Chapter Eight
Morgan
I blinked at the man standing in my bedroom. I shook my head, convinced I was hallucinating. I’d had a lot to drink at the Tavern, but I didn’t think I was drunk enough for the dreams to plague me while I was still awake.
Wait, maybe I wasn’t awake.
I tilted my head and continued to stare at him, waiting for him to disappear. I pinched my elbow; the pain shot up my arm. My mouth opened to speak, but nothing came out.
“Morgan,” Jude hissed.
I closed my eyes tight against the vision. Maybe I had a brain tumor. According to Dr. Claudia, brain tumors caused walking, talking hallucinations. Like those episodes of Izzy and Denny on Grey’s Anatomy.
My eyes popped open. Could I have sex with my hallucination? Would it be the same as when he was alive? If a brain tumor allowed me to spend a few more months with Jude, then maybe I’d welcome it.
Oh God, I was losing my mind.
“Go away. I don’t have time for a brain tumor.”
I stood up and walked toward the bathroom, and he grabbed my arm.
“What the fuck are you talking about, baby?”
“You’re not really here. You’re a hallucination, which means I probably have a brain tumor. And honestly, I’d rather just not know. I can’t take anymore.”
Spirit Jude pulled me into his arms and whispered, “I’m not a hallucination, baby,” and then pressed his lips against mine.
The feel of his lips was so familiar. So comforting. It was as if he were really here with me. Maybe a brain tumor wasn’t so bad. Maybe I could indulge in my fantasy just a little longer.
I wanted to explore his chest with my hands, but he held them tight in his. I kept my eyes closed, fearing that if I opened them and looked, he’d disappear like the remnant of a dream.
“Jude,” I cried out against his lips. I longed to hear his voice again. The rough timbre, the graveled vibration as he said my name.
“Baby, I’m so sorry,” he whispered against my lips.
His hands slid up my arms, over my shoulders, up my neck and into my hair, leaving mine free to finally touch him. I skipped his chest and went for his belt. If this was a fleeting dream or hallucination, I didn’t want to waste any time.
I pulled at the buckle and tore at the snap. I quickly unzipped his pants and reached in, grasping his cock. His moan was pained as I gripped him, squeezing him the way I knew he loved.
“Fuck, Morgan, I’ve missed you so damn much.”
He was saying all the right words. All the things my heart longed to hear, and I questioned if my heart or my brain had conjured him up. Not that it mattered. I would take what I could get. Seven long years without this man, seven years without hearing his voice or touching his skin.
Maybe it was hearing his name earlier that had caused my subconscious to manifest him. Maybe Phoebe really was a witch and had cast a spell to ease my suffering. I’d have to remember to thank her later.
“I’ve missed you, Jude. Why did you leave?” I asked the apparition. I still didn’t believe it was real. How could it be? He was dead. He’d died in an explosion. King was there; he’d watched his best friend die.
But he felt so real.
He grabbed my hands and wrapped them around his neck. With his hands on my ass, he lifted me and pressed me against the wall. My skirt rose up to my hips and his fingers brushed over my panties.
“You’re so wet for me, baby.”
Tomorrow was definitely going to suck. When I woke up from whatever this was, this dream, this illusion or whatever the fuck it was, I would be devastated.
The grief would come back even stronger. Maybe I should wake up now. Force my subconscious to spare me the pain of losing him again. But I didn’t want to let him go.
He tore at my panties, ripping them from my body. His mouth assaulted my throat. He licked and nipped his way up to my ear. Biting my earlobe hard enough to cause pain. Like the pinch, my mind refused to accept reality.
Refused to acknowledge that this was real. I pulled at his hair, moving his head to where I wanted it, and he was kissing me again. Brutal and honest. Real and true.
I was losing my mind, but what a fucking way to go.
He pressed me harder against the wall while his fingers swept over my pussy, finding my clit and rubbing in circles before he dipped one finger inside me, coating it in my own arousal as he circled my clit again. I felt my body winding up, felt it climbing to that peak that only he could get me to.
I expected to wake up any minute. This was the moment I woke from every dream I had. Every memory that visited me in the dark. It was always the same—he pushed my body to the brink, only to fall back into the darkness, leaving me wanting.
“Come for me, Morgan. Come on my fingers and I’ll give you my cock,” he demanded as he pumped his fingers into me.
God, I wanted his cock. I’d missed it almost as much as I missed his kiss. His smile. The sweet words of love he whispered in my ear when I was sad.
I missed it all.
I missed him.
I cried out his name as wave after wave crashed over me.
He removed his fingers from inside me, hoisting me higher as he lined up his cock. He surged inside me, and my head fell back, banging against the wall.
“Fuck, baby, you feel so good.” His voice rasped against my neck, and still my brain let me have this moment. My heart was bursting. I’d never gotten this far in the dream. It had to be something Phoebe had done. Some spell she’d spoken over me to take me back in time. Remind me what it was like.
Remind me why I could never let him go. Jude Peterson owned my heart and soul, and there would never be enough left over for anyone else. If this were all I had, this moment, this spell or hallucination, I’d gladly live the rest of my life locked inside my mind as long as he was with me.
He pulled back, and I swore I felt every inch of him. His thrusts were slow and shaky, as though he too had waited a lifetime to be with me again. As if he had no control over his desire and longing for me.
His fingers dug into my skin, and once again the pain didn’t quite register. My mind refused to allow me to accept reality.
“I’m not gonna last, baby. It’s been too fucking long,” he muttered.
My heart knew what I needed to hear. That I was the only woman he wanted, even in death. Even in the spirit realm—which I’d convinced myself this was—I was the only woman he wanted. The only woman he fucked.
“Come for me, Morgan. Let me feel you squeeze my cock. Show me how much you missed me being inside you.”
“Yes,” I cried out, whimpering his name over and over as he fucked me. I ignored the part of my brain that tried to break the moment. The part that wanted to tell me this wasn’t what I thought it was. That it was more. That it was real.
It wasn’t real.
It couldn’t be.
He was dead.
He was never coming back.
This was all I had to hold onto.
This memory, this dream, this delusion was something I would store in my heart for when the grief came back.
And it would come back.
It always came back.
It was always there, hiding, waiting for the right moment when it would pierce my heart the deepest.
“That’s it, baby. I can feel you clamping down on me.”
He leaned back far enough to reach between us and stroke my clit.
Pushing me higher and over the edge. My body tensed.
My eyes filled with the tears I was tired of crying.
I knew when this was over that was what would happen.
The pain would come after the pleasure. The grief would come after the euphoria.
But for now, I would take what I could get. I would let my delusions wash over me the way the orgasms were. My legs tightened around his waist; my arms squeezed around his neck as I clung to him. As I held him close to me, not wanting to let him go again.
He drove into me a few more times before he roared out my name. Spilling into me, the feeling so tangible. So authentic that I wondered again how it was possible.
His head rested on my shoulder while we both panted, struggling to catch our breath, lost in the ecstasy of each other’s arms. Caught up in the fantasy together.
My legs slid down to the floor as he slipped out of me. The feeling of his cum dripping down my legs was too much to ignore. My brain registered the corporeal man pressed against me, and my eyes opened wide.
My hands moved to his waist. They slipped under his shirt, desperate to feel his skin. My fingers grazed his abs.
It wasn’t smooth.
I pushed him away.
His head snapped up. “Morgan?” His voice pleaded an unspoken request. I looked into his eyes. Those deep blue eyes that haunted my dreams.
I blinked at the question in the tone of his voice. I pushed him back and looked at him. Really looked at him.
My hands went to his shirt again, and I yanked it up. The smooth skin I remembered so fondly was gone. Replaced with raised grooves. Puckered lines crisscrossed his belly.
Scars.
From a burn.
From an explosion.
This was a nightmare, not a dream.
He pulled my hands away, smoothing his shirt down. Stepping back from me, he pulled his pants up as I reached for him again. The look on his face turned to one of guilt, and suddenly I realized he wasn’t a hallucination. He wasn’t a dream or an apparition.
Phoebe hadn’t cast a spell giving me one night to remember what it was like to be loved by this man.
He was real.
He was standing in front of me, in my bedroom, as real as my grief. He’d fucked me against the wall of my bedroom, without a word, without an explanation.
“Morgan,” he whispered.
I couldn’t breathe. My grip on reality was fading quickly. How was this possible? How was my husband, my dead fucking husband, standing in front of me? Making love to me as if he’d never left.
“What... how...?” My mind refused to comprehend what I was seeing. What I was feeling. The smell of his cologne was so strong, I should have known it was real. The sound of his voice was too perfect.
I gasped for breath. My hand went to my stomach, trying to stem the nausea that churned in my gut. My mind tried to catch up with my senses, or maybe it was the other way around. I couldn’t tell anymore. Nothing made sense.
Jude couldn’t be here.
Couldn’t be real.
If he was, that meant he’d... Even in my mind I couldn’t say the words. Couldn’t accept the reality of what his absence from my life meant all these years. And yet, he was here now.
Standing in front of me, demanding to know why another man had touched me. His wife. The wife he’d left. The wife he’d stayed away from.
I moved before I realized what I was doing. My fingers clenched into a fist. My arm swung, and my hand made contact with his nose. The crunch was deafening. My father had taught me how to hit with purpose. How to cause the most damage, giving me time to get away.
That was what I did.
I left.
I turned and walked out of my bedroom. Hurrying to the front door, I ripped it open, only for it to be pushed closed before I could step outside.
“Morgan, let me explain.”
I spun around. Blood dripped from his nose, staining the front of his shirt. I raised my knee and connected with the cock I’d just had inside me as I screamed, “YOU MOTHERFUCKING BASTARD!”