He stepped back, spreading his arms so that the robe whipped around him.

“The night passes, quick and bright, and dawn will break with the softest light. If blood calls to blood, come then to me.” He paused so that their eyes locked and held. “As you will, so mote it be.”

He reached down, took a spray of moonflowers and gave it to her. “Sleep well, Rowan.”

The sleeves of his robe fell back, revealing hard muscle. With one flash of power, he sent her from him.

Chapter 8

The sunlight beamed bright through the windows. With a murmur of complaint, Rowan turned from it, pressed her face into the pillow.

Sleep was what she wanted. Sleep where those wonderful and vivid dreams would come, where she could wrap herself in them. There were tatters of them still waving through her mind.

Fog and flowers. Moonbeams and candle glow. The silver flash of an owl, the quiet roar of the sea. And Liam in a white robe that shimmered with jewels, holding her in the center of a circle of stones.

She could taste that hot male flavor of him on her tongue, feel the ripple of muscle held ruthlessly in check, feel the not-quite-steady thud of his heart against hers.

She had only to slide back into sleep to experience it all again.

But she turned restlessly, unable to find it, or him, again.

It was so real, she thought, rubbing her cheek against the pillow to watch the sunbeams shoot in through the windows. So real and so … wonderful. She’d often had very odd and textured dreams, particularly during her childhood.

Her mother had said it was imagination, and that she had a good one. But she needed to learn the difference between what was real and what was make-believe.

Much too often, Rowan supposed, she’d preferred the make-believe. Because she’d known that had worried her parents a little, she’d buried it. She decided it was because she’d chosen to take her own road now that the dreams were coming back so often.

And it didn’t take an expert to understand why her dreams were so often of Liam—and so romantic and erotic. She supposed the wisest course was to simply enjoy them—and not to forget what was real and what wasn’t.

She stretched, lifting her arms high, linking her hands. And, smiling to herself, replayed what she could remember.

A dream riff on the game they were working on, she thought. With Liam as hero, she as heroine. Magic and mist, romance and denial. A circle of stones that whispered, a ring of candles where the flames rose straight despite the wind. Columns of fire, blue as lake water. Fog that parted as she walked.