Every motion felt like a claiming, but not of ownership — of understanding. His hands framed my face as though he were trying to memorize the shape of it, his movements deliberate and sure, pulling me into him until I forgot where one ended and the other began. There was nothing hurried in it, nothing careless. Just a steady, unspoken promise in every shift, every breath that left his lips against my skin.
When he finally moved, it wasn’t dominance but gravity — inevitable, overwhelming, the universe narrowing to the warmth between us. The world could have burned down outside that room, and I wouldn’t have noticed. Because in that moment, I wasn’t the one holding everything together. I was the one coming undone, and he was the only thing keeping me grounded.
I woke with a sharp gasp, the kind that tore through the quiet and left only the echo of my own heartbeat. My skin was damp, the sheets tangled tight around my legs like I’d been fighting something—or someone—in my sleep. For a second, I didn’t know where I was. All I felt was the lingering warmth, the pulse beneath my ribs that refused to slow.
And then I remembered.
The dream. The way it had felt—his hands, his breath, the way he’d said my name like it meant something more than it ever should. My stomach dropped, and heat flushed up my neck so fast it made me dizzy.
“Oh my,” I whispered into the dark, pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead. “You have officially lost it.”
Embarrassment hit first—sharp, immediate, mortifying. Then came the denial, quick and defensive. It was just a dream. It didn’t mean anything. People dream about weird things all the time. Dreams were just… static. Random noise from a brain that hadn’t shut off properly.
Except it hadn’t felt random.
I exhaled, long and shaky, and forced myself to sit up. The clock on my nightstand glowed 3:47 a.m. Of course. The hour when exhaustion and emotion made terrible conspiracies together. I reached for my water glass, took a sip, and muttered, “You need sleep, not fantasies about a man who argues for sport.”
Still, my pulse wouldn’t settle. My body felt caught between worlds—half in the dream, half in the quiet aftermath of it. I could almost hear him, that low, maddening voice that somehow always knew how to get under my skin.
I flopped back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling, determined not to think about the way he’d looked at me in that dream—like he saw past everything I kept buttoned up tight. It was stupid. Unreal. I was stressed, overworked, running on caffeine and adrenaline. That was all.
But when I finally closed my eyes again, sleep didn’t come easy. Because no matter how hard I tried, I could still feel him there—ghost-light and impossible, the memory of something that had never happened. And the worst part wasn’t the dream itself.
Naomi was already halfway through her latte when I slid into the seat across from her, still feeling the ghost of that awful, vivid dream clinging to me like static. She looked up, all sunshine and curiosity, and before I could stop myself, the words just tumbled out.
“I had the world’s most inappropriate dream,” I blurted.
Her eyes lit up instantly, the kind of look that said I’d just given her the highlight of her morning. “Define inappropriate.”
I groaned, dropping my head into my hands. “It involved Beckett. And zero common sense.”
Naomi set her cup down slowly, dramatically. “Oh, this I have to hear.”
“There’s nothing to hear,” I said quickly, voice too high to sound convincing. “It wasn’t—it’s not like that.”
She tilted her head. “Ellery, you’re blushing.”
“I am not blushing.”
“Your ears are pink. That’s your tell.”
I buried my face in my coffee cup, wishing caffeine could erase memories. “It was just a dream. It didn’t even make sense.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, drawing out the sound like a song. “Didn’t make sense or didn’t have clothes?”
“Naomi!”
She grinned, completely unrepentant. “What? I’m just trying to understand the level of ‘inappropriate’ we’re working with here. PG-13? R? Lifetime movie with surprisingly good chemistry?”
I tried not to laugh, failed, and sighed. “It wasn’t… explicit, okay? It was just… intense. And stupid. I don’t even like him like that.”
Naomi leaned forward, chin resting on her hand, clearly unconvinced. “Right. So your subconscious just decided to do an interpretive dance about control issues featuring the grumpy soccer player who drives you insane?”
“Yes,” I said firmly, clinging to the explanation like a life raft. “It was a metaphor. For stress. For control. My brain’s just… filing paperwork wrong.”
She arched a brow. “Sweetheart, that wasn’t a metaphor. That was your subconscious waving a red flag shaped like abs.”
I groaned again, but this time, I couldn’t help laughing. Naomi’s laughter joined mine, bright and bubbling, drawing a few amused glances from nearby tables. For a moment, it felt good to laugh about it — to let it be funny instead of terrifyingly revealing.
