Chapter Nineteen
Rheda
Something has a hold of me in my sleep.
Again.
I know it before I know where I am.
It’s like a poisoned cloth pressed up against my lips: sweet at first, then choking. My head spins in a slow, nauseating circle, throbbing as if my skull has been packed too tight. The world tilts. Forward. No—back. I can’t tell. My body won’t agree with itself.
Am I lying down?
Am I upright?
Everything is muffled, muted, as though I’ve been dropping into a soundless chamber, wrapped in cotton and shadow. I open my eyes but they don’t budge.
I feel the darkness intensify. My limbs don’t answer, either. I try to breathe deeply and fail—each breath shallow, clipped and wrong like I’m borrowing them from someone else’s mouth.
And then—stillness.
A silence so complete it feels deliberate. I settle into my sheets. The bed beneath me is hard and solid, and all too wrong, but my mind recognises it as home.
Something presses down on my chest.
And then that familiar smell, oak and honey dragged through fire. Warm. Smoky. Intoxicating. It slides down the back of my throat and lingers in a way that swallowing refuses to budge.
“Doctor.” The word flares in mind like a headline, bold, urgent, and then fades as if someone has turned a dial and drained it of meaning.
Deogal.
It hits me before I can consider the consequences.
It’s impossible.
I don’t know what he sounds like. He’s never spoken to me before. And yet...my mind knows it’s him.
I jolt. My body doesn’t obey.
Panic blooms.
I force my eyes open. They stay shut, and that’s when I feel someone straddling me.
The heat of them bleeds through whatever thin barrier still exists between us, weight pinning me effortlessly, perfectly balanced, like they’ve done this before, like they know exactly how much pressure to keep me trapped, without crushing me.
A sound tears out of my throat. A broken, useless cry.
“Shh.” A deep, velvety voice coos. It doesn’t come from a voice, but whispers straight from within my brain like lips licking my skull.
My eyes finally obey me. I open them.
Darkness fractures into shape and I see him.
The criminal.
Here.
Now.
Hot and heavy, leering over me like a sinner over its sacrifice.
“No!” I gasp, the panic hitting sharp and electric. “Get off me—get off!”
My body tries to surge upward, shoulder straining, spine arching, muscles locking as I force everything I have into the movement. I twist violently, trying to throw him off, to buck him loose—nothing.
Not even an inch.
“Move,” I choke, “Move!”
Head floods my face. My hands claw at nothing, fingers curling, nails digging into air that refuses to respond. I try to scream again, louder this time, forcing it up from my chest like it can rip free. But the sound dies before it touches my lips.
“No!” I strain harder, breath tearing sharp and uneven. “No, don’t you—”
He leans closer.
The heat of him is wrong, too close, too consuming. It rolls over my skin like something alive, like fire learning the shape of my body.
“You look so beautiful like this,” he murmurs. His mouth doesn’t move, but the words arrive anyway, landing in my mind like they’ve been planted.
I thrash again, forcing every ounce of strength into the attempt. My body should move. It should. I feel my muscles screaming, tendons straining, breath breaking apart in my chest.
But I’m trapped. Held in place like I’ve been pinned beneath something far stronger than flesh.
“Get—off—me!” I force out. The word help is on the tip of my tongue, but as soon as I inhale enough oxygen to make my sound do damage, the sound is snatched from me.
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Help isn’t coming.”
The words land heavy and final.
What the fuck!
I try again, one last violent push and the force just...stops.
My fingers tense, then loosen. My breath comes in too quick, catches halfway, won’t go any further. He tilts his head, studying me. His eyes flick up once, land on the camera watching us, and then back to me. He smiles openly.
“You think I don’t see your little trap there, Doctor?” he murmurs. “Are you going to watch it back and fuck yourself wishing it were my fingers inside you?”
He pushes so close his breath feels like fire. “A little camera won’t stop me from ruining you.”
Fear kicks my pulse into hard, uneven beats. I can feel it in my throat, in my wrists, everywhere at once. A tear slips free before I can stop it, hot against my skin as it drags down my cheek. It just keeps falling, and I have to stay here and let it.
He moves fast, his thumb brushing beneath my eye, catching the tear before it reaches my ear.
My heart slams against my ribcage.
“How—” I gasp, “What is this?”
The question falls apart.
“This isn’t possible!”
“And yet.” He gestures lazily around the room. “Here I am.”
His lips still don’t move but the sound turns around in my mind. My brain doesn’t want to catch up; the thoughts are jumbled and crazed like the words are losing their meaning. His eyes flick over my face, cataloguing every crack in my composure.
“You’re dreaming of me,” he finally says. Then tuts. “Naughty Doctor.”
I choke.
It doesn’t feel like a dream.
I scan my body aggressively like that will tell me the truth.
I can feel the sheet beneath my fingers, the coarse snag of fabric against my skin.
The air is cold where my breath stutters out, warm where his body traps it back in.
My heart isn’t floating or distant or miles away; it’s hammering, painful and exact.
Each beat loud in my ears, screaming that I’m not dreaming.
In dreams, panic slides. Here, it rots.
There is no dream-logic to explain him away. No haze to soften his weight, his smell and the deliberate stillness of him watching me struggle.
This isn’t sleep. It’s being awake inside a body that has betrayed me.
“Lucid dreaming,” the voice moves through me.
I squeeze my eyes firmly shut as if I can push him out of my mind. I count down from five, numbers rushing over one another like water. I try to control my thoughts, to push myself into another dream.
When they re-open, I half expect it to all stop. But he’s still there, watching, waiting. Amused.
His lips flash into a smile.
“How was your date tonight?” He pushes closer. “Did he taste good?”
I try to move again but my body doesn’t respond.
“Stop!” I gasp. “Get out of my head!”
“Did he turn you on?”
His hand lifts slow enough that I can track every inch of it—and still I’m able to do nothing to stop it. It hovers just above me, not touching yet, but just waiting.
I buck wildly but nothing moves.
A faint smile ghosts his mouth. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Did you think of me?”
“No!” I gasp. A lie. Fast and automatic.
He closes the space between us. The heat of him sinks into my skin before I can pull away from it.
His humour vanishes.
“Never do that again, Doctor.” The growl echoes around my mind. “You’re lucky he didn’t touch you properly.”
My stomach drops so violently it feels physical.
Touch.
The word catches somewhere deep in my chest and suddenly everything rushes back at once.
The weight at the end of my bed. The hand around my throat. My nipples aching for no reason. The bruised feeling beneath my skin where nobody should have touched me.
Oh God.
Oh God, no.
My body goes cold beneath him.
“It was you,” I whisper. The words barely exist by the time they leave me.
Every night.
Every touch.
Every impossible thing curling through the dark while I lay there unable to move.
Him. My patient.
Panic detonates so hard my vision pulses white at the edges.
“No,” I choke out violently, shaking my head beneath him now. “No, no, no—”
“It was us.” He smiles. “My body and your mind. You make me do some filthy fucking things, Doctor.”
He leans closer.
“You know why I’m glad he didn’t touch what is mine?” His gaze holds mine, steady, unyielding. “I’d have to kill him.”
My stomach drops so fast it makes me dizzy, breath catching shallow and useless. I can’t slow it—can’t stop the way my body locks up around the fear.
And yet... I feel it.
Not just the panic, not just the pressure pinning me down, but something else threaded through it. Heat. Low, unfamiliar, coiling in a place I have never paid attention to.
Why is my body doing this while I’m terrified?
“You like that,” he murmurs, eyes sparkling. “If you want it rough and forced, just tell me and I can play the part.”
My breathing stutters.
He watches me in a way that almost feels reverent. His attention drags over my face like a hand. I hate how it feels like heat. I hate that something traitorous within me tightens.
I shake my head, the movement barely there. “Stop—”
But I don’t sound convincing.
“Just give yourself one night off, Doctor,” his words settle like poison. “I’m not real. None of this is real.”
The words yank at something inside, something familiar, but the idea bleeds away just as fast as it forms. He drags his thumb slowly across my cheek, over the curve of my freckles, like he’s counting them. I feel my breath hitch under it.
“Your mind knows you’re sexually starved. After twenty-six years and you had never even masturbated,” he whistles. “your body is desperate for release.”
My chest seizes. His fingers tilt my chin.
“You can let it go,” he offers it like it’s a kindness. “You don’t have to fight something that isn’t real.”
His thumb presses just slightly, grounding me to him, pulling my focus back every time it tries to slip.
“Just for tonight,” his voice fills the space behind my eyes. “Let it happen.”
And the worst part, my body listens. It betrays me in small ways first: a shift in breath, a tightening I can’t control.
I hate it.
I can’t ignore it.
His hand moves, slower now. Tracing. Testing. Like he’s waiting to see if I’ll fight it.
I should.
I know I should.
My chest rises too quickly. My thoughts scatter, trying to rebuild something solid, something rational—
This isn’t real.
This isn’t him.
It should make it easier to reject, but it doesn’t. God help me, it doesn’t because if anything, it makes it worse. Because no one sees this. No one knows. I can do whatever I want here...
My lips part on a shallow inhale.
He notices.
“There you are,” his voice threads through my mind.
My eyes squeeze shut. For a second, I try to anchor myself. But the feeling doesn’t fade. It builds heavy and sharp.
My body softens anyway and I hate it instantly.
“No,” I whisper, but the word sounds ruined by the time it leaves me.
Because the warmth spreading through me does not feel voluntary anymore.
It feels conditioned. Learned. Like my body already knows him better than my mind does.
“Good girl,” he praises, and I hate how easily the word settles into me.
My fingers curl into the sheets instead of pushing him away. And that...that feels like an answer.