The young man lay in his bed and sweated silently. How could he call them dreams? They came at the deepest part of sleep. They were part of him, drawing out his anguish and his lusts. His hair lay spread on the pillow, thin strands of it sticky on his cheeks, and his long, elegant fingers clenched into fists at his sides.
The low voice laughed, softly; the voice he’d grown used to, night after night.
It was a nightmare, surely. A possession of both his mind and his body, his limbs suffused with the flow of rich, hot blood that felt less than—and yet somehow so much more than—his own. He was consumed by an ache that began at his extremities, then rippled swiftly through every nerve. His legs tensed on the cool linen beneath him; his fingers ghosted over the taut skin of his hips. He’d for
