“Someone has to be here,” she said aloud. But if they were, apparently they had no intention of showing themselves to her.
She went upstairs and showered. Afterward, drying her hair, she turned on the television. She’d no idea it had gotten quite so late, but the ten o’clock news was on. She got to see herself, Brad, Laymon, a few of the excited grad students and Dryer, who announced that the police were excited by the discovery, like everyone else, and that there would be a large police presence in the area. New York would be preserved for New Yorkers. The city wouldn’t stand for vandalism or interference.
At last, with the television on, she fell asleep.
And that was when he came to her.
In dreams.
She slept, and he was there.
She knew that she dreamed, but the dreaming was sweet and real. She felt his presence as he spooned his body around her, just as they had so often slept when he was alive. His arms were around her, and she could feel the soft seduction of his breath against her nape. She smiled. “I knew that you would come. But—”
“Shh,” he said softly.
He brushed his knuckles across her cheek, caressed the length of her back, stroked soothingly along her spine.
She turned into his arms, felt his kiss. Hungry, erotic, just as it had always been when they were apart for any length of time. A kiss that spoke volumes. Strong and powerful, liquid and ardent. His embrace was strong, reassuring, somehow gentle, like the power of his passion, and she slid into that embrace as if they had never been apart. She returned his kiss with the love that had lain dormant in the painful corridors of her heart ever since…
But she knew she was only dreaming.
She broke the kiss, lips moving the slightest distance away.
“I love you so much,” he whispered.
“Why won’t you come to me? Speak to me? Why has it taken you so long? Why can I only dream about you?” she whispered. “I see so many others….”
“But I’m not like any of the others,” he told her, and he smiled, that rakish, rueful smile. He was such a combination of assurance and humility.
“Matt…”
“Shh…”
And then his lips were against hers once again. So loving, so passionate.
As their lips locked, their hands bumped as they drew her nightgown over her head, both of them working to get the garment out of the way. And then she was against him, flesh against flesh, and he was warm and vital, hard muscle and taut sinew, his heartbeat thundering in rhythm with her own. She let her fingers play over his shoulders, slide down his back, clasp his buttocks. In turn, he drew her even closer, fitting her body to his own. It seemed as if they kissed forever, lips locked, bodies straining to be ever closer, as if they could crawl inside each other. She touched him…and touched him….
It was sweet and aching and poignant.
And it was a dream….
At last he pulled away, an apparition in her mind, but one that seemed so real. She met his eyes for a moment, the deep, dark, dazzling blue eyes that had so teased and loved her throughout most of her life. “Rebel,” he breathed. “Damn, I’ve missed you.”
She stroked a strand of hair away from his eyes.
“There really is no life without you,” she murmured.
He shook his head. “Yes, there is. There has to be,” he told her. And then his lips curved into that smile that always took her breath away. “But not tonight.”
And then he began to make love to her, his lips caressing her flesh, tender, provocative. His fingertips danced along her arms, her collarbone, her breasts. Delicate kisses followed, growing more forceful, teasing…the stroke of his tongue, the brush of his teeth, his lips…barely there, so that she strained toward him in search of sensation.
He moved against her, her wraith of the night, his flesh and vitality eliciting her own growing arousal. As intimate as he had always been, his kisses found her abdomen, the brush of his hair teasing her midriff. His hands moved down her inner thighs, spreading them wide as he lowered his head, leaving a whisper of sweet wet fire everywhere his mouth fell. She felt the spiraling ache of longing grow until it approached madness, and she strained against him, whispered his name, threaded her fingers through his hair. He made love to her with the hot wired tension of his body and the searing caress of his lips and tongue, until she was writhing and whispering and finally all but sobbing his name.
And then he rose above her again before driving into her with the passion she had never forgotten.