When he withdrew at last, she pressed against him, cold in the absence of his scalding touch, but he let her slip down in his arms and took her mouth in a kiss that drew the sounds of passion from deep within her and set them free. Her own arms came about him, raking his back as his hands tangled in her hair. His arousal was a shaft of furnace heat against the inside of her thigh, rising to meet her flowing warmth.
In the instant before union, as he lifted her onto himself and she prepared to take him, she opened her eyes. His face was cast in shadow, taut with hunger, but she could see his eyes. They were the source of the burning heat, they radiated it, glowed with it. The full shock of those eyes drained all the desire from her body.
“No!” She pushed at him, repelled his immovable strength, pummeled his shoulders and chest in rage. He was hard, demanding, unyielding, staring at her with that hot, terrible gaze. Even as she struggled, she knew if she looked at him again, she would lose herself to him forever. His grip tightened, and he forced her against him, he compelled her—he compelled her to meet his eyes, to surrender, to submit to him now and for all time.
Her voice rose in a ragged cry of defiance, but her gaze was drawn irrevocably to his, and she was lost. Lost, burning and lost…
“No! Joey jerked to wakefulness, her body tangled amid the sheets and blankets of the bed. The only sound was the harshness of her breathing, there was no one with her, no burning eyes engulfing all the world. For a long moment she lay gasping, trapped in the clinging warmth of the covers and staring into the moon-laced darkness of her room.
She focused slowly on the homely furnishing of the guest chamber, the old oak bureau and the antique radio, the ancient pictures discolored by age and sunlight.
The light of the moon, cutting a brilliant, broken shaft across the floor, gave the illusion of midday and cast the corners of the room in deep shadow. Joey concentrated on the light until her breathing had slowed and she was able to think clearly again. A nightmare. She reassured herself with that thought over and over until its reality took firm hold.
With slow, deliberate movements she freed her arms and legs of the entangling covers. They were soaked with perspiration, the illusion of heat that had infused her dream had not been entirely a fantasy. It helped to remind her that the feeling of being trapped had also come from a very real condition.
But that was not entirely comforting. Joey could feel remnants of another kind of heat, coiling unfulfilled deep with her. There was moisture there, too, her mind and body had reacted to the nightmare with an enthusiasm that frightened her. In the nightmare she had lost control—completely and irrevocably. Her body had rejected the careful fetters that her mind had struggled to impose so many years ago. In dreams her mind lost its mastery.
Joey sat up, ignoring the hard edges of the wooden headboard at her back. The eyes in the dream. She had recognized those eyes. She wrapped her arms tightly about herself and suppressed a shudder. It had been him. The man she’d seen in the bar and the general store—Gévaudan. The man who had at once frightened and fascinated her. In her dream it had been Gévaudan who had caressed her and breached all her careful boundaries, who had taken control and dominated her—until that very last moment, when the sanity of her waking mind had freed her from a situation that had become unbearable.
The images were burned into her mind, though she stared into the silence of the room until she had memorized every tiny detail of it. Rage welled up in her—rage that Gévaudan had invaded her dreams, upsetting her careful equilibrium. Why? She pounded the damp mattress with her fist. Why was her own mind betraying her?
She remembered the incident in the general store—the way his mere presence had almost overwhelmed the room, quieted a threatening dog, and frightened Mr Jackson into retreat.