Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, the throb between them a fading beat, she placed her feet firmly on the floor. “First you see him on the crater’s rim, now in your dreams. Not even working five-hundred hours a week is keeping your mind off the fact you…” She let the sentence falter. Dragging her hands through her hair, she gnawed on her bottom lip—a lip her imaginary lover had so wonderfully nibbled on only moments earlier.
How lonely did a person have to be to conjure up an imaginary lover? To actually orgasm in her sleep because of his imagined touch? Moderately lonely?
With a scowl and a disgusted snort, Jordynn shook her head again. “No. I’m not lonely. Just pathetic.”
Pushing herself to her feet, she shoved her legs into a pair of sweat pants and yanked a tank top over her head. The feel of the soft cotton rubbing over her nipples sent a wet squiggle of excitement through her body and she huffed. “Damn pathetic,” she muttered, crossing the cabin to scoop up the canvas bag containing the soil and stone specimens she’d collected that afternoon.
Studying and cataloguing them would take her traitorous, borderline-psychotic mind off her…well, off her borderline-psychotic episode.
She opened the cabin’s only door and cool night air wrapped around her immediately, pinching her nipples into tight tips of flesh. She sighed, sinking into an old cane chair on the small porch and gazing up at the moon-bathed Hawaiian mountains.
Burying herself in her work always distracted her from the fact she hadn’t had a single date in over a year. Nor a single phone call, email or carrier pigeon message from either of her parents in the same amount of time. Probably more. It wasn’t that she didn’t have any friends. She did, but none so close she’d give up a rock-hunting expedition for. None she’d share her secrets and desires with. As for dates…
Jordynn grimaced and flicked on the powerful fluorescent lamp sitting on the small table beside her. Stark white light spilled from the lantern, throwing leaping shadows up around the immediate clearing before the cabin. Scowling at them, feeling foolish and unsettled, Jordynn pulled a random stone from her specimen bag.
She’d dated quarterbacks, artists, musicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers, models…you name a profession, she’d tried one from its ranks. Like her friends, however, none gave her pause for commitment. None, in fact, pushed her buttons. They were all pleasant, all wanted to make her happy, all told her she was gorgeous—but none made her body quiver with lust, none made her heart ache with connection. None made her feel…alive.
In her more melancholy days, she found herself thinking the concept of love, of a “Happy Ever After”, was a fallacy.
Jordynn rolled her eyes. Talk about pathetic! “Get a fucking grip, Jordynn,” she growled, reaching into her specimen bag and pulling out another random stone. “Do you really want to lose it?”
She looked down at the stone she’d grabbed.
The stone!
The stone from the crater’s rim. His stone. The one that brought visions of a naked man.
A ball of heat radiated out from the small stone, heating her palm. Her body tingled, awash in sensations she’d only moments earlier experienced in her dreams. Her pussy fluttered and Jordynn gasped. Potent heat threaded through her limbs, down into the pit of her belly.
She tightened her grip on the stone, pressing it harder to her flesh. Biting ice stabbed into her palm and she sucked in a swift breath. A shudder rocked her, nipples becoming so hard they hurt. But oh, God, what exquisite pain! As though unseen fingers pinched each, twisting them, pulling them…
She sucked in a swift breath. No! Not again! But her body wouldn’t listen. She arched her back, pushing her breasts forward, drawing the memory of her dream lover’s hands on their heavy, swollen forms into her mind.
He appeared immediately, materializing into naked perfection before her. His long-fingered hands closed over her breasts without hesitation. The moon kissed his smooth, bronzed flesh, highlighting the sculpted curves of his muscles and the rigid length of his engorged shaft. The sudden absence of lamplight left his face shrouded in shadow, but still Jordynn felt the blazing intensity of his inspection. His eyes travelled her body. Made her pussy clench with anticipation.
She licked her lips, willing to let the dream continue. What else could it be? She was alone, it was near midnight. Her clothes seemed to have miraculously disappeared. When her imagination could create a sexual god like this, why should she fight the call of sleep?
The hands on her breasts squeezed. Softly at first and then with greater force. Bolts of wicked tension shot through her, targeting her sex. She gasped and arched into his grip, grinding her hard nipples into his hot palms. Her pussy constricted, longing to be filled. To be pumped into with savage, repetitive strokes.
A shift in her dream lover’s position brought his hips closer to hers and Jordynn realized she was standing, her thighs brushing his, their groins aligned. The solid length of his cock nudged the smooth curve of her mons, sending another shard of exquisite pleasure to her core. Damn, she was so fucking ready. Ready to be fucked and used and pleasured beyond comprehension. How could a figment of her imagination do this?
Does it matter?
Jordynn closed her eyes on her own question, giving herself over to what her mind and body so obviously wanted. Lust. Passion. Connection. The sense of being needed by someone. Her soul burned with it. An intoxicating heat matched by the hands on her body.
Strong fingers played over her tight nipples, tweaked one and then the other. Pinched them until Jordynn whimpered. She wiggled, pushing her hips toward the steely cock pressed to her groin. “Yes,” she murmured.
“Yes,” her dream lover echoed. He scooped each breast into his hands, molding them together, rolling the pads of his thumbs over her nipples as he did so. She arched into his touch again, gnawing on her bottom lip. His flesh scalded hers like a brand, a contact so hot it felt like blistering ice. Without preamble, he raked his hands down her rib cage, sank his fingers into her ass cheeks and yanked her completely against his body.
She cried out, both in surprise and delight. His shaft, more thick and solid and meaty than ever, ground into her belly, stealing her breath. He dug his fingers harder into the firm muscles of her ass, lifting her slightly from the ground until the swollen head of his cock pushed, insistent, at the sodden lips of her sex. “You are wet.”
His deep, smoky voice caressed her senses. She opened her eyes and gazed up into his face, wanting to see him, truly see him. He may be a dream, but she wanted to see what her soul hungered for.
Shadows hid his face from her stare. Except for his eyes. Brilliant green. Cutting, sharp green. Ablaze with a need equal to hers.
She rolled her hips, sliding her pussy over the distended bulge of his cock’s tip. “You’ve made me wetter than I’ve ever been.”
“And you have made me harder.”
His statement flooded her pussy with cream. She whimpered, pushing her hips forward. She wanted to feel his thick, impressive cock buried inside her again. “Fuck me!” The command burst from her, hoarse and almost pleading. Her blood roared in her ears, surging through her veins, pumping through her quivering body by her hungry heart. “Fuck me,” she ordered again. “Now!”
Eyes flashing, those molten swirls of green lava scalding her soul, he snared her wrists in his fists and pinned them beside her head against the wall, the bulbous head of his cock pushing farther into the folds of her sex. “Gladly.”
He smacked his ankle against the instep of her right foot, knocking her legs wider apart, and he thrust his hips upward, impaling her on his massive cock.
Exquisite pain shot through her. Her sex stretched around his thick width, her swollen pussy lips igniting with stinging fire. She cried out, her nails sinking into her palms as she clenched her fists. The uncut stone in her right hand scalded her flesh with icy heat, its rough, uneven angles digging into her fingers as she squeezed her fists tighter. A ribbon of concentrated pleasure
rippled out from the contact, through her palm, along her arm, down her body into the pit of her stomach. She cried out again, engulfed in the impossible, fantastical rapture.
Her lover’s shaft stabbed into her, his long, fluid strokes in perfect harmony with her hammering heart, each penetrating thrust so powerful her feet lifted from the ground. The wooden wall rubbed against her butt and shoulder blades, its smooth, worn surface like a rough tongue on her flesh, heightening the wicked sensations rolling through her. With each forceful thrust of his hips, his cock sank deeper into her sex, filling her so utterly she felt sure they had become one.
A keening sound vibrated in her throat, high and primitive. Squirming tension blossomed in her core, radiated out to her spine, her ass. Oh fuck, she was going to—
“Release the stone.”
The words rasped over her senses. Her pulse quickened, her sex fluttered. She struggled against his hold on her wrists, wanting to bury her hands in his thick, lush hair and yank his head to hers. Wanting to taste his lips, his tongue as she rode his throbbing cock all the way to—
“Release the stone.”
He drove deeper into her. Deeper. Deeper. Her pussy contracted. The stone in her grip pulsed. Scalding tension shot through her. She opened her mouth, her scream of rapture building in her throat.
Her lover’s hands ground into her wrists, pinning her to the wall as surely as his driving shaft. He shifted slightly, levering his torso backward to stare into her face. Lust flared in his brilliant green eyes. Lust and desire and wonderment. “By the Gods, I can almost…”
His eyes squeezed shut and he threw back his head, a roar tearing from his throat as his savage, frenzied thrusts turned wilder. Wilder. Hot cum spurted from his cock to fill Jordynn’s eager, greedy, constricting sex in thick streams she felt in her very core, in her very soul.
How can that be? How can you feel a dream in your soul?
She couldn’t. It was impossible, but Jordynn didn’t care. It was a dream after all. And what a dream! One minute she was awake and dressed in sweats, the next she’s naked under the stars on the verge of the most intense multiple orgasm of her life.
The small stone in Jordynn’s hand burst into heated pressure, as though it was about to explode in her tight grip. Like it was about to—
Release me…
With a jolt, Jordynn snapped awake. “Huh?” She blinked, looking out at the silent Hawaiian night before her.
Awake? Had she really been asleep? Asleep standing up outside her cabin?
The stone in her hand turned to ice and she hissed. Her fingers snapped open of their own accord and she stared hard at the small rock sitting on her palm.
Jordynn’s throat squeezed tight. The once dullish, greenish-tinged stone now seemed to glow with an inner light. Green light. Light the color of…
“Peridot.”
The precious jewel’s name slipped from her lips, falling in the night’s silence. Pulling at her bottom lips with her teeth, Jordynn lifted the small stone closer to her face, studying it. “Peridot,” she repeated on a whisper.
Her fingers tingled with each syllable.
As did her sex.
* * * * *
Blistering heat poured through the nothingness of Kale’s being. Through the stillness of his soul. Warmth spread through his consciousness, electrifying and unfathomable.
How was it so? After so many years imprisoned.
The woman? Her warmth? Her sensuality?
Her soul?
Kale stirred in the nothingness of his existence, burning with a pleasure he didn’t believe possible.
And for the first time in several lifetimes, felt hope.
* * * * *
“I’m not sure, Tom.” Jordynn held the unusual stone up to the sunlight streaming through the cabin’s window, catching its green light in the sun’s golden rays. “It looks like peridot. It feels like peridot, but yet it doesn’t.”
Thomas Willis, her boss, teacher and all-round good guy, laughed. The deep, rumbling sound came through the weak satellite phone connection without any problem, bringing with it an image of his considerable girth and outrageous mustached face to Jordynn’s tired mind. “Well, Jordynn, it either is peridot or it isn’t.”
Jordynn pulled a face at both her boss’s response and the jewel grasped between her fingers. She’d spent the remainder of the previous night not sleeping as she should have, but polishing the small stone. Her body ached but whether from a need to sleep or a wanting hunger for the dream awaiting her if she did so, Jordynn didn’t know and wouldn’t let herself discover.
Instead, she’d worked the peridot with her rock cloth, carefully, methodically polishing its surface until the light she’d seen glowing in its grimy depths earlier positively shone from it now. She scowled at it, feeling an unnatural heat emanating from the gem. “Well you tell me, boss,” she grumbled into the phone, wishing she could put the jewel down but incapable of doing so. “Is peridot hot to the touch? Or cold? ’Cause whatever this stone is, it’s both.”
Tom burst out laughing. “Both? Jordynn, it’s either time for you to come home, time to stop drinking or time to start.”
Jordynn scowled again at her boss, despite the hundreds of miles separating them. “You know I don’t drink.”
“Well, it’s the latter then. Peridot doesn’t conduct temperature, Jordynn. You know that.” There was a pause—a long pause, long enough to make Jordynn fidget—and then Tom cleared his throat. “Are you okay? It’s your birthday tomorrow and you’ve been up there alone for quite some time now. Over two weeks. Do you want to come back? Go out for dinner with some friends? I can send Craig with the helicopter. If you leave now, you should make it down the mountainside by the time he gets to the clearing. You can be back in New York before your birthday ends.”
“I don’t want to come back.”
Another pause. Longer. Heavier. “Have you heard from your folks?”
Jordynn bit back a sigh. “Not fair, boss.”
“Well? Have you?”
Ridiculously wealthy and monumentally self-centered, Jordynn’s father had bought an opal mine in the Australian outback on Jordynn’s fifteenth birthday. He’d sent a fax to the boarding school she’d attended since the age of five, informing her that he and her mother would be flying Down Under to check out his new purchase and may be back for Christmas.
That had been twelve years ago to the day tomorrow.
Suffice to say, they hadn’t returned for Christmas, or any of Jordynn’s birthdays since.
“No, I haven’t heard from them,” she said into the phone, doing her best not to growl. “Read about them but not heard from them. Dad’s bought a television network in the UK. But that’s not the issue here, Tom. I’m holding a stone that looks like peridot, feels like peridot but runs hot and cold. Now you tell me how the total and utter insensitivity of my parents can make a stone change temperature?”
Release the stone…
The thought threaded through Jordynn’s mind like smoke and she blinked. At both the senseless message and the way her sex contracted.
Release the stone…
Pussy constricting, nipples hard, Jordynn blinked again, a fuzziness clouding her vision. The small stone in her hand began to burn. And vibrate.
Release the stone…
Piercing light green eyes stared at her through a strange white mist folding around her. Green eyes the color of peridot. Green eyes that studied her. Caressed her.
Release the…
“Jordynn? Hey! Are you there?” a deep voice called to her through the fog. Distant. Faint. “Jordynn?”
Unseen hands skimmed over the curves of her hips, travelled the dip of her lower back, explored the slight swell of her ass. Unseen fingers feathered the curve of each cheek, tickling her skin despite the denim shorts she wore. She pulled in a swift breath. The sultry heat of the day warmed her as it invaded her body.
“Jordynn?”
The fingers traced a swir
ling path over each butt cheek, lower, lower, until a grip both firm and unrelenting held her frozen. Through the mist, she gazed into mesmerizing green eyes, her heart hammering, her pussy wet.
“Jordynn?”
The grip on her ass tightened and with a savage jerk, she was yanked against an unseen body, a body both hard and warm. A body she knew.
She gasped, staring up into her dream lover’s eyes, knowing she was losing her mind—not asleep, I’m not asleep—yet incapable of doing anything to save herself. Save yourself? Why would you want to save—
“JORDYNN!”
Jordynn jumped, her boss’s frantic bellow causing her to drop the phone and the small peridot at once. The exquisite sexual pleasure consuming her body instantly ceased. Just like that. One second, masterful hands caressed her, the next, nothing. One moment a long, thick, hard cock ground against her belly, branding her like a red-hot iron, the next she stood in the cabin untouched by anything but the oppressive August air.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “Jesus, I really am going out of my mind.”
Dropping to a squat, she scooped up the phone and pressed it to her ear. “Sorry, boss. I’m here. Just lost the connection there for a while.” She stood and cast a steady glare at the small peridot glinting at her from the cabin floor.
Lost connection? Her pussy fluttered and her heart skipped a beat. More like made a new one.
New one? With what? A chunk of rock?
“I think I might come up there,” Tom said, worry clearly threaded through his words. “Fuck being scared of heights. I’m not going to lose one of my best geologists because she’s overworked and—”
“I’m fine, Tom,” Jordynn interrupted, still studying the polished stone.
Formed by a millennia of pressure inside the Earth’s igneous level, a tiny, foreign particle rolled and folded and tossed through rivers of subterranean lava, a lifetime of molten heat forcing it through the planet’s veins, finally to be deposited on the volcano’s rim as a small, yellow-green stone. Peridot. Her least favorite semi-precious stone, and yet here she was, unable—and unwilling—to turn her gaze away from it.
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