“Corinne.” He whispered her name. Or had he simply thought it so the sound brushed like the wings of a butterfly in her mind? His tone was sexy. Tantalizing. Intimate. He could make her insides melt with the way he said her name. He placed her palm over his heart, his hand covering hers. “Ssh, little love, listen to the sound of my heart talking to yours. You must learn to relax and breathe. Breathing is essential to your life, you know.”
She inhaled; her heart was already following the strong pattern of his. She thought about that, the way he worded things. Essential to your life. Her long lashes lifted so she could study his face. Physically he was beautiful, sensual, very male. “Isn’t it essential to your life?”
For a brief moment, humor flashed into his eyes, a fleeting glimpse only, and then his eyes were black and deep and fathomless. Hiding a thousand secrets. “Sometimes it is extremely essential. Like now. When I look at you, you take my breath away. It just happens. I find I cannot catch my breath.”
Corinne found herself laughing in spite of her resolve not to. He was so outrageous, making her feel beautiful when she was pregnant. “I haven’t noticed that peculiar phenomenon occurring. I’ll have to pay closer attention.”
“Then you must not realize you make my legs weak either.” In the darkness, with the fog pressing close around the car and the strange insidious whispering, Corinne was grateful for Dayan’s solid frame and the laughter he was generating.
“I think you’re making things up just to get me to laugh and forget those men waiting in the darkness to hurt you.” She was sliding her fingers up and down his arm absently. “I want to go with you.”
His mind was a shadow in hers. She wasn’t afraid for herself, she was afraid for him. She was determined to accompany him. “Meltdown.” He whispered the word against her pulse, against her bare skin so that she felt him in her, deep inside. The word was a caress of black velvet, a sorcerer’s tool.
Dayan felt his insides had gone into serious meltdown, turning his blood to molten lava. Thick and hot and moving through him with urgent demands. She was everything. Light and laughter, serenity and poetry and hot, steamy sex. She was classy and sweet, she was elegance and candlelit nights and lace and satin. She was the purity of frothy waterfalls and cool, dark forests. There was a wildness buried deep within her that surged to the forefront when she was with him. A wildness that matched his own. He sensed that it surprised her because she hadn’t known it existed. Yet she should have; it was there in her music, when she played so passionately, in the songs she wrote for others to sing.
Dayan drew her close to him, so that their hearts beat in the same rhythm, her heart matching his steadier beat. “You will stay in this car, my love, where the fog will protect and keep you safe. These humans cannot harm me. I will make sure they leave.”
She recognized the “push” he used in his voice, the urge to obey that was nearly impossible to ignore. As irritated as it made her, Corinne was intrigued by the mesmerizing quality of his tone. Before she could really think about it, Dayan’s mouth was capturing hers, whirling her away from anything as sane as thinking, removing every thought from her brain and replacing it with pure feeling. Then he was gone, slipping quickly from the car, leaving her sitting by herself, bereft.
Corinne drew her legs up onto the seat and nibbled at the tip of her fingernail. Dayan. He had crawled under her skin, wrapped himself around her heart, seeped into her soul so she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Couldn’t stop wanting to be with him. There was something different about him. Each time she thought she was close to the answer, he distracted her. He did it smoothly, casually, effortlessly.
She stared out the window and saw the thick fog. She could see nothing else, and the lack of visual cues gave her the illusion of floating in the sky, cushioned by billowy clouds. No one had the capability to command the sky, the weather. So why did she believe that Dayan had done something to bring in the mysterious fog? It wasn’t natural. She had heard the whisper of voices, seen the shadowy shapes moving. It was frightening, yet he had gone out into it completely without fear, as if he knew he would come to no harm.