No more exhaustion, no more pain.
Another step forward…
Cries. Wails. Her name. All of those sounds echoed from the hallway to her right, the path she’d just come down. Why couldn’t she remember what was at the end of that path?
“Celeste!” they yelled. “Please! No!”
She swallowed, backed away from the powerfully tempting radiance, and immediately her exhaustion returned. The light had grown to nearly the size of a door, but now it started shrinking away, like golden water down a drain.
Celeste fell to the floor. She knew those voices wanted her to go to them, but she didn’t want to. And now that the light had disappeared again, she wasn’t tempted to go in that direction either. She turned to her left, saw the edge of the path that led to Dax and crawled toward it. “Please,” she whispered, then licked her parched lips. “Adeline, please, let me through.”
Nothing happened.
Sobs tore from her chest, echoed against the roof of the dismal room and then came back to haunt her. “Please,” she pleaded, her body collapsing against the cold floor. She was not going back down the other path until she saw him. She wouldn’t. “Let-me-in!”
“Oh, darling, what have I done? You’ve barely rested, chère.”
Celeste knew the owner of the voice. Adeline Vicknair had, once again, opened the pathway to Dax. Merely seeing the older woman, and knowing she had the power to send her back to Dax, gave Celeste a surge of much-needed strength.
She sat up, then pushed to her feet. “I’ve got to see him again, Adeline. I’ve got to get back to him.”
“Chère, you only left a few hours ago. If I let you back through, you won’t be able to stay any time at all. You’re simply too weak, child. You need to rest, and then, maybe, you can try again.”
“I’m going now, and you’re going to help me,” Celeste said, with conviction. “I won’t rest until I do.”
“But you see, dear, you have a choice to make. Either that way-” she pointed to the middle, where the light had been blazing merely seconds ago “-or that one.” Adeline indicated the path to the right, where the voices still called Celeste’s name. “Dax’s path can’t be your final destination. It isn’t an option, and every time you go to him, you risk losing the ability to choose. I know you want to see him, and I’m trying to help you.”
“Then do. Let me through, Adeline. Help me,” she whispered.
Adeline’s mouth flattened, then she closed her eyes as though deciding what to do.
“Please,” Celeste urged.
“On one condition.”
“Anything.”
The older woman stepped back and pushed the door wide, then she lowered her voice to a hushed whisper. “Promise me, chère, that you won’t tempt fate. Promise me that you won’t push yourself until you’re too tired to fight the light’s pull. If that happens, you will lose your ability to choose.”
“I promise,” Celeste said, though she wasn’t completely certain she could keep that vow. How would she know when she’d stayed too long? She was tired the last time she was taken from him, but she didn’t enter the light. Surely she could keep it from happening again. She simply had to resist, be strong-strong for Dax. He was definitely worth the fight.
Besides, she wasn’t concerned with having choices right now; in her mind there was only one choice to make, and she was making it.
FOR DAX sleep was both an enemy and a friend. An enemy, because it took time away from his quest to get Celeste back, but a friend, because every time he closed his eyes, he found her in his dreams. And although he knew that that was what was happening now, that the dream had taken over, he didn’t care. Instead, he focused on making it as real as possible, so much that he could almost-almost-feel her presence nearby the bed. But ultimately he couldn’t deny that this was a dream; in reality, he’d never seen Celeste nude. But he saw her that way now.
Dax had known she would be beautiful beneath the white gown, but beautiful was too weak a word for what he was envisioning now.
She was exquisite.
Long, golden curls tumbled freely past her shoulders, teasing the tips of her breasts. She stood before him, her skin satin smooth and glowing faintly, as he took his time appreciating her beauty, imprinting her image on his thoughts to hold on to for eternity.
He never wanted to forget this moment. He never wanted to forget her. “Move your hair,” he said. “Please, I want to see you, Celeste, all of you.”
With a soft, seductive smile, she pushed her long curls behind her shoulders, and his jaw clenched tight. Her breasts were fuller than he’d anticipated, high and taut and beautifully exposed, the tips hard points that he longed to lick, taste, suck. Her waist was slim and gently flared outward to curved hips and well-toned legs. Between those legs, soft, blond curls covered her most tender flesh, and Dax grew painfully hard merely looking at her and imagining touching her there, kissing her there, coming inside of her there.
“I need you, Celeste.” His words were rough, strained and commanding. “I’ve waited for this for too long, and I don’t want to wait any longer.” He watched her step closer to his bed. “How long do we have?”
Her touch on his wrist caught him by surprise. He hadn’t realized she was that close, and he hadn’t seen her reach for him, but she was definitely touching him now, the searing sensation that he’d experienced earlier, the first time she’d touched him, heating his body like a brushfire, causing him to groan in near pain, in near ecstasy.
He tried to reach for her, but his arm didn’t move. “Celeste?” His brain told him this wasn’t really happening; it couldn’t be. She was still gone, still somewhere in the middle, in a place he couldn’t go, but this dream seemed so real that he didn’t want it to end, not before he had her, if only in his mind.
He refused to open his eyes, refused to let reality in, but still her image was fading. Something was taking the vision away, and he suspected he knew what that something was, or rather who. Hell, he didn’t like following their rules, but he did, every time. And now that he needed something, needed Celeste, the powers that be weren’t even willing to give him a damn fantasy?
No! Dammit, don’t take this too!
Her searing touch moved to his other wrist, and he felt his arm being pulled above his head. Heat, once again, spread over him, and he could feel sweat beading from his pores. More than mere warmth, the lust, the pent-up desire, sizzled throughout his flesh, and Dax could no longer keep from verifying what he now suspected.
This wasn’t a dream.
He opened his eyes and saw the woman currently binding his wrist to the bedpost, long spirals of hair cascading around her shoulders the same way that they had in his dream. She wasn’t nude anymore, proof enough that he wasn’t dreaming. Instead, she wore the long, white gown, and her face was intent on what she was doing, securing him to the bed. His arms were stretched in a V and fastened to each of the bedposts. She was here, with him, and she’d tied his hands in preparation for…everything. “I’m not dreaming.”
“No, you aren’t,” she said, knotting one of his silk neckties around his wrist as she spoke. She finished, then turned toward him. “You were dreaming of me,” she said with a smile, and her silver-gray eyes glittered as she spoke.
“I’ve dreamed of you every night for the past two months,” he said. “But this time, it was so real, even before you touched me.”
“Dax, I-I know I won’t have long this time. I was supposed to rest before I came, but I couldn’t stay away. I needed more.”
He knew exactly what she meant. “I know. I need more too. I need you, Celeste.”
She swallowed. “I want to touch you again, and to kiss you again, but-”