She gave a small gasp of delight as his touch set fire to her desires, igniting all the passion she had somehow known she was capable of feeling but which hitherto had been locked up inside her, hidden away in a secret place to which only he had the key.
She loved him so much…wanted him so much…What had been unthinkable with anyone else was not just ‘thinkable’ with him, but desirable…must-haveable…Her whole body shook with the force of what she was feeling…with her longing for him…her love for him. He only had to look at her and she melted.
Just the way he said her name was a form of poetry greater than even the greatest love sonnets. Just the way he looked at her more beautiful than any love song ever sung. The way he made her feel was so intense it was scary…He thrilled her, excited her, made her want to laugh and cry at the same time, filled her with such happiness that it made her feel afraid. He made her feel almost immortal, and yet, at the same time, he filled her with such a sense of her fragile vulnerability, her own frightening dependence on him and his love, that she was consumed with terror at the thought of losing him.
He stroked her breasts, watching her as she quivered in instant response, her eyes darkening, her lips parting.
‘Has anyone ever told you that you have the sexiest mouth in the whole world?’ he asked her softly, rimming it with his fingertip and smiling as she made an instinctive movement to catch hold of it.
‘Not like that,’ he whispered to her. ‘Like this…’ And then he slid his fingertip into her mouth, coaxing her to fasten her lips around it and slowly suck on it.
In her dream Annie moaned out loud in shocked delight, her body moving restlessly as it sought the intimacy of its lover’s embrace.
The evening sun slanted through the wide windows. Beyond them, if she opened her eyes, Annie knew she would see the purple haze of the distant hills, and if she stood close to them she could look down on the mellow wash of the river. Even at this distance she could hear its soft rhythmic whisper, almost feel the insidious pull of its tide, just as she could feel the urgent tug of the female tide within her own body. She drew a sharp breath as she felt the male hunger in the hands that caressed her.
‘Tell me now if you want me to stop,’ he was whispering huskily, insistently, to her. ‘Tell me now, Annie, otherwise it will be too late.’
But she knew she would say nothing, that she wanted him too much, loved him too much, even though the things he was doing to her, with her, were a world away from her own childish experience, limited to a few fumbled kisses.
‘I’m much, much too old for you,’ he had already told her, but somehow, instead of putting her off, his bold confession had only heightened and intensified her desire for him, imbuing him with a magical, almost mystical worldliness, a male knowledge and awareness that galvanised her body into excited little shivers.
And now it was nearly here, the moment of supreme revelation, the moment when…
Annie gave a sharp, piercing cry and she suddenly woke up, her body drenched in perspiration, her mind racing. As she sat up in her bed she covered her face with trembling hands.
Her dream had been so strong, so real, and the man in it, her dream lover, had been so—so scarily alive.
Shakily she tried to draw a calming breath of air into her lungs, and then she closed her eyes, reliving the moment when she had traced with her lips the shape of the tiny scar she had seen on her lover’s temple, the same scar in exactly the same spot that the man in the restaurant had had. How many times had she dreamed of that scar and not really known it?
She didn’t know. She only knew that a small fierce stillness had gripped him as she touched it. It was as familiar to her as her own reflection. But how could that be? What was happening to her? Was she experiencing some kind of sixth sense, some kind of special awareness, some kind of inexplicable glimpse into the future? Were they perhaps fated to meet, and was this—these dreams—fate’s way of warning her of what was to come, of what was to be? Her whole body started to tremble.
She had been so very close to death, and, although she was extremely loath to acknowledge it, never mind discuss it openly, had experienced the sensation she had read avidly and secretly about that was reportedly so common to people who shared her near-death experience: that feeling of rushing towards a wonderful welcoming place, being propelled through darkness into an indescribable sense of awesome light, then that sudden awareness of being turned back, pulled back, that voice that was not actually a voice announcing that it was not yet her time.
Had that experience somehow or other, illogical and implausible though it might sound, given her the ability to sense, to feel, to experience a special, wonderful event in her life that had yet to take place?
Had the secret yearning she had carried all her life, to share it with someone who loved her, affected her to such an extent that she was already living in her dreams what she had yet to live in reality? Was her dream lover, in fact, not so much a figment of her imagination as a very factual and real figure from her future?
Impossible, implausible…Yes, maybe, but then there were many mysteries that defied logical explanation and analysis.
The fear she had felt earlier in the evening, the sense of shock and panic, had given way to an excitement that was almost euphoric. Her dream lover wasn’t just a dream. He was real. He was…Ecstatically Annie closed her eyes, hugging her thoughts, her love, to her heart just as tightly as she yearned for him to hug and hold her.
It was a long time before she finally got back to sleep, and when she did finally succumb her exalted state had convinced her that the evening’s meeting with the real-life physical embodiment of her dream man had been an act of fate for which her dreams had been preparing her.
‘Annie, how are you feeling this morning, my love?’
A little groggily Annie focused on Helena as she walked into the bedroom carrying a fragrant mug of coffee.
‘I’m not sure,’ Annie admitted. ‘Those pills you gave me really knocked me out.
‘Helena,’ she demanded, her voice changing as she sat up in her bed and looked at her friend and mentor with fixed determination. ‘Helena, do you believe in…fate?’ she asked solemnly.
‘I’m not sure just what you mean,’ Helena responded cautiously.
‘The man—the one I saw in the restaurant last night,’ Annie told her in a low voice. ‘At first I thought I must be imagining it, that he couldn’t possibly be the same man I’ve been dreaming about…But then, last night, I dreamed about him again, and I knew…’
She took a deep breath and told Helena huskily, ‘I think that we must have been destined to meet somehow, Helena, and that he and I…’ She paused and shook her head, responding to her friend’s silence with a wry, ‘Oh, I know how far-fetched this must sound, but what other explanation can there be? I don’t pretend to know why I should have dreamed about him or why I should feel as though I already know him. I just do. Please don’t tell me that you think I’m being silly,’ she pleaded.
‘I won’t,’ Helena promised her quietly, pausing to sit on the bed and stroke the soft tumbled hair back off Annie’s face with one hand as she placed the mug of coffee on the bedside table with the other.
Annie was so very dear to her, very precious, so much the daughter, the child she herself had never had, but she was also, in Helena’s opinion, a very vulnerable young woman. The gravity of her accident and her injuries had meant that the energy that other young women of her age would naturally give to the process of maturing had in Annie’s case had to be given to her physical recovery, recuperating her health.
It wasn’t that Annie in any way lacked intelligence—far from it. She had obtained her degree and she had