Page 150 of House of Roots and Ruin
Whatever perdition you bring upon this world, I hope it eats you first!
It was coming. It had started.
“We have to stop,” I sobbed, breathless.
We couldn’t stop.
Not now.
Not when we were so close.
Whenitwas so close.
So…
Close.
So…
A soft knock snapped me from my slumber and I opened myeyes, gasping as if I’d just run from the maws of death. My heart pounded, thudding in an unfamiliar cadence.
I’d been so surrendered to the dream, so blissfully, horrifically saturated within it, I couldn’t at first remember where I was.
I sat up and the world came rushing back to me.
I was in my sitting room.
Lying on the velvet settee.
After spending the day in the Garden of Giants, I’d feigned a headache before dinner. I knew I’d be unable to stomach sitting in Gerard’s presence, pretending everything was fine.
The room was dark now, washed in shades of midnight blue and starlight.
Save for Viktor, poised on the threshold of the open secret passage, illuminated by the glow of a single yellow taper.
Viktor.
My body sizzled as I recalled the way his touch had raked over me.
Not him.
It had only been a dream.
But my middle ached with the echoes of that ecstasy all the same.
He frowned, looking guilty. “Were you sleeping?”
“I…” I pushed back a strand of hair, feeling fluttery and flustered. “I was but…I’m glad you woke me. I was having the most—”
Sensual.
Shameful.
“—shocking nightmare,” I concluded, my chest rising and falling as if I was out of breath. I swallowed hard, trying to stop the quiver in my voice.
“No dreams of me, then?” he asked playfully.
Deep inside, I felt the way his feral groan had reverberated in the deepest, most secret part of me. I stifled back the urge to press him up against the wall and demand he take me then and there. “Afraid not.”
