24. Pippi
“Pippi. Pippi, I…” Alistair’s voice tickled my brain on the lonely wagon ride I’d taken back to my cottage. Lonely, only because the families with kids had left Brew & Bites earlier and most everyone else, including Jackson, were enjoying the after party, so I had the wagon all to myself.
I’d stayed as long as my pounding head would tolerate. And I’d tried not to be upset when Jackson had kissed my temple and told me to go on ahead without him after I’d mentioned going back to the cottage.
But I was a little upset. More than I had any right to be.
The two alicorns who pulled the wagon, a male and female pair named Blythe and Orielle, were friendly, maintaining soft, idle conversation as they carried me to my lodgings through the fog.
On any other night, I would have engaged in small talk with them.
But tonight, I was too tired, too raw, too… off kilter .
My emotions were jumbled into a brambly hairball. I couldn’t tell which ones were mine, and which ones belonged to others. Like Alistair.
“Pippi…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t keep calling you.
” My heart wept at the lonesome tenor of his voice.
And I almost went to him—almost bypassed my cottage and wandered down the cliff path.
But as I stood at the door, deliberating, my skull gave an awful, grinding thump, reminding me that I was overdue for a snooze session.
And that was sometimes the best cure for everything that ailed the soul—a good, hard, uninterrupted night of sleep.
Something I hadn’t had since coming to the isle.
“I’m sorry, Alistair,” I whispered as I went inside, changed into my pajamas (a.k.a., an old pair of Jackson’s boxers and a holey T-shirt), kicked the blankets to the bottom of the bed, and stretched out over the pillows.
Alistair’s voice continued to tease my brain—lightly, at first. Soft, whispered words, most of which started to sound like murmured gibberish. But then he grew more insistent. Demanding, almost.
“Pippi. You look lovely.”
His voice dropped to a raspy whisper, one that had goose bumps exploding over my skin.
Stars, that accent of his, and the way it caressed each word…
It was sinful .
I rolled over, curling myself into a ball, and tried to ignore the spindles of arousal sparking in my belly as I drifted off.
Behind me, the bed dipped.
Jackson.
I sighed and scooted back, seeking him, the warm weight of his arms. The heat of his body. The comfort and affection and security, and…
My eyes burned when the bed gave a little shudder, and the weight disappeared.
Jackson never touched me.
I called for him, brokenly, hating the way my tears scraped my voice raw. But when I managed to lift my leaden head from the pillow and peer at the doorway of our bedroom, my heart slammed against my chest.
It was gone.
The door.
The whole bedroom .
There was nothing there. No walls, no bureaus, no windows. The suitcases we’d left piled in the corner had vanished. There was nothing. The edge of my mattress dipped off into an endless pool of inky black.
“Jackson?” I bolted upright.
Or, well, I tried . But something heavy and iron-solid pinned my body to the bed.
“Jackson!”
I swiveled my eyes around, but the black plagued my vision. I couldn’t even make out the shape of whatever was holding me down.
“Jackson! Help!”
My heart turned into a heavy thrumming motor between my ears.
The thing pressed more fully against me, crushing me.
Every inhale became a struggle. My lungs were too smooshed to work properly. And I couldn’t move . My wild attempts at flailing, at freeing myself, only locked me down tighter.
The black swelled around the fringes of my vision, an obsidian ocean puffing itself into a massive tsunami.
My cry came out in a warbling gag.
“Pippi?”
It wasn’t Jackson who called to me.
“Alistair!” I bellowed. “Alistair! HELP!”
With a sticky roar, the black waves at the edges of my vision gyrated, contorting themselves as though in pain, and retreated.
The weight shoving into my chest vanished.
I was alone again, lying on my side, panting and sweating as I tracked the trickles of color returning to the walls around me.
The mattress dipped again.
I stiffened. But a warm hand pressed against the small of my back, kneading gently.
“Jackson.” I shuddered and arched into him.
“You’re safe, Pippi.”
Oh no.
My blood turned to ice—big, clunky cubes that clinked and clanked their way through my body, smashing bruises and welts into my insides.
That wasn’t Jackson’s voice.
It was Alistair’s.
His hand slipped under the covers and up my shirt, splaying his warm palm against the skin of my back. He chuffed when I shivered and scooted closer, pressing more of his hot body against my suddenly frigid one.
“How are you—” I started to move, to turn, and found that I no longer had control over my body. When I asked my limbs to move, they didn’t.
“You’re safe, Pippi.” Alistair rubbed my back. “You’re safe.”
I stiffened anyway, straining to lift my arms, my legs, my head off the bed.
Alistair crooned to me, muttering velvety gibberish until I stilled.
“Your voice should be illegal,” I snapped at him.
He laughed—a deep, rich, and unadulterated chuckle.
And an image plastered itself across my eyes, only for a second—barely long enough for me to drink in the details. Of a man. A tall, handsome man. Naked, his muscles taut and rippling around his booming laughter.
And he was laughing because I’d shoved him onto a bed.
My bed.
The man’s face was blurred. No matter how I scraped and dug at the image, I couldn’t get his facial features to focus.
But the rest of his long-limbed body was in sharp detail.
Every cord of muscle bunching and coiling as he shimmied himself back on the mattress.
His belly fluttered when he propped himself onto his elbows and reached for me, beckoning me to join him.
I stretched my fingers toward him, giggling when he latched his around them and pulled, gently, flipping me onto my back.
Stars. Above.
Literally.
He’d flipped me right out of my bedroom.
I lay on my back, staring up at an indigo sky encrusted with twinkling stars and illuminated by the ivory moon.
But I still couldn’t move.
I couldn’t lift my head.
Couldn’t look at anything except those stars.
And someone was touching me, stroking the insides of my thighs?—
Thighs that were bare .
“You’re safe.” Alistair dragged that sinful voice over my brain when I started to squirm. “Pippi. You’re safe.”
“What’s…How…Wait!” I cried.
Because he’d pulled away.
“ Wait! Don’t leave!” My hands scrabbled.
His fingers found mine and he held on, tightly, with the same force I was gripping him with.
But he still slipped away.
I dragged my nails into his knuckles, sobbing when I couldn’t feel them.
I might as well have been holding a wisp of smoke.
“Pippi…”
His voice filled me. But it was different this time. Strained. The exquisite groan of a man who’d been pleasured and teased to the very edge of release.
What on earth…?
And I saw him. Clear as day.
That long-limbed man lying beneath me, panting and groaning, his body slick with sweat, his muscles coiling, as I?—
No.
Goodness.
No.
This is wrong.
This is…
“Oh!”
The twisted, tortured sound clawed out of my throat as molten pleasure pooled between my thighs. A fire stoked by the soft scrape of a man’s tongue.
I arched, hissing.
Laughter rumbled from between my legs, sending pulsating vibrations through my core—an area that was now screaming with the need to release.
I had never been this aroused.
Never.
Never had the suckle of a man’s mouth brought me so, so, so very close to orgasm. Not like that, anyway. That suddenly —the fierceness of it stole my breath and made my vision blur.
The mouth moved away, and the sudden coolness between my legs had me twisting and sobbing.
Until those warm lips touched my brow. My cheeks.
The tip of my nose. My lips. Soft, nuzzling kisses.
Playful, in the way they tickled and shaped themselves into a smile whenever I giggled.
Comforting, in the way they murmured words against my skin.
Words spoken in Alistair’s voice that didn’t make any logical sense—random phrases slapped haphazardly into sentences—but that were spoken with such reverence, they left me dizzy.
They were words meant to be felt . Not heard.
Expressions of loss and hope. Declarations of love. A plea for connection, and whispers of relief when affection was given freely.
It was thrilling. Heartwarming. Arousing.
My goodness, was it arousing.
When those lips returned to the pulsating area between my legs, I cried.
I was going to come.
Hard.
I was going to come hard.
I whimpered. Bucked my hips. Grunted. Did everything I could to just keep him moving…a little…just a little…
“Oh!”
My eyes flew open.
“Oh. Shit.”
The curse tumbled out of me as I stared at the dark interior of our cottage, panting—heaving, more like it—as my hips rocked against…
My own hand.
The realization—that I’d been dreaming and masturbating in my sleep—hit just as the orgasm rolled over me. And it was intense—the kind of orgasm that had your toes curling and sent you to the stratosphere. But there was no joy in it.
Only sorrow.
Because that hadn’t just been a hot and wild wet dream. It’d been a soft and beautiful love story, one I wanted to stay in forever.
I sat up, shuddering from the shock waves of pleasure, and patted my hand along the bed. Empty. Cold.
Jackson wasn’t here.
The cottage was still and quiet.
I drew my knees up to my chin, hugging my legs as my body thrummed with aftershocks and my heart sobbed, wishing everything in that dream—the sense of connection I’d felt, the love, the companionship, everything —had been real.
I decided the next morning, as I got ready to go to the kelpie show Jackson had booked, that the dream hadn’t happened.