Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ridge
Derek goes lucid for eleven seconds.
I know because I count. I’m standing in his beach dreamscape again, and I watch his eyes change and his attention shift from dreaming to being aware. But then he looks down at his hands, and when his gaze comes up to mine, the beach flickers.
“Breathe, Der,” I say softly, trying to reach out and grab him, to ground him in the dream, but the next second the light changes. His dreamscape collapses around me…
…and I fall backward into yellow flowers, landing without grace and lying there staring up at the Milky Way for a moment.
Eleven seconds.
I put my arm over my face.
I have no idea how we’re going to do this.
I know Derek is trying. He will get there eventually. But eventually is not a timeline, and Lennon has been in there for a week now, and we’re not one bit closer to getting her back.
Nevan is learning from scratch, and Paul is sitting in his house doing his clinical patience thing that I simultaneously respect and find profoundly aggravating.
All while I’m lying in the flowers being useless.
I sit up and run a hand through my hair. The flowers move around me in whatever passes for wind on this planet, and I’m about to start the mental list of everything that’s wrong with the plan when the pull happens.
Not the vague directional thing I’ve been feeling for days, the compass needle in my chest that says she’s somewhere that way without providing the actual address. This is different. This is the tether, pulling like a hand around my wrist, as if something on the other end has grabbed it.
My pulse kicks up hard.
Lennon.
I reach back before I’ve decided to, toward it, the thread, and it catches…
…until the planet dissolves into her apartment.
Not her dream kitchen. Her apartment next to mine. Her bedroom’s bare walls , the suitcases on the floor, the yellow pillows. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands.
I count my fingers.
Left hand, seven. Right hand, four.
I’m still dreaming.
She looks up, and the expression on her face when she sees me does something to my chest.
“Ridge.” She says it like she’s not sure I’m real. Like she’s checking. Her eyes are wet, and she’s already standing. I run her over once, head to toe, looking for wrongness, for the off quality of a dream projection, something too smooth or too perfect.
She’s here.
She frowns, then scrunches her nose and takes a step toward me.
“Ridge.”
She’s real.
The room gets darker around us.
She takes another step.
The edges of the space are going soft and then softer, a black fog coming in from the walls, but I don’t care because she’s right in front of me now.
Lennon puts her hand on my chest. Palm flat, right over the sternum, and the warmth of it goes through me before I’ve processed that she’s touching me. Then I shudder, actually shudder, before realizing I’m shaking.
My hands.
My hands are shaking.
I look at them, at the wrong number of fingers on each one, and they’re both trembling. This is not something that happens to me. It’s not a thing I do.
“Ridge.” Her hand presses slightly, and I feel how my emotions rush out of me in the form of darkness.
I look up from my hands to her face.
The room is full of darkness now, the fog pressing in from every angle, and I can feel my yellow flowers pushing through the walls because, apparently, my dreamscape wants to be here with her.
Her face is all I can see clearly. She’s looking at me with those blue eyes that I could pick out of every other pair of eyes in any room, in any dreamscape, in any dimension, and there are tears on her face, and she’s here.
She’s here.
And then the darkness swallows us both.
Get her out.
That’s the whole plan, the only plan, the thing I promised myself the second I find her.
“Ridge,” she pleads again, a hint of fear in her voice.
I’ve had her back for forty seconds, and I’m already completely useless.
I pull her into my chest and feel her breathing against me, her heartbeat going too fast to match mine, her hands fisting my shirt like she’s checking if I’m real too.
I close my eyes and hold on, and for one second that’s the only thing I do.
Hold her, feel her, let the fact of her sink all the way down before I let myself want anything else.
But one deep breath of her lemon scent, and I break.
I grab the back of her head.
She makes a small, startled sound when I kiss her, a sound that does something irreversible to whatever was left of my composure, and then her hand is fisting in my shirt, pulling me down to her.
My hands find her face, her jaw, and I tilt her head back and nip her bottom lip because she’s there.
She’s real, and I’ve been patient for her.
I’m done being patient.
She hisses at the sting in her lip.
“Don’t you dare do that to me again,” I say against her mouth. “Do you hear me?”
She pulls back enough to speak, her breath fast, and her hand still in my shirt. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I won’t.”
I pull the darkness back and kiss her harder.
The flowers are everywhere now, coming through the floors, walls, and ceiling, yellow blooms pressing in from every angle while the dark retreats.
The dreamscape smells like her and sour lemon, like the planet I built when I was a different person, and I don’t care.
I don’t care about any of it except the hand in my shirt and the fact that she’s here.
She came back to me.
I pull back and look at her. Flushed, plump lips swollen already, eyes glassy and fixed on me. I want to keep going so badly it’s a physical ache low in my spine. But I hold there instead, just looking, letting her want me for one more second before I give her everything.
“Ridge?” Her voice cracks on my name, and her asking is the last straw.
I grab her thighs and lift her before she can argue about it.
She makes a sound against my mouth, half protest and not quite, while I carry her the three steps to the bed, where I set her down on the edge and drop to my knees in front of it. I kiss her again, hard and fast, and she gasps into my mouth while her hands come up into my hair.
Somewhere underneath the want there’s a smaller, colder voice reminding me that every second I spend on my knees in front of her is a second I’m not spending getting her out of here.
I tell it to wait its turn.
My heart is hammering against my ribs like it’s trying to get to her first, but my hands are already moving over her shoulders and arms, the soft warmth of her waist, down her back, learning her in rapid, thorough strokes that are partly checking for damage and the fact that I’ve been starved. The two things are the same right now.
Both hands find the cardigan, and for one second, the cold voice gets loud enough to hear.
This isn’t the plan.
Get her out first.
I press my forehead to hers instead.
Breathe, Ridge.
“Sweetheart, I need these clothes gone. That all right with you?”
She nods, and a breath later, the clothes dissolve. I don’t know if I did that or she did, and I genuinely don’t care. The fabric simply ceases to exist between us.
I pull back enough to look at her.
Jesus.
She’s bare in front of me, flushed and breathing hard, every inch of her soft and here.
The generous curve of her breasts, the gentle slope of her stomach, the wide spread of her hips, the beauty marks scattered across her skin like someone had taken their time marking constellations only I get to read.
I don’t realize I’ve gone still until her nose scrunches in that way that always makes me want to flick it. Or kiss it. Or both.
“Ridge?” Her voice is small now, almost uncertain.
“Don’t you dare go shy on me now.”
I put my hand on her shoulder, warm skin under my palm, and push gently until her back meets the sheets. She goes easily, eyes on me the whole time.
I hook my hands under her thick, soft, perfect thighs and spread them. “Fuck,” I murmur. “You’re so goddamn beautiful it’s unfair.”
Her breath catches, but I don’t give her time to doubt it.
I lean in and drag my tongue up her slit in one slow stroke.
The sound she makes punches straight through me.
I groan against her pussy, eyes closing for half a second because yes.
That taste. That heat. How her thighs tremble around my shoulders.
I do it again, slower, savoring her.
“Ridge.”
“Mm.” I circle her clit once. “That’s it.”
She doesn’t get to rush this. Not after she walked into 5D like a goddamn hero without backup. I keep my mouth on her, licking and sucking with focused patience, watching every flutter of her lashes, every twitch of her hips.
Her hands fist the sheets.
“Ridge, please, we need to—”
“So needy,” I say against the inside of her thigh, pressing a kiss there before returning to her center. “Look at you.” I slide my tongue over her again, firmer. “Greedy little thing. I had to wait days for you to come back to me, and you can’t wait five minutes?”
“Ridge.” Her voice breaks on my name.
“Tell me what you want. My fingers or my dick.”
The sound she makes is not a word.
“Words. Use them.”
“I want—” She stops, so I wait, perfectly still, breathing against her, which is unfair, and I know it. “Both.”
I chuckle, then look up at her. “Both?”
“Y-yes,” she breathes out, the word trembling.
“My greedy, greedy girl,” I murmur against her heat, then slide two fingers into her slowly, curling them deep. She’s already so wet, warm, and tight around me.
My cock throbs painfully against my thigh.
Fuck, I missed this. Missed her.
I seal my mouth over her clit and suck, tongue flicking in tight circles while my fingers stroke a slow rhythm inside her. No rushing. I want her to feel every second of this.
Every second I couldn’t touch her.
Lennon’s back arches hard off the bed. “Ridge!”
“That’s it, sweetheart. Let me hear you.” I crook my fingers again, pressing firmly, and her thighs clamp around my head like she’s trying to keep me there forever.
Good. I don’t plan on going anywhere.