TEN
VIKAN DIDN’T ENTER her dream that night.
Instead, he stayed up, watching over the fire since the temperatures began to drop and he didn’t want his female to get chilled.
Vikan stared into the flames, feeling like a stranger. There was no pain in his mind, no lingering pressure that ate at him. His body was at peace, so why didn’t he feel like it?
Across the fire, he listened as his mate slept. It had taken her a long while to find sleep, but her breaths had slowly evened out and, though her back was to him, he watched the gentle curve of her waist rise and fall with every one.
He was tight with need, his Instinct humming with it. It was unnatural for an awakened male to go this long without claiming his fated mate and his Instinct was making that fact known. There wasn’t a moment of the span he wasn’t hard and aching and he felt on the verge of madness.
How his warrior brothers wooed and courted their human mates, he did not know.
For one, it probably helped that they didn’t have a previous mate they’d mourned for ten rotations.
Vikan’s fist clenched just as the fire crackled. Taylor had known Nitav’s name. And yet, she still refused to believe that his gift was bridging across to her mind through their connection. She hardly even admitted there was a connection, though it was obvious between them.
Everything was wrong, warped.
And Vikan did not know how to fix it, how to repair what was broken. Because so much was broken, including himself.
But…he wanted to be right for her, he hesitantly admitted to himself.
The dream he’d entered the night before, when he’d simply sat with her on the shores of Lopitax, watching the twin suns rise…he had felt right. He had felt whole.
It made him realize just what he’d given up, by allowing himself to mourn for Nitav for so long. He’d given up any kind of hope for the future, for a mate, for offspring, like many males after the Plague.
The Fates had given him a second chance. And he didn’t want to squander it.
But how to convince her to give them a chance? How to convince her to stay on Luxiria, at least for a little while, until she was certain of her decision to leave?
He’d given her no reason to stay, he realized, his mouth thinning in a grim line.
He’d taken her captive in the middle of night, forcing their unexpected situation. He’d gone from showing her his desire to coldly trying to keep his distance. He’d essentially told her that he didn’t want a mate because he couldn’t forget Nitav.
And after all this, he still expected her to stay, to want him, to try and build something with him.
Vikan squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head when he realized what a fool he’d been.
He was more surprised she wasn’t running away, trying desperately to get back to the Golden City, after the way he’d treated her.
As he stared at the fire, he knew he only had two options. They were quite simple.
The first being that he could bring Taylor back to the Golden City and say goodbye to her before she returned to Earth for good. He would never see her again and he would return to his life in Lopixa. But he would never be able to forget her. Instead of being haunted by one female, he would be haunted by two. And Vikan knew that he would be forever changed, though he would live his life in the same numb loneliness as before.
The second option was that he say goodbye to Nitav, freeing himself from the guilt in order to begin a new life with Taylor. He could show her how good he could be as a mate, convince her to stay, and hope for her love, the same love he’d felt in her dream.
It wouldn’t be easy. Vikan knew he wasn’t the easiest male to love.
But he would try. Just as he told Taylor.
Because in reality, what other option did he have?
After knowing her, even for a short amount of time, he knew he could never go back to how he’d survived before…clinging to Nitav’s memory, numbing his pain with yikava, and becoming even more of a shell than he’d been before.
It would soon kill him.
He didn’t want to live like that anymore.
So, as he watched over his mate that night as she slept, he made his decision. He would show Taylor what life with him could be like. He would show her the side to him that he always wanted to. He would no longer deny his instincts around her.
And he would need to say goodbye to Nitav. Once and for all.
Something lifted from him. Yes, he still felt the guilt, but…it wasn’t as suffocating as before. Deep down, he knew that Nitav wouldn’t have wanted him to become the male he was. He needed to remember that while he embraced a potential new beginning with his fated mate.
If she would have him.
Rising from his space across the fire, Vikan crossed over to his slumbering mate before lying down next to her.
Without hesitation, he pulled her body close, pressing her face into his chest, entwining his legs with hers, and wrapped his arms around her slim, small shoulders. The tension eased out of his body at the warmth of her, the scent of her, and he gently rubbed his horns across her silky, dark hair.
A small sigh escaped her lips, but she didn’t wake. She pressed closer to him in sleep, her body recognizing his own.
Softly, he murmured to her, “I will make this right, luxiva. I vow this to you.”
* * *
Taylor woke in the middle of an orgasm.
She’d been dreaming—surprise, surprise—of Vikan and he’d had her on her hands and knees, thrusting powerfully behind her.
And the moment she began cumming, her eyes opened slowly, her breath coming out in a stunned gasp as her whole body arched.
Then, mid-way through, she heard a growl next to her, felt his hands tug her closer into him.
Taylor moaned helplessly, the feeling of his skin sending her into a frenzy as her orgasm drew on and on. Her nipples pebbled against the thin, soft material of her shirt, which had once again ridden up to her waist during her sleep, leaving her sex exposed.
Except for a groan, Vikan didn’t touch her there, though in her dream, he had been. He’d been fucking her thoroughly as the pad of his calloused thumb rubbed her clit in an exquisite rhythm.
“Luxiva,” he rasped, his voice still rumbly from deep sleep. She must’ve woken him. “Fates, your smell. You will undo me, female.”
The last remnants of her orgasm pulsed through her body, wringing little whimpers from her throat as her sex throbbed.
Once it was done, she crashed back to reality. And when she did, her face immediately flushed and she wiggled to pull down her shirt so that it would cover her.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, hardly daring to look over at Vikan but knowing she’d have to face him eventually. Blowing out a breath, she hesitantly glanced beside her, her heart pounding in her throat.
He was doing that constant purring growl, his chest heaving up and down. He had her wrapped in his arms and they were side-by-side, facing one another, much like the position she’d woken up in the day before. She’d arched into him and every time she inhaled a breath, her hardened nipples dragged across his chest.
“I…I’m sorry,” she whispered, so embarrassed.
Those gray eyes seared her. The intensity of them almost made her melt and she had to remember that he wasn’t hers, that his heart belonged to another, no matter how he looked at her.
His next words sent those thoughts flying out of her brain, however.
“How was I mating you?” he rumbled in her ear, the husky words deliciously naughty. His cock was hard against her belly and her lips parted when she actually felt it pulse against her. “Tell me.”
“Vikan…” she murmured, her eyes darting back and forth between his.
His fingers spread over her back, but then he shocked her by slipping his hands underneath her shirt until he touched her bare flesh. Her eyes widened, her breath going ragged.
And then she gasped because he cupped the cheeks of her ass, pulling her into him until his cock was wedged tightly between them. For a moment, her eyelids went heavy because it was exactly the kind of thing her dream Vikan would do. It was primal and aggressive and damn sexy. But this wasn’t her dream Vikan. This was the real Vikan.
“What are you doing?” she breathed, blinking, wondering if this was still a dream after all. It was becoming harder and harder to differentiate, which was beginning to scare her.
“Tell me,” he growled, running the sides of his horns across her forehead. “I need to know.”
Taylor sucked in lungfuls of air, feeling like she couldn’t get enough. And yet, she felt her body responding to him, yet again, even on the heels of her orgasm.
“I…” she started, licking her lips. God, he was so warm. And he smelled so good.
“Please, luxiva,” he murmured, rocking his hips and she gasped, his cock sliding against her belly, only his leather pants between them.
It was the ‘please’ that did her in.
“F-from behind,” she whispered, feeling her cheeks flush yet again. “I was on my hands and knees.”
“Tev,” he hissed, his eyelids falling shut for a brief moment, his hips giving another jerk.
She felt dizzy. What the hell was happening?
“Vikan,” she whispered, feeling his hands flex on her ass. “W-we shouldn’t. It will only complicate things and things are already so complicated.”
He stilled, her words finally penetrating his mind. With a groan, he dropped his head until his breath ruffled her hair, but he stopped rocking his hips against her.
He didn’t, however, take his hands off the swells of her ass.
They lay in silence for a little while as Taylor tried to process what had just happened. When he finally spoke, he pulled back to look at her and surprised her by asking, “Why did you say ‘I’m sorry?’”
She blinked up at him and replied, “Because. Because I…I didn’t expect that I would…”
“Orgasm,” he rasped.
She nibbled on her lip. “Yes.”
“It is natural,” he told her. “There is no shame in that, especially with your mate.”
She swallowed thickly and tried to hang on to reason, “You’re not my mate, Vikan.”
His eyes flared, but it wasn’t anger in them she saw. It was…determination.
“I decided something as you slept,” he told her suddenly, just as a ray of morning sunlight penetrated the circle of aloe vera leaves they’d slept within.
She was almost scared to ask. “What?”
“This distance between us will be no more,” he said. Taylor almost choked, but he continued before she could say anything, “I realized that I could not ask you to give me a chance, when I had given you no reason to.”
She blinked, surprised.
“From now until we reach Lopixa and then journey back to the Golden City, I will give you reason to,” he told her. “I want to make this right between us. But I wish for you to be open to what could be. Will you do this?”
Slowly, and without quite meeting his eyes, Taylor commented, “It doesn’t change the fact that you’re still in love with her. With Nitav.”
Vikan tilted her chin until his gaze connected with her own. “I realize that if there is a possibility for a future with you, I must let the past go. I must let her go. She will have no bearing on our matehood.”
“It’s easier to say it than to do it, Vikan,” she murmured. “You ask for a lot. And I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if it’s something I can even give.”
“All I ask for is that for the next few spans, you keep your mind open to me. To us,” he murmured, his gaze completely and utterly focused on her. “We can be good for one another. You have foreseen it.”
“I don’t know what I’ve seen,” she whispered.
Vikan dropped his forehead down to her own and it made her throat close…because in her dreams, Vikan had often done the same thing out of affection, out of love.
“Three spans,” he murmured. “If you wish to journey back to Earth once we reach the Golden City…then I will let you go. We will say goodbye and we will never see one another again.”
Why did that thought fill her with fear, with wrongness?
“Three spans,” he said softly again. “Please, luxiva.”
And it was the ‘please’ that did her in again…because she eventually found herself nodding, albeit slowly.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll give you that.”
And she wondered whether she’d just signed her own heart away with those words. Because if real Vikan was anything like dream Vikan, she had a feeling he wouldn’t need three days to make her fall in love with him.