Dream King by Elise Knight

28

My head was a wreck. Everything I’d been keeping locked up was spilling out of me, and I didn’t know what to do about any of it. I shouldn’t have kissed Dream...Twice! Or at least I told myself that, ignoring the fact that it was him that had kissed me at first. I’d hardly been an unwilling participant in it. I’d reveled in his touch. I’d wanted it badly, and I hadn’t been the one to step back. He had. Right before he slipped right back into unconsciousness.

What the fuck was I doing?This was all wrong. Everything about it was a bloody mess, including Dream himself, who was literally so.

“I shouldn’t have kissed him,” I murmured to Raven, who seemed to agree with me entirely on the subject.

I’d come here to get my mother back, and instead, I was on a beach in perpetual night worrying if I’d done the wrong thing about kissing her captor. Except he wasn’t her captor, someone else was... probably. None of it made sense, and it seemed that every move I’d made since stepping foot in this world had only served to make things worse.

My lips tingled with the bruising Dream had done to them. He was so utterly beautiful it took my breath away. Even unmoving with his eyes closed, it was everything I could do to stop myself from reaching down to kiss him again. Small beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. I felt it with the back of my hand. He was roasting. The fever was back. I pulled off my dress and soaked it in the lake before wiping his forehead with it. Then I gingerly unwrapped the makeshift bandages around his chest and cleaned the wound the best I could. What did it matter that I was once again without clothing? There was no one around to see me. I washed the dress in the lake and laid it out on a rock to dry.

I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. I lay down on the sand next to Dream and let sleep take me away into its comforting hold.

My eyes flew open as something draped over me. It was only when I realized it was Dream’s arm that my heart rate subsided a little. I’d thought the nightwalkers were back for a second. Then my heart rate increased again when I realized that Dream’s arm was wrapped around me!!! His almost naked body spooned my back which, just so happened, was also naked. His face was nuzzled just behind my head, so close that I could feel his breath on my shoulder. His breathing was deep, as though he was still asleep, but without turning around to check, I couldn’t be sure. His body was warm and comforting, and I found myself pressing my back into him further. All of it felt forbidden, but he was asleep, and he was the one who’d maneuvered himself into this position. The bulge of his dick beneath his pants sat right next to my ass, and he had one leg coiled around mine.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t even if I wanted to, which I didn’t. Not in any way. If either of us was going to die here on this beach, this was the way I’d want to go. I closed my eyes and wiggled my ass a little. He moaned in his sleep, but I had a feeling it was no longer pain that was producing the moans. I let myself fall asleep again, but this time a little more content and safe within his arms.

I woke later to find him sitting down by the water’s edge, facing away from me. Bizarrely I seemed to be covered in a thin layer of leaves. Above me, my dress fluttered in the gentle breeze hung over a tree branch. I’d not put it there, so Dream must have. I stood up and pulled it down from the tree. It had dried completely, so I lowered it over my head and let the folds of fabric cover my body.

“We need to get back,” Dream shouted over to me. “I can’t leave the doors any longer.”

He stood and walked over to me. “I hung up your dress to dry. I hope you don’t mind.”

His behavior was odd, disconcerting. He had an almost detached cheeriness about him.

“I don’t mind,” I replied, going along with it. “How are you feeling today?” He looked better; that was for sure. He still had a ghostly pallor, but then again, he always did in this light, but the dark rings around his eyes had gone, and the sheen of sweat had vanished too.

“Don’t you want me to check your bandages before we go?” I asked? I didn’t see any fresh blood, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t any.

“They’ll be fine. I’ll go and see Aethelu when I get home to get something a bit cleaner and some new clothes for you. We can’t seem to keep them clean, can we?”

He hummed as he stepped into the forest. Then he turned to me. “Are you coming?”

I was perplexed by the whole thing. He was being very un-Dreamlike. I wondered if the fever was making him this way, but the fever appeared to have broken.

“Stop!” I yelled out to him. He turned and eyed me curiously. “You can’t go. I won’t let you.”

“You won’t let me?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Since when do you get to decide to let me do anything?”

I stalked forward to where he was and grabbed his wrist. “Since you were given a hole in your chest and me looking after you is the only thing that’s kept you from death, that’s when. There’s not a chance in hell I’m going to let you walk through those woods because we both know you’ll never make it in the state you are in, superhuman or not. And if you think for one second I’m going to carry you back when you fall, you’re even crazier than you make yourself out to be.”

“The doors, Ana. I can’t leave them for too long. You know that.”

“I told you. I went to the doors. I’ve done them today exactly how you showed me.”

His eyes narrowed in confusion. “Did you? I don’t remember.”

Like fuck he didn’t. To acknowledge what I’d told him earlier, he’d also have to acknowledge the kiss between us.

“Yes. Now come back to the beach and let me look after you.”

Surprisingly he let me lead him back. He sat on the sand, his back to me. I took a seat beside him and looked out at the small lapping waves. Neither of us spoke. I jiggled my knee up and down, uncomfortable with the silence.

Of course, I was the one to break it. “You kissed me.”

He stared out into the distance, not even acknowledging my words.

“I said, you kissed me. Here on the beach.”

His eyes continued to graze the horizon unblinking. “I don’t recall. Maybe I was hallucinating and thought you were someone else. Or maybe you were hallucinating.”

Ouch!

“Bullshit!” I pulled on his shoulder to make him turn to face me. “You. Kissed. Me. Not the other way around. Maybe the first time it happened, I could explain it away as an accident. I mean, you were protecting me from the wind, but not this time. You fucking meant it.”

He opened his mouth to speak, then paused. “I can’t. I can’t do this.”

I stood up. “Fuck you. Do you know how pathetic that sounds? You sound exactly like David did when I found out he was fucking his office bitch. I thought you were different. I thought you were better, but you’re just the same as every other man. My father, David. You know I’ve heard all this shit before, right? ‘I can’t do this,’ ‘I wish things were different,’ and the perennial favorite of shitty men everywhere, ‘It’s not you; it’s me.’ Christ, it’s not only pathetic, it’s a cliché. At least come up with something original. Although, props to you, blaming a loss of memory is a new one to me.”

“Sit down.” His voice was calm but firm. I’m glad someone’s was because I was bordering on hysterical.

“The fuck I will. You stand up.” I ignored the fact that standing would cause him more pain than me sitting down would, but I was all for that. The more pain, the better. He deserved to feel some of what I was feeling.

“Ana. Please sit down. I want to talk to you. You are right. I am pathetic, but there are a lot of things you don’t know. I owe it to you to tell you about them.”

My angry ass was ready to leave him there and hotfoot it back to the red door, but there was such sincerity in his voice that I did as he asked.

He sat agonizingly quietly, his eyes shuttered. I sat waiting for him to say something that would make me stay with him because I wanted to stay with him. I wanted it with every pore of my being, but I wanted him to want me to.

“I’ve not been honest with you, Ana.”

No shit, Sherlock. “Go on.”

He ran his hand across his forehead. “I didn’t forget kissing you. How could I forget something so...so...”

“Hot?” I helped him out.

He uttered a small “heh,” And continued. “Harrowingly, heart-achingly beautiful and painful and perfect and terrifying.”

Woah!I held my breath, trying to take all those words in. He’d certainly expanded on David’s and my father’s vocabulary after all. “Why terrifying?”

He ran a hand down his face. “You came in here to my world, and I hated you. I wanted to destroy you, to cause you pain.”

“We’re kinda losing the moment here. You might want to go back to the beautiful, heart-aching part,” I quipped, my insides churning as I tried to work out exactly where he was going with this.

He laughed a low laugh again, rumbling in his chest. “All of this makes my heart ache, Ana. There’s not one part of you being here that lets my heart rest. It hurts.”

“You know, that might not be me because there’s literally nothing but a bit of ripped-up, old dress holding it in your body.”

“This pain I’m feeling has nothing to do with the injury the savagara inflicted on me. That is merely physical pain. I will heal, thanks to you.”

“So what is it then?” I whispered.

“I wish I could tell you. It is pain like nothing else I’ve ever endured, and yet I crave it. I cannot imagine breathing without it. It is holding me together, and it is tearing me apart.”

I sucked in a breath and brought my hand to the sand to steady myself.

“I don’t understand.”

He licked his lips and then ran a thumb over them. It was an incredibly sexy maneuver, and yet, he probably didn’t notice the puddle of Jello I was descending into.

“I need to tell you everything and start at the beginning so you will understand.”

I nodded. I needed to know what made Dream like he was.

“My father was killed by a human a long time ago. My mother threw us out of our own home.

I knew this. Aethelu had already told me the story of Dream and his brother.

“Nightmare,” I said quietly.

He nodded lightly. “That is what he is now known by, yes. He is my twin. My best friend growing up. We were inseparable, and then my father died...was killed. No human had managed to come into our world. The man that killed my father was the first. The shock of my father’s death sent my mother insane.”

I lifted my hand and placed it on his. “It must have been a horrifying time. I’m so sorry.”

“I cannot begin to tell you how bad it was. My whole world fell apart. My mother is the queen of the Dark Court. She used to be Queen of the whole realm before she broke it into three, sending my brother and me out to rule our own kingdoms. Our world has been fractured ever since. At first, my brother and I stayed in touch. We had help with our jobs from some staff my mother had deigned to send with us. They didn’t know what to do. Neither did I. I was only a small boy, but I knew that if I didn’t keep watching the dreams, both your world and mine would die.”

“It must have been an awfully lonely existence.” My heart ached for him. How anyone could send their ten-year-old sons out to rule a kingdom with barely any support beggared belief. I’d never met the woman, but I hated the queen. I hated her with a passion for everything she’d done and for everything she should have done but didn’t.

“It was. Eventually, I left my palace and decided to live in the forest with Raven. My brother didn’t understand. He thought I was weak. Maybe he was right, but watching an endless stream of nightmares had changed him. It wasn’t long before we were bickering every time we saw each other. One day, we had an argument, and I’ve not seen him since. The nightwalkers are from the Nightmare Court. They belong to him. Both the wolveries and the savagaras.”

My hand flew to my mouth. “Your brother did this to you?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. The nightwalkers are his army. Wolveries and savagaras are just two types of shifter he has working for him. There are other nightwalkers. Some more monstrous than those.”

I couldn’t get my head around any of it. “The wolveries and savagaras are shifters? You mean that shit is real? I’ve read about shifters in books, but... well, it’s PNR. They all wanted to fuck each other or fuck each other up by the end of every book. I thought they weren’t real.”

He shrugged. “They are very real, although I’d not heard the term shifter before you mentioned it that day in Gladys’s library. Here, they are just called nightwalkers. Men who transform into monsters.”

Something hit me then. “I killed a man. Two men.” I thought back to the wolveries I’d killed. Bile filled my throat.

“It was them or you. Do not think on it. They are not men. Not in the way you think they are. I do not know about the shifters in your books, but even in their human form, they are bloodthirsty and more monster than man.”

“I used to think the same way about you.”

He sighed. “You might want to hear my full story before you change your judgment of me. In many ways, I am worse than any nightwalker my brother controls. They are savages, blood thirsty-monsters. They don’t know how to be better, but I should, and in view of that, I am extremely ashamed.”

I mulled this over. “So your brother wants to kill you. You told me that he wanted to kill me, and that’s why he sent the wolveries in the first place.”

“That is what I thought, but then he came for me knowing that a wolvery wouldn’t be able to kill me. I knew the second the savagara showed up, he’d turned his sights to me instead. They have a venom in their bite that not even I am immune to. That is why my healing magic is not working as it should. Thanks to you, I believe the venom is now out of my system. It was you that kept me alive, not magic.”

I shuffled forward. “But why? What have you done to make him so angry?”

“I’ve made some stupid mistakes. You are the biggest of all, and yet, you are the one I regret the least.

You have become something to me that I never imagined in my wildest dreams. My brother has somehow found out about you. I do not know how. He must have realized what I feel for you, and for that reason, you should go back to your home. He will be back.”

God, this was so intense and so confusing. Painful didn’t cut it. It was excruciating.

“I can’t go back. I can’t leave you.”

Dream groaned. “I don’t know how to keep you safe, Ana.”

“I’d rather be unsafe here in this world with you than safe in my bed alone back in Vancouver without you.”

“This is torment. I wanted to kill you. I wanted you to feel pain. I wanted you to hurt, but in doing that, I’ve caused myself more pain than I can bear.”

My voice lowered. “Why did you want to hurt me?”

“Ana,” he brought his hand to my face and ran his fingers lightly through my hair. Just the touch of his fingertips had me burning. He was right. This was excruciating. “You are a human. You are everything I was brought up to detest, and yet, you are nothing like I imagined a human to be. You are kind, and thoughtful, and funny, and so incredibly beautiful, I cannot keep my eyes away from you. I want to know everything about you, I want to touch every inch of you, I want to know what every part of you feels like under my fingertips, and most of all, I want to kiss you so bad it’s tearing me apart. I can’t function. I can’t think. God help me, Ana, I can barely breathe when I’m with you.”

My heart exploded with happiness. If his words were designed to make me feel bad, they were having the opposite effect. His fingers were still in my hair, his palm warming my cheek. I leaned into him and kissed him slowly. He didn’t protest nor try to pull away. I moved slowly, giving him the time to pull back but hoping with every fiber of my being that he wouldn’t. He didn’t. He leaned into me, matching my movements. With a shock, I realized that this was his first-ever kiss. Ok, it was his third, but both of the first two were all angry passion. This was slow and deliberate and beautiful and...well, it was uncoordinated and jerky. His eyes were closed as I slowed down further still. His scent, the sweet smell of this earth coupled with the unique masculine scent of him, washed over me as he matched my movements with his lips. He groaned as I parted his lips with my tongue, and it was then that I closed my own eyes. I didn’t need to see his beauty; I could feel it on me, in me, as his tongue hesitantly explored my mouth. The guy was a fast learner; I’d give him that. My body tingled in anticipation as he brought his hand lower, letting his fingers graze against my cheek and my neck, before lowering to the top of my dress. My touch-starved body pushed against his hand as heat flooded through me. I became more insistent, and our slow, beautiful kiss turned into something more urgent. I moved slightly, not breaking the kiss at all, and brought my hands up to his body. One on his shoulder, the other to his chest, forgetting in my desire-addled mind, his chest, for all intents and purposes, wasn’t there.

He cried out in pain and pulled back.

“Shit!” I murmured, my eyes opening in horror. I’d barely touched him, and yet obviously, I’d touched him more than I meant to. “I’m sorry.”

“I am fine, Ana.” He grinned through huffed out breaths. “Perhaps I was a little too enthusiastic.”

“Maybe a touch,” I grinned back. I couldn’t help it. My mouth felt like it was pinned up at both ends. A maelstrom of desire was still echoing around my body, but getting him better had to come before...well, before I could. It was going to be a long, long few days. At least I hoped it would only take days now that his healing magic was kicking in. I didn’t think I’d be able to wait any longer. “Let’s get some more lake water on that chest of yours. It worked wonders on my own scrapes and cuts earlier. Look...” I pointed to my legs that were barely showing the mess I’d made of myself when I’d been dragged through the forest by the wind.

“Scrapes? How did you scrape yourself?” he ran his hand down my leg, and I shivered. This time, not because of his touch. This time, because he wasn’t the only one with a secret and now, it seemed, it was time to tell him mine.