The dream should have faded.
They usually did.
But this one... clung to me like smoke, thick and hot, curling beneath my skin even after I woke. My body had betrayed me long before dawn broke. I’d come awake gasping—back arched, thighs pressed tightly together, damp with sweat and something far more shameful. Something far more needy.
Lucien's voice still echoed in my head.
“You’ll remember this when you wake.”
And gods, I had.
Silken ropes binding my wrists. His mouth—possessive, commanding, reverent—dragging down the line of my throat. The brush of fangs—hovering with purpose but never piercing. Not yet. The threat of surrender, drawn out like a violin’s slow moan.
I lay there afterward, breathing too loudly in my empty chambers. My heart galloped against the fragile walls of my r
