Chapter Twenty-Six
Rheda
I know immediately that I am dreaming.
My body is heavy, held, like something has pressed me down into the mattress and decided I’m not getting back up yet. I pull in a breath but it’s warm, used, and it doesn’t settle properly in my lungs.
“Hello, Doctor,” his voice carves through me.
My breath catches.
Deogal.
He’s here.
For a second I don’t think. My body does it for me, breath catching in the back of my throat. Every muscle tightens at once. The old instinct arrives first, hot and immediate, the need to get up, get away, put distance between me and whatever this is.
Then the rest of it follows.
The knowledge that I am in bed. The stillness in my limbs. The peculiar weight of sleep pressing down through me like another mattress laid over the first.
I know this feeling now.
I hate that I know it.
“No,” I panic, and my voice sounds wrong in the room.
There’s a pause, long enough to force a tremble through my body, and then the pressure lifts from my eyelids.
I open my eyes, and find him, leering in the shadows next to my bed.
The shape of his shoulders. The rough fall of his hair.
The bruises under the electrodes, blotched and deep along his skin, the colour of them dragged into strange relief by the moonlight.
He doesn’t move toward me. He doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, watching. And it’s somehow worse than if he did break the silence.
“You’re not real.” I whisper as though the words might save me.
He smiles, voice stroking my thoughts. “You say that as if it helps.”
The air changes under that gaze. My body registers it before my mind can decide what to call it.
A low awareness moves through me as if every nerve has turned its face toward him.
I grip the sheet beneath my fingers. The fabric is cool and slightly rough against my skin.
I focus on that. On texture. On pressure. On facts.
“Go away. This isn’t right.”
Amusement spreads across his face. “If you wanted me gone, you would stop looking.”
He takes one step closer and the intrusion feels physical.
“You dragged me through your thoughts all day,” the answer hits somewhere deeper than sound. “Of course I’d come back at night.”
Heat rises through me so fast it feels like anger. I want it to be anger. I want it to remain clean enough to name. Instead, it tangles almost immediately with something else, something heavier and harder to deny.
“How do you know—”
He points at his temple. “I’m in your head. None of this is real.”
My breath shudders, brain whirling as it fails to catch up.
No.
No, he can’t be—
But he’s here. Again.
The realisation hits too fast. My eyes drag over him like I can disprove it if I look long enough.
My ribs suddenly feel too small for my lungs.
I’ve done this. I’ve brought him here. This is my fault.
Regret blooms.
This isn’t just stress. It’s fucking obsession.
“Doctor,” his voice licks the edge of my mind. “You keep trying to turn everything into evidence.”
I jerk as if the adrenaline might be able to snatch me from the nightmare, but again, nothing moves.
Panic crawls up my throat. “Get out of my head. I don’t want this.”
“Clearly you do.” He chuckles and the sound drops in my skull, low and heavy. “Or I wouldn’t be here.”
My mouth dries. My heart slams against my ribcage.
“What happens when I wake up?” The question comes out thinner than I mean it to, faster than it should.
Consequences. There have to be consequences, there always are.
“You can go back to being the sweet little Doctor, and I will remain the nasty criminal you’re sentencing to death.” He bares his teeth like it amuses him.
His gaze moves over me slowly, thoroughly, and I become acutely aware of the thin straps of my camisole against my shoulders, of the warmth trapped between my thighs beneath the duvet.
He leans closer until his breath becomes a second skin. “Did you like my show earlier?”
I hate that something coils tight within me.
“Lie to me,” his words drag low through me. “And I’ll make you pay for it.”
He pushes in closely, and his hot breath fans against my lips.
“No.” I manage.
“I’m in your head, Doctor.” He tuts. “I know when you’re lying.”
His attention drags lower.
“I know it turned you on.” The words tighten around my throat, “I know you fucked yourself watching me. I know you need more.”
“No.” It’s a feeble protest, filled with shame and denial. Because the alternative is to confess that I’ve broken every protocol under the sun, that I’m obsessing over a killer.
My pulse stutters loudly.
“Stop.” I squeeze my eyes shut as if that could force him out of my mind. “Why do I keep dreaming about you?”
His gaze drops to my mouth and back up again. “You know what you want.”
My thighs shift beneath the duvet, the movement instinctive, searching for friction before I even understand what I’m doing. Shame hits a second later, hot enough to sting.
His hand slides a few inches further across the bedspread. The sheet wrinkles softly under his fingers. He is close enough now that I can smell him, something dark and warm.
I do not want him to touch me. But I need him to touch me so badly it makes me angry.
The contradiction burns.
“You need me,” it slides through me like sin.
My lips part. I don’t know what I’m going to say. Plead with him to stop, tell him to leave, or worse... beg him to keep going. The urge to speak fractures under the weight of all three.
“I don’t want this.” I finally say.
“But I do,” he breathes.
He doesn’t wait for permission. He presses forward, lips brushing mine.
He kisses me. There’s a beat where everything stills, where my head swims loudly, and any voice of reason rots away.
The touch shifts from something sweet, to something violent, desperate, but I refuse to kiss back.
I keep my lips firmly closed; it doesn’t deter him.
He shifts, hands scooping around my head, angling my head for better access. My traitorous body is on fire. My nipples are pebbled, thighs firmly pressed together to hide the wetness that I know is gathering there.
He makes a noise, and it’s almost my undoing.
“Kiss me back,” he coos.
I don’t.
I can’t.
It’s wrong. If I allow myself another fantasy, another wet dream—then I know I’ve lost my fucking mind, and this crush will become something I’ll never be able to pull away from.
I keep my lips firmly shut, eyes closed too as if I can block him out through sheer willpower.
“Fine,” he murmurs. His hands hover just above my skin, close enough that I feel the threat of him without the relief of contact.
Then he stops deciding.
He takes me by the hips—fast, unannounced—and the sharp jolt of pain flashes clean through me before my body can catch up with what’s happened. A sound slips out of me, small and unguarded.
He catches it instantly with his mouth and his kiss is invasive in the way it erases the distance I thought I still had. It steals the air from my lungs, turning my reaction into something he can taste.
I should pull away.
My body shifts instead, chin lifting by a fraction as if I’m offering myself to him.
When his teeth catch my lower lip, it isn’t gentle. Something inside me tightens—then cracks, slow and inevitable. And I hate how easily I stop resisting, how quickly I start responding.
“That’s it, Doctor,” he whispers into me. “Give yourself up to me.”
I don’t know when he moved my legs but I’m suddenly aware they’re wrapped around him. He pushes forward and the pressure between my thighs climb higher. I can’t help myself, animal instinct takes over. I grind, and finally, my body obeys, shifting against the hardness that begs for me.
He groans, low and rough, and it does something violent to my thoughts—scattering them, breaking them apart until there’s nothing left but sensation.
He shifts against me, and the movement drags through me in a way that feels dangerously precise.
Like he’s found something I didn’t want him to know about. My breath stutters.
His hands are already catching at the fabric by my hips. I suck in a breath, too slow, too late, as he drags it down without hesitation.
His cups my sex without warning. The heat licks me immediately, the traitorous pleasure instantly blinding.
I scream, writhing away from him, but my mind has other ideas.
I somehow seem to buck my hips into his hand.
He drags his fingertips to my clit that’s already swollen and too sensitive.
He’s not slow tonight; he’s ravenous. He drags his finger in a sharp circle.
The lines continue, growing faster until I’m panting.
I feel my orgasm. Dangerously close. Traitorously fucking close.
I need more. I can’t deny it much longer.
I need my release.
And I hate myself so fucking much for it.
And then...
God, and then—
Everything stops.
I’m no longer being touched. My pleasure plummets.
The whimpers catch between my lips; I bite it back before it can betray me.
“Did you enjoy my show earlier?” He asks, eyes suddenly cold and searching, but I refuse to play whatever this game is.
His hand moves fast. It connects with my clit in a sharp slap. I scream. The pain is blinding, but the pleasure is even worse.
He’s not impressed. “Answer me, Doctor.”
“No!” I cry out. “Please, stop—”
“Do you want to cum?”
“Yes! No!” My head spins so fast I feel sick. My eyes open. Shut. Open again.
“God, this is torture!” I whine. I wish the bed would swallow me whole. I wish that I could squeeze my eyes shut and he’d disappear. And God, I wish he’d just let me cum.
“Oh, the irony,” he sneers. “May I remind you that you fucking torched me today.”
“I didn’t want to!”
“But you did it anyway,” he spits coldly. His lips slash into something not quite a smile, but no other word seems to fit it. “I guess we both like fucking each other up.”
He slaps my clit again, harder this time. I involuntarily cry out, snapping in half as the agony stings. My thighs desperately try to close, but he keeps me pried open.