“Kalis!” She snuggled close and put her arms around him. Her soft, curvy body was nearly naked and the feeling of her flesh against his caused his shaft to react. But Kalis did his best to ignore it—he just wanted to comfort her, he told himself. Not…anything else. After all, it had only been two weeks since she almost died of the knife wounds and blood loss. He wanted to be sure she was all right before they did anything remotely physical again.
But this time, as he held the female he loved close to him, Kalis didn’t smell the sour scent of fear on her. Usually he could tell right away when she was having nightmares—his nose told him as well as the copious tears she’d cried against his chest while he held her and comforted her. But tonight, that scent was absent. In its place was…
He frowned, inhaling deeply in the dark. Was that the scent of her feminine desire? But how could a nightmare arouse her?
“Kalis?” she murmured again, and shifted against him. This time she seemed to be pushing her full breasts against his side almost on purpose.
“Jillian?” he asked. “Sweetheart, are you all right?”
“I…I don’t know. I feel so strange.” She moved against him again and this time he felt her pussy pressing against his thigh. She was hot and wet, he realized with a shock—which was certainly not her normal state after a nightmare.
“Did you have another bad dream?” Kalis asked her, reaching down to brush the hair out of her eyes.
She shook her head.
“I don’t think so. I was dreaming, but it wasn’t about Brad or…or anything else to do with him. It had to do with you…and your Ursus. With Brun.”
Kalis felt a small shiver of delight go through him, as he always did when she spoke of his Ursus by his secret true name. They were the only two people in the entire universe who knew it, and that was how it was going to stay. The fact that his other half had given the woman he loved his true name was remarkable, since he hadn’t even given it to Kalis’s first mate.
“What were you dreaming?” he asked her softly, stroking her cheek.
“It was confusing…” She shook her head. “But I think I was on my hands and knees on the ground. I was digging for some kind of buried treasure but for some reason, I wasn’t wearing any underwear.”
“No underwear, hmm?” Kalis couldn’t help thinking this dream sounded intriguing. Also, was she wearing any underwear now? If she was, he certainly couldn’t feel them as she pressed her pussy against his thigh. “Go on—what was I doing in your dream?” he said. “And what about my Ursus?”
“You were right behind me,” Jillian told him. She was pressing harder against his side, rubbing herself against him as she talked but Kalis didn’t know if she was quite aware of what she was doing. “You were telling me something like, ‘You have to dig deep to find the treasure. Deep—really deep.’ And every time you said the word ‘deep’, you…” She trailed off, as though embarrassed.
Kalis cleared his throat, trying to control his reaction to her soft, curvy body pressing so intimately against his own.
“Go on,” he urged. “What was I doing when I said the word ‘deep?’”
“Well…” Jillian shifted against him and looked up at him from under her lashes. He could see her lovely eyes glinting like two stars in the darkened room.
“Well?” he urged again.
She nibbled her bottom lip.
“Every time you said the word ‘deep,’ you pressed inside me,” she confessed in a soft voice. “You were filling me up—fucking me—while I was digging for treasure. Only sometimes it was you…and sometimes it was your Ursus. Is that even possible? I mean for the two of you to, er, switch places back and forth, that way?”
“Not exactly. Though there is something akin to it during a deep bonding,” Kalis said, frowning.
“A deep bonding? What’s that?” Jillian asked.
“It’s a step beyond bonding sex—for a B’varren Kindred, anyway,” Kalis told her. “It’s when his Ursus is…” He cleared his throat. “Is intimately involved in the bonding process. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it results in an incredibly deep and close bond with your mate.”
“Were you deep bonded with your other mate? With Kara?” she asked softly.
Kalis shook his head.
“No, my Ursus didn’t choose to participate in my bonding with her. Just as he didn’t choose to give her his true name. He loved her, I think, but not as much as I did.” He stroked Jillian’s flushed cheek, noting how hot it was. “But with you, it’s different, sweetheart. I think he loves you every bit as much as I do.”
“That’s sweet, but what a weird dream!” Jillian shook her head. “So strange…but somehow I didn’t want it to end.”