The Mad Dog's Midnight Visitor

The moment Daisy made up her decision, someone shouted.

"The Grand Duke's carriage is coming through the gates!"

With a clamor of clattering chairs, everyone around her leapt up and rushed to the windows in a stampede. Daisy rose a beat behind them and joined the crowd at the glass.

She was small enough that she had to stand on her very tiptoes to catch even the top of Ezra's head through the window.

Great. All this trouble for a glimpse of a scalp.

Just then, Ezra lifted his head and looked up—directly into her eyes.

"Eek!"

"He looked this way!"

While the crowd went mad, waving their handkerchiefs, Daisy quickly ducked back behind them. It was only for an instant, but even from that distance she could have sworn she saw the murderous glint in Ezra's eyes.

That night, Ezra sat in the chair beside his bed. On the small table next to it stood a bottle of viciously strong liquor and a glass.

Ezra had never been fond of alcohol, so he rarely drank. But lately his nights had been so unsettled that the stuff had become a mercy. He knew perfectly well that liquor, being a kind of poison, wouldn't work on him—yet if he drained a whole bottle in one sitting, he could at least fall asleep as though he'd been knocked unconscious.

He told himself that he dreamed of Daisy every night because being bested by her galled him so much that he replayed the humiliation over and over until he dropped off.

That shameless wretch.

People had coveting his looks since he was a boy, but he had never met anyone so brazen as that woman.

Ezra drained his glass in one swallow.

Daisy checked the countdown. In the days since she'd resolved to climb through the window of the Grand Duke's townhouse, she had prepared everything.

From her pocket she carefully drew out an ointment and worked it evenly into the inside of her gloves. The stuff gave off a ferociously strong adhesive when it met stone—strong enough to let her scale a sheer wall. Detaching again mattered just as much, of course, so she'd formulated it to peel away the moment she rubbed her palms together and warmed it.

It was a trick she'd learned from a mercenary she'd grown friendly with during one of her many regressions.

She checked her surroundings, then started up the wall. Having used the ointment a few times before, the climb itself was easy.

According to the intel she'd gathered at the café, Ezra's bedroom was the second terrace from the right on the topmost floor.

The truly terrifying ones are always the women.

By the time she finished that thought, she had reached her target terrace. The curtains were drawn; whether he was already asleep, she couldn't tell.

Daisy peeled off her gloves, stowed them in her bag, and tapped the window with a fingertip.

It's open!

Delighted, she eased the window open without a sound and slipped inside. Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out a man in a nightgown, asleep on the chaise beside the bed.

Even better that he's sitting up. I can collar him right away.

As she drew closer, the heavy scent of liquor hung in the air. On the table sat a bottle of harsh whiskey, nearly empty. Clicking her tongue inwardly, Daisy pulled the collar from her bag.

She knelt before him and carefully reached both hands around the back of Ezra's neck.

And that was the moment.

"Hhk—"

The arm holding the collar was seized in a scorching grip. She startled and tried to lunge backward, but the man was faster. He hauled her up, tossed her onto the bed, and climbed over her with an expression of pure irritation.

"Ha. This dream again?"

Dream?

Before Daisy could ask what he meant, Ezra bent down and bit her lips.

A beat too late, she registered that she was kissing Ezra—and she thrashed beneath him, straining to shove him off. But he caught both her wrists in one hand and pinned them above her head, subduing her with insulting ease.

"You're getting nailed either way, so why not hold still? No—wait. We're in a dream, aren't we? Might as well commit to it."

"St—op—mmph!"

And he went back to kissing her. His thick tongue began to plunder her mouth at will, and every time its rough tip scraped the ridged roof of her mouth, Daisy felt a warm ache coil low in her belly.

You cursed body of mine—why is it doing this again, of all times?

Daisy had forgotten, but the debuff on her body had never actually lifted. It had seemed dormant lately only because Ezra hadn't been anywhere near her. Now she had walked, of her own free will, straight into a zone drenched in his scent in order to collar him—so tumbling right back into heat was the most natural thing in the world.

Naturally, she had never once asked him about any of this.

Ezra, mid-kiss, felt the tension steadily draining from her body and released her wrists. He went on mouthing and sucking at her lips for a long while before finally lifting himself off her.

Unlike in every dream before, she was dressed head to toe in close-fitting black—so the lines of her body stood out in full. Breasts that seemed a size larger than in his previous dreams, a sharply nipped waist, hips that fell away in a gentle, unhurried curve.

Ezra's eyes narrowed as he trailed his gaze over her, then he reached out to peel her clothes away.

"W-wait. Just hear me out. Listen to me first—about us—"

"Too loud."

He silenced her with another kiss and tore her clothes apart by force. With a rending rip, the thin black shirt gave way, and when he dragged her bra upward, her full breasts spilled bare into the air. He seized them in both hands, kneading roughly, then caught a stiffened peak between his fingers and pulled.

"Nnnh!"

At that instant Daisy's eyes flew wide open and her whole body shuddered. She had come, hard, in the span of a heartbeat.

"Th—that—!"

"See that? You came the moment I touched you. Proof you've been waiting for this."

Ezra smiled brazenly, and with the same hand that had been teasing her breasts he tore open her trousers and brought his mouth straight to her. There was no chance to hide what he had bared.

"Hh—ah, ahh!"

Every wet, obscene pull of his mouth drew another climax out of her, her release spilling over his tongue. He licked up every last drop as though he'd been starved for it, and the rough scrape of that tongue against her oversensitive flesh only dragged her under again, and again, helplessly.

But a deeper hunger, one that wanted to be filled, had begun to gnaw away at the last of her reason.

"N-no. Not that."

"You loved it, so why do you always say no? Is it that I only remember what repeats, because it's a dream?"

Ezra grinned, playful, and slid a single finger into her soaked heat while his other hand went back to exploring her breasts. The soft, plush give of them was the kind of thing a man didn't forget even in dreams.

Well—that was presumably why she kept showing up in them.

He gave up trying to think any further. It was a dream, so he intended to do exactly as he pleased. He pressed the spot he'd long since mapped out from every dream before—a slightly deeper patch of her inner walls, if he remembered right.

"Nnnh!"

Even at his lightest touch, Daisy climbed toward a climax that felt like her brain might burn away. Delighted, Ezra began working his fingers in earnest.

"This is the spot, isn't it?"

Daisy shook her head frantically, writhing beneath him. A faintly wounded look crossed his face—then he pushed in a second finger and began stroking that aching peak harder still.

Soon the slap of skin and the wet, squelching chorus of her arousal filled the room.

The rising pressure in her belly drained the color from Daisy's face. Last time's disgrace had happened out in the open wilderness, where she could pretend it never occurred—but this was the Grand Duke's own bedchamber.

Scraping together what wits she had left, she caught his hand and shook her head.

"Honestly, you're so honest below the waist—soaking my hand and milking it for all it's worth—and yet up here you seem not one bit satisfied."

Daisy was dumbstruck by his tone, half scolding and half soothing. As if to quiet her astonishment, Ezra bent down again and kissed her.

Pressed beneath that enormous body, Daisy took the Grand Duke with her mouth and with her body alike. When she peaked in his arms and cried out—a sound perilously close to a scream—it was all swallowed into his kiss.

Again and again he brought her apart with his fingers alone, until she felt her whole body being turned over.

"You liked it from behind, remember?"

"N-no. No, I didn't."

Back then she'd been half out of her mind, and what remained of it was patchy at best.

"Really? What a shame. The way you whimpered, mewling like that—it was rather cute."