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Without looking away from his burning stare, I lifted my hips and held my breath while he tugged the fabric down to my thighs before completely pulling them free and tossing them aside. I was just as surprised as he was to find myself without underwear. Apparently this dream knew what it was doing when it knitted itself together. Wes swept his gaze down the length of my naked body and slowly back up again. My skin tingled where he looked at me.

Nerves danced at the edges, but I wasn’t scared. I was ready.

Wes lowered himself over me, his face almost glowing with the intensity of emotion in his expression.

“I’ve wanted this—wanted you—for so long. You are so beautiful, Tara,” he said. The words sounded as if they’d been dragged over jagged rocks. My throat ached all the way down to my chest and lungs. For a horrible moment I thought I might cry and ruin the beauty of what was about to happen.

“Then have me, Wes. Right now,” I whispered.

He settled himself between my legs and pushed gently until first my thighs and then all of me was completely open to him. Pleasure turned to pain and back to pleasure again as he slid into me. We began to move together, hips arching toward hips in a dance I understood on an instinctual level. My hands scraped along the smooth skin of his back and shoulders. His fingertips roamed and caressed every inch of me he wasn’t sliding against.

A moan escaped me and Wes pulled back, staring down at me in concern.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked.

“No, you…” I struggled to find words through the joy. “You healed me,” I whispered, shoving the words out around the tears.

He smiled, slow and languid, and when he came into me again, all that was left was pleasure, each stroke building and building toward something I couldn’t quite grasp until suddenly I was shoved over the edge and into the blissful wide open.

“Wes, I…” and then I couldn’t speak as blissful sensation rushed in and out of me.

“Tara,” Wes said, and then with a final stroke he went taut and his body shuddered wildly. Wave after wave crashed until finally, his shoulders sagged, and my muscles puddled. We sank into a cuddled heap together against the sheets, both of us breathless and deliciously sated.

“Is it possible to be full and empty at the same time?” Wes asked a moment later.

I grinned, but it faded too quickly as I caught the edges of my own reality tugging at me.

“What is it?” he asked, immediately sitting up with knitted brows and pinched eyes.

“I think … I am being pulled back,” I said.

“Already? But how? You can’t.” He shook his head and the hair on my arms stood up as the scent of his panic hit me. He smelled like wolf.

My muscles coiled, ready to jump out of his way if he shifted. But he wrapped his hand around my waist and pulled me close. “Don’t go,” he said, looking down at me with a desperate expression.

“I don’t think I have a choice,” I said. “It’s like a dream or something. But not my own. A mind trick. They’ve been doing experiments on me. Giving me drugs. I hallucinate sometimes and I can’t … I can’t always tell what’s real anymore.” The words came faster and faster as I rushed to tell him anything that would help him find me.

“Wait, tell me where you are. What you see. Something to help us find you.”

“I don’t know where I am.” My voice broke under the frustration. And then I realized who else would want answers from me after tonight’s little magical road trip. “Gordon. He’ll know. He’ll use the drugs to make me tell him what happened.” I looked around wildly at the studio apartment. Some of the fog had cleared and I could make out a pane of glass with a city skyline view draped in shadows in the distance.

“Tara, calm down. You don’t know enough to—”

“But I do, don’t you see?” I pressed my palm to his chest and scooted backward until I could sit up. I couldn’t even be concerned with the fact that I was naked and sitting in a hardly flattering position. My panic covered even that sort of embarrassment. “He might’ve orchestrated this whole thing. I don’t know how real it is but—” I squeezed my eyes shut and when I opened them again, the studio apartment was still there. Wes was still staring at me with wide, worried eyes.

“Tara—”

“You can’t let me take this back with me,” I said, hurting at the truth of what I was saying even as I spoke the words. “It’s too dangerous to know where you are. You have to make me forget.”

Something prickled at the edges of my mind. Something was calling me back—and soon.

“You want me to take away your memory of what just happened?” he asked. “All of it?”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hating that it had to be this way.

Wes stared at me and I cringed, waiting for his horror to give way to something uglier like anger or disgust, but in the end, he only nodded and hung his head. “You’re right. It’s safer if you don’t remember.”

And somehow, his agreement made it worse. A tear slipped down my cheek. Wes looked up and flicked his finger out, catching it before it could fall off my chin. “There will be other times,” he said.