The simplicity of the request conveyed an urgency that compelled her to obey. Not that she wasn’t already itching to glide her hands over him and rest her head against his chest.
Katy brushed the sweep of midnight hair off Ryck’s brow. The sleek strands curled around her fingers, alive, like cords of velvet vine. She stroked him again, his hair soft and silky beneath her palm. The angular outline of his square jaw stood out in starker relief.
She gripped his shoulder. Beneath her palm, the thick curve of muscle grew more sturdy and robust under his rustic woolens.
Was he right? Did her touch do that? Did she give him potency, the way his voice had provided her with the guts to best Cabot? The idea tempted her to reach for him again.
As her fingers explored, a soft sigh escaped him. Color returned to Ryck’s face and his features firmed. His body took on greater form and substance. His sinews and musculature grew solid and dense. She did that.
“We make each other stronger,” Ryck confirmed.
Her fingertips drifted below his cloak, to the front of his breeches. The thick ridge of his cock strained against the rough buckskin. Hard. Katy dragged her hand away with effort.
Could she trust him? She doubted that. He wanted something from her. She ignored what her mind screamed. Her body screamed louder. She yearned for him in a way that nearly made her weep. Between her thighs, her panties dampened. She couldn’t prevent her body’s reaction or resist the temptation he offered.
Unable to help herself, Katy slipped her hand beneath Ryck’s homespun shirt this time, flattening her palm against his rock-hard abs. His skin heated at once, as if her touch filled him in, made him whole. A sketched outline that became a rich, vibrant painting when her fingertips glided across his warming flesh. He let out another ragged breath. The effect she had on him made her braver. The thrill shooting through her when she touched him sparked and heightened her desire.
“You like that?” she whispered.
“You know what I like.”
Katy recalled the sound of the ghostly hoof beats flying along Broadway the last time she had encountered this man in the flesh. What was she dealing with here, she wondered? A wraith? A specter?
A psychological manifestation of defective mental health?
What the hell was a dream voyager?
She pulled away from him to rub her temples. She didn’t like what he represented. He was just a wet dream. As much as she longed for him, she resented him as well.
“I want you to get the hell out of my head,” she told him.
“I can’t read your mind, Katrina. I answer when you summon me. When your emotions are in turmoil, I sense that.”
“And when we…”
“I need you more than you need me.”
She stared at him, unable to credit her eyes, her ears, or what her brain told her. When he visited her in her dreams at night, he never acted as if he were obeying a summons or performing a chore. No, he swept her up in his strong arms, as eager, as excited as she, as desperate to make their moments together last. She did not think he faked the guttural groans of passion she wrested from him.
“You…need me?”
“Yes. Hell, yes. I’m not whole without you.”
Despite her misgivings, she reached out a tentative finger and poked his arm again. This was a solid male body before her tonight. No question about that.
Amusement glittered in his eyes. “Pinch me,” he offered.
“I think you should pinch me.”
“There are other things I’d rather do to you.”
Fire surged through her, setting her cheeks aflame, melting her. He quirked an eyebrow and his low, suggestive words transported her on a bewildering sensual journey. Ryck was magic. She shouldn’t believe in magic anymore. But God help her, she did. Hudson Valley magic. Her father’s legacy.
Ryck’s silver eyes gleamed up at her, piercing her to her core, smoldering with a feverish desire as intense as her own. The potent male musk of his arousal mingled with the autumnal fragrance of ripening apples and falling leaves.
The rankness of the bowling alley pit in which they lay faded away.
“Apples,” she murmured. “You smell like apples. You smell like fall.”
Katy no longer cared what he was. Just that she needed him, that she had to have him again, had to feel the sweet, hot friction of his skin sliding against hers, and the burn of their bodies as they tangled about each other in blistering ardor, coming together again and again. Flesh to flesh this time.
“Kiss me, Katrina,” he growled, his deeply masculine voice rougher around the edges. The battle to seize control of his lust stamped his bold features, the strain written on his face. “I’ve waited a long time.”
His words thrilled her more than the imperious command annoyed her. What would it be like to kiss him? To really kiss him?
She bent and touched her mouth to his. Light and brief. Even so, sizzling currents leapt between them. Ryck’s cool lips warmed instantly beneath hers. He snatched her against him, his strong arms imprisoning her against his length, melting her as he seized her mouth, his lips firm and demanding now, making her head swim.
His mouth parted and she captured the low rumble of his groan, heard it, tasted it, let it resonate through her. Urgent fire swept through her as their breath mingled, sparking an uncontrollable blaze that made her toes curl and her heart leap.
Her heart pounded, ready to burst from her chest.
Pure fantasy, supernatural phantasm—whatever else he might be, none of it mattered. Somehow everything seemed more real when she was with him. As if they were two sides of one coin.
Ryck’s rough tongue slanted against hers, spicy as a harvest night, wringing moan after shivery moan from deep within her. His hot, delicious kisses made her drunker than mulled wine, consuming her, dizzying her, taking her out of herself onto another plane, a place of carnal delights where only she and Ryck existed.
Ryck crushed her against his chest, his big hand stroking the back of her head. His powerful arms seduced her. The hard evidence of his arousal pressed against her. She answered with a throb of desperate desire.
His lips claimed hers with such a fierce storm of possession she felt…branded.
Claimed.
