The Man of her Dreams: A Paranormal Romance

by Stratton, Nathan

  “Damn this insomnia!” she shouted, throwing her purse down on the chair and sinking into the couch. She racked her brain for what she could do that might help.

  But she needn’t have worried. Whether it was the exhaustion of all she’d been through this evening, or simply a desperate resolve born from longing, she felt that familiar heaviness settling in around her eyelids within a few seconds of sitting down. She knew she should move to the bed; it wasn’t like her to fall asleep on the couch like this, with the light still on. But she was powerless to resist. As she felt the warm pull of sleep enveloping her body, her face curved up into a restful, contented smile.

  A moment later, she was standing in a familiar green field; it was the same place she had first met Philip, the beautiful vision that she kept in her head as the happiest place she could imagine. She turned and looked toward the crystal-blue water, and smiled when she saw the sun glinting from the surface like a mirror. The sun was bright, but still, the day wasn’t too hot. It was one of those too-perfect days that exist only in our memories, the movies, and in dreams. She looked down to watch the breeze lift her dress and toss it around her legs. Beautiful.

  All right, so she was here. Now, where was he?

  “Philip?” she called out, listening to the familiar sounds around her. She strained to hear anything that might be out of the ordinary. But there was nothing – not even a far-off rustling through the fields. She called and called, but there was no response. Now that she was in the dream-world, he was nowhere in sight.

  “Philip,” she whispered, and sank down on the grass. She was staring up at the trees swaying in the gentle breeze, listening hard, but hearing nothing. She remembered the last time she saw him – he was in danger, and she vanished before she saw what happened to him. Could he have been injured? She remembered the way he had limped after the demon had punished him, and her heart grew heavy. He could be in the midst of punishment right now, in fact, a punishment she couldn’t begin to imagine, and what would she do? How could she stop it?

  Tears sprang to her eyes as she thought about what he might be going through right now as she called for him from this beautiful, idyllic side of the dream-world…

  “Alexis?”

  The sound of his voice brought her to her feet in an instant. She spun to see him standing there, looking at her with a wide smile and dancing eyes. He stood still and didn’t approach her, as though he was waiting for something. Without a second thought she charged at him, throwing her arms around his strong shoulders. Her body weight crashed into him and even though he was much larger than she was, the impact almost knocked him from his feet. He staggered as he wrapped his arms around her and laughed.

  “Well…this is quite the welcome!” he teased her.

  She drew back, suddenly embarrassed. Her face flooded with heat as she pressed her hands to her dress and smoothed it down. Her palms were sweaty, and for some reason that made her feel even more embarrassed. She had simply thrown herself at him with an abandon that probably didn’t make sense to him, considering that he hadn’t been privy to any of her thoughts that day. Now the memory of her fears popped into her head, and she looked at him with wide eyes.

  “After I left… after I woke up… were you okay?”

  He was still smiling. “Of course I was okay. I can usually dodge anything that might be headed my way. He doesn’t take much time with me anyway – he has too many other people to terrorize.”

  She nodded. Her lips were dry, and so she licked them with her tongue. He watched every move she made, his eyes as hungry as she felt.

  “Philip, tell me something…” She paused, choosing her words carefully. She knew what she wanted to say, but the wording had to be right. She didn’t want to be too forward, but she wanted to know – she had to know –

  “Why did you choose to come to me in the form of Evan?” she asked.

  Philip looked surprised. “In the beginning it was because you loved him, and I thought you might be able to love me, if I looked like him. You might not know the difference.” He winced. “Of course I know better now.”

  “But… I already know you’re not him, now. So why do you still show up in the form of Evan?”

  “Well, because…” Now it was his turn to pause. She watched as the thought about it. “I don’t suppose I have a reason now,” he said slowly. “It makes you more comfortable, perhaps? And he is far more handsome than I ever was in my real life.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “I should be the judge of that.”

  “You…you want to see what I really look like?”

  Alexis nodded. To her surprise, Philip laughed. He threw his head back and laughed, long and hard, until there were tears in his eyes. Finally he looked at her and sobered up enough to say, “You won’t like it. I’m not handsome like men of your time are.”

  She thought about this. “I should be the judge of that,” she said again, and Philip paused for a long moment, then shrugged again, as if it were no big deal.

  “Turn around,” he said.

  Alexis hesitated, then nodded and turned around. Her heart was pounding with the question of what he would look like. Surely he was more handsome than he thought he was. She knew already that his inner gorgeousness shined through. She grinned, dying to turn around, so eager to see what he might look like…

  “Okay,” he said, and she spun around. She stared. Her mouth dropped open. She blinked hard, stared some more, and finally tried to find her voice. It took a few tries before she what she wanted to say squeaked out on a whisper.

  “Oh my God,” was all she could utter.

  Philip had transformed completely – and he looked majestic. He had the same coloring, the same hair, even the same build as before. His muscles still bulged beneath the fabric of his shirt. But there was something about him that stood out and made it clear he would be the kind of man that warranted a second or third or even fourth glance. There was a regal bearing about him, something that Alexis was sure could not be cultivated – rather, it was something he must have been born with.

  His lips were a little fuller than Evan’s were, and he was a little taller. His face was more chiseled, a little squarer, making him appear even manlier. His eyes were darker, making him appear somewhat dangerous. And his smile was different – more genuine, as though he was glad to now be hiding who he really was anymore.

  “You’re gorgeous,” she finally said.

  Philip actually blushed. She watched as the redness filled his cheeks and turned his ears red. The shot of color was a delight, and Alexis laughed out loud when she saw it. With that the tension was broken, and Philip walked toward her with a smile on his face. He stopped when he was only a foot away.

  “I’m not,” he protested. “But I’m glad you see me that way.”

  She reached out with one hand, came within an inch of his chest, then pulled back. Philip looked at her with that same smile while she bit her lip and contemplated something that had been in the back of her mind ever since their first encounter.

  “You said that you…” she started, then trailed off abruptly. What was she doing, anyway? She couldn’t ask him such a thing, could she? It would tell him exactly where her mind was going, and that would give him the upper hand…

  But at the same time, the curiosity had become so significant that she felt as though she no longer had a choice when the words finally came out of her mouth in a rush.

  “You said you seduce women. Okay, I get that, I understand. But what I don’t understand is that you said you don’t get any enjoyment from the act. How can that be? I mean, you don’t like it at all? Or you are just opposed to it because of the reasons you’re doing it? Or you’re just… well, are you still in love with someone? Or…”

  Philip simply stared at her quietly until she ran out of steam. As she trailed off, she blinked up at him and shrugged, her face bright as a tomato.

  “…Well?”

  He finally looked away, his gaze going to the
clouds above them. Then he nodded once, briskly, as though he had made a decision about what to tell her.

  “There’s physical pleasure,” he said. “Of course there is. But there isn’t much… emotional pleasure. Each time I’ve seduced a dreaming woman, I’ve always been acutely aware that it was me who did the seducing, and that I was doing it under false pretenses. It’s hard to get excited about that.”

  He paused, searching for his words. “And to answer your other question, yes. For a long time, I was in love with someone. I loved her so much that it was impossible to forget about her while I was with others. So that dampened the enjoyment quite a bit, as you can probably imagine.”

  Alexis let this all sink in. Finally she nodded very slowly. “That makes sense.” She didn’t quite know what else to say.

  There was another long moment of silence as she contemplated what was on her mind. When she spoke next, she took a deep breath and looked him right in the eye. “But what if you were to be with someone who knows the truth about you – someone who understands who you are? Do you think that might be… better?”

  Philip gave her a slow smile. Her heart flipped over like a fish out of water. Her breath was instantly short, and she blushed even harder. When he reached up to touch her shoulder, her skin seemed to burn underneath his fingers.

  “I’d love to find out,” he whispered.

  Alexis tilted her head back as he bent over her. She looked into his eyes until he was too close to see, and then she closed her eyes as his lips settled softly onto hers.

  The touch of his lips instantly turned her body into liquid heat. It was everything she’d anticipated, but at the same time it was entirely new, as though she was experiencing the desire for a man for the first time in her life. The sensation was overwhelming. Part of her wanted to push him away so that she had a chance to catch her breath – but at the same time, she wanted to pull him closer and carry him down onto the grass with her.

  In the end, Alexis did what her heart and her body were telling her to do. Still kissing him with everything she was worth, she pulled on the fabric of his shirt and urged him closer. Her knees again threatened to buckle as he deepened the kiss – and this time she let them, falling back to the soft grass and pulling him right along with her. Philip caught his fall with his hands on either side of her shoulders, and he started to utter what sounded like an apology, but Alexis shut him up with a kiss that was even deeper and more urgent than the last.

  As his tongue swept into her mouth, she pulled at the hem of his shirt. Again, she felt torn: she wanted to make this last, but she also wanted him right now, all at once. Philip felt her tugging, and he chuckled against her lips. “We have plenty of time, Alexis,” he murmured, licking a trail down her throat to the pretty ties at the top of her summer dress. She sank her hands into his hair and looked down at him as he pulled at the ties with his teeth, first one side and then the other, opening up the bodice of her dress to his probing eyes.

  She should have felt the shyness of being with someone new, but this was an entirely different moment. The desire in his eyes made her feel utterly feminine, sexy and in control. She watched until Philip’s mouth closed over one hard nipple, and only then did she let her head fall back against the grass. She closed her eyes and moaned as he played with first one side, then the other, teasing her with his lips and tongue and teeth until she was thrusting her hips up to him in a silent plea.

  “You are so beautiful,” he murmured to into her ear as he rose his body up over her. She watched as he pulled his shirt up over his head. There was a scar on his chest, and she reached out instinctively to touch it. He met her questioning gaze. “Life wasn’t always easy for me,” he said simply, and she nodded. She came up on her elbows and placed her lips on the scar, kissing him gently on the mark of some long-past injury. She rose up to meet his mouth again, ravenous with desire. His lips crashed back into hers with the same intensity, and they grabbed at each other’s bodies hungrily.

  Philip broke away from her after a moment, and half-stood up, his naked chest glistening with sweat. She watched as he slowly unbuckled his belt, then ever-so-slowly reached for the button and zipper. The heat between her legs seemed to grow with every new inch of skin he revealed. She licked her lips and watched as he pushed down the pants, taking the undergarments along with them. When they were down to his ankles, he stood proud before her.

  Her eyes took in every inch. He was just as handsome out of his clothing as he was in it. Her mouth watered at the sight of his body, fully erect and waiting for her. She could have stared for an hour, but he broke her rapturous gaze with two words. “Your turn.”

  She came up on her knees before him. Instead of pulling off her dress, she simply lifted her arms. He grinned, kicked his pants to the side and came to her. She closed her eyes for a brief moment as he pulled on the hem of her dress, lifted the fabric over her head, and threw it to the side.

  They stared at each other for long moments, naked together, their bodies both flushed with erotic desire. Alexis felt his gaze as clearly as if he had placed his hands on her skin. She looked up at his face and then looked straight ahead, where her position on her knees made a certain part of his anatomy perfectly accessible. She reached out to touch him and he drew a deep breath, then took one step back.

  “Alexis…are you sure…”

  “Am I sure that I want to suck you?” she asked bluntly, and he blinked at her. She knew he was shocked by how forward she was, but she found that she loved the heady feeling of taking control over what was about to happen. “Come here,” she demanded, and he stepped toward her. This time she reached out to touch him before he could stop her again.

  He was so hot in her hand – hotter than she had imagined. She took her time feeling the length of him, the hard iron wrapped inside skin soft as silk. When she wrapped her fingers around him, she was gratified by the moan that ripped from deep inside him. It was the kind of moan that said he was drowning in desire, just as she was.

  It was all the encouragement she needed. Alexis leaned forward and blew a gentle breath across his skin. She watched as he shivered with anticipation, and then she pressed the flat of her tongue against his hard shaft. He jerked once in her hand, then his fingers curled into her hair as she opened her mouth wider and slid him inside with one long, slow and savory suck.

  “Alexis,” he breathed, and then he was silent except for the moans that escaped him as she moved back and forth on his delicious hardness. She put her hands on his hips and pulled him closer, taking him deeper, until his hands tightened in her hair and he pulled her away. “I can’t last if you keep that up,” he said. “And I want to last. I want to be inside you.”

  In response to his words, she took his hand and pulled him toward her as she fell back onto the grass. It was all the invitation Philip needed. He rose up on his knees between her legs and gently pushed them apart. With his hands on her knees, he looked down at her. After a long moment he shook his head. “You get more beautiful as every moment passes.”

  He watched her as she blushed hard, and then he bent low to kiss the skin of her belly, right above her belly button. His tongue began a slow trail downward and Alexis looked up at the trees swaying above her, trying to control her racing heart, trying to breathe. Everything this man did was absolutely perfect, and it seemed as though he was touching her very soul, not just her body.

  At the first touch of his tongue, she cried out with the intense pleasure. The sound rose into the trees and a flock of birds flushed out of the brush, winging away from the sound. She clasped the long grass in her hands as she writhed on the ground underneath him. His hands on her hips held her right where she was, while his tongue made slow circles, then faster trips around and around, until she was begging for release in a voice that was completely incoherent, even to her own ears.

  “Hold me,” he said to her, and she immediately let go of the grass and reached down to twine her fingers through his hair. He went back to wh
at he was doing, those touches and licks that were now just fast enough to send her to the edge. She pulled his head closer to her as she went past the point of no return.

  “Philip!” she called out as she came. It was a hard and deep orgasm that slammed into her with enough force to take her breath away. Her body pulsed and writhed and arched all on its own, her natural instinct taking over as the waves of pleasure cascaded through her. After what seemed like an eternity, her hips collapsed to the ground and she let go of his hair. Her arms fell to the side, and she chuckled once, then again, her body utterly exhausted and alive at the same time. “That was…”

  “I know,” he said, coming up over her and looking deeply into her eyes. He kissed her slowly, and she smiled at the taste of her own arousal on his lips.

  She raised her lips up to his ear, and whispered to him in husky tones. “I want you inside me.”