ing her.
She gasped, trying to pull away from the connection but he did not allow it, his hold on their thread ruthless in its intensity. His scent wrapped around Shilah like a tight embrace, hot, arousing and comforting. Her pussy became wet and heated, longing for his touch. Even from such an impossible distance, their link burned with a dark-silver fire, and when her eyes snapped open, he was right there in the shower, peering down at her.
Phantom arms caught her chin in his hand and tipped her head up, forcing her to look into his eyes. “I’m not going insane. You can feel and see me, just as I can see and feel you.”
“Yes,” she whispered, reaching out and touching him.
His eyes closed, and he shivered his pleasure as if she had really touched him. “I feel the heated pad of your finger on my cheek…I smell you, my mate.”
And she smiled, the ache in her heart easing. “I hardly understand it, but I miss you, Lachlan Ravenswood, quite desperately.”
He made no reply, merely watching her in that calm way of his. And then she felt it, kisses all over her body, nips, and licks as he fed her mind and aroused her body. The arousal in her built and built with no end in sight. She heard her own strangled sob of pleasure as if from far away. A wave of weakening hunger swept through her, and it was more for than just sex with him. She wanted to be held, to share her fears with him.
Immediately the burning need disappeared, and phantom hands hugged her from behind and flushed her to his chest.
“What do you fear?”
She wanted to tell him, rest her fears and doubts on his shoulders, always. She wanted to trust in his strength and not fear his brutality or retaliation if something were to ever happen to her. The pain of that realization had her body tightening until she was on the verge of shaking.
“Let me come to you.”
“Never.”
She stopped the flow of the water and using her telekinesis turned on the crystal spray which cleaned her body within seconds. Another pulse of air dried her, and she stepped from the shower stall and went into the sleep quarters. She quickly dressed in a silver sari, conscious of her Darkan’s psychic eyes watching every dip and hollow of her body. His phantom touch brushed against her nape and her bared stomach, and she saw him as if he were there, as he dropped to his knees and pressed a kiss above her navel.
A sharp knock on the door had her spinning around, and Kala entered. Her sister faltered. “Shilah, there is a strange light glowing around you! What is it?”
The fire of their connection had engulfed her body, the thread humming with a sweet resonance only she and her lover could feel.
“It is nothing,” she said huskily, firmly closing their link, and marching from the room to prepare the arguments for the Senate.
The sweet scent of flowers wafted through her nostrils. Shilah knew she wasn’t alone the moment she woke. A wall of heat pressed into her back, and she wiggled, scooting back against the man that held her with such tender possession. His body felt as hard as valnetium, unyielding, his arms strong, surrounding her. His scent wrapped around her, and she purred, feeling safe, content. She felt him inside of her, a part of her. Every breath she drew brought him deep into her lungs.
“Did you sleep well, my mate?”
Lachlan Ravenswood’s low, husky growl shattered her sleepy contentment. Her heart lurched, her mouth dried, and a multitude of emotions jumbled through her—the most prominent longing for the man behind her. She inhaled deeply, and it took several moments to realize he wasn’t there. A peculiar loss scythed through her heart. There was a deep part of her that hungered to see him beside her. It had been five days since she’d been in the ship, waiting for news on the Senate call to assemble. And each day, Lachlan visited her, or she’d slipped into his mind and visited him. There was always a sharp sense of disorientation, an awful tug of fear that he was really within Serange before she’d accepted what they saw was the Darkage, his touch, kisses, and loving words filled her soul for hours because of the strength of their mating bond and her tremendous psychic abilities.
Their link flamed with familiar dark silver heat, a bond forged between them that could never be broken, and one that she’d never want to see shattered. She twisted on the silken sheets, facing him. Several days’ worth of beard shadowed his jaw. He looked even more ruthless, but his eyes were alive with swirling needs. She reached out and touched his lips. She felt the softness against the tip of her finger. He growled low, a purr of deep pleasure, and her heat tumbled sweetly inside her chest.
“You visit me every day,” she whispered. “And torment me with things I shouldn’t crave, but how I want you.”
He brushed a hand across her cheek tenderly. “I would crush an empire for you.”
And that was what she feared, but he was brutally unapologetically himself.
“But for you, I will also show mercy.”
The shock of that promise, given in such a solemn tone tore through Shilah. Her hands trembled as she slipped them around his neck, drifting even closer to his body. “What do you want from me, Lachlan Ravenswood?”
“Your heart…your soul…your laughter…your happiness.”
A hunger for him flamed in her chest like a living entity. She smiled, unable to halt the rush of tender feelings humming through her.
“And that my mate…that I wish to see.” The pad of his thumb traced the curve of her lips. “Your smile makes the bleak cold flee, and I imagine that is what it feels like to bask in the ray of your sunshine. I’ve brought you something.”
She glanced down and blinked. “Flowers?” The most beautiful she’d ever seen. An array of purple, and blue flowers with a dark red vein at the heart of each.
When she looked up, she found such longing and hunger in his eyes mirroring the desires of her soul.