Page 72 of Ex Somnis

I look up from my hands to her face.

The room is full of darkness now, the fog pressing in from every angle, and I can feel my yellow flowers pushing through the walls because, apparently, my dreamscape wants to be here with her.

Her face is all I can see clearly. She’s looking at me with those blue eyes that I could pick out of every other pair of eyes in any room, in any dreamscape, in any dimension, and there are tears on her face, and she’s here.

She’s here.

And then the darkness swallows us both.

Get her out.

That’s the whole plan, the only plan, the thing I promised myself the second I find her.

“Ridge,” she pleads again, a hint of fear in her voice.

I’ve had her back for forty seconds, and I’m already completely useless.

I pull her into my chest and feel her breathing against me, her heartbeat going too fast to match mine, her hands fisting my shirt like she’s checking if I’m real too. I close my eyes and hold on, and for one second that’s the only thing I do. Hold her, feel her, let the fact of her sink all the way down before I let myself want anything else.

But one deep breath of her lemon scent, and I break.

I grab the back of her head.

She makes a small, startled sound when I kiss her, a sound that does something irreversible to whatever was left of my composure, and then her hand is fisting in my shirt, pulling me down to her. My hands find her face, her jaw, and I tilt her head back and nip her bottom lip because she’s there. She’s real, and I’ve been patient for her.

I’m done being patient.

She hisses at the sting in her lip.

“Don’t you dare do that to me again,” I say against her mouth. “Do you hear me?”

She pulls back enough to speak, her breath fast, and her hand still in my shirt. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I won’t.”

I pull the darkness back and kiss her harder.

The flowers are everywhere now, coming through the floors, walls, and ceiling, yellow blooms pressing in from every angle while the dark retreats. The dreamscape smells like her and sour lemon, like the planet I built when I was a different person, and I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it except the hand in my shirt and the fact that she’s here.

She came back to me.

I pull back and look at her. Flushed, plump lips swollen already, eyes glassy and fixed on me. I want to keep going so badly it’s a physical ache low in my spine. But I hold there instead, just looking, letting her want me for one more second before I give her everything.

“Ridge?” Her voice cracks on my name, and her asking is the last straw.

I grab her thighs and lift her before she can argue about it.

She makes a sound against my mouth, half protest and not quite, while I carry her the three steps to the bed, where I set her down on the edge and drop to my knees in front of it. I kiss her again, hard and fast, and she gasps into my mouth while her hands come up into my hair.

Somewhere underneath the want there’s a smaller, colder voice reminding me that every second I spend on my knees in front of her is a second I’m not spending getting her out of here.

I tell it to wait its turn.

My heart is hammering against my ribs like it’s trying to get to her first, but my hands are already moving over her shoulders and arms, the soft warmth of her waist, down her back, learning her in rapid, thorough strokes that are partly checking for damage and the fact that I’ve been starved. The two things are the same right now.

Both hands find the cardigan, and for one second, the cold voice gets loud enough to hear.

This isn’t the plan.

Get her out first.