I use my arms like a clamp to keep her locked to me as I pump inside her. This is better, I think. This I can control.
She begins to make small, desperate sounds, and I can feel the pressure building in her abdomen. Cutting to her core. Burning her bones. I drive into her faster and harder, each thrust pulling her climax closer to the surface. At the same time, I fight my own. I fight the destruction of my defenses. The fracturing of my shield. When her light envelops me, I try to shake it off. I bite. I battle. I broil.
“Come for me,” I say through gritted teeth.
And in that instant, her muscles contract around my cock. Her need stings and pushes and floods until it explodes, delicious and bittersweet.
And I realize it’s not just her need that has risen like a tidal wave. I’m coming, too. The initial burst of pleasure is followed by a pulsating high that throbs inside me for several long moments. Each surge chips away my resistance a little more. Each rush of blood shatters the carefully constructed barricade a little more. Until her light seeps between the spider-web cracks. Until the tension builds. Until it ruptures, and she pours into me like a floodtide.
Until I have drowned in her light.
I am shaking. Trembling so hard my knees give, and we collapse into a heap the floor. A soft sigh slips through her lips, and I wonder if she’ll remember this in the morning. If she’ll remember me. If she’ll understand what she’s done.
23
The dreams continue for over a month. Each one reveals a new facet of her personality. One night, she is wild and unpredictable. The next, she is shy or giggly or coy. She laughs and growls and bites and sucks. She brings me to the brink of orgasm, then pulls back. Forces me to wait. Revels in my agony.
I continue my quest to no avail, and I grow more frustrated every day. But at night, I know what’s coming. Who’s coming.
Part of me, a very small part, wonders why this is happening now when she’s never pulled me into one of her dreams before. When we’ve never even come close to have sex. Most of me doesn’t give a shit and just enjoys the ride. But there’s another part, an obstinate part, that wants more. That wants Dutch live and in the flesh. That wants her hand. Her mouth. Her hips under mine. It wants all of her. Every last ounce. Body and soul. That part is just going to have to settle for what it has. There’s no getting Dutch. There’s no having her. Even if it did come to that, even if it could, the minute she sees the truth about me, the dirty little secrets I carry around, she’ll run for the hills.
So for now, I savor what I have. I relish the intimacy.
When I’m not scouring through the backstreets of every city in the state, I keep an eye on the girl. My girl. She’s working a case with Angel, a departed kid she picked up off the streets, and Cookie, her receptionist and best friend. It’s dangerous. Three lawyers are dead already, so I stay close for a few days.
She’s also working a case on the side. Mine. She’s beginning to put two and two together. To suspect that the man she pulls into her dreams every night and the cloaked figure who’s followed her since the day she was born are one and the same. But that still won’t lead her to me.
I head back to the long-term care facility the state has moved me to. Something is wrong. When I get there, the doctors are speaking with the warden. Neil Gossett is there as well. He’s upset. Wants to give it more time.
Basically, since I have no next of kin and no one to protest, to petition the courts to keep me on the machine, the state is going to take me off life support in a few days. The doctors say there is no hope of recovery. My brain is dead.
They got that right. I may have faked my condition a little too well. I have three days before they pull the plug. Three days to figure out how I’m going to fake my own death without actually being buried alive. Or cremated.
Maybe I could have Amador steal my body. How hard could that be? But Amador doesn’t know the truth. I