Dreams
LILA
Despite the autumnal chill in the air, I wake up warm. Utterly, profoundly, deliciously warm in a way that takes me a moment to understand.
Outside a bird is calling somewhere in the pine trees. The wood stove went out during the night but despite the chilly air I’m not cold at all, because there’s a comforting weight draped over my waist and delicious heat all along my backside.
I soon realize the reason for that delicious heat.
It’s because there’s six feet five inches of sleeping cowboy wrapped around me, holding me against him as he spoons me.
Slade is still asleep. I can tell by the steady rise and fall of his chest, his even breathing.
We must have rolled over into each other in the middle of the night, because we definitely started it on opposite sides of the bed, and now we’re all entwined in each other.
I know he wouldn’t have done it deliberately.
He’s been far too controlled and careful with me to ever end up like this consciously.
His arm is heavy and warm across my ribs. His chest rises and falls against my back. His legs are tangled through mine, his thighs solid and warm against the backs of my own, the hair on his legs just a little scratchy, but in a good way.
My husband is holding me in his sleep and it’s the best I’ve felt in as long as I can remember.
I need to get out of this bed before I do something foolish, like decide I want to stay here forever.
I need to move.
In a minute, though.
The sad truth is that I’ve wanted to be held like this my whole life. Held like I’m worth holding onto. Like my presence is a comfort and a pleasure rather than an inconvenience.
I just want to enjoy it for a second, even if I know it’s not real.
Slade has boundaries and I’ll respect them.
Just as soon as I get out from underneath him.
I try a careful shoulder roll.
His arm tightens around my waist and pulls me closer. His wedding ring glints in the pale morning light filtering through the canvas.
I try the other direction. Shifting my hips forward, away from him.
His grip tightens again and he makes a sound that’s almost a growl as I try to wriggle away from him.
Well then. Apparently this man gets very possessive in his sleep.
I try the only remaining choice I have to get out from his embrace and push my butt back against him instead.
Big mistake.
Huge.
Huge, as in the erection now poking into my ass.
It shouldn’t surprise me, given the sheer size of the rest of him, but Slade is hung.
There’s a tingling warmth between my legs at the feel of his cock jutting into me.
Keep it together, I tell myself. It’s been a long while since I was with a guy, and it wasn’t very good that last time in any case, so I’m feeling a little under-touched and oversexed.
I’ve been getting by with my vibrator and my daydreams, but of course my body is going to have a natural, involuntary response when I’m in bed with a guy I’m extremely attracted to.
And I happen to be married to him.
I try gripping a fistful of the sheets and dragging myself away.
Slade’s hand, however, has begun a slow unconscious drift upward from my waist, fingertips trailing along my ribcage through the thin silk of my nightgown, until his palm closes warm and heavy over my breast.
I stop breathing for a second.
His breathing hasn’t changed at all. Still slow and steady. Still sleeping.
I stay still and consider my options as I take inventory of our positions. His hand is warm and heavy over my breast, his thumb resting just above my nipple. His body is a furnace at my back. That arm is heavy as hell across my ribs. I’m effectively pinned.
Then he stirs. Not fully awake yet. Just a shift, a deeper breath, as he presses his hips against me, pushing his cock against my lower back again.
I bite my lip.
His face is in my hair, a slow unconscious nuzzle. He makes a low sound in his throat, low and satisfied as his thumb rolls across my nipple again.
I have to press my lips together hard to stay quiet. My fingers curl into the sheets as I shut my eyes and concentrating very hard on breathing normally, on ignoring the heat between my thighs.
It’s getting more difficult by the second.
His nose drags slowly to the shell of my ear. I can feel him breathing me in, deep and slow, and something about that involuntary intimacy, the fact that even in his sleep he wants more of me, makes my chest ache.
His lips follow, tracing the same path along my ear, pressing softly against the sensitive skin just below my earlobe.
My thighs clench at the same time his hips roll forward, thrusting his hard cock against me. The thin fabric of his boxers does nothing to disguise how much of him there is.
A sound escapes me. It’s barely anything, just a small hitch of breath, but he responds to it immediately, his arm tightening, pulling me even closer against him.
“Baby,” he murmurs. Low and rough and still half dreaming, the word pressed into the curve of my neck.
Heat floods through me from my scalp to my toes.
Baby.
Not Lila.
Not a conscious choice. Just the word his sleeping mind reaches for when he pulls someone close. I’m the someone he pulled close this time.
I know he’s dreaming. That endearment likely belongs someone in his memory, probably some past girlfriend or hookup.
A hot surge of envy moves through me at this nameless, faceless woman my husband once held just like this. Whoever she was, she had him fully. She didn’t present “complications.” She got to be held in his arms and feel him deep inside her.
She had his passion.
I have his ring.
I clench my teeth together. I won’t be jealous of a ghost from his past. I won’t make myself sick with jealousy for no reason. I chose this deal, same as him.
This is quite literally the bed I made. I just didn’t anticipate how much it would hurt to lie in it.
His lips find the curve of my neck, his breath warm against my skin. His mouth presses in, his lips parted, his exhale warm against my pulse point.
Heat blooms from that spot and spreads. Down my throat. Across my chest and belly and lower. I’m warm everywhere he’s touching me and aching everywhere he isn’t.
The problem is he’s still half asleep.
My whole body has gone sensitized and flushed and the ache is now a hot, relentless throb in my pussy. And Slade calling me “baby” in his sleep-rough voice has made all of it that much worse.
As he rubs his cock against me, his hand moves from my breast down again, sliding across my ribcage. Down my belly.
My breath catches because I know where he’s going and I want him to go there so badly it frightens me.
“Slade.” My voice comes out breathless and unsteady.
I can’t let it go there because he’s asleep and we made a deal and—
His fingers skim past my bellybutton. Nearly to my pussy. It takes everything to put a stop to this, but I must, because if he were in control of his faculties right now, he wouldn’t be doing this.
I grab his wrist.
“Slade,” I say firmer. “Wake up.”
He stirs, his whole body shifting.
And then he goes absolutely rigid, every muscle, all at once. The hand on my body goes still. His hips stop moving. Even his breathing stops for a full second.
“Lila?”
There it is—my name, as a question. Like he’s shocked to wake up and find it’s really me here, instead of whoever he was dreaming of.
His voice is completely different too, the sleep-rough warmth gone out of it in an instant and replaced by something alert and tight.
“Good morning,” I say.
Another silence.
His hand lifts from my breast slowly. Carefully.
His arm loosens from around my waist. He rolls away and the cold air rushes in where all that warmth was.
The bed shifts as he sits up, keeping his back to me.
He’s only in his boxer-briefs and I can see every muscle in his back, taut with tension.
His shoulders are tight. His spine is straight.
His hands are braced on his knees and the tendons in his forearms are taut, like he’s preparing to take a hit.
I’m still flushed from my hairline to my toes. Still throbbing. Still tingling where his hand and his mouth and his body were pressed against mine. I clutch the duvet tightly to my chest.
“I’m sorry,” he says, rubbing a hand along his stubbled jaw. “I was in the middle of a dream, and I... I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t thinking about…”
I can finish the sentence in my head easily enough: I wasn’t thinking about you.
“I know,” I say.
“That won’t happen again.”
I look at the back of his head. His dark rumpled hair. The broad line of his shoulders. His wedding ring catching the morning light.
“Slade.” I sit up, pulling my knees to my chest. “You were asleep. It’s okay. It doesn’t bother me.”
Or rather, it does, but not for the reasons he seems to be thinking. It’s more of a hot and bothered situation.
“It’s not an excuse,” he says.
He reaches for his shirt and pulls it on without looking at me. Grey sweatpants next. Then his sneakers, laced with quick efficient movements. I think about those fingertips squeezing my breasts. Rubbing across my nipples.
Three minutes ago his hands were all over my body and now he can’t even look at me.
“I’m going to go for a run,” he says. “Feel free to get breakfast without me.”
“Okay,” I say quietly.
He stands. At the tent flap, he pauses with his hand on the canvas.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. To the tent flap. To the mountains. To himself as much as to me.
Then he’s gone.
Sitting in the middle of the bed in the cold morning air, I listen to his footsteps on the wooden platform outside, brisk and deliberate, the walk of a man who needs to be somewhere else immediately. Then the shift to gravel, and then nothing.
Just the birds calling out from the trees. Probably calling out for their mates.
I press two fingers to the place on my neck where his mouth was. My pulse is still racing.
I lie back against the pillow and stare at the peak of the tent. That murmured baby is still echoing in my ears. My whole body is still humming with heat and frustration.
Three more days of this honeymoon. Three more days, and then we go home and I sleep next door to him for a year.
I’m going to need a way more powerful vibrator.