Her body burned with desire. She put up no resistance as he spread her legs apart with his foot. He kept whispering little things into her ear, his lips grazing her earlobe and his breath hot with need on her skin.
Her fingers dug into his shoulders as he entered her. He kept whispering her name in between kissing her neck and bringing his lips up along her jaw and chin.
"Oh, Aiden..." she said, wrapping her legs around him, locking her ankles at the small of his back so that he couldn't escape. "Aiden... Oh, yes..."
Something started buzzing. She ignored it, or tried to, focusing all her attention on their joined bodies, on the weigh his weight felt on top of her. On the way he filled her.
But she couldn't. That damn buzzing just kept getting louder and louder. The more she tried to concentrate on being with Aiden, the more difficult it became to ignore that buzzing sound.
Didn't it know she was busy? Couldn't it see she was sharing a pleasant morning with a handsome man who clearly knew his business when it came to a woman's body?
That gave her a moment's respite from the buzzing. She concentrated completely on their joining, on the way their bodies moved in perfect rhythm, as though weren't two people but one. One perfect sexual being living entirely within the moment, living entirely for the pleasure of it.
But then the buzzing redoubled. The bedroom started to slip away, with its cream-colored walls and its window with a view of Central Park. It became hazy, indistinct. Then the bed started to fade.
It wasn't so bad, at first. After all, it left just the two of them joined together, floating in the nothingness.
Then Aiden left her, too. Dissolving with the rest of it.
Gwen sat up in her bed, one hand shooting out to slap the alarm clock into silence.
She looked around. Yep, this was her room all right. Inside unit 705 in her old building. Sunlight crept in around the edges of the old curtain her parents had let her take from home when she moved away for school.
The weight of reality came crashing back down onto her, and she gathered her knees up in a hug against her chest. She felt hot, and a little sweaty. Short of breath and shaky. She swallowed against the lump in her throat.
Gwen sat there for a while, watching the minutes tick by on the alarm without actually seeing them. The dream had been so real. So visceral. So sensual. If she closed her eyes, she could still smell him all clean and perfumed from his shower. And it took no effort to recall the memory of his weight against her. Or the way it felt as their bodies moved.
Gwen blew out her cheeks and shook her head, trying to shake herself back into waking life.
"It was just a dream... Well, not just a dream. A fantasy. A good fantasy, too..." she muttered. Her thoughts interrupted: Okay, Gwen, you're getting off track here. Remember, he told you that you're not his type.
She snorted at that. It certainly felt like I was his type in the dream.
"Get a grip, get a grip," she said. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember that a dream was just that, a dream. This was real life. Real life, with its essays for class and its paying rent and all those other mundane things. In real life, she didn't live with Aiden Manning in an amazing condo with a view of the park, and he didn't step out of the shower in the morning to take her back to bed. No matter how much she wanted it.
That startled her. Do I want it? Is that what I want? she thought. It still hurt to think about him telling her she wasn't his type, and that he wasn't actually interested in her in that way at all. It was all just wasted feeling, thinking there was something actually between them. Best just to leave it as the business relationship they both knew it to be.
And that thought brought her to look at her desk. The contract was there, just waiting for her to actually read it and find out just how much longer Aiden expected her to keep the act up.
Chapter 11
Gwen forced herself up out of bed and into the shower, and from there into some clean clothes. The hamper in one corner of her room was getting pretty full. She needed to get down to the coin laundry soon. Yet another aspect of real life she didn't feel particularly fond about.
A steaming cup of instant coffee in one hand, she sat down at her desk. From one drawer she pulled out the contract. It was thicker than she remembered it being, and a tickle of trepidation started in her stomach as she wondered just what she'd put her signature to.
She wanted to be mad at Beatrice. But that would be too easy, blaming her friend for making her sign so hastily. No one had forced her to sign it. She had done it of her own free will, and lied about the contents to her best friend as well. That ate at her.
From another drawer, she pulled out a glasses case, flipped it open, and put her glasses on. She didn't use them very often, but her eyes still felt a little blurry from sleep and they would help her puzzle out what was doubtlessly page after page of small-print and legalese.