Chapter 5
My room is filled with the noise from my ceiling fan and the cricket symphony outside my window, but still... it’s hard to tell if I’m actually awake.
What’s happening to me?
I feel lucid, but… not.
My limbs are like lead, weighted down, sunken into the mattress. Even turning my head feels labored, requiring far more energy than it ought to.
It’s the pills.
One would’ve been enough, but I stupidly took two, feeling more wired than usual. Now, I’m unsure whether this is real or imagined. And I’m so out of it, this almost feels like the few times I’ve experienced sleep paralysis.
The comparison makes my heart race, and a foreign sound leaves my mouth, a cross between an exhausted groan and words. Although, I’m not actually trying to speak.
The weight of sleep passes over me again, settling into my bones as the lines blur even more. So much that I’d swear the blanket is slipping off my skin, being pulled to the floor by some unseen entity. But I’m too tired to care, too tired to be afraid. Even when there’s a touch, gentle and feather-soft, moving down the length of my arm as I catch an unfamiliar scent. It’s pleasant, but impossible to place, notes of pine and citrus that have me wishing I could lean into the source of it. The touch trails past my wrist to the tip of my middle finger, and then it’s gone. The scent hasn’t left me, though.
Nor has the sense of there being a warm presence beside my bed.
The mattress moves a little, and I’m not sure that was me.
It could’ve been.
It probably was.
No, it had to be.
The touch returns. This time, it’s on my leg, just below the knee, then higher. Without understanding my actions, I part my legs, drawing a sharp breath when the sensation moves to my inner thigh.
Is that my hand?
Am I touching myself?
My nipples harden beneath my tank top, feeling as solid as pebbles as I become uncomfortably aware of the fabric stretched taut over them. That strange groan leaves me again, and a random thought passes through my brain too quickly to hold onto it—I wish I was naked.
I squirm against my freshly washed sheets and the movement is too much. My body goes limp again to recover. What feels like a soft breath moves against my ear and that scent is stronger now. And what’s even stranger is… I think I’m wet.
Another soft gust of warm air touches my ear, and then… words. A voice that isn’t my own.
“I can’t believe he left you like this. Wanting. Unsatisfied.”
What the fuck?
My eyes flutter, but there’s no keeping them open. I barely catch a glimpse of a shadow kneeling at eye-level beside me, just beyond the edge of my bed. The thundering inside my ribcage has me questioning whether my heart will actually beat out of my chest. I’ve never felt fear so powerfully before, and it leaves me confused when the wetness inside my underwear becomes more apparent.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Am I alone?
Am I hallucinating?
Did I take my meds or just the sleeping pills?
I can’t remember, and it sends me into a mild panic.
“Relax,” that deep voice croons again, filling my head as the hallucination intensifies. That single word surrounds me in theater now, as if it’s coming from… everywhere.
Yeah, okay. I’m officially insane.
I writhe against the sheet when the phantom hand between my legs moves higher, to my underwear now. There’s pressure applied by one finger, enough that it lightly presses into the slit of my pussy, awakening my clit. The motion is slow and sweeping, coming to an end when the heat of a large palm rests on my quivering stomach.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he says, “but I had to. For you.”
The last syllable he whispers has a breath hitching in my throat, and my chin lifts toward the sound of his voice, this fantasy I’ve conjured in my sleep.
This fantasy I can admit I desperately need.
“Did he even notice that you didn’t come? Or does he really just not give a fuck?”
The tone of the voice darkens and there’s a sharp edge to it that wasn’t present before. At the sound of it, my fists clench, gathering handfuls of the sheet between my fingers.
“I can fix you. I can please you,” he promises. “But you’ll have to do something for me first. You’ll have to tell me you want me to touch you.”
My teeth sink into my lower lip, and I’m beginning to feed into it, the illusion.
“Say it, Layla. Say you want me to do this for you. Say you want me to do what he couldn’t.” The sound of my name leaving his mouth has the slickness between my legs surging.
I’m still unable to form words, but I manage to nod, giving my phantom the permission he seeks.
“Perfect,” he sighs, leaning closer to add a dizzying, “Good girl.”
I’m aware of a sound, a drawer opening and closing. Then… a faint buzz. My torso cools when my shirt’s lifted above my breasts, and then one nipple warms inside the damp chamber of his mouth. He sucks, the silkiness of his tongue contrasting the ridged roof of his mouth as he draws my flesh in deeper, a relieved moan resonating inside his chest as it meets my shoulder.
And with the contact, I feel something I don’t expect to, something that makes this feel like less of a hallucination and more… real.
A beating heart.
One racing so wildly it nearly matches the pace of my own. It’s jarring and has my eyes fluttering open again, but I’m dazed, confused by the many sensations, sounds, and emotions currently overloading my system.
As the device in his hand teases against my thigh, I force myself to stop questioning and just… feel. So, when he gently rests the tip of the vibrator against my clit, I arch off the mattress, readily spreading my legs.
He pleasures me through the fabric of my panties, making me soak them while he plays. My mind is all over the place, and I think I surprise us both when, without thinking, I manage to reach across my chest, cupping his jaw—broad, chiseled, textured with stubble. He pauses, and I question whether I’ve somehow startled a figment of my own imagination?
He seems to relax when I don’t freak out, and his jaw flexes in rhythm against my breast with his nonstop sucking. My clit’s so sensitive now, which means I could come at any moment. The outline of my nipple, rock solid and pointing skyward, glistens with saliva in the sparse light when he takes his mouth away. I strain to see him, but he’s hidden in the shadows.
I’ve had my share of hyper-realistic hallucinations before, but nothing like this.
Never like this.
“Touch yourself,” he whispers. “I want you to push your fingers inside your pussy. Can you do that for me?”
Out of my mind, I nod, and he plays into my ego again. “Good girl.”
I ease my hand inside my panties when he moves the vibrator.
“That’s it, Layla. As deep as you can,” he beckons, and I’m panting at the sound and depth of his voice, stretching my shoulder in unnatural ways to reach further between my legs.
The sound of my wetness draws a groan from him, and I find it strange how badly I want to please him, want to be his good girl one more time.
“Now, let me taste you,” he croons. “Feed me your fingers.”
With very little coercion, I slide my fingers out of my slit, stroking my clit with my arousal-coated fingers as I free them from my panties, and then immediately push them into his mouth. My eyes roll back as he savors the rawness of me from my fingertips, his tongue swirling them, sucking them clean.
“Shit, you’re so fucking sweet,” he whispers, going in for one last taste.
I gasp when he places the vibrator on my clit again, and with him so deep inside my head now, I come in no time at all.
A moan tears its way up my throat as my teeth sink into my aching lip, feeling the unspent tension and frustration drain from my body. The sting of neglect is gone, replaced only with a powerful sense of what the phantom promised.
Satisfaction.
I’m already teetering on sleep, lazily turning onto my side as the cover is pulled over me again. The faintest kiss presses to my temple, and then the illusion ends with the whisper of one final command that fades in from the depths of my imagination.
“Sleep.”