Page 200 of Ex Somnis

I’m going to combust.

I’m going to take Ridge’s whole flower planet down with me.

Ridge turns to Nevan. “What about you, baby boy? Any hard no’s?”

Nevan shrugs. “In a dream? Don’t think I care all that much.”

“Then don’t be surprised when I shove your hairy ass out of the way the second you take too long for my taste.”

“Only if I get to pick you up and move your hairy ass in waking life when she wants you somewhere your legs won’t get you.”

Nevan says it with a glint, chin up, holding Ridge’s eye, and I suck in a breath because that could go so many ways.

Ridge glares at him.

Nevan glares back.

“All right…” Ridge squares his shoulders and reaches out a hand, “… deal.”

Before I can even react, they shake on it.

I open my mouth to say don’t, you idiots, never shake hands on anything in dreams, but then I think about what they just shook hands on, and see it’s two grown men being idiots over sex positions, so I shut it again.

“What is even happening right now?” Paul groans, making me chuckle and reach out to take his hand.

He smiles down at me.

We’ll be fine.

“The clothes have to go,” Ridge announces, and in the next breath we are all naked.

All four of us instantly. My brain whites out for a second at the sheer amount of information before Ridge keeps talking.

“We need a bed, though.” He’s surveying the flowers critically. “We can get creative later. But the first time, a bed’s the correct call, I think. Civilized.”

The dreamscape folds, and the yellow goes white. The flowers stay, but they climb walls now, green everywhere, a whole room built out of growing things, and Paul actually looks around and approves, the traitor, tipping his chin at Ridge in something close to respect.

Ridge grins like he won something.

In the middle of it all is an enormous white bed. I blink, and on the next blink, I’m on top of it, sprawled across the middle like I was placed there, which I was, by someone who didn’t bother to ask.

The three of them stand at the foot of the bed, looking down at me.

“So,” Ridge says. “Who’s going first?”

I reach up and grab his wrist, pulling him down before I can overthink it. “Come here.”

He comes willingly, that one-sided smirk already curving his mouth as he crawls over me on the bed. The white sheets of Paul’s dream-version bedroom feel cool against my back, but Ridge is warm, smelling like sour lemon. His hair falls forward as he settles between my spread thighs, and I feel the others watching, the weight of their attention like another set of hands on my skin.

My heart is pounding.

Fuck, why am I so nervous about this?

It’s just a dream. I’m dreaming.

“You good, sweetheart?”

I nod quickly. “Yes.”