He snorted. “Oh, that’s damn convenient.” He turned away from her. She could see he wanted to let loose with a few obscenities. His lips were definitely mouthing the words.
Then he grew very still and frowned, though staring at nothing. “I remember that we talked and you asked me something. You asked me if I would finally give my permission, but I refused.” He turned back to her. “Permission for what? Does this have to do with drugs?”
“No. Oh, God no.” She waved a hand in the air. “No drugs, I promise you.”
“Juliet … ” His deep voice carried the exact tone he used in the dreamglide, affectionate and almost weightless. “Talk to me.”
She rose slowly to her feet as another compressed sigh forced its way from her body. “I can’t, Brann. You have to trust me in this.”
“Can you at least tell me how long this has been going on?”
“You told me not to tell you anything,” she said.
“As much as I can’t imagine how some dreamlike part of me would insist on your silence, I’m giving my permission now, here, in real-time. So, how long have you been sexing me up in the dreamglide?”
It took her a moment to make the decision, but she finally decided she couldn’t hold back. “Five months.”
“Holy shit.” He shook his head back and forth very slowly. His lips worked again, only this time she didn’t think he was uttering obscenities. Maybe he was trying to frame the right words for what was going through his head right now.
He frowned even harder. “You want to know what I saw earlier? What came to me?”
She put her hands to her throat and smoothed her fingers down the length. She was trying to ease the knot that now felt like a noose. Given that every dreamglide she’d ever had with Brannick either began or ended with sex, she found it hard to breathe.
The Brannick in the dreamglide was all in, one-hundred-percent. He was an exceptional lover and an engaging companion. If Juliet had to guess, they’d probably spent as much time in conversation as they had tangled up in each other’s arms.
But there was only one answer to give him in this situation. “Yes, I want to know. Please tell me what you saw.”
He moved to stand just a couple of feet from her. “We made love, in my bed, and you said the color of my red comforter was called Alabama Crimson. Dreams usually don’t have such specific details, do they?”
“Sometimes they do.” And just like that, she was right back there, with him. They often made love in his bed, some
times in hers, sometimes they ended up in all sorts of places. The dreamglide could be amazing.
But this time, yes, she’d been in his bed.
He searched her eyes as though trying to understand. She knew he was thinking the whole thing over.
He moved closer still and took her arms in his hands. “It’s as though I’m two people right now, Juliet. One of them knows you extremely well, the other is a stranger.”
He leaned close and ran his nose over her temple, drawing in his breath at the same time. “You feel so familiar to me, yet not, and you smell like strawberries.”
“It’s my shampoo. And Brann?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
He drew back and met her gaze. “Well, I’m angry.”
How many times had she stared into his haunted, green eyes? A hundred? A thousand?
She knew he was struggling with the nature of the situation. She also knew that this could be the last time she’d ever be close to him in real-time. For one thing, he could easily drop her from his operation and she’d never see him again.
So, she slid a hand around the nape of his neck and mirrored what he’d done to her. She swept her nose over his cheek. She smelled soap and the citrus fragrance of an aftershave, only everything was more vivid because it was real-time.
She also caught the scent of him, the sweat on his skin, his vampire masculinity. All was new, yet familiar at the same time. The dreamglide could communicate part of the sensory experience, but not all of it.
She pressed herself up against Brann and slowly met his lips with hers. When he didn’t pull away, she kissed him harder.