Page 39 of The Dryad Storm

She arches against this new, assertive Geoffrey, wraps her legs around him, his desire pressing against her with startling pressure that sends flares of pleasure raying out from the contact, his arousal so quick, so intensely hard...

Abruptly, Geoffrey rolls off her.

“Gwynn,” a rough voice says, thickened by what sounds like mingled desire and conflict. A lower-pitched voice than Geoffrey’s.

A voice that isnotGeoffrey’s.

Alarm shocks through Gwynn’s system, and her eyes bolt open as she’s jerked violently out of the half dream to see Mavrik beside her. A glowing prism of hues pulses all over his lips and the base of his neck, the streaks of color practically incandescent in their intensity. He’s sitting up and has put some distance between them as they stare at each other with mutually stunned expressions.

Mortification explodes through Gwynn as her sleep-fogged mind assembles what just happened.

“We...” Mavrik swallows, his face flushed, lust still swimming in his eyes along with a look of discomfort. “We must have been dreaming.”

Gwynn sits up, her head spinning, her thoughts cast into turmoil.

What just happened?Those things she dreamed... did she do them with Mavrik? Thatkiss...

She can’t speak, the shame too tremendous.

She reaches up to massage her swollen lips and sees rainbow light reflecting from her mouth onto her hand.

“I woke fully when you... threw your legs around me,” Mavrik rasps. He bites at his light magic–infused lips. “Gwynn, I thought it was adream...”

“I... I thought you were myfastmate,” Gwynn stutters, her flush heating to a scald, the shame intensifying.

“I’ll sleep somewhere else,” Mavrik offers hastily, rising to his feet, and Gwynn notices, with heightening embarrassment, the lingering evidence of his arousal.

Because I threw myself at him so unforgivably.

Wildly distressed, she imagines what her family’s priest would say as if he were here. She can imagine those judgmental, condemning eyes. And she’s certain Mavrik must feel the same way about her.

He hesitates, raking a hand through his tousled hair.

Hair I tousled, Gwynn thinks, her flush growing so hot it feels like a sickness.

“I’ll... I’ll keep my distance from you,” Mavrik offers, the multicolored glow on his mouth constricting to forking threads of color. “I’llneverlet that happen again. I promise you. I’ve never pushed myself on a woman...”

At first, Gwynn is thrust into confusion by his words before she realizes, with stunned comprehension, that he’s not angry at her. He’s angry withhimself.

The radical idea calms an edge of her distress.

“Mavrik,” she ventures, seeming to startle him by her use of his name, “I believe you.”

He shakes his head. “I didnotmean to attack you. I’msosorry, Gwynnifer.”

Heat spreads down her neck as she remembers the thrilling feel of him. His unfamiliar, excitingly aggressive kiss. How she wrapped her body around him, her magic straining toward his, unforgivably wantingmore.

“I didn’t mean to attack you either. I’m sorry,” she apologizes.

“I don’t feel attacked,” he insists with a look of wild contrition. “Gwynnifer, themomentI realized what was happening—”

“I know. I stopped, too, the second I realized,” she agrees hastily as he hovers near the cavern’s entrance, color still flashing over his lips. Her own mouth tingles, and she realizes they probably look the same.

“What I just did,” he says, sounding tortured, “it wasdangerous... your fastlines... we could have...”

Gwynn glances down at the dark, looping lines, the claustrophobic feel of a cage descending. More and more these past months, she’s felt this way about her fastlines, but never as strongly as she does now. Now that she knows Vogel might break into their fasting spells...controlthem both through them...

It only adds to how disoriented she feels in this moment.

---