He covers my mouth with one finger, cutting me off, and snakes his other hand down my stomach. His tongue darts out to taste my shoulder as he drags his fingers past my navel to the seam between my legs. I’m wet and ready for him, as I am always, and my lids flutter.
“Don’t you like this place?” He nibbles my shoulder, the hand covering my mouth dipping down to knead my breasts. “And what I do to you?”
“Yes.”
He grazes and pinches and teases, exactly the way I like it. Exactly the way I need him to. When the thick head of his cock slips between my ass cheeks and enters me from behind, I gasp.
He makes love to me again and again, never in reality but for all eternity. Every golden morning, on this cliff, where I get to fuck a ghost without shame or regret. Because that’s the only time of day I feel truly alive.
He always knows how to please me. My dream-husband.
My mouth parts on a sweet, sweet sigh. “With dreams like you haunting me, it’s a cold, slow death to wake up.”
He bites my earlobe at that, hooking a finger to rub that deep, sensitive space behind my pubic bone. “I should punish you for bringing him up.”
He hates it when I mention Death, but lately, I’ve thought of nothing else. I can’t help but squint at the exact point where the waterfall meets the clouds, and wonder what would happen to me if I jumped. Would I go home, then? And who would be waiting for me there?
“You’re distracted,” my lover muses, his thumb rubbing my clit in a scolding, delicious manner. “Have you kissed him yet. Your ghost? Is it his cock you want between your legs?” he chuckles darkly, as though this is all a big joke.
I pant out a curse and a blessing. “Fuck, don’t stop.”
He stops. “I’m jealous of him.”
“Why?” I cry out, dangling on the edge.
“Because he’s not broken, like me. And he gets to love you regardless.”
“I won’t fall for him,” I say, trying to appease my lover.
His laugh grows louder, almost joyful, but also incredibly condescending. “Oh, little fox… You already have.”
The dream shifts again, keeping me enthralled, pushing back against morning. Devouring my sanity.
I’m a prisoner of these visions, where cottony clouds and bare skin and the mouth of a stranger make me forget to wake up. I’d rather count the feathers on his wings than return to my life, and that’s not only foolish, it’s insidious.
When I finally manage to peel my eyes open, the memory of his touch lingers on my skin. My heart beats wildly in the shameful space between my legs, the orgasms he gave me all too real. I know it won’t be the last time he finds me in the Dreaming, but is it E, truly? Or some twisted version of him that exists only in my brain?
He was jealous of my ghost, but I don’t see who else he could be. Not with a voice like that… I comb my hair back, pressing hard against my scalp to ground myself in the present and resist the temptation to slip back into sleep.
“E?” I call to the bedroom.
“I’m here.”
The sound comes from the window, calming the whoosh of blood at my temples.
I nod and ponder whether to ask if he’s influencing my dreams, if he’s somehow to blame for my predicament and those long, heated visions, but I’m not sure I’d believe him if he denied it.
“You looked like you were battling demons in your sleep,” he murmurs, hovering closer.
“That’s about right,” I croak.
I can’t tell if he’s teasing me or not, but his tone sounds perfectly innocent.
If it didn’t make sense for me to accept a proposal from a mortal I barely knew, it makes even less sense to lust for a dead man. I have to get my act together, and quickly.
I tear the covers off my body, ignoring the mess between my legs, and pull on fresh clothes. The sooner I do this séanceand get into the attic, the sooner I’ll get clarity, whatever the outcome.
I wouldn’t be the first witch to be overcome by a dark spirit, but if E were a devil, Mabel would have warned me against him. Only, I never told her about the dreams. Maybe I’m wrong, and the man who made love to me all night isn’t the same person as the spirit who lingers close now. Maybe I’ve got two different entities vying for my soul.
