She echoed the odd incantation twice, for good measure. Brilliant golden light flashed, the heat behind her increased markedly, and the room suddenly seemed too small for all that was in it. The sensation of spatial distortion increased almost unbearably.
The lamp was plucked from her limp grasp and placed elsewhere. Strong hands closed on her waist from behind. Lifted her from the floor and swept her aside. Deposited her behind him, sheltering her with his body.
She caught scent of him then—God, had she ever smelled such a scent? The female muscles deep in her lower belly clenched. He bore no chemical traces of aftershave or deodorant. Nothing artificial. Just pure man: a blend of sun-warmed leather on skin, a kiss of something spicy like clove, a touch of sweat, and the raw, unspoken promise of sex. If male sexual dominion had a scent, he reeked of it, and it worked on her like the ultimate pheromone, bringing her nipples and groin to intense, painful sexual awareness.
She glanced up. And up.
It was the same towering, gorgeous, muscle-ripped man from her Friday-night fantasy, his long dark hair a tangle of dozens of braids bound with gold, silver, and copper beads, falling halfway down his back. His bare, oh-so-beautiful, velvet-skinned back.
“Whuh,” she breathed. In all her voyeuristic forays, she’d never seen a man so savagely, splendidly masculine. Figured he existed only in her subconscious.
It occurred to her then that since it was her subconscious at work, it was high time she transformed her id’s twisted little everyone’s-trying-to-kill-Jessi-today dream into something more to her liking: one toe-curling, scorchingly hot sex-dream.
Usually even the most intractable of bad dreams needed only a tiny nudge.
Nudge she would. With this fantasy man? Happily. Blissfully, even. She slid her palms up that perfect, powerful back, gliding over the ridges of muscle.
Fisted her hands in all that magnificent dark hair. Rubbed up against him, molding herself like Saran Wrap to his muscular, deliciously tight ass.
And licked him.
Slipped her tongue right up his spine. Tasted the salt and man and heat of him.
His entire body jerked with a violence that she would have found frightening, were she awake and any of it real. He sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth, a long, tight indrawn hiss, as if he were in exquisite pain. He went completely still, and made a guttural sound deep in his throat.
“You try me, woman,” he hissed.
He tossed his head—hard—yanking his braids free of her hands. In two strides he was through the door, slamming it behind him.
Only then did Jessi realize her assailant, too, was gone. He must have fled the moment she’d freed the man from the mirror.
With a gusty sigh, she went and slumped down on the couch. After a moment, she lay down, stretched out, and folded her arms behind her head.
She crossed her legs. Uncrossed them. Rubbed her eyes. Pinched herself experimentally a time or two.
God, she was horny. She couldn’t remember ever being so horny. The instant she’d pressed up against him she’d felt the strangest . . . well . . . jolt, for lack of a better word, sizzle through her entire body, and she’d gotten instantly ready. Panties-slick, ready-for-sex, no-foreplay-necessary ready.
So this is a wet dream, she thought with a little snort of amusement.
A worrisomely vivid, detailed wet dream, but a dream nonetheless.
She was going to wake up any minute now.
Yup. Any minute now.
3
Jessi awakened stiff, cold, and with the beginnings of what promised to be a perfectly vicious headache.
Her neck was crinked from sleeping funny and she must have pushed her pillow off the bed in the middle of the night, because there was nothing remotely downy beneath her head. She opened her eyes and pushed herself up, intending to take some Advil, retrieve her pillow, and lie back down for a few minutes, but the moment she opened her eyes, she had to add utterly-perplexed-as-to-her-current-location-in-the-universe to her list of complaints.
Unfortunately, her cranky, sleep-muddled respite from reality was far too brief. As soon as she sat up, she discovered she was not in her bed as she’d thought, but on the sofa in Professor Keene’s office, and the events of last night sledgehammered back into her brain.
Groaning, she dropped her head forward and clutched it with both hands.
Impossible events: a stranger in the office who’d tried to kill her; an absurd tale that the mirror was Old Stone Age; a man inside the mirror whom she’d freed—allegedly a ruthless killer.
Insane events.
Face buried in her palms, she whimpered, “What’s happening to me?”
But she knew what was happening to her; it was painfully obvious. She was losing it, that was what. And she wouldn’t be the first graduate student to crack under the strain of an overly ambitious load. Hardly a term passed without one or two dropping out of the program. The survivors always shook their heads and gossiped mercilessly about how so-and-so “just couldn’t take the pressure.” She knew; she’d been among them.