“Then what is it?” she asked, and Dax noticed the concern in her eyes. “Dax, I know I’ll get pulled away again, and I have no idea when that will happen. I don’t want to waste time.”

“Neither do I, believe me. But I also don’t want to lose you again without trying to figure out how to get you back. I know there’s got to be a way, and I’m thinking you can help me figure it out if we talk for a minute.” He smiled at her, and eased his body to the side so he couldn’t feel her through the sheet. He needed to make this last, and weakening her wasn’t the way to make that happen. “Let’s talk a little first.”

The pain in her eyes touched his heart. “Dax, if I cross without ever making love to you, I’ll never forgive myself for not taking advantage of this chance.”

He wanted to ask her so many questions-why she couldn’t control the time she came to him or the time she left, why she grew tired when no other ghost he’d ever known needed sleep, why she was wearing that nightgown again, if indeed she could change her clothes at will. And if she couldn’t change, then why couldn’t she, when Ryan had been able to? So many questions, but looking into her eyes, he realized-none of them mattered. What if they started talking, as he’d suggested, and then she was pulled away before they touched again? Could he forgive himself if he caused her to cross, completely, and never experienced making love with her?

“I don’t want to talk either,” he said honestly. “I want you, Celeste.”

She smiled and stood from the bed. Then she looked at him, and her gray eyes turned charcoal with desire. “In your dream, what was I wearing?”

“Nothing.”

She moved one finger to her shoulder and pushed the shiny fabric down, then she shifted slightly, and the other side also spilled down her arm, so the fabric rested at her elbows, and her breasts were bare.

His dream had been amazingly accurate. Full and lush and tipped with rose-tinted peaks, they were perfect. As in his dream, he ached to caress them with his mouth, and to learn the sweet sounds she’d make when he did. He wanted to learn what excited her, what aroused her, what ignited that slow burn within her until it exploded…around him.

She shifted her hips slightly and dropped her arms to her sides, and the fabric continued on its path to the floor.

Dax’s erection pushed high against the sheet, and he forced himself to breathe. She was naked, boldly, beautifully naked, and exceptional, from the tiny navel that centered her slim waist, to the curved hips, a little more than in his dream, and damn if he didn’t like the extra too. Her legs, as he’d imagined, were toned and well sculpted, perfect for nuzzling when they finally made love, and he would nuzzle them, kiss them, caress them, on his path to her core, hidden from his view with shimmering golden curls. He wanted to part those curls and taste her, feel the most heated part of her against his tongue, feel her pulse against his mouth as she came.

She turned toward the bed and he watched her attention move to the tented portion of the sheet, and the damp spot where he was already preparing to enter her. “You said it has been a long time,” she whispered, then her hands grasped the sheet, and she slowly slid it down his body, eyeing each revealed inch of his flesh. “How long has it been?”

Her eyes were nearly black as she looked up at him from the foot of the bed. In the back of his mind, he knew that something wasn’t right about that either. Her eyes had been lighter earlier, then darker, and now darker still. But he didn’t have time to analyze it, because she dropped the sheet to the floor, then climbed up on the bed, and took his breath away. Her hair fell wildly across his legs as she brought her face near his erection and asked again, “How long has it been, Dax?”

“I haven’t been with a woman since I met you,” he said, giving her the truth. “No one else would do.”

Her hands circled his penis, and then she brought her mouth to the tip and licked the first drops away.

The heat of Celeste’s mouth was even more potent, as though he were being flicked with hot coal…and he didn’t ever want it to stop. He’d never had any sexual encounter remotely like this, where he honestly felt as if his body couldn’t take it, but he prayed that it could.

“I’ve never done this before, Dax, and yet, I can sense exactly how this makes you feel, exactly where you want me to touch, exactly what you want me to do. It’s-it’s making me burn inside.”

Dax grit his teeth and nodded, unable to speak. He didn’t want to lose control, not yet, but the heat was so intense that he knew he wouldn’t make it much longer. He wrapped his hands tighter within their restraints and forced himself to leave them where they were. He couldn’t touch her, but he wanted to, to reach down and take that exquisite mouth and pull it to his, then slide her hips up his body and learn if she was as hot there.

She was trembling all over, her body shaking as she placed hot, wet kisses down his penis, massaging him with fiery circles of her tongue, until she reached the base. Then, emitting a low moan of contentment, she took that same technique to his testicles, and Dax’s heartbeat soared, thundering in his chest, roaring in his ears. His pulse hammered through him, his need for release beckoning him to let go.

Celeste licked him solidly again, from base to tip, then she ran her tongue around the end and took him inside, deep inside, and another of her intense moans vibrated against his heated flesh as she worked her way up and down, up and down, moaning and clamping that hot mouth tighter against him, until Dax’s body tensed fiercely, a tingling rush poured through him, and he growled through an orgasm that tore from his very soul.

He sucked in a breath, exhilarated by what she’d done for him, and miserable because he feared what it would cost her. She wanted to experience making love, but now that she’d put so much of her energy into pleasing him…

“Celeste!” he yelled as she looked up at him, her black eyes filled with pleasure at what she’d done, and no regrets, none at all. “Celeste!” he repeated, then he watched in complete agony as the woman he wanted more than any other-disappeared.

7

DAX WAS COVERED in sweat, both from the orgasm that had thoroughly shaken his world and from anger at losing Celeste again without fulfilling her needs, or learning how to get her back. “Dammit!”

He yanked his hands free from the restraints, then climbed from the bed and hurriedly dressed, grabbing the first clothing he could find, worn jeans and a black tank undershirt. The digital clock beside the bed proclaimed it two-thirty in the morning, but Dax didn’t care what time it was; he needed answers, and he wasn’t going to find them while he slept. More than that, he needed help, and he believed he knew where to go to get it.

Obviously, no one on this side was able to provide him with the help he needed. If anyone could have, it’d have been Ryan. But there was one person on the other side who had never let him down, and that person surely had the ability to help him now.

Even though he was only four when she passed on, he remembered one thing he could always count on from the feisty Vicknair matriarch. No matter how hard Adeline Vicknair tried, she simply couldn’t tell him no. Maybe it was because he was her youngest grandson. Maybe it was because he’d been as headstrong and trying back then as he was now. Or maybe it was just that all his older siblings, cousins, parents, aunts and uncles had spoiled him rotten. But for whatever reason, not once could he remember the woman turning him down, for anything.

Dax was counting on her not to break that record.

His bedroom was on the second floor of the plantation, so it was a short walk to the sitting room, its traditional rose-tinted lighting spilling from beneath the doorway across the hardwood in the hall.