Before I Wake (27 page)

His body lifted from mine, and I felt the loss like a chill. I watched as he slid the remainder of his clothes down his legs. Socks and boots went as well. And then he straightened, standing before me beautiful and naked and not the least bit self-conscious.

Noah had a beautiful body. His legs were long and muscular, like someone who biked a lot, and he had the pert little butt that only lean men seem to have. Every inch of him was golden and warm and firm—some inches firmer than others.

I licked my lips.

Smiling like a cat after a mouse, he hooked his fingers in the sides of my lacy pink panties and pulled. I lifted my hips, and the flimsy garment slid down my thighs, past my knees to the floor. I spread my legs, inviting him between.

He knelt on the carpet and held me open with his fingers and then…oh! His tongue made me shiver and moan, and I think I might have actually started begging. I’m not sure. But I was still gasping when he slid his body up over mine and replaced his tongue with something infinitely harder and bigger.

One thrust, and he was inside me. I barely had time to adjust, to enjoy the feeling of being so filled, before he withdrew and thrust again. I cried out and clutched at him with my legs and arms, rocking my body against his.

He braced himself on one elbow, shoving his free hand into my hair, twisting it around his fingers, tugging on my scalp. I let him pull, opening up my neck to his mouth. He ran his tongue along the sensitive skin, nipped with his teeth. I shuddered and wrapped my legs even tighter around him.

His mouth moved to my ear, sucking on the lobe as he continued to fill me with short, aggressive strokes.

“Dawn,” he whispered, breath hot and moist on my skin. “My Dawn.”

That did it. I, a woman who usually didn’t orgasm without a little mechanical help, came with such force I stopped thinking—hell, I stopped breathing. My body tensed, arched, and spasmed all at the same time.

It was fantastic. And as I rode out the amazing sensations, Noah gave a little groan, and I felt his back stiffen. His fingers tightened in my hair as he buried his face in my neck. His hips stopped pumping, and I felt the warm flood of him deep inside as he eased his torso onto mine.

We stayed like that for a bit, fitted together like pieces of Lego, simply touching one another in silence. It was a strangely intimate experience, this quiet comfort between us. I smiled. He smiled and played with strands of my hair, draping them over the bed and over my shoulder. I didn’t even bother to fix my bra, which was pulled down on one side, leaving me bare, the underwire digging in under my arm.

“Thank you,” he murmured, his voice husky and rough.

“For what?” I was almost afraid of what he was going to say—that it might ruin the moment.

His brows knitted slightly, his expression as restrained as always. “For being you.”

I had to blink back tears, and I kissed him rather than trust my voice.

That was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me.

I wasn’t surprised to find Noah gone when I woke up. I wasn’t hurt either. He would have woken up in his own bed, back inside his body. I could only hope that what had happened between us didn’t seem like a dream to him. It was still wonderfully real to me.

The Dream Realm was a lot like the Matrix. In fact, I often wondered if the Wachowski brothers had been inspired by The Dreaming. Of course, they probably wouldn’t know it even if they had been. The techno aspect was obviously different, but the similarity remained—what happened inside the Matrix was real, even if your physical body wasn’t there to experience it. The Dreaming operated on the same principle. In either world, all you had was the abilities and strength your mind gave you—unless, of course, you were me and able to take your body with you.

So while Noah would wake up and only have the memory of what had happened, I woke up with the smell of him on my skin and all the physical evidence of what we had done to remind me.

I got up and showered and pulled some clothes out of the closet. When I was a kid, the dresser and closet had been filled with clothes in my size and favorite colors, and that hadn’t changed. I didn’t know where they came from or who was responsible for them, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t need more guilt where my mother and Morpheus were concerned.

Dressed in jeans, a sweater, and my own boots, I went looking for the two of them. It was 6:00 A.M. in New York, but the sun had yet to rise in The Dreaming. I wasn’t sure how that worked either or why. It wasn’t as though Morpheus ever slept, so the change between light and dark didn’t serve as any kind of clock—not for him at any rate.

I found my parents in the study, sitting in the big leather chairs in front of the fireplace, sipping coffee and eating croissants. It was a very Continental scene.

“Did you get him?” I didn’t bother with good morning. I didn’t care if that seemed petulant or not. I cared about Noah and whether or not he’d be able to go to sleep at night without worrying about something trying to kill him.

Morpheus put down his coffee and rose to his feet. He was dressed very similar to me while my mother wore cream-colored slacks and a gray silk blouse. There were tension lines bracketing her mouth and around her eyes. It didn’t make me happy to see the worry in her face, but I liked it all the same.

“No.” He didn’t mince words. “My Guard is scouring The Dreaming for him even now.”

I stared at him. No, I glared. “Why can’t you find him? I told you how to find him. Why can I find him, and you can’t?”

If my little outburst bothered him, he hid it well. “I searched everywhere. I found your friend Lola, but she was alone. Her essence was nowhere else to be found.”

This wasn’t possible. “Noah!” I grasped at his name with new conviction. “Did you look for him?”

“Safe in his bed,” my father replied. Then, more drily, “After leaving yours.”

Now was not the time for blushing, so I swallowed the bitter mortification that threatened to turn my face beet red.

Morpheus pressed a mug of coffee into my free hand. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.” I knew without trying it that it would taste exactly how I liked it. I also knew that he was right. It would make me feel better.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered, more to myself than the two people in the room with me.

“Obviously he was hiding behind someone else.”

I peered up at my father. “No kidding.”

His smile was one of sympathy. “If you think you feel foolish and helpless, imagine how I feel. I can’t even protect my daughter from one of my own creatures. It’s embarrassing.”

“No doubt that’s part of Karatos’s motivation. He hates you.”

Morpheus nodded. “Comes with the job.”

“But you’re supposed to be all-knowing here.”

“Again, embarrassing. I think the Terror might have siphoned energy from some of the people he murdered and used that to cloak himself.”

I was beginning to understand. It was what Antwoine had suggested. I had found him when he used energy from Lola, but if he was using the essence of his victims…“And you can’t track dead people, only dreamers.”

“That’s right. You know that the dead sometimes travel through The Dreaming?”

“Yeah. I read that in the book you gave me.” It made perfect sense. The Dreaming was like a rest stop for those moving on to the Shadow Lands—or Heaven and Hell, whichever you prefer. Sometimes the spirit didn’t want to let go right away, and it came here, where it could still have contact with the living. A spirit could exist in this world, but couldn’t affect it, and was just as much of a ghost here as in the human world.

If Karatos had indeed learned to do that…

“It’s going to be very difficult to find him,” Morpheus stated, finishing my thought. “That’s why I want you and Noah to stay out of The Dreaming.”

“And just how do you suggest we do that?”

He looked at me like I was a child, which I suppose to him I was. “Take pills or imbibe alcohol, whatever you humans do to escape darkening my door.”

“But I want to help find him.” When had I started thinking of Karatos as “he” and not “It”?

“No.”

“I’m a Nightmare, it’s my job.”

“I said no.” His voice had a weird kind of echo to it—it was his “god” voice. “And my word is final.” With those words still ringing between us, a portal opened beside me, a bright sliver of light that I knew instinctively led to my apartment. I could hear Fudge meowing on the other side. My poor neglected cat.

“Go.”

So I went. After all his coercing me to stay, now he was booting me out, and funnily enough, I didn’t want to go. Since I didn’t have a choice, I went. The portal zipped shut behind me as I stepped into the early-morning brightness of my bedroom. Fudge was on the bed, watching with big green eyes.

I scooped all eighteen-plus pounds of him into my arms and hugged him close, listening to his wheezy purr. “I’m not turning my back on what I am this time, buddy,” I told him, not caring how TV-drama it sounded. “I’m a Nightmare, and it’s about time my father and Karatos figured that out.”

I was late for work. Not by a lot, but late—and you can be sure that if Dr. Canning didn’t already know, it wouldn’t be long before he did.

Bonnie gave me a motherly once-over when I walked in. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

I nodded. Bonnie was on my side, so I knew she wouldn’t go squealing on me. “I’m fine, thanks.” What else could I say? The bruise Karatos had given me had almost faded, but my makeup today was half-assed, and I looked pale and drawn. Those things, coupled with the smugness a night of great sex brings, served to make me look how I thought a crack addict must look as she chases a new high.

She didn’t push it, and I was grateful. She wouldn’t believe it even if I told her, and the thought of Bonnie looking at me differently made my chest tight. Bonnie wasn’t the kind of person to believe in dream demons and half-goddess coworkers. At least I didn’t think she was.

“The police are here again, talking to Canning,” she informed me in a low voice. “If you can avoid him today, do it. If he asks, you were here on time.”

I smiled my thanks and left her. Dr. Canning blamed me for all the attention the NYPD was laying on him because Nancy Leiberman had been my patient. I might be responsible for her death, since Karatos had killed her to send me a message, but Dr.

Canning was the one who had smeared his face all over the news and declared himself an “expert” on SUNDS.

In my tiny office, I hung up my coat and flopped into my chair, careful not to spill my coffee. I rotated half a circle, then back again, spinning the chair back and forth as I looked at my schedule for the day. I had a couple of patients that morning—one who was part of my lucid dreamers study and another who was suffering from nightmares related to post-traumatic stress disorder. The rest of my day would be spent helping out in the sleep clinic. Great. An afternoon under Canning’s watchful eye was not what I needed at that point.

I was still sipping my coffee when my first appointment arrived. Megan Murphy was a university student who had been able to control elements of her dreams since puberty. She wasn’t as strong as Noah, but her abilities had been increasing as of late. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe nothing. She was stressing over school, and that could explain the increased dream activity.

Still, I made a note in her file to keep watch and possibly “visit” her some night when this mess with Karatos was over. I was getting paranoid—understandably I thought—about creatures in The Dreaming messing with my dreamers.

I had fifteen minutes after Megan left, so I ran to the bathroom, then called Noah. He answered on the fifth ring, just when I was mentally composing a message for his voice mail.

“Hello?” He sounded like crap.

“It’s Dawn.” I twirled the phone cord around my finger. “I wanted to check in and see how you’re doing. Did I wake you?”

“Yeah.” His voice was dry and rough, but he sounded happy to hear my voice. “But I forgive you.”

I smiled. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired. Sore.” His voice dropped to a seductive timbre, “I had the best dream.”

The shiver that ran down my spine was warm, spreading heat down my arms and legs—and other places. “Are you sure it was a dream?”

“Had to be. It was too good to be real.”

I flushed, grinning into the phone. “You’ll have to tell me all about it.”

“I’d like that.”

Whoa, was it getting hot in here, or was it just me? I was pretty sure it was me.

Then he yawned. “Sorry. I took some Vicodin earlier.”

I wasn’t offended. In fact, I was impressed that he remembered what I had told him about depressants suppressing REM. Not something you want to take on a regular basis, but for now, little white pills were the only defense—other than me—Noah had against Karatos.

“I’ll let you go back to sleep.” His body needed rest more than it needed to flirt with me. “I’ll call you later.”

“’K. See ya, Doc.”

I said good-bye and hung up. Seconds later, Bonnie buzzed and told me my next appointment was there, and so I put thoughts of Noah on hold for the next forty-five minutes. I was saving those thoughts for later, when I’d be working with Dr. Canning and in dire need of them.

My next patient was a young man, plagued by terrible nightmares about a particularly horrible incident he’d been involved in that killed several of his friends. They’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught in the middle of a gang assassination attempt. I could handle my Dream-Realm weirdness and horror pretty well, but the stuff that humans do to each other really scared me.

John, my patient, and I had met several times already. In our earlier sessions I had him describe the incident that haunted his dreams to me in several different ways. This process helped me to isolate certain parts of the incident that had affected John the most. By doing this, we could concentrate on those elements in therapy and hopefully get John back to sleeping—and functioning—in a healthy manner as soon as possible.

John’s main issues were feelings of helplessness as he was unable to save many of his friends. He also had what many refer to as