“Why were you outside?” Roxy asked.
Charlie jumped out of her skin. She had slipped back inside and was closing the door silently when her grandmother’s voice came out of nowhere and scared her so badly she would probably have gray hairs by morning. Roxy was pulling on her bathrobe and coming up the hallway, and Charlie tried to wipe the guilty and slightly dreamy expression off her face and replace it with an indignant one.
“I couldn’t sleep, and I went outside. Not that I should have to explain myself to you.”
“Charlotte, I’ve told you how much danger you’re in. If you don’t listen to me, how am I supposed to–”
“I am an intelligent, adult woman, and if I want to get some night air and look at the stars, I’ll damn well do it. You need to ease up on me, Roxy.”
Her grandmother seemed taken aback by that. Pursing her lips, she brushed past Charlie to throw all the locks on the front door and re-set her silly alarm system, all the while staring through the door’s window panes until her eyes should’ve bled.
“You don’t trust me, do you?”
There was a chiming sound, and Roxy pulled a cell phone from her robe pocket, glanced at it, and then put it back. “No more than you trust me, Charlotte. Not yet, anyway.”
Charlie hadn’t been prepared for the blunt reply, and it hurt, even though it was probably deserved. She heaved the sort of sigh she hadn’t heaved since she was sixteen and said, “I’m going to bed.”
And that was what she did, not exchanging another word with her wanna-be jailer. If she didn’t think Roxy might have some kind of inside knowledge about how she could extend her own lifespan, and maybe countless other things as well, she’d leave this place tonight.
Instead, she lay in her cell, tossing and turning until finally falling into a restless and fitful sleep. As soon as she did, he was there, invading her dreams.
Killian.
In the dream she was standing outside again, and he was there too, staring into her eyes. She could feel him reading everything that had ever happened to her and everything that ever would. And she was letting him and vaguely aware, in an abstract way, that she didn’t have to. She could stop him, shut him out. But she didn’t want to. She relaxed and let him explore to his heart’s content. And then he withdrew from her mind, or that’s what it felt like, and he was staring into her eyes again. And she could hear his thoughts, just as if he was speaking aloud, only...not. He said, I’ve never felt anything like this before, without even moving his lips.
She thought, neither have I, and he nodded as if he’d heard her.
Is this real?
Yeah, he told her. Almost as real as it gets.
He ran his hands over her face, through her hair, down her neck.
I’ve dreamed of this before. Of you, of us, together.
I know you have, he told her. I have too, but only in bits and pieces. This time I’m here. I’m here with you.
You’re real. I’m so glad you’re real.
His hands were on her shoulders as they stood there, toe to toe, thigh to thigh, chest to chest. I think we belong together, his mind whispered to hers. I think there’s something bigger than either of us at work, here. There has to be for it to be this intense.
I don’t understand it, either. But I feel it too, Killian.
He kissed her, and it felt as real as when he’d kissed her outside, under the giant sugar pine. She was wrapped up in him, pressing against him, and suddenly they were both naked, even though they hadn’t stopped kissing. Her breasts were crushed to his powerful chest, and her hands kept running over his shoulders and arms. They were strong. She loved the way they felt and wondered how it was she could feel something so physical in a dream, and then she decided to just enjoy it and stop questioning it. It was different from the other times she’d dreamed about him. Even more real.
His hands were all over her, her back, her thighs, her waist, and he kissed her like he was going to die if he stopped. She was sure she would. Bodies straining, they tumbled to the ground beneath the sheltering boughs of the big tree, their hips moving urgently, insistently And then she wrapped her legs around him, and pulled him closer, and felt him inside her, filling her, and it was real, dammit, it was more visceral than any dream had ever been.
I want this to be for real.
It is, Charlie. Trust me, it is.
How can it be? I’m dreaming. You’re outside and I’m, I’m....
He moved harder, deeper, taking her breath away and leaving no doubt in her mind that this was real. She didn’t know how, and she didn’t care. It just was. And that was good enough. He was on top of her, and wrapped around her, and buried inside her mind and her heart, as well as her body. It felt like they were melding. She could feel everything he felt. His loneliness. His endless aching emptiness that only she could fill. His soul, she felt his soul, and it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever felt. And her physical sensations, her sensual pleasure, it was magnified a thousand times because it was mirrored back to her by his. Pretty soon she couldn’t tell which feelings were his and which were hers, and he couldn’t either. They were one.
It felt as if they always had been and always would be.
She screamed out loud at the pinnacle of it.
Her bedroom door burst open about the same time her eyes did. She laid there in her bed, naked under the covers, her whole body coated in sweat and shaking like a leaf. The rippling echoes of the orgasm that had just shattered her were still pulsing through her body. And her grandmother was standing in the doorway, looking at her with wide, questioning eyes and crazy hair.
“I’m okay,” Charlie whispered. “It was a just a bad dream.”
But it wasn’t, she thought. It wasn’t, it was good beyond endurance. And it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a dream at all.