Free Dawnkeepers by Jessica Andersen Page B

much of a dreamer, had never remembered his dreams once he awoke, except for the ones about the glowing orange monsters, the ones the therapists had told him were Oedipal projections of his mother and had turned out to be actual glowing orange monsters, the boluntiku that had slaughtered his playmates during the Solstice Massacre.

    Aside from those nightmares, he’d never dreamed. Or, at least, not that he remembered.

    “If this is what dreaming is like,” he murmured as her hands went to the hem of her clingy black shirt, “then I’ve been missing out.”

    Her expression changed at that, showing a flash of uncertainty, a hint of vulnerability he would’ve expected more from the Alexis he knew than from this brighter, shinier version. But then she shimmied out of her shirt and bra, exposing herself, her nipples puckering in the golden torchlight and soft air.

    He moved without being aware of making the decision, closed in on her like a hunter, his body moving under the direction of another, one who had absolutely no reservations about the two of them being together. This is meant, that other him thought. This is how it should be.

    Nate balked at that, nearly drew away, because it was exactly what he was struggling to avoid—that sense of inevitability and fate, the dogma that came with the Nightkeeper way of life. He wanted to win his woman, not have her handed to him by the gods, or destiny, or some such shit. He wanted freedom, wanted—

    Before he could complete the thought, that other, baser part of him kissed her and brought his hands to her creamy flesh. In an instant everything gave way to a roar of heat and need, and the two of him melded into one man—one incredibly turned-on guy who knew exactly how she felt and tasted, yet each time discovered something new about her, about the two of them together. He’d sworn he wouldn’t do this again, wouldn’t be with her, because it wasn’t fair if he didn’t intend to fall in with the gods’ plans for the two of them.

    This is a dream, he told himself. Dreams don’t count. And if that played false in the back of his brain, the knowledge was quickly lost to the heat and the needs of the man who both was and wasn’t him.

    He pressed into her, crowding her against the throne—altar, whatever—at her back. She braced herself against the soft curves of limestone that had been built up and worn smooth by centuries of dripping water. She grabbed onto a pair of protruding bumps carved by an ancient hand into the shapes of serpents’ heads, their mouths gaping open, their fangs dropping down in menace, or maybe reverence. Nate was filled with that same reverence when he brought his hands up to cup the dip of her waist and the small of her back, then higher, to the heavy weight of her breasts, which were crowned with the tight buds of her nipples.

    She moaned and arched against him, digging her blunt, manicured fingernails into his biceps, then shifting to run her fingers up his chest and get to work on his shirt, freeing the top three buttons. Boosting herself up onto the altar, she leaned into him, curling her hands around his neck to find the sensitive spot at the back, just beneath his hairline.

    Heat speared through him, lust flaring as that small gesture reminded him of the past. They’d been together only two short months, but they’d packed a hell of a lot of sex into those weeks, when they’d been ridden hard by pretalent hormones and the magic that had sought to bind them together. Had almost succeeded.

    Memory gentled his touch, had him cupping her, shaping her the way he’d learned she liked. Her eyes went glassy and her head fell back, baring her throat to his lips. Time stretched out, spiraled inward. In that instant there were only the two of them and the small stone room, the carved audience frozen timeless on the walls, and the moving floor of water, pierced with stone teeth and ripples of movement.

    “Lexie,” he said, using the