“I might not last very long,” he warned her.
He grinned. “Not this time, anyway. But there will definitely be a next time, won’t there?”
“I will make love to you as many times as you will let me,” he vowed. He pushed her down again gently and slipped his strong body between her thighs. She wrapped her legs around his, urging him forward. Her hands rested languidly on his shoulders. “Show me what you feel like,” she murmured into his ear.
He took his time. He pushed against her, not quite entering her yet, and she sighed. She wanted him all the way inside her, but the sweet anticipation of waiting for it was too delicious to deny. She lifted her hips and he pushed in just a bit more, just a single inch of his manhood inside her. She stared into his eyes as he pushed in a bit more, then a bit more, stretching her as he went deeper and deeper.
“All of you,” she finally whispered, and that’s when he thrust all the way home, filling her completely.
At that moment, something inside Alexis seemed to explode. Some long-held tension seemed to release in an instant, snapping like a rubber band. All the doubts she’d harbored, all the worries and fears she’d had about falling in love with a man in her dream world – they all faded away in this moment of passion. This felt as real as anything, and she knew it was real, more real than anything else she had ever known. She threw her arms around him and locked her legs tight around his hips, holding him hard against her. “Philip, I love you,” she cried out as he began to move inside her.
At the sound of her words, Philip suddenly stopped moving. He pushed himself up on his hands and looked down into her eyes with an expression of sheer surprise. “You do?” he blurted out, his eyes searching hers.
Alexis said it again, and watched as a glorious smile broke across his face. Then she said it again as he began to move inside her. She said it over and over as the climax slowly built, and she was still saying it when he began to move faster and pushed her over the edge for the second time.
“Keep going,” she breathed, and he grinned at her before he buried his face in her neck and thrust harder, deeper, faster. Alexis grabbed his hips and urged him to go even faster. Soon his motion became jerky, and his whole body tensed under her hands. She lifted her hips up to him and laughed out loud in sheer delight when she heard the deep groan and felt him spill into her, over and over and over. It was as though it would never end.
Finally he collapsed onto her, his whole weight landing on her chest. She took shallow breaths until the weight became too much, then she gently pushed his shoulder and he rolled to her side, pulling out of her as he went. She instantly felt empty. He threw his leg over her thighs and wrapped his arms around her, still trying to catch his breath.
They looked at each other, each waiting for the other to speak. If only the moment could last forever…
Chapter 6: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream…
“That was amazing,” he finally said, and Alexis laughed again. She had never felt so alive and so free, either in the dream world or in the real one.
Shit, she thought. The real world. The thought brought her laughter to a sudden close. She looked at Philip with wide eyes. The question hovered on her tongue, something she didn’t want to ask, but she knew it would have to happen sooner or later.
“…What happens now?” she asked.
Philip rose up on one elbow and looked down at her. He trailed his fingertip along the line of her jaw, the curve of her nose.
“I don’t know,” he finally whispered. “Do you really love me?”
Alexis nodded even as the tears sprang to her eyes. “I do.”
“Then it’s simple,” he replied. “My curse is broken.”
“But you’re still here with me…”
Even as she said it, she heard the sounds in the distance, the roaring and the trembling that always heralded the appearance of something sinister. But this time Philip didn’t even blink. “He’s not happy,” he said. “But there’s nothing he can do to me. He has to release me.”
“But…what does that mean? Where will you go?”
He looked into her eyes, but his gaze was now filled with sorrow. “The agreement said that once I managed to fulfill my end of the bargain, then he would send me back to the woman I loved, and we would be happy together for the rest of our lives.”
The pain of the realization cut like a knife. Alexis could actually feel the pain in her chest, a ripping pain that made it hard to breathe. She was angry, heartbroken, confused. She pushed him away and sat up on the grass.
“How could you do this to me?” she cried. “You made me fall in love with you – you got me to open my heart to you – and now you’re…”
She trailed off in a fury, too upset to speak. He looked at her with pain in his eyes.
“Alexis,” he said. “I didn’t want this. Try to understand, my darling…”
“Don’t you call me that,” she seethed. The world around them was starting to vanish, the edges becoming a blurry haze. She knew it was only moments before the dream would break apart, and she would never see him again.
But he would be happy. She’d done a good thing, hadn’t she? She’d rescued Philip from this prison. He would go back to the woman he loved. He would live the life he had dreamed of having for centuries while he was locked in an impossible hell.
But he would leave her…
Alexis burst into tears. She felt Philip’s hands on her as she buried her face into her hands and started to sob. Philip wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, and now the sounds were louder. She realized there was very little time left.
“You have your whole life ahead of you,” he was saying to her, though his voice already sounded far away. “You have so much to live for, Alexis. So much to give. You will find a greater love, and you will make a mark on your time.”
“But…”
“You will see me again,” he said with a smile. “I believe in the afterlife, Alexis. I believe I will see you there one day. And when you get there, you will have so many good stories to tell, and I will listen to every one of them, and we will have all the time of eternity to share them…”
“I do love you,” she said to him, even as the grass underneath them began to wave with a massive gust of wind. “And I want you to be happy, Philip. I want you to be with the one you love.”
Alexis struggled to get to her feet. Philip rose with her, holding her hands in his. “Alexis, there is something I have to tell you,” he said.
She looked into his eyes as he started to speak. But at that moment, the ground underneath them began to shake. It soon became a violent shudder that threw both of them to their knees. Alexis looked up to see the trees above them swaying dangerously. The lake water was now nothing but whitecaps whipped by an approaching storm. The mountains in the distance had begun to spew red-hot lava. The dream was collapsing. She had to say her last words to him now, while there was still time.
“Be happy,” she called out to him, and then the ground opened up beneath her. She was falling fast now, through an infinite gray distance, falling away from him softly…
Alexis sat up on the couch, struggling to breathe. For the longest moment she couldn’t make her lungs work. It was as though the world around her was filled with sulfur and smoke, and it was blocking all the air she needed. She fell to her knees beside the couch and struggled to draw in a single breath.
Finally, she inhaled. The air was clear and sweet and good, but now she knew it was the pounding pain in her heart that kept her from breathing. It was the pain of losing Philip that made her body want to shut down.
She sat there for a long moment, drawing in deep breaths of air. She felt faint, and even when she lay down flat on the floor, her heart wouldn’t stop the insane pounding. It was as if she was running from something terrible, and she couldn’t slow down.
This is what a broken heart feels like, she thought, and then she burst into tears.
A long hour later, Alexis s
at up. She looked around her living room. The early-morning sun was bursting through the windows, threatening to make the room brighter with every passing minute. She suddenly glared at the curtains.
“How dare you,” she said to the light that streamed in to brighten up her world. “How dare you even think to rise today!”
She rose on shaky legs and walked toward the shower. On her way there, she suddenly stopped in the hallway. She lifted her hand to her mouth, where her lips were swollen with kisses. She touched her breasts, which were still sensitive and a little swollen, too. Then she slipped a hand between her thighs and felt the wetness there.
“Philip,” she murmured, and that set off a whole new round of tears.
In the shower, she looked up at the water and thought about the last several hours. She relived every moment of their lovemaking in her mind. She tried to remember every inch of his body, what he looked like everywhere, and how he had felt when he touched her. She tried to remember everything, because she knew she would never see him again.
But then something amazing happened. Alexis leaned against the wall in the shower and looked up at the water, and then she smiled. She smiled at the thought of Philip, no matter where he might be right now, no matter who he might be with. She smiled at the thought that he was happy. He was free.
And she was the one who had set him free.
“I do love you,” she finally said again, this time to an empty room, but she knew that somewhere – somehow – he could still hear her.
Epilogue: Sleepers Awake
It had been two weeks. Two long weeks, during which Alexis had, ironically, not had any trouble sleeping at all. But when she did sleep, she didn’t dream. She felt that after everything that had happened, there wasn’t a single dream left in her head.
She was getting more sleep than ever, in fact, and she was beginning to scare herself. She didn’t have much energy these days, or much drive to do anything at all. She’d spent many hours trying to relive the dreams with Philip so that she wouldn’t forget them. Sure enough, they hadn’t yet faded in the least, and she was grateful for that. She hoped they would never fade.
She had gone to work and done her job, but hadn’t put any heart or soul into it. She had spent time with friends, but her laughter had been hollow. Today she was taking some time off to just be by herself, and to try to shake the cloud of darkness that seemed to hang over everything she did.
She didn’t know how she’d do it, but surely getting out of the house would be a good first step.
She was sitting at a corner café and looking at the menu when a shadow fell across her table. She ignored it, turning a page in the menu, but then the shadow moved deliberately into her line of vision. She looked up to see a tall man standing before her. The sun was behind him, so all she could see was a powerful outline of a body, broad shoulders and something that might have been a shadow of a smile.
The man pulled out the chair on the opposite side of her table. Before she could utter a word of protest, he had sat down in the chair in front of her. She dropped her menu, looked at his face…
She gasped. Her eyes widened. She stared at him as her heart began to pound. She put her hand against her chest as though she had to keep her racing heart under control. This wasn’t possible, this couldn’t be possible, it wasn’t happening…
“Am I dreaming?” she whispered.
Across the table, Philip laughed. She watched as he threw his head back and laughed hard, as though she had just said the funniest thing in the world. He finally sobered up enough to look at her with an expression of loving indulgence.
“What a beautiful way to greet me after all this time,” he said to her, and bestowed that smile she loved so much.
“But…you…you’re not here. You can’t be here!”
Philip leaned across the table and took her hand. She stared at the fine cut of his suit. His hair was slightly tousled, and his face had a little bit of stubble, just enough to make him look even manlier than he already was. He looked as though he had stepped right from the pages of a men’s fashion magazine. She had never seen someone so breathtakingly handsome in all of her life.
“The Devil made one big mistake,” he said, still smiling into her eyes. “When we made our agreement, he told me that I could go back to the one I loved when I had completed my part of the bargain. Remember?”
Alexis didn’t flinch. She stared at him hard, looking for answers.
“…What are you saying?” she demanded.
“The woman I love is you, Alexis.” He took her hand. “It’s that simple. In all my centuries of torment, I never dreamt I’d meet a woman like you. When you came to me, it was a miracle… I’d given up on ever loving anyone again. But when I saw you, something changed. Somehow, after all that time, I felt ready to fall in love again. And I did, Alexis,” he said, gripping her hand tightly. “I fell in love with you. And so now I’m in the land of the living again, with the woman I love – with you.”
Her world began to spin. She was vaguely aware of Philip moving his chair over next to hers. He took her into his arms. She could hear him ask the waiter for a glass of cold water, but the rest of the world seemed to be too distant for her to comprehend.
He’s in love with me? And he’s here?
The water arrived, and Alexis drank most of the water down in a long swallow. Then she looked at Philip. There were so many questions, so many things he had to know, but there was only one question that came to her mind. It was the only one that mattered right now.
“Are you here to stay?” she asked.
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. The touch of his lips was warm and soft. It brought back such a rush of memories that for a moment, Alexis had to remind herself that she was in her world – it wasn’t a dream.
“I am here to stay,” Philip said. “…If you will have me.”
Suddenly Alexis laughed. She threw her arms around his neck so hard that she almost knocked him from the chair. Everyone else in the café turned to watch, as she made a spectacle out of both of them.
“Let me hear it,” she said, and he grinned.
“I love you, Alexis,” he said simply. And at that moment, she was sure of it. The psychic had been right, after all. She knew that no matter what else happened in her life, she was absolutely certain of one thing:
Dreams really could come true.
--- THE END ---
Copyright 2013 Nathan Stratton. All rights reserved.
Reproduction of this work prohibited unless the author grants express permission.
Art credit: Nathan Stratton, with license from www.depositphotos.com.
Author’s Note:
I’m an independent, self-published author and I’m always looking for honest feedback from readers. So please, whether you hated this book or enjoyed it, I implore you to please leave a review on my Amazon page and let me know your thoughts.
You can also sign up for my e-mail list using the address listed below, so that I can keep you informed about future books.
Thanks for reading.
Best wishes,
Nathan
Contact Nathan at [email protected].
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