Quicksilver Dreams(42)

                “Correction,” he snapped. “You were in my dream.”

                “That’s not possible! People can’t just do that! And you became a monster! You were going to kill me!” I could feel myself losing it. Horror was setting in. My eyes whipped around the room looking for a weapon, a window, anything. I started edging along the wall toward the door. Only quick breaths were coming in and going out. My body was screaming for flight.

                “You can do anything in dreams.” He flared his nostrils, his face set in fierce lines.

                “I don’t understand this! Any of it. I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I’m going home!”

                I dashed for the door.

                Ryder caught me around my ribs. His powerful arms halted my forward motion midstride, my breath exiting in a sudden hiss. He pulled me back against the rock wall of his chest, and then it was on! I fought for my life. I elbowed his gut and heard a deep grunt. I reached backward to scratch at his eyes, but his arms repositioned to bind mine to my sides. I tried to head-butt him in the chin and kicked at his shins, which had him growling deep in his chest but did little if any damage, because the damn sheet hampered me!

                “You’re going to hurt yourself,” he snarled in my ear. He was just too big and too strong. He was nearly wrapped around me, and I could feel him overpowering me with sheer strength.

                “Let me go.” I bent over and tried to bite his arm.

                “Dammit!” he thundered, and he loosened his grip. I stomped his bare toes with my heel and lunged for the door as he hollered, but he was standing on my sheet, which thwarted me again. During my moment of hesitation, he tackled me to the bed and pinned me with his body.

                “Get off me. You are absolutely crazy. This is kidnapping. You’re holding me against my will.” The weight of his chest alone had me pinned helplessly to the mattress, but I still tried to kick him off.

                “Hush up.”

                “I want to go home.” We were both breathing heavily as he wrestled my legs between his own, binding them tightly so I couldn’t move.

                “Not until we settle this.”

                “Settle what? What is there to settle? You’re some weird superhuman freak, and I want you to leave me alone.” But he wasn’t even listening. He was talking to himself.

                “A ring, piercing... I need to find it,” he muttered. Putting both of my wrists into one of his large hands, he held them down above my head with little effort, though I struggled to get them free.

                With his free hand he gently checked my lobes, my fingers, my neck, my wrists, but found nothing. He even went so far as to check my mother’s charm bracelet carefully. Then he pulled the sheet aside and in a single motion yanked my T-shirt up and away from my breasts. I gasped, shocked motionless, staring down at them, bare to the sunlight slanting through the window.

                “What the hell are you doing? You goddamn perv!” My nipples puckered with sudden exposure, but missing whatever he was looking for, his eyes continued south. Mortified, I snarled, “Is this how you get your kicks? Get off me! Let me go!”

                “It has to be here,” he said in a steely voice.

                He looked down at my belly button, just above my floral cotton thong. I was lacking whatever item was on his scavenger-hunt list and his eyes traveled back up.

                “Where is it?” he growled.