Page 118 of Somno Slave

My stomach twists.

But if he’s really here, then every night comes crashing back wrong. Every time he touched me while I lay trapped inside sleep. Every time my body reacted before I could stop it. Every time I woke up aching and terrified and convinced I’d done it to myself because that was easier than believing someone had really been there.

And all the while, he knew. He let me sit there unravelling, questioning my own mind, while he looked me in the face and let me believe he was only a fantasy.

“Fuck,” the word breaks out of me too fast. “How could you—"

My breathing starts coming apart properly now in sharp inhales.

Mike.

The interrogation room.

The CCTV.

“You spoke to me.” My voice sounds wrong. Thin. “You—you talked to me in front of Mike and then it—”

My throat closes violently. I can still see Mike staring at me like I’d lost my mind. The empty footage. Nothing there except me speaking into silence.

Cold spreads through my chest so fast it hurts. Because if he’s telling the truth, then it wasn’t silence.

My body starts trembling underneath him.

God.

Oh God.

“No,” I whisper again, weaker now. “No, that’s not possible.”

The mattress shifts softly behind me. I flinch. His hand finds my jaw before I can pull further away, fingers settling there firmly enough to stop me shaking apart completely.

“Rheda.” The sound of my name nearly undoes me. “Stop looking at me like that. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it already.”

My breathing breaks apart. “You already did. You used me while I was asleep. Multiple times!”

The corner of his mouth shifts faintly. “Your body never treated me like an intruder.”

Heat floods through me violently. “Stop!”

“You reached for me before you even understood what I was.”

“Stop.”

His thumb drags slowly beneath my jaw, forcing my attention back toward him.

“You can hate me for it,” he murmurs. “But don’t lie to yourself about what I felt in you.”

My eyes squeeze shut, my mouth suddenly dry. I rasp. Wheeze. Everything suddenly feels too hot, too tight.

“Calm down,” his voice drags through my mind. “I’m not going to hurt you, Doctor. I need you.”

His hand slides slowly from my jaw into my hair, fingers threading carefully through the strands like he already knows the texture of them.

“Need me for what?” I splutter.

“You want the truth,” he murmurs. “Even now. That matters to me.”

I shake violently.