Once Forbidden(2)

His hand was biting into her buttocks, clenching and unclenching as he held her to him. “Now!” she demanded. “Please!”

He ignored her, driving ruthlessly. He flicked her clitoris again with his thumb and felt her convulse, her legs tightened around his head and still he drove her on, wringing every last ounce of her passion, drinking in the scent of her.

Sarah screamed with the force of her release.

“Yes,” he said at last. “That’s what I want.”





Sarah awoke suddenly and climbed from the bed with a groan. She’d had the dream before. Her eyes closed against a wave of pain. In the dream, the way he made love was sometimes different, but some things were the same—she was whole again, the disfiguring burns were gone. Her lover had been intense, his passion driven by her own.

With a sigh, she padded silently across the carpeted floor to the bathroom. As usual, she was wet. She could feel the juices flowing, and knew she’d had an orgasm. It had been so real—and it was embarrassing! Women didn’t have these kinds of vivid dreams. It amazed her still how real the dreams were each time she had them. She could almost feel him inside her.

Sometimes he made love to her slowly and gently. Sometimes he was rough and demanding…but always, he made sure that she found as much pleasure as he did. Never before these dreams had begun had she had such erotic dreams so vivid and real. But the dreams were also painful—especially now that no man would ever want her. That, of course, was the source of the dreams, she’d decided.

It had been months since she’d had sex, and it was her minds way of giving her body release. Too bad her body didn’t know how painful they were when she was awake and realized it all would never be real.

Always awakened after the dreams, she knew she’d be getting no more sleep this night. She didn’t bother turning on the light as she got the glass on the counter and filled it with cool tap water.

As she sipped, she thought once again how much she wished the dream would come true. Wished with a desire that literally hurt. She didn’t regret what she’d done six months before. She couldn’t regret saving the child. The little girl thankfully hadn’t been burned and would go on to live a normal life.

Unlike her.

The price she’d paid was high. She’d never look normal again and she never would she get used to the stares of people as she walked down the street to the market. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that she was better off staying inside as much as possible. She hated being the recipient of their disgust and—even worse—their pity.

Parents actually pulled their children closer when they happened to pass as if she were somehow a danger to them. It had been months since she’d gone out in the light of day.

Sarah sat the glass back on the counter with a soft clink and reached for the vanity light. A Tylenol for the headache she felt creeping up, and just maybe she could at least go read for a while. She glanced up as she prepared to open the medicine cabinet and gasped.

Where there should have been pink scars, there was smooth undamaged flesh. Her hair, burned off in large patches in the fire, was long and the luxurious again. But how? She ran her fingers through her hair. It was soft and silky just as it had been before.

The answer hit her with the force of a blow. It was only a dream. She was still somehow in the dream. She touched her face.

It seemed so real.

If she was dreaming she didn’t want to wake up. The dream was much better.

Sarah ran her hand down her neck to the edge of her nightgown, seeing that the flesh there was healed, too. The ugly scars on her neck and upper chest were gone. “Please,” she whispered, “let it be real,” knowing of course that it couldn’t be.

“It can be,” came a deep voice.

Sarah spun around, her hand coming to her throat in terrified response. “How did you get in here?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, backing away until the sink stopped her. She hadn’t even seen him in the mirror. Her eyes widened as she looked at the man standing at the door of her small bathroom.

It was him.

The man from her dreams. He was dressed as he had been in the dream—in the same dark slacks and shirt. He was the same beautiful man she’d been dreaming about since the first few weeks after the fire. She’d spent more than a month in the hospital, and the dreams had started the week she’d come home.

She relaxed then. Somehow, she decided, she was still locked in this very vivid dream.

“You don’t know?” Devlin asked, moving toward her.

“It’s a dream,” she said sadly. “This is all some kind of very vivid weird dream.”