The Man of her Dreams: A Paranormal Romance (6 page)

She should have felt the shyness of being with someone new, but this was an entirely different moment. The desire in his eyes made her feel utterly feminine, sexy and in control. She watched until Philip’s mouth closed over one hard nipple, and only then did she let her head fall back against the grass. She closed her eyes and moaned as he played with first one side, then the other, teasing her with his lips and tongue and teeth until she was thrusting her hips up to him in a silent plea.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured to into her ear as he rose his body up over her. She watched as he pulled his shirt up over his head. There was a scar on his chest, and she reached out instinctively to touch it. He met her questioning gaze. “Life wasn’t always easy for me,” he said simply, and she nodded. She came up on her elbows and placed her lips on the scar, kissing him gently on the mark of some long-past injury. She rose up to meet his mouth again, ravenous with desire. His lips crashed back into hers with the same intensity, and they grabbed at each other’s bodies hungrily.

Philip broke away from her after a moment, and half-stood up, his naked chest glistening with sweat. She watched as he slowly unbuckled his belt, then ever-so-slowly reached for the button and zipper. The heat between her legs seemed to grow with every new inch of skin he revealed. She licked her lips and watched as he pushed down the pants, taking the undergarments along with them. When they were down to his ankles, he stood proud before her.

Her eyes took in every inch. He was just as handsome out of his clothing as he was in it. Her mouth watered at the sight of his body, fully erect and waiting for her. She could have stared for an hour, but he broke her rapturous gaze with two words. “Your turn.”

She came up on her knees before him. Instead of pulling off her dress, she simply lifted her arms. He grinned, kicked his pants to the side and came to her. She closed her eyes for a brief moment as he pulled on the hem of her dress, lifted the fabric over her head, and threw it to the side.

They stared at each other for long moments, naked together, their bodies both flushed with erotic desire. Alexis felt his gaze as clearly as if he had placed his hands on her skin. She looked up at his face and then looked straight ahead, where her position on her knees made a certain part of his anatomy perfectly accessible. She reached out to touch him and he drew a deep breath, then took one step back.

“Alexis…are you sure…”

“Am I sure that I want to suck you?” she asked bluntly, and he blinked at her. She knew he was shocked by how forward she was, but she found that she loved the heady feeling of taking control over what was about to happen. “Come here,” she demanded, and he stepped toward her. This time she reached out to touch him before he could stop her again.

He was so hot in her hand – hotter than she had imagined. She took her time feeling the length of him, the hard iron wrapped inside skin soft as silk. When she wrapped her fingers around him, she was gratified by the moan that ripped from deep inside him. It was the kind of moan that said he was drowning in desire, just as she was.

It was all the encouragement she needed. Alexis leaned forward and blew a gentle breath across his skin. She watched as he shivered with anticipation, and then she pressed the flat of her tongue against his hard shaft. He jerked once in her hand, then his fingers curled into her hair as she opened her mouth wider and slid him inside with one long, slow and savory suck.

“Alexis,” he breathed, and then he was silent except for the moans that escaped him as she moved back and forth on his delicious hardness. She put her hands on his hips and pulled him closer, taking him deeper, until his hands tightened in her hair and he pulled her away. “I can’t last if you keep that up,” he said. “And I want to last. I want to be inside you.”

In response to his words, she took his hand and pulled him toward her as she fell back onto the grass. It was all the invitation Philip needed. He rose up on his knees between her legs and gently pushed them apart. With his hands on her knees, he looked down at her. After a long moment he shook his head. “You get more beautiful as every moment passes.”

He watched her as she blushed hard, and then he bent low to kiss the skin of her belly, right above her belly button. His tongue began a slow trail downward and Alexis looked up at the trees swaying above her, trying to control her racing heart, trying to breathe. Everything this man did was absolutely perfect, and it seemed as though he was touching her very soul, not just her body.

At the first touch of his tongue, she cried out with the intense pleasure. The sound rose into the trees and a flock of birds flushed out of the brush, winging away from the sound. She clasped the long grass in her hands as she writhed on the ground underneath him. His hands on her hips held her right where she was, while his tongue made slow circles, then faster trips around and around, until she was begging for release in a voice that was completely incoherent, even to her own ears.

“Hold me,” he said to her, and she immediately let go of the grass and reached down to twine her fingers through his hair. He went back to what he was doing, those touches and licks that were now just fast enough to send her to the edge. She pulled his head closer to her as she went past the point of no return.

“Philip!” she called out as she came. It was a hard and deep orgasm that slammed into her with enough force to take her breath away. Her body pulsed and writhed and arched all on its own, her natural instinct taking over as the waves of pleasure cascaded through her. After what seemed like an eternity, her hips collapsed to the ground and she let go of his hair. Her arms fell to the side, and she chuckled once, then again, her body utterly exhausted and alive at the same time. “That was…”

“I know,” he said, coming up over her and looking deeply into her eyes. He kissed her slowly, and she smiled at the taste of her own arousal on his lips.

She raised her lips up to his ear, and whispered to him in husky tones. “I want you inside me.”

“I might not last very long,” he warned her.

He grinned. “Not this time, anyway. But there will definitely be a next time, won’t there?”

“I will make love to you as many times as you will let me,” he vowed. He pushed her down again gently and slipped his strong body between her thighs. She wrapped her legs around his, urging him forward. Her hands rested languidly on his shoulders. “Show me what you feel like,” she murmured into his ear.

He took his time. He pushed against her, not quite entering her yet, and she sighed. She wanted him all the way inside her, but the sweet anticipation of waiting for it was too delicious to deny. She lifted her hips and he pushed in just a bit more, just a single inch of his manhood inside her. She stared into his eyes as he pushed in a bit more, then a bit more, stretching her as he went deeper and deeper.

“All of you,” she finally whispered, and that’s when he thrust all the way home, filling her completely.

At that moment, something inside Alexis seemed to explode. Some long-held tension seemed to release in an instant, snapping like a rubber band. All the doubts she’d harbored, all the worries and fears she’d had about falling in love with a man in her dream world – they all faded away in this moment of passion. This felt as real as anything, and she knew it was real, more real than anything else she had ever known. She threw her arms around him and locked her legs tight around his hips, holding him hard against her. “Philip, I love you,” she cried out as he began to move inside her.

At the sound of her words, Philip suddenly stopped moving. He pushed himself up on his hands and looked down into her eyes with an expression of sheer surprise. “You do?” he blurted out, his eyes searching hers.

Alexis said it again, and watched as a glorious smile broke across his face. Then she said it again as he began to move inside her. She said it over and over as the climax slowly built, and she was still saying it when he began to move faster and pushed her over the edge for the second time.

“Keep going,” she breathed, and he grinned at her before he buried his face in her neck and thrust harder, deeper, faster. Alexis grabbed his hips and urged him to go even faster. Soon his motion became jerky, and his whole body tensed under her hands. She lifted her hips up to him and laughed out loud in sheer delight when she heard the deep groan and felt him spill into her, over and over and over. It was as though it would never end.

Finally he collapsed onto her, his whole weight landing on her chest. She took shallow breaths until the weight became too much, then she gently pushed his shoulder and he rolled to her side, pulling out of her as he went. She instantly felt empty. He threw his leg over her thighs and wrapped his arms around her, still trying to catch his breath.

They looked at each other, each waiting for the other to speak. If only the moment could last forever…

Chapter 6: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream…

“That was amazing,” he finally said, and Alexis laughed again. She had never felt so alive and so free, either in the dream world or in the real one.

Shit,
she thought.
The real world.
The thought brought her laughter to a sudden close. She looked at Philip with wide eyes. The question hovered on her tongue, something she didn’t want to ask, but she knew it would have to happen sooner or later.

“…What happens now?” she asked.

Philip rose up on one elbow and looked down at her. He trailed his fingertip along the line of her jaw, the curve of her nose.

“I don’t know,” he finally whispered. “Do you really love me?”

Alexis nodded even as the tears sprang to her eyes. “I do.”

“Then it’s simple,” he replied. “My curse is broken.”

“But you’re still here with me…”

Even as she said it, she heard the sounds in the distance, the roaring and the trembling that always heralded the appearance of something sinister. But this time Philip didn’t even blink. “He’s not happy,” he said. “But there’s nothing he can do to me. He has to release me.”

“But…what does that mean? Where will you go?”

He looked into her eyes, but his gaze was now filled with sorrow. “The agreement said that once I managed to fulfill my end of the bargain, then he would send me back to the woman I loved, and we would be happy together for the rest of our lives.”

The pain of the realization cut like a knife. Alexis could actually feel the pain in her chest, a ripping pain that made it hard to breathe. She was angry, heartbroken, confused. She pushed him away and sat up on the grass.

“How could you do this to me?” she cried. “You made me fall in love with you – you got me to open my heart to you – and now you’re…”

She trailed off in a fury, too upset to speak. He looked at her with pain in his eyes.

“Alexis,” he said. “I didn’t want this. Try to understand, my darling…”

“Don’t you call me that,” she seethed. The world around them was starting to vanish, the edges becoming a blurry haze. She knew it was only moments before the dream would break apart, and she would never see him again.

But he would be happy.
She’d done a good thing, hadn’t she? She’d rescued Philip from this prison. He would go back to the woman he loved. He would live the life he had dreamed of having for centuries while he was locked in an impossible hell.

But he would leave her…

Alexis burst into tears. She felt Philip’s hands on her as she buried her face into her hands and started to sob. Philip wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, and now the sounds were louder. She realized there was very little time left.

“You have your whole life ahead of you,” he was saying to her, though his voice already sounded far away. “You have so much to live for, Alexis. So much to give. You will find a greater love, and you will make a mark on your time.”

“But…”

“You will see me again,” he said with a smile. “I believe in the afterlife, Alexis. I believe I will see you there one day. And when you get there, you will have so many good stories to tell, and I will listen to every one of them, and we will have all the time of eternity to share them…”

“I do love you,” she said to him, even as the grass underneath them began to wave with a massive gust of wind. “And I want you to be happy, Philip. I want you to be with the one you love.”

Alexis struggled to get to her feet. Philip rose with her, holding her hands in his. “Alexis, there is something I have to tell you,” he said.

She looked into his eyes as he started to speak. But at that moment, the ground underneath them began to shake. It soon became a violent shudder that threw both of them to their knees. Alexis looked up to see the trees above them swaying dangerously. The lake water was now nothing but whitecaps whipped by an approaching storm. The mountains in the distance had begun to spew red-hot lava. The dream was collapsing. She had to say her last words to him now, while there was still time.

“Be happy,” she called out to him, and then the ground opened up beneath her. She was falling fast now, through an infinite gray distance, falling away from him softly…

Alexis sat up on the couch, struggling to breathe. For the longest moment she couldn’t make her lungs work. It was as though the world around her was filled with sulfur and smoke, and it was blocking all the air she needed. She fell to her knees beside the couch and struggled to draw in a single breath.

Finally, she inhaled. The air was clear and sweet and good, but now she knew it was the pounding pain in her heart that kept her from breathing. It was the pain of losing Philip that made her body want to shut down.

She sat there for a long moment, drawing in deep breaths of air. She felt faint, and even when she lay down flat on the floor, her heart wouldn’t stop the insane pounding. It was as if she was running from something terrible, and she couldn’t slow down.

This is what a broken heart feels like, she thought, and then she burst into tears.

A long hour later, Alexis sat up. She looked around her living room. The early-morning sun was bursting through the windows, threatening to make the room brighter with every passing minute. She suddenly glared at the curtains.

“How dare you,” she said to the light that streamed in to brighten up her world. “How dare you even think to rise today!”

She rose on shaky legs and walked toward the shower. On her way there, she suddenly stopped in the hallway. She lifted her hand to her mouth, where her lips were swollen with kisses. She touched her breasts, which were still sensitive and a little swollen, too. Then she slipped a hand between her thighs and felt the wetness there.

“Philip,” she murmured, and that set off a whole new round of tears.

In the shower, she looked up at the water and thought about the last several hours. She relived every moment of their lovemaking in her mind. She tried to remember every inch of his body, what he looked like everywhere, and how he had felt when he touched her. She tried to remember everything, because she knew she would never see him again.

But then something amazing happened. Alexis leaned against the wall in the shower and looked up at the water, and then she smiled. She smiled at the thought of Philip, no matter where he might be right now, no matter who he might be with. She smiled at the thought that he was happy. He was free.

And
she
was the one who had set him free.

“I do love you,” she finally said again, this time to an empty room, but she knew that somewhere – somehow – he could still hear her.