Page 103 of Bound

Brick started on a rickety inhalation of his own. Never made it all the way in, though. “Jayd—”

“He never came back, Brickham.”

He dragged his free hand across his skull. “Okay, so the moral of the story here is…what?”

“Not applicable.” Her answer was too quick. Too clear. Too dismissive. Too much of a tone he could imagine her using on Carris, not him. Fuck. “There is no moral, Brickham. That is exactly the point.” She let her hand slip free as she scooted back, arranging her pillow against the headboard so she could lean into it. “Sometimes a dream is really just a dream. And you can join the world and its grand stab at purpose, wasting time in picking it apart for meanings that are just not there, or be glad and grateful that you had the dream at all.”

For long seconds, Brick was motionless. Bolted to his spot on the edge of the mattress. More unnerving symbolism, since he again felt like the guy on the fringe of the party, lost about whether the game was charades or spin-the-bottle. Worse, he wasn’t aware of the etiquette. Was there a limit on how many times he could ask the hostess what the hell she was talking about?

But then he paused.

And thought about it.

Then some more.

Shit.

He wasn’t lost about any of this. He was just wishing to be.

Double shit.

Even then, he forced himself to dig even deeper. To fire up his mental jackhammer and push it into the thicker clay of his psyche.

Triple shit.

Not only was he not lost, but he knew exactly where to drop the pin on being found. The one place he never expected to be. The sole destination he’d told this woman, over and over again, to never seek him in.

So…she wasn’t. Despite how the effort was filling her eyes with rain, her voice with mist, and her words with shadows, she was honoring every boundary he had ever set. Every fence he had ever ordered her not to climb.

All the walls that now became all his regrets.

Fuck.

As soon as it tumbled from him as a dismal mutter, Jayd rustled beneath the covers again. But it was only to tuck her hands in, not out. Her shoulders shivered a little, perfectly emulating the nervous tremors in his gut. Just in time to give physical support for the lurch of his heartbeat, a massive wave suddenly crashed along the palais shore.

“Pixie.”

“Hmm?”

Her tone was worse to take than before. Clear and dismissive were replaced by quiet and noncommittal. He thought he’d been tossed in hell when they realized both she and Carris were roaming free through the palais. But there had been an instant plan for that. Detailed actions of what they could do.

But this…

There was no conceivable field of weeds to describe his mind about this.

“What if someone doesn’t want the dream to be over?”

Well, that felt like a terrifying jumping-off point if there was one. Until her soft, bitter chuff filled the air, bringing his instant splat.

“Dreams do not work that way, Brickham. You know that as well as I do.” A new shrug vibrated her shoulders. “They are what they are. They end when they end.”

“But what if…they change?”

He took the leap again, which was no awful than the first. But this time, he added a new factor. The plunging intensity of his gaze. The stare he refused to relinquish until she felt its intensity and raised her own.

When it finally worked, nearly a full minute later, he almost pumped a fist in triumph.

“You mean like when they become nightmares?”