“You always use that cheesy line, you know.”
His kisses were like fire, like a sweet hot shade of touch. I knew they weren’t real, yet they felt fuller than the real thing. I looked into his eyes and felt the stir of something else there, like I could look deeper into him, and I resisted the call from within to do it. I focused on the sense of his skin against mine in the dream, and held onto that moment, that feeling.
“How do you do this?” he moaned as I ran a hand over his chest, causing him to tingle.
I could feel what he felt as I did it. “Dreamwalking is part of my metahuman abilities,” I said, kissing him on the neck and sending him into ecstasy. “You know that.”
“Yeah, but I get the feeling that the other people you’ve talked to in your dreams didn’t get this...” He shuddered, his mouth opened slightly and he let out short, gasping breaths, “...sensation from being in a dream with you.”
“True,” I said, and kissed him on the bicep, causing him to sigh loudly. “But that’s because with them, I was insubstantial; a ghost without touch.” I felt myself fade into a shadow, as though I had become blurry, and I passed through him, reappearing at his back, where I planted a series of slow kisses and a caress along his shoulder, causing him to shudder. “I’m only real in your dreams.”
“I’m...not complaining. But you seem pretty real when I’m awake, too.”
“Yeah, but you can’t touch me there. Not like this. Not like here. I wish we could...” I ran a hand over his shoulder.
“This is working plenty well enough for me,” he said and moaned again as I traced my fingers along his spine. “This is unlike anything I’ve ever...it’s just...so good.”
I smiled and kissed him again, back in front of him now. I looked into his eyes through the haze of the dreamwalk, and I paused. His eyes were normally perfect, creamy brown, like the color of sugared and creamed coffee. “What?” he moaned as I hesitated, and he pushed himself against me again, brushing against my skin, and he sighed, a little noise of ecstasy. I held fast, though, unmoving, as he moaned in pleasure from the feel of my skin against his in this dream world, and he dissolved into the sounds of a man deeply, totally satisfied.
I held back though, frozen, unable to move, locked into the dream and the horror of thoughts I couldn’t—wouldn’t—share with him.
His brown eyes were gone, replaced with blue—bright, crystalline, cerulean—exactly like the ones I saw when I looked in the mirror every morning.
4.
I walked into Ariadne’s office at the crack of nine the next morning to find her already behind her desk, a file in her hands, her reading glasses on. She wore them infrequently, only when she was actually reading, and as soon as I appeared at the door she hurried to put them back in her desk drawer, laying the file down in front of her.
“Why do you do that?” I asked as I flopped down in the chair across from her.
“Do what?” she asked, almost looking innocent.
“Put away your glasses when someone comes into the room?” I nodded at the drawer to her side where she had stowed them. “Everyone knows you wear glasses when you read.”
“I...” She paused, as though thinking about it. “I don’t know, actually. Just one of those things I’ve never given any thought to. Vanity, I suppose.”