ELEVEN
He lifted his head, watching her face for a strained heartbeat. Dark eyes holding hers, he lowered again. Doing as he'd imagined before, he parted her with his fingers and buried his mouth between her thighs.
She held in a gasp, aware that just because she was dreaming didn't mean she wouldn't make actual noises that might carry through the small house. The stroking of his tongue, the ever so light raking of his teeth, had her rocking beneath him.
She thought she could hear him growling softly in the back of his throat as she tightened her grip on him. The way he shivered against her as he nipped and suckled at her told her he was holding back.
But she couldn't think about that now, not as her limbs started tensing and she found her body shifting under him, trying to press tighter against him. He responded by drawing on her more ravenously still.
He growled again as she came, the sound constant now, like a content purr. She relinquished her hold, clamping her hands over her mouth to muffle a scream while he worked her through her orgasm.
As it ebbed, her hands slipped from her lips. She uttered an airy laugh as she rocked again, riding out the sweet, tingling aftershocks.
"Thank you," she said softly. She did adore her imagination.
Treating her to one last moment of suckling at her clit, he pulled back. "No, моя кошеня" he whispered. "Thank you."
She recognized something unusual. Something different from her other admittedly masturbatory lucid dreams, and she thought perhaps if she'd been sober, she'd have understood what that was.
As she slipped into another, different dream, she realized it.
The shadowy figures had never spoken before.
Antonin watched as her eyes closed. As her breathing evened out. She'd fallen asleep. Hardly ideal for the state he was in, but ... it was just as well, dawn would threaten soon enough. And for all the things he could picture getting up to with her when the opportunity came, it would certainly take a lot longer than they had right now.
As he was about to leave—wondering if being aware of the ability might somehow hinder his bizarre, misty transformation—he puzzled over why she hadn't reacted to finding him, of all people, in her bedroom.
Then he looked down at himself as he tried to understand.
His entire body was shrouded in shadows. Well, there went another new thing. He must've understood on some level; must've still been trying to hide. She hadn't seen him at all, only some ... vague silhouette of a man? And yet, the way she responded to him—
Arching a brow at her, he shook his head. "What a strange creature you are," he whispered, though there was a hint of awe in his voice, for were she not so strange, who knew how this might've turned out?
She fiddled with her teacup all through breakfast, her plate already empty. The girl seemed rested—and inexplicably famished—but troubled.
Oksana asked, "Something on your mind?"
Hermione pursed her lips, trying to recall the pronunciation. "Does moya koshenya mean anything?"
Her host smiled. "You heard this last night? Some young man to his love?"
Unsettled that it did mean something—especially since she knew she'd not heard those words before her dream—Hermione prompted, "And?"
"It means 'my kitten.'"
Hermione's brows lifted, a flash of cold rocking through her as she simply uttered, "Oh. Um, yes. I ... must've heard someone say that last night." It wasn't a lie, not really.
Forcing a smile, she let Oksana go back to her morning routine.
After breakfast, Hermione returned to her room and looked about. The rumbled bed, the basket of laundry, the tightly shuttered window. No sign anyone had been in here besides her.
And yet ... моя кошеня ... those had been actual words. And now that she was replaying that sweetly gruff murmur over in her head, she couldn't help an awareness that even though she couldn't place it, she'd heard this voice before.
