost to time, the sweet scent comprable with the sound of elven harps and organs he’d long forgotten. What was it about this human that had him so sentimental? She’d crossed her arms over her abundant chest, no doubt to be defiant, which had made the ample swell of her breast even more enticing The image of her plump behind teased his memory; the black cloth hiding her flesh had clung to the secret mound between her legs and her position leaned over the machine had sent a breeze of mouthwatering smells that burned deep into his being. He fantasized about ripping the fabric away with his claws and devouring the source of the delectable scent until she begged for release, using his shadows to hold her still through his ministrations.
Filthy thoughts led to another, more ridiculous notion. What would her flesh feel like against his? His imagination ran rampant, filling in the blanks where he would never have the answer. The unattainable sensation was pointless to consider. He refused to be bound to a mortal, refused to do anyone’s bidding, but still he wondered how it would feel to enact the binding ritual with her. To ride her bountiful chest with his own flesh and bone body. The image of her beneath him, maple syrup brown eyes locked on his, mouth open to receive, nails digging into his thighs. It sent shivers through every fiber of his being at the thought of such a forbidden act.
His magic shouldn’t be capable of inciting such a strong reaction in her body, requiring her to shed her underclothes each morning. Then again, he’d never found himself in this position before, and his own body was behaving unnaturally, too. Perhaps it was natural for his comforting touch of magic to thrill a human female—if one could consider his docile nightmarescomforting,which was another concern regarding his human. She was unaware of how detrimental her night terrors were to her health, nor what creatures of the night were set on stealing her soul.
The day stretched on with his mind consumed by thoughts of the dreamer and all her tight holes he longed to fill. He couldn’t shake the throbbing sense of need that welled within him, but he thrust it away to focus on feeding. He must fill up on sleepers to ensure he had enough power to take form when he arrived in her chambers. Her dreams would sustain him once she slept, but he wanted to be ready the moment they met. After every handful of sleepers, he meandered back to the tree where he’d stashed her panties and braced himself for the rush of addictive power that crashed over him each time he licked her sweet sap.
Twilight’s deep glow graced the sky by the time he felt adequately nourished. The shadows clung to their master as he made his way back to her home.
A foreign vehicle was parked in her driveway. Traeyr bristled at the intrusion and watched with annoyance as a human male strode confidently to the front door. He inserted a key into the aperture that Traeyr was coming to think of fondly. It clicked and gave way to the stranger, which sent another bristle of irritation through Traeyr.
Carefully clutching his power as tightly condensed as possible, Traeyr followed the man inside. He remained out of sight as the man pulled one of humankind’s most prevalent devices from his pocket and busied himself with it while he spun circles in Addison’s chair.
“Hey, babe. I know we haven’t been talking lately, but call me back.”
Traeyr growled at the term of endearment. The oblivious male kicked out of his boots and shrugged off a light jacket, then languidly spread out on Addison’s bed. Traeyr waited impatiently for the man to fall asleep. The moment he heard snores, he zipped out of the shadows and perched upon the man’s chest.
Addison was under no obligation to disclose a mate. She was free to take as many mates as she liked, even a deeply devoted partnership with whomever she pleased. Traeyrknewthat. Despite her sexual desire for him, the companionship he felt toward her was a one-sided ordeal, and even that was entirely made up in his overly active imagination. What he felt for her was more about hersmell—well, and her taste—than about her as a woman.
Even so, he found himself staring at the male with a deep aversion bordering on hatred. As with many of his feelings as of late, hatred was an unusual one; he didn’t even hate the man who turned him into a demon, not anymore. His bitterness toward the man who’d cursed him had dispelled after beholding the wonders of this magnificent earth ten times over. But this human lying inherbed, complicating his plans tonight, calling her human terms of endearment, elicited strong emotions from deep within him.
If it turned out this man was one of Addison’s mates, she would surely be angry at him for what he was about to do. Without hesitation, Traeyr reached for the man’s dreams and gave them a good solid spin, sending the man pirouetting through a ballroom of horrors while Traeyr smirked down spitefully.
Have I not seen this man before?Traeyr took a moment to study the man’s high cheekbones and broad forehead, his crooked nose and thick eyebrows, and realized he had seen this face before—in the spillover from one of Addison’s dreams. Except, in the clipped images from her nightmare, this man was acting out a role from Addison’s childhood.
Nightmares often switched the faces of villains from a person’s memory, along with other bits of information that the nightmare deemed interchangeable. When pain from the present reminded the subconscious mind of a pain from their history, nightmares eagerly used that as fuel. Nightmares could be cruel acts of punishment that served as warnings or persuasion to the subconscious to build more walls and erect more boundaries around the person’s soul. Traeyr knew of this mechanism of the sleeping mind, but humans often discarded it, not realizing that they had little choice in the way their subconscious took and implemented the subliminal messages.
Knowing that this man had hurt his dreamer deeply enough to affect her in this way made it difficult for Traeyr not to break the man's bones.
He could.
He could easily press his full weight down upon the vile human male, crushing the bones encasing his heart and lungs until they were fodder around punctured and useless organs. Then he would never hurt Addison again. Would never cause pain, be it physical or emotional, to the dreamer Traeyr had become entirely too fond of.
Choked breaths forced their way from the man’s throat. Traeyr watched him struggle, felt him clawing for breath in the dream as his bones were depressed under Traeyr’s weight in the bedroom. His bones bent with the pressure, so close to snapping that his pale human features turned gray, his breathing inconsistent.
As tempting as it was, it would not remove the damage already done to Addison. It would only cause more trauma when she came home to a dead lover’s body in her bed. Traeyr eased off.
The man beneath him ground his teeth against the nightmares Traeyr fed him. Traeyr watched with a bored expression, his gaze drifting over his shoulder every so often to watch for the door. He wondered what Addison would do with this unexpected visit from her past, but mostly, he wondered how long it would take for this man to leave so he could be alone with the dreamer he couldn’t keep out of his mind.
Chapter 11
Addison
Leah pinned Addison with a dark look from the trout counter the moment she walked in. Nasty Nathan must be in one of hismoods. Addison’s lip threatened to curl in disgust. She pushed away the ever-present regret, the shame she felt about having gone to school for years just to wind up working for a creep like him in a stinky dump like this.
Thoughts about the bright-eyed demon stayed just out of reach in her mind as she went through the motions. Conflicting ideas tugged at her. She felt like a cliché cartoon speaking to an angel and demon on either shoulder. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t focus on any task put in front of her. Her mind stayed in the gutter, wondering what kind of magic tricks he had up his sleeve. Could he control the shadows? What could he do with them? She’d always been curious about being bound, tied down, and taken control of with no escape from the pleasure. And if he could do that, couldn’t he fill her completely?
