"Let me enjoy you, this moment will never come again." With incremental movements he slid the bra straps off her shoulders and reached to unhook it.
Her breath came in uneven gasps and her head thrashed against the pillow, her dark hair fanned out framing her face.
At last, he bent down and suckled her nipple, first one and then the other, flicking his tongue over the tips, then nipping her lightly with his teeth until she groaned.
"Yancy, I need you." She reached for him, but he grabbed her wrists and placed them at her side.
"I know, but is it as much as I need you?" He grinned at her. Every other time they'd made love she met him movement for movement. This time, he wanted her to feel the thrill of receiving, just being open to his touch, his body. "Be still. Let me."
Quickly, he removed his clothes, letting them fall to the floor. He grabbed the condom and sheathed his cock.
Unable to get enough of her, he ran his hands over her skin, grazing every bit he could reach, kneading, massaging. At last, he slipped his fingers between her thighs to find her wet and ready. He stroked her slow, fast in an alternating rhythm. When she bucked against him, her legs shaking, he withdrew.
A growl of frustration met his actions.
"Hush." He kissed his way down her curves, her breasts, her stomach, and then each hip bone until he hovered above her mound.
She squirmed in an exquisite sexy wiggle, and he could not wait any longer to savor his just desserts. He lapped at her creases then fluttered his tongue against her clit until the little screeches of her desire filled the room.
"I'm coming!" she hissed through her teeth.
Never letting up, he rode the wave of her climax, waiting until the tremors slowed. Only then did he move up and enter her, thrusting hard. In order to give her the most pleasure, he lifted her legs to his shoulders and plunged in deeper.
The sharp intake of her breath accompanied her shout. "Yes, more."
Unwilling to disappoint, he continued driving fast and hard. After the extended foreplay, his orgasm approached swift and unrelenting. "Yes! Now!"
His arms shook with the effort to hold on until she came. One final lunge and her quivers sent him over the edge. Every other thought left, leaving only the sublime sensations of unity, completion. With his release, he gently let her legs down and lowered until he lay on top of her. Then he rolled them onto their sides, holding her close, listening to their hearts beat.
"That was awesome." He brushed her nose with his.
"Togetherness, before unknown and now known." Though her words were not from Quest, they sounded like they should be.
"You should be a writer," he said.
"I write a little, but just for me, in a little notebook, little lines and snippets, nothing much." She ducked her head into his shoulder. "I've never even told anyone that before. What is it about you?"
"I feel the same way. For the first time in my life I want you to know everything about me, all my goals, likes, dislikes, all of it." He interspersed his words with little kisses to her cheeks, nose and chin.
"We have time." Her lashes brushed his cheek. "Tell me. What is something you want to do?"
"Wake with you every morning."
A hand on his arm nudged him awake. "Sir, visiting hours are finished." The nurse studied him. "You look like you could use some time away."
"Not really. This is where I belong. Where togetherness is known." He rubbed his eyes and stretched groaning when a kink in his neck protested.
"Well, we need to bathe her. And like I said, visiting hours have ended for today. You can come back tomorrow at nine." The woman ushered him out of the room.
Before the door clicked closed he caught another glimpse of the woman he was falling fast for in his dreams. Unbelievable that the most satisfying and emotional experience he ever had was with Tessa, who lay comatose in the hospital since bumping into her at the coffee shop. They never even really spoke.
Chapter Eight
IT WAS STILL RAINING when Yancy arrived home to an empty house and a despondent Quark. The dog followed him around the house for a while before laying down on the living room area rug with his head on his paws. His eyes never left him.
Yancy had wandered from room to room, wondering why his home seemed so lifeless. Of course, he knew the truth. Tessa wasn't here. From his dreams, she had invaded his space, his quiet area of the loveseat, his bedroom, and even his shower were filled with memories of her energy. Images flowed through his mind—her with hair dripping wet from the shower and asking him for a Q-tip and when he presented her one with a gentlemanly bow, she looked at him with such gratitude, he shied away, almost embarrassed at the intensity of her gaze. Her cuddling close to him in bed, seeking his warmth and pressing her face against his chest. Her dark hair fanned against the pillowcase. He searched, brushing his hand against the smooth cotton, expecting to find a strand of dark hair in his bed, but nothing.
Disappointment filled him as once more he confronted the reality that the woman of his dreams was not part of his ordinary world. He shook his head. Somewhere, sometime this must be real.
He needed answers, but the answers lay comatose in the hospital.
He was itching to take action, anything to explain that he wasn't going crazy. That niggling thought never left the back of his mind. Certainly when someone's dreams felt more real than their reality, there was some mental breakdown happening. Perhaps he needed a therapist, psychiatrist even, to drug him back to the here and now. The idea gave him a headache. There must be some kind of explanation, right? He returned to command central and switched on the computer.
Google, the first avenue of research, turned up a few articles from places like Psychology Today, but nothing hit home. They talked about lucid dreaming and controlling your dreams. Was that what he was doing in his subconscious? It didn't make sense, because he wasn't making things happen in his dreams, they were happening to him. He found one little tidbit that made him laugh. It said that if you played video games you were more likely to have lucid dreaming. That was definitely not the case with his dreams. Since the accident he hadn't played any video games and only turned the computer on one other time, at the office while searching Bill's files.
As if conjured by his thoughts, his cell phone rang, and flashed Bill Barton's name on the screen.
"Good thing you can keep your word about some things." In his funk, Yancy didn't even try for polite.
A slight hesitation greeted his comment. "Point taken. However, I'd beg to differ on your opinion. I kept my word on everything we ever agreed on."
"If you don't count agreeing to be our finance guy and nearly partner. So glad we didn't go that route." Yancy gripped the phone tighter.
"At my suggestion, if you remember the details. I told you that having me as a partner wasn't a good business move."
"Why, Bill? We were friends. Why did you leave, especially how you did it with like a one hour notice? We couldn't train someone to take over let alone even find someone." With great effort, he avoided sounding like a whining, unrequited lover.
"It was time. I admit it probably wasn't the best decision I've ever made, but to be honest, I didn't want you and Trev pulling some smooth moves to convince me to stay. There was no upward mobility with your company. Mostly, everything was boring. No challenges. Everything ran like clockwork, so I could do my job with my eyes closed." As his former colleague spoke, Yancy tried to remain impartial, which proved impossible.
"Dude, you could have just told us how you were feeling." He put the computer to sleep. "We would've thought of something that'd work for everyone. It was a cop out, and a dip shit move."
"Don't you want to know something about what I went to? And yes, I am sorry about how things went down. For that I apologize. It's that you and Trevor are such a team that I knew I'd never win against you if you didn't want me to leave, and I guess that sounds wimpy, but I care about you guys too much to get into a head to head fight."
"So how are things over at Grissome Finch?" he asked.
The line went silent and Yancy had to check the phone to make sure they still had a connection.
"How did you know the name of the company?"
Without an easy explanation of how he visited Toussaint and Sanchez, he left his answer vague. "I have my sources."
"Well, they're awful good. GF hasn't even made the announcement official that they hired someone for my position. It was such a good opportunity, that when the headhunter called I just had to take it. You understand, man?" Yancy heard the pleading in his friend's voice, but it was the words that made his stomach churn. The headhunter had called Bill? That definitely wasn't the way Tessa had indicated it might have happened, though she hadn't really said. Who's to say she didn't initiate the call? Wasn't that the way it worked? He was sure she said, a company calls and then I find them the appropriate person to fill the position. His head warred with his heart, wanting to believe in Tessa, but at hearing the truth from Bill it didn't jive.
"Wish we'd known you were looking, we could have found a replacement. Would you consider coming back to oversee finding someone?" Again, he kept his irritation in check with substantial work.
"Things are pretty crazy right now, but when you find someone, give me a call. We can talk."
Yancy recognized a brush-off when he heard one. "Sure. Thanks."
After he hung up, he went to Quark. "The rain sounds like it's stopped. Want to go for a walk? I need to clear my head."
Immediately, the dog ran to the door and waited.
Outside in the air fresh with moisture and a light breeze, Yancy breathed deeply to clear his mind of the negativity that invaded him as soon as Bill mentioned the recruiter called him. He broke out into a jog which the dog eagerly joined. Once they arrived at the nearly empty park, he slowed to a walk, his mind still racing. "Shit. Maybe the dreams are only what I want to happen, what I want to believe. They aren't based in any reality, only my hopes."
The dog let out a little whimper and looked up at him. The expression in the creature's eyes was so sympathetic that he almost thought Quark would speak.
"Exactly my point. In my dreams, I bet I could talk to you and you'd answer me."
"Possibly." A woman sitting on a bench waved him over.
In her rain gear, he didn't recognize her at first, but when she lifted her head he stopped in his tracks. "Quincy? What are you doing here?"
"Seemed like a place to be on a rainy afternoon." She grinned. "Now who is this delightful guy?" With a pat on her thigh, she invited the dog over.
"Quark."
"Wonderful name, all scientific and all that." All her attention focused on the dog, not unlike how Tessa behaved with him when they first met.
"He seems to like you." He shook his head, trying to understand the difference in his mutt the last couple of days. "I wonder what's gotten into him."
"What's that, boy? You're glad to be outside? Me too."
The dog's tail wagged.
Yancy remembered what she'd said earlier. "You said that if I wanted it to happen, that Quark could talk to me in my dreams."
"No. I said it was possible. Most things are, at some level or another." While she continued petting his dog, her gaze met his. "I think you know that, don't you? Why don't you ask me your questions?"
"You have answers?"
"Depends." The small smile hovering on her lips made him think she was teasing him, but her eyes were serious behind her glasses.
"Okay, here goes, but I bet it sounds as crazy as I think it does. Can someone appear in another person's dream? Can dreams be real?"
"People appearing in dreams happens all the time. Don't you always dream of other people?" When she stopped scratching Quark between the ears, the dog laid his chin on her knee.
"This is different." He paused, needing to figure out how to explain it. "It's like my dreams are more real, or at least as real as the conversation I'm having with you this very moment."
"What makes you think our conversation is real, as you say?" Her head tilted, waiting for his response.
"It's real because it isn't just in my mind while I'm sleeping in my bed, for one." The need to understand the essence of what was happening surged over him in a wave.
"And how do you judge that this event is not happening in your dreams?" Her voice remained calm and she gestured for him to sit.
The thoughts came so fast he could only make out a couple of them. Unlike the peaceful easygoing sensation he experienced in his dream whenever he thought about the nature of the events around him, the current predominant feeling was confusion. "I'm trying to understand."
"I see that. And if you weren't, we wouldn't be having this conversation." Rather than elucidating further, she returned to petting the dog.
"Who are you? Really? Some kind of angel?" It was the only word he could find to describe her, but as soon as he said it his mind rebelled. "There are no such things."
"How do you know that?" Her sharp gaze returned to him. "I'm not an angel, but I am curious how you seem to know so definitively what is real, what is not real, what really exists and what doesn't. This is a curiosity to my way of thinking. My world is more of questioning, wondering of possibilities, thinking about what if, and could it be. Yours is the opposite, where you are more intent on discrediting something."
"I guess I like to think of it as the scientific method." As a techie, his field required logistics, everything needed to be quantifiable. Since the accident, his life had fallen into unfamiliar territory where logic had taken a leave of absence to be replaced by intuition and feelings. The whole experience left him a little dizzy, and it wasn't due to the bump on his head.
"Science is good and very necessary, but it doesn't negate the experience of emotions, raw existential connections with other beings. Quark is even aware of this, aren't you, boy?" Her face glowed as she watched the dog pant and nuzzle her leg in obvious agreement.
"Real beings or those in my dreams?" If only dreams could come true somehow.
"Maybe they are both. I can only tell you once more to keep the faith. Tessa is struggling on her end too. If you trust the process you'll both be fine." Quincy stood. "This guy would like to continue his run, and I need to go. But Yancy, remember cherishing all existence in the now is what you long to do, and dreams happen in the now as well." She gave him a hug, pushed her glasses up on her nose and walked toward the street.
For the rest of their walk, he turned over her comments in his mind, no closer to answers than before.
Chapter Nine
ON RETURNING HOME after the run with Quark, Yancy wandered around the empty rooms, searching for the life he lived in his dreams. When they finished making love in the most recent one, Tessa had whipped up some amazing wraps out of lettuce, deli turkey, and provolone. It had the perfect amount of crunch and meat to sate his carnivorous nature. He complimented her and she shrugged.
"Just wait till I really start hitting on you. Then you'll think you're in heaven. Between my Italian and Mexican meals, you'll never be satisfied with a hamburger again." Her laugh trickled over him like warm water.
Unable to keep his hands off her, he lifted her to the counter and began making a meal of her unique flavors.
The memory made him smile and when he circled around to the kitchen, he almost expected to find her there, but the room was just as empty as the rest of his house. Quark whined at him.
"I know, buddy. Something's missing isn't it?" Or someone, he added silently. "I'm going to the hospital to check on her. Maybe she's even woken up." At the thought his heart sped a little faster. A funny little sensation skittered through his abdomen and chest.
For a moment he wished for the clarity of the wind in his face before recalling his bicycle was still out of commission. The accident flooded his mind. All the little details of the seconds just before it came through more vividly than a movie. The music from her car, the breeze on his face, her smile and how ever
ything froze with an aura of expectation. An idea of something he might be able to do for Tessa had him nearly sprinting toward his computer. It certainly couldn't hurt and it just might help. Who knew?
Over an hour later he entered her room, at once taken aback by her beauty, even bruised, and the sensation of helplessness. The nurse at the ICU station told him there was no change. She was right. Tessa lay in the same position, unmoving, her eyes closed. In his dreams he spent some time watching her sleep, and never was she as still as in the hospital bed. Her mouth would make little movements and twitches that he found so cute. To watch her so quiet, so unlike the energetic woman he saw in dreams felt like someone punched him in the gut.
Needing a connection to this woman, he took her hand which though limp, possessed the familiar touch of the woman he spent loving anytime he could. "Hey. I've missed you." The words tumbled out. They were true, but how could he miss someone he hardly knew? "I brought you something." Gently, he pushed her hair back from her face and placed the earbuds in her ears, careful not to disturb any of the bandages. Then he clicked the on switch on the player.
The playlist, inspired by the time he spent with her, began with the first song from the 80s Brit boy band he heard from her speakers. The songs would continue, each one a greatest hit from the 80s second British Invasion. Her face remained inexpressive, tranquil, but no more lifelike than a statue.
What had he been thinking that something so simple could have an effect on her condition? Even if he read somewhere that music could have an effect on certain parts of the brain, it didn’t guarantee the tunes would spur her consciousness.
For a long time he sat, simply gazing at her, willing her to wake up, to open those blue eyes which hypnotized him whenever they met his. The music provided a beat, a soft background noise to his silent pleas.
The light had faded from the window when a voice from behind him interrupted his focus.
"Hi. I'm glad to see you here. I had to leave earlier and was hoping perhaps you had time to spend with her since I couldn't be here."
Come Undone: Romance Stories Inspired by the Music of Duran Duran Page 18