Never in her life had Lyssa been more aroused. She was so wet, so hot. She doubted she could take a man of his size if she wasn't.

"Oh, Lyssa," he crooned, one hand stroking the length of her spine, making her arch like a cat. "You've got the tightest, juiciest, hungriest cunt I've ever fucked."

"Aidan." She shuddered violently, his coarse words spoken in that luscious brogue making her cream. The extra lubrication allowed him to slide deeper, making them both gasp. Regulated breaths were out of the question. They were both too far gone, their focus so completely arrested by the place where their bodies joined.

She liked dirty bedroom banter, had fantasized about it, but it took a highly confident man to be so open. Until now, she'd never found one.

Finally, Aidan sank in to the hilt, his tight, heavy balls resting against her clit. He withdrew and pumped forward, the smacking of his sac against her slick flesh forcing a deep moan from her.

Her voice came slurred with pleasure, "You're so deep."

And he was; every crevice of her pussy was stretched to hold him, sheathing him like a custom-made glove. There was no way to ignore how perfectly they fit together.

Aidan paused with one hand at her hip, the other at her shoulder. His chest rose and fell in great bellows against her back, which drew her attention to his quivering thighs. She felt as if she were rattling apart. It appeared he felt the same.

The tantalizing smell of his skin filled the air around her, blending with the incense. Where they touched, they clung, their mingled sweat binding them closer together.

"Maybe if we come fast… ?" she suggested shakily, trying to think of a point past this moment of vulnerability.

"Yes."

Reaching beneath her, Aidan rubbed her clit in those maddening circles and began to shaft her cunt with long, measured drives. The sensation was incredible, the feeling of stretching and shrinking, of grasping and sucking, of being pumped with expert precision by a man who knew how to fuck so well, it made her mindless with lust.

Lyssa had no doubt she was in over her head. She didn't have the experience to handle a man like Aidan. It was obvious in the way he mantled her body and rode it with absolute surety that he was in his element. She, on the other hand, could only lie there and take it, her entire body so sensitized that the feel of his pendant brushing across her back made her orgasm.

"So sweet," he groaned, as she shook beneath him with a startled cry. "I'm coming…"

She felt his cock jerk inside her as he climaxed hard, flooding her with pulses of thick, hot semen. Blood roared in her ears, dulling her hearing, but slowly she became aware of his words, softly whispered in a language she didn't comprehend. His tone was reverent, his embrace crushing.

As her knees gave out beneath her, he followed her down, shifting to lie behind her.

Still joined.

Still murmuring those beautiful, mysterious words with his lips pressed to her skin.

* * *

Chapter 3

Aidan lay on his back and looked up at the starry night sky through the oculus. Outwardly he was calm and sated. Inside he was shaken to the core. He didn't know how to process the feeling of connection he felt with the woman curled up at his side.

As he'd slid inside Lyssa's lusciously tight body, the connection had been more than a dream, more than sex. He'd tried to make their joining no more than physical pleasure. He had turned her over, faced her away from him, and none of it had worked. The unrestrained anxiousness he felt around her hadn't dissipated with his orgasm. Now it was worse than ever, accompanied as it was by the knowledge that he would have to leave her, and once he did, he would never see her again.

His eyes closed on a ragged breath. She'd made love to him, not a fantasy. Not the Captain of the Elite. Not a Guardian with a lascivious reputation. Just Aidan Cross.

In all his life, he was certain she was the only woman to have ever done so.

The effect that knowledge had on him was startling. He'd been as lost to the sex as she was. He, a man who'd fucked literally countless women, had just had a sexual encounter unlike any other.

"So tell me." Her warm breath gusted across his skin. "What are these things you say I don't understand?"

"Lyssa…"He heaved out a sigh, and looked down at the top of her head. How could he tell her enough to keep her safe, but not enough to anger the Elders?

"Uh oh." She rose to look at him. "Let me guess. You don't date seriously, you're not looking for a girlfriend, no attachments. It's just sex."

It wasn't, but he could never tell her that. Instead he said, "I'm a Dream Guardian."

Her brows rose. "O-kay… That's a new one."

"The beach, this tent, your clothes, even the darkness— they are inventions of your mind."

"'Kay I got that."

"I'm not."

"You're not what?"

"I'm not a figment of your imagination. You can alter my appearance to suit your desires, but that's the extent of your control over me. You can't make me do anything I don't want to."

"Yeah, I figured that one out already." Lyssa pursed her lips in thought. She offered a shaky smile. "So you're not a tall, dark, and handsome, drop-dead gorgeous sex god?"

Aidan's lips twitched with a withheld smile. "What color is my hair?"

"Black."

"All over?"

Lyssa ran her finger through his chest hair, then dipped lower to cup his balls. "Yes. All over."

"And my eye color?"

Her eyes narrowed, then she leaned closer. "I'm not sure," she said finally, in a low, hesitant tone. "They look dark. I think the light's not good."

He reached out and caught her hand, then dropped it as if it burned him. That was her first sign that something was wrong. She saw his hands clench into fists and wondered what the hell was going on. "The lighting is fine."

"So I take it, that's not how you look?"

"No."

A shudder moved through her. She'd just made love to man she couldn't see. It was so bizarre, she didn't know how she was supposed to feel. "What does a Dream Guardian do?"

"It depends," he said, his voice rough. "There are a lot of us, and we're divided into certain specialties. Each Guardian has their strengths. Some are tender and offer comfort to those who grieve or are deeply saddened. Others are playful and fill in dreams of sports heroes or reality television shows."

"I suppose you're one of the tender ones," she guessed, remembering his compassion and caring, and finding peace in that. She didn't know what he looked like, but she knew what type of man he was, and that's what really mattered.

Aidan stiffened beneath her.

Her brows rose. "What?"

"I'm Captain of the Elite Warriors," he said, as if that explained everything.

I keep the bad guys away, he'd told her that first night. But he'd been kind to her. Tender.

"What's an Elite Warrior?"

"I'm assigned to protect Dreamers who have recurring Nightmares."

"Like a bodyguard?"

"More like a military rescue."

"That's why you're so big."

He stared at her intensely. "I'm a large man, yes, but I don't know what you see when you look at me, Lyssa. Your dream is fabricating my appearance. Dreamers can't see Guardians. Your subconscious fills in the gaps."

"Oh." Lyssa sank deeper into the scarves. "Why do I need an Elite Warrior in my dreams? I don't have nightmares."

"The door you built is a formidable one. We had to come in, and I'm the muscle."

Her short laugh held no humor. "That's why you came back tonight? Because I wouldn't open the door to the other… Guardians?"

"Yes."

Her stomach knotted. She had totally believed that line about him worrying about her. "Why do they want to come in here so bad? There's nothing to see."

Aidan sat up and rested against a pile of pillows. Aside from the silver chain and stone pendant he wore, he was unabashedly naked. The most luscious masculine animal she had ever seen. Even as she applauded her imagination, she mourned that he wasn't real.

His male perfection was all in her head.

"Nightmares are real," he said. "Just not in the way humans have come to see them."

"Huh?" She waited for him to speak, and then listened with damp palms as he explained abbreviated space, space-time, and planes of existence in a voice devoid of inflection.

Since the Nightmares had discovered the human subconscious through the fissure created by the Elders, the battle was never-ending. The dreams created in the human mind had given Nightmares a new power source on which to thrive. Fear, fury, misery—these were easily aroused through dreams, and fed them so well.

"Too many times I've seen the dark circles under human eyes, the slumping shoulders, the weary shuffling stride." Aidan's hands fisted rhythmically in his lap. "Over the years the Elders have tried to close off the tiny crack between the Twilight and your world, but there's no way, Lyssa. We can only do damage control."

And here she'd thought she was an expert on dreams after a lifetime of struggling with hers. How little she knew.

"We fight back as best we can to protect you," he continued. "We've become phantasms, taking on the form and nuances of each individual subconscious."

Lyssa considered everything carefully, and then asked, "Why do I have to know all this? I'm assuming most people don't?"

"Most people don't," he agreed. "But you're stronger than most. You recognize all guises, and you can keep us out if you want to. I've been asked to convince you to open the door. Since you understand that this is a dream, which is rare, but not unheard of, I decided to give it to you straight."

"They just want to come in, look around, and see if there are any Nightmares lurking in here? Isn't that your job?"