Dream King by Elise Knight
27
Agap of light filtered through between the door and the frame. At the bottom, dark green strands were already creeping up. The vines were re-growing around the door and frame. Raven pecked at them from outside. I could just make out his feathery head bobbing away through the half-centimeter gap as he hammered his beak at the vine.
I pulled Dream’s knife from my boots and held it between the frame and the door, ready to slice it through. “Step back!” I ordered Raven. His dark shadow, only a touch darker than the forest around him, disappeared, allowing me to push the knife through. My mother’s dream was almost completely swallowed by blackness, and fuck knew what would happen when it petered out completely. It would move back to where it should be probably, taking me along with it, miles and miles away into the forest. Adrenaline kicked in as I hacked at the vine, screaming in both determination and anguish. The vine finally snapped, and I fell through the door, landing with a bump on the ground. Almost immediately, the howling wind came, sending my mother’s door away and me almost with it. Without warning, I was dragged along the ground, caught up in the current along with the debris that littered the forest floor. When the wind died down, I found that I hadn’t moved as far as I worried I had. I could still see the red door in the distance, but my mother’s door with the vines was no longer in sight. Raven flew over to me and landed on a door frame nearby. I could have sworn the little bastard was wearing an ‘I told you so’ expression.
“I’m sorry,” I grumbled as I picked myself up. I was filthy, my clothes ripped in multiple places, and a bloom of blood was already showing where my brief journey along the forest floor had ripped at my skin. A quick check told me that all my grazes were superficial and probably wouldn’t kill me, but that didn’t stop them from hurting like a bitch.
“Ow!” I grimaced, twisting my mouth with the pain. I’d accomplished precisely nothing, and Dream was still at the beach by himself.
“Shit, come on, we’ve gotta go.” Raven gladly hopped onto my shoulder, and the pair of us ran back through the forest to the lake, with me taking a minor detour to the clearing to pick up the other dresses that Aethelu had given me.
Dream was exactly where I’d left him. A knot of fear pulled at my stomach when I saw his body lying prone on the sand, but he was still breathing. I wondered if he’d woken at all since I’d been gone. It had been hours and hours—at least a full day. No footprints in the sand other than my own from when I’d gone to the lake’s edge told me that he’d not woken, or at least he hadn’t moved. I headed to the water’s edge and filled my hands with water which I brought back to him. He didn’t stir as I dribbled the soothing water between his dry, parched lips. The movement of his chest, what was left of it, told me he was still alive, but his face was serene as if in death, almost like a statue made of marble. A quick peek under the makeshift bandage told me that one of his lungs was still visible. Surely there was no coming back from that kind of injury?
If he died, who would take over his job? I couldn’t do it. I’d done it for a few hours, and it had traumatized me. So many questions rolled around in my brain as I ripped up another dress to make a clean bandage for him. What would happen to this world? To my world? And the one question that was the loudest of all -- What would happen to me?
Raven sat diligently at his master’s side, ignoring me as was his wont to do.
“I’m going for a swim!” I said at last to the bird. If I didn’t get all the grazes covering most of my body clean, they would get infected, and I’d be in no better position than Dream. Without thinking, I pulled off what was left of my ragged dress and the horrible bloomers and ran to the water and jumped in. The pain stopped almost immediately, the water soothing all the places where my skin had been broken. It truly was magical stuff. I dived under the surface and swam until I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, at which point I resurfaced. The feeling of freedom was palpable, and the cool water on my naked flesh thrilled me no end. Out here, I could forget about the doors, my mother, Dream, and the mess we were all in. There was nothing I could do, so instead, I floated on the water’s still surface and turned my gaze to the heavens.
After half an hour or so had passed in the most glorious swim, I swam back to the shallows and stepped out onto the black sand of the beach. The water dripped off me, seeping into the soft sand beneath my feet. As I walked up the beach back to Dream, I saw that his outline had changed. He was no longer lying down. At some point during my swim, he’d awakened and sat up, and now he watched me in all my naked glory in front of him. I walked slowly toward him, stuck between the embarrassment of him seeing me and the desire for him to. His eyes took me in completely, looking me up and down. This time, there was no venom in them as there had been on many occasions, nor was it polite interest that had his eyes raking over me.
I swallowed my nerves, caught as I was in the headlights of his stare. He’d seen plenty of naked people before. I’d been there many times in dreams when people had taken their clothes off or found themselves without clothes. He’d shown such a decided lack of interest in all of them that it was almost scary to watch how intensely he looked at me. How powerfully his gaze was locked upon my skin so that I could almost feel the heat of it.
“Please pass my dress,” I murmured, almost holding my breath. He hesitated slightly, then tore his gaze away from me. I saw the wince as he reached for my dress and handed it over.
I didn’t take it. To do so would be to break the moment. He stared into my eyes, waiting for me to move toward him, but I was paralyzed. I wanted him to see me naked. I wanted him to continue to look at me the way he was doing. Maybe I had right from the start.
He licked his lips, and I wondered how they tasted. How easy it would be to walk that one step toward him and find out for myself. But he was still injured. Lust coated his face, but just beneath it was pain he was trying to mask. What the fuck was wrong with me. Half an hour before, I’d been wondering how long he had left, and now, all I could think about was touching him.
He was the sexiest man I’d ever laid eyes on, but if what Aethelu had told me was true, then he’d never been with a woman before. My emotions were a heady mix. To reach out and touch him would be madness, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to. The pull of him was stronger than the current of any ocean, and yet, he was wounded in more ways than one. I reached forward and took the dress in my hands. My fingers grazed against his, making him flinch again. This time it wasn’t pain that had caused the movement. He was scared. The big sexy brute was terrified, and he wasn’t the only one.
I pulled the dress over my head and sat next to him, trying to keep any hint of desire inside. This was neither the time nor place. Heck, none of it was the right time or place. I was a human, he was a...well, I hadn’t quite figured out exactly what he was, but he was the king of dreams, and without him, we’d all die. I needed to keep my lust in check and remember that small fact. He could no more leave this place than I could stay here. Lusting after a hot dude who ruled this world of darkness was both stupid and irresponsible and totally and completely overwhelming.
I needed to get a grip.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, trying to dampen the conversation to boring levels.
“I hurt,” he said with a small smile. “I need to get back to the doors.”
“No need,” I said nonchalantly. “I already went. I did your job for you today.”
The smile on his face fell instantly, to be replaced by the thunder I was used to seeing. I guess the thrill of seeing me naked had worn off pretty quickly. Maybe I was reading into it too much anyway.
“I told you not to go into the forest alone,” he roared. I feared that the effort was going to send his heart and lungs flying right out of his chest cavity with the force of it. Thank fuck I’d thought to retie his bandage because I’d be splattered in his organs if I hadn’t.
“Yeah, and I also knew that if I didn’t, your world would have come crashing down, followed very quickly by mine,” I spat back. “You should be thanking me.”
“Dammit, Ana! You should have woken me. You are not safe in these woods. How many times...”
I stood up. “You couldn’t be woken. You were mauled by a savagara remember?” I pointed to the long ragged teeth marks in both his legs and the blood-stained cloth holding his chest together. “I’ve been gone hours, and you’ve only just woken up.”
He slammed his hand into the sand, sending a plume of it up into the air. “What you did was incredibly stupid.”
I brought my hands to my waist, anger seething inside me. My voice raised an octave, and I was glad that the forest was so remote that no one would hear me shouting. “And what would you have me do? Let the world go to crap while you lay here and died? Because that’s what I thought might happen. I thought I would come back here and find you dead. I really thought you had died for a minute. It was only when I saw you breathing that I relaxed, but your chest is a mess. I don’t even know how you are talking. It’s only my ripped-up dress that’s stopping you from falling apart.” Hot angry tears fell down my face and the trauma of the last few days finally began pouring out of me. Seeing David’s dream, followed quickly by the savagara attack. Then seeing my mother locked inside her own head. “And all there is in this god-forsaken hell hole is darkness, and I couldn’t be here with you. I couldn’t save my mother, I can’t do anything for you and ...”
I was cut off by the crush of his lips against mine.
Shock was the first feeling that crashed into me, followed very swiftly by a need I’d barely registered before the last ten minutes.
Holy shit, this is hot! My hormones wreaked havoc on my body, and I didn’t want it to stop. This messy violence of our two mouths crashing together violently in a maelstrom of emotion. The ferociousness as he pulled my body toward his savagely. This was like no kiss I’d ever encountered before. It was full of passion and intensity and disordered and impolite, and everything a kiss should be and everything a kiss shouldn’t be at the same time. It was beautifully chaotic. I liked the chaos. His chaos sucking me right in. I found myself trapped in a maelstrom of desire and pain and hormones, and it was the most exhilarating experience I’d ever had. My tongue touched his, and he flinched again, just like when I inadvertently touched his fingers a few minutes before. I wasn’t the only one falling into something I didn’t know how to handle. For some reason, his inexperience in this field excited me more. In all our actions together, he’d always been the one in charge, the one telling me what to do. Now I was the one leading him. And this time, there was no pulling away from it like he had done before. No hesitation, nothing that either of us could pass off as some kind of accidental meeting of mouths because his hands were everywhere, exploring my body as his tongue explored my mouth, and fuck, it was thrilling!
He pulled back, an almost crazed look in his eyes. He heaved a breath in then quickly breathed out. I thought it was the excitement of the moment we had just shared before his eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed onto the sand.