“I was drawn to you.”
“From where?”
She felt him searching for the right words. “A great, cold nothingness where I was totally alone. More alone than I had ever been before.” His voice hitched. “In the darkness, I saw something that pulled me forward. At first, it was only a tiny beam of light. And I knew I had to get closer. As I did, I saw it was you with your long red hair and your wonderful green eyes, and I knew I must get closer to you—or lose myself.”
Her chest tightened. She had thought she was the needy one—that she had made him up to fulfill some deeply buried craving of her own. Yet he had turned the tables on her.
More proof that she had finally gone off the deep end? Or if she couldn’t connect with other people, she would work out some kind of relationship with a phantom?
She had been sitting rigidly, propped against the pillows, the position adding to her tension.
Lie down. You might as well be comfortable.
Would following his directions be an acknowledgement that she thought this encounter was real?
Okay, why not go with it, if it fulfilled an unacknowledged need of her own? She wasn’t hurting anybody but herself by inventing an imaginary lover for her bedroom.
A lover? Was that what she was doing because she had never had a real one who made her feel fulfilled the way women in love songs and romance novels felt?
She made a dismissive sound. Was she really that needy?
In the next moment, her muddled train of thought switched back to an earlier idea. Okay. If she had brought this phantom to her room, why not enjoy the experience while it lasted? Couldn’t crazy people get some pleasure from their illness before the men in the white coats came to drag them to the funny farm?
With a sigh, she plumped up the pillows and lay back against them. He was still there, only much closer.
My lord, he was lying beside her. Surrendering to the situation, she moved over so that her shoulders and hips touched his. The contact set up a sexual pull toward him, yet at the same time, it was also strangely comforting.
Going with the fantasy or the psychotic break or whatever it was, she allowed herself to enjoy the sense of closeness. It was what she had always longed for, and he was giving it to her, even if it was only a mirage. Closing her eyes, she breathed in and out, feeling the beat of her own heart, imagining what it might be like if this visitor were real.
A shiver went through her and with it, feelings she had repressed for so long. Sexual awareness had never been a big factor in her life, and yet she felt herself responding to this invisible man as she never had before. She felt her body heating, and cursed the unwanted sensation. Why now? Why with this man who wasn’t even real?
For heartbeats, she let herself build the fantasy, imagining her soulmate lying next to her—the man she had secretly wished for all her life. In the next moment, she clenched her fists.
“Stop it,” she ordered herself. “This isn’t real. It can’t be real.”
It was like building a sandcastle and watching it wash away when the tide came in.
She felt anger rising inside her, anger at herself for succumbing to this game. And anger at him. She had made him up and then pretended he was offering her something that a figment of her imagination could never give her in real life.
She knew she had been bouncing from one state of mind to the next, from fear to acceptance to sexual need, not in any particular order. None of it was entirely rational—except the fear. Now, a new determination seized her. She would not let herself sink into this madness. She would fight it.
Bent on ending the self-delusion, she let the anger infuse her words as she said, “I am not your savior. I’m not your lover.”
He didn’t answer in words, but she heard him make a desperate choking sound, like a drowning man struggling to breathe underwater.
In that moment, the dream came back to her sharp and clear in all its horror. Had that been reality? Was that what had happened tohim?
CHAPTERFOUR
Olivia’s nerve endings burned as she took in the sound. It was not what she had expected. It was like a cry of anguish, a cry for help, a cry that gave her visitor a new reality that he had not possessed before. She had told herself his existence was impossible, but she knew to the depths of her soul that she had caused him pain. With that knowledge, all her resolve to drive him away crumpled.
“I’m sorry.” She gripped his arm, her fingers digging into what felt like solid muscle. At the same time, she felt herself reaching out to him in a way she never had to another human being. It was like making an intimate connection that had been impossible—until he made something inside her unfurl. He had said he needed her. Unaccountably, it seemed she needed him, too.
As much to reassure herself as him, she whispered, “It’s all right.”
He answered with a harsh laugh. “You’re just saying that. It will never be all right.”
She could have asked him why, but she didn’t want to hear the answer.
