His nostrils flared and he inhaled sharply, and she suddenly wondered if she’d said something far more dangerous than she knew.

“Everything?” he purred. “Everything I might want? Everything I might dream of doing to you? Do you mean to gift me your innocence—without condition?”

A heartbeat passed, then two.

… would say that she needed him. Was willing to relinquish everything. He would turn his years of mastery—all those years he’d made heated love with a cold heart to women who’d wanted nothing from him but his body—to Chloe’s lush curves, the backs of her knees, the inside of her thighs, laving every inch with his tongue. He would untie her, roll her onto her stomach. Stretch her hands above her head, catch them in one of his, nipping the nape of her neck. He would drag his tongue down her spine, lavishing attention on his favorite spot, the slender, delicate arch where a woman’s back met her bottom, then kiss every inch of her sweet ass.

Kneeling above her, straddling her, he would nudge her soft curves with his hard cock. Feel her buck up and back …

“Dageus!” Chloe cried. He was behind her, hot and silky and hard against her bottom, and she felt so damned empty inside that it hurt.

“What, lass?”

“Make love to me,” she gasped.

“Why?” He stretched flat atop her, skin to skin from her head to her toes, his palms to the backs of her hands, pressing them against the bed, letting her feel the full weight of him, making it hard for her to breathe. He nudged her thighs apart with his knee. He thrust his hips, pushing against her, but not inside her. Deliberately teasing her.

“I want you.”

“Want is no’ enough. You must feel like you can’t breathe wi’out me inside you. Do you need me? No matter the cost? Though I’ve warned you I’m no’ a good man?”

“Yes! God, yes!”

“Say it.”

“I need you!”

“Say my name.”

“Dageus!”

Chloe snapped awake with a violent start, sweating and breathing hard, and so intensely aroused that she hurt from head to toe. “Wh-what . . .” she trailed off, remembering the dream. Oh, God, she thought, appalled. Shaking her head, she suddenly realized she wasn’t alone.

He was in the room with her.

Sitting not two feet away from her in a chair beside the bed, watching her with those glittering tiger-eyes.

Their gazes collided.

And she had the most awful feeling that he somehow knew. Knew that she’d been dreaming of him. In his smoldering gaze was a strange satisfaction.

A hot flush suffused her from head to toe. She glanced frantically down. Thank God, she was still fully clothed. It had been but a dream.

He couldn’t possibly know.

She tugged the covers up to her chin. The air in the room was positively frigid.

“You sounded restless,” he purred, his voice dark as the shadowy room. “I came to check on you and thought I’d sit nearby till you calmed.”

“I’m calm now,” she lied blatantly. Her heart was hammering and she turned away so she wouldn’t betray something with her eyes.

She sneaked a quick peek at him. Beautiful man. Sitting half-gilded by the dying firelight. One side of his face golden, the other in shadows. She was nearly panting. Bit her lip to quiet herself.

“Then I should go?”

“You should go.”

“You doona … need … anything, Chloe-lass?”

“Just for you to let me go,” she said stiffly.

Never, Dageus thought, pulling the door firmly closed.

When she’d wakened, he’d been stunned to realize that somehow his thoughts, the painfully intense seduction he’d been imagining, had crept into her dreams.

Power. There was power inside him and he dare not forget that. Somehow that power had made her share his fantasy.

A dangerous thing.

Apparently, he’d used magic yet again, without even realizing it.

A muscle leaped in his jaw. ’Twas getting damned hard to see where the ancient ones began and he ended.

He had work yet to do this eve, he reminded himself, shaking himself sharply, resisting the darkness that stretched and flexed within him. The darkness that tried to convince him he was a god, and aught he wished was his due.

Tugging on his boots and donning his coat, he cast a last glance in the direction of the bedchamber before he slipped from the penthouse. She was securely bound, would never know he was gone. It would be but for a few hours.

Before he left, he turned the thermostat up. It was cold in the penthouse.