Again, she fails to define exactly what she’s talking about. Yet she lets me give her a gentle good-night kiss, after which she turns around and snuggles into me so that we’re spooning. She spends the night in my embrace, and we both sleep well.
Two steps forward?
Then, she wakes me by jolting upright the instant the alarm goes off—depriving me of the chance to wake her with a kiss. Shock and delight ring clear in her voice.
“I know who sent the book!”
Chapter 15
Dreams and Lies
JOHANNA
My dream mixes lies with truth.
I shouldn’t be dreaming tonight. While I’ve always dreamed—full-color, multi-sensory affairs, most of which make little sense in the light of day—these plague me most when I’m fraught and not sleeping well or when I’m sleeping alone. I’ve had two good nights’ rest and am well into a third, cuddled in Corin’s arms.
All the same, a new hallucination sweeps me up.
Hot water laps against my chest as I sink into an almost-full tub. Orange-scented bubbles float on the surface, the bottle sitting on the counter by the sink. It’s a special blend for after-heat recovery, with anti-inflammatory agents and soothing ingredients mixed in.
The dimmable lightbulbs are set on a low level, giving the room an aura of permanent dusk—easy on the eyes.
The tub is long enough that I stretch out fully, yet don’t brush the tips of my toes against the far end. It’s the one in the main suite that I share with Max, meant to fit two easily and three in a pinch, depending on size. I rarely fill it up this full, but thistime it’s worth it, for the warmth and bubbles ease my aching muscles.
Both doors to the bathroom stand ajar. The bedroom is dark and empty, but periodic buzzing snores resound from the shadowy nest, accessible from bedroom or bathroom.
Max rests in there, fever broken and heat over—or so I hope. His heats have begun to take place at longer intervals now that he’s in his fifties, shorter and more spiky, with higher highs and longer lows, rather than running a roller coaster around and around for days on end. Fairly typical for omegas, who never stop having heats as long as they’re healthy, although the odds of pregnancy drop exponentially after fifty. Still, this particular heat hit him harder than usual. I had only one alpha to assist, and we’re both worn out.
The smell of hot wax and just-snuffed candles, underscored with the unmistakable musk of alpha, mixes with the orange. The lights shift—this is a dream, after all—flickering as though a dozen orange-scented candles burn along the tub rim.
The alpha sits behind me, ensuring that I lean against warm skin, rather than cool porcelain. I sit within the compass of his legs. His arms press against my sides, hands scooping up bubbles to massage into my breasts and upper chest. Each caress rouses deeper sensations of being cherished.
Turning my head, I smile and whisper thanks. His head’s no longer as smooth-shaven as when we started. Grizzled dark stubble grows on the sides to match the once-trim beard, which is getting shaggy. Deep-set eyes watch me from a face still light brown after nearly two days of solely artificial light.
Nathan Mazarini: lawyer, widower, and alpha—and my accomplice in sating Max.
Wrong! A sharp pang runs through me. Part of me cries out that this is false, untrue, never happened. Yes, Nathan attended the heat. Yes, he started a bath for me, but he didn’t join in.
The dream Nathan paints bubbles on my nipples and whispers kisses along my neck. I absorb the gestures and the warmth they build, making memories to take out on colder, lonelier days.
I push the notion of wrongness away. It’s only a vision, what harm could there be in indulging?
The lights flicker off, then back to the candle-glow. The orange, wax, and alpha scents shift, adding layers of rum and omega.
Max watches from the other side of the tub, resting against a purple cushion. Bubbles hide most of his body. Beneath the waterline, his legs mingle with Nathan’s and mine, but the tub is long enough that he’d have to stretch and point his toes to touch my center.
Short hanks of damp, graying dark hair cling to the sides of his head and hide the tips of his ears, giving him a Spock-like look. One eyebrow quirks upward in a gesture he spent years practicing, further enhancing his resemblance to the science-fiction icon.
It’s a familiar movement, one he deploys most often when viewing behavior he accepts but doesn’t understand—a clear sign that his heat is most definitely over. His yearly ordeal done, he can forge ahead, free of dread, for ten or more months before starting to plot the who and when of his next. His shoulders relax rather than hunch up toward his ears. A smile, relieved or satisfied or some such, plays on his lips.
It’s something else the hallucination gets wrong. I helped Max shower after his heat in lieu of refilling the tub.
Yet this, too, makes embracing the dream worthwhile.
Because I get to see him again: happy and seemingly healthy. In truth, the cancer had probably already started to eat away at him before his heat, though who knows?
Still, this dream version matches the Max I knew long before the end. I drink every detail in, desperate to paint this image of health over the pain-racked, withered visage of his last days and the soulless body in the morgue.
