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“Well . . .” he began, slowly. “. . . I know I’m asleep.”

She nodded, yet again. And then, as though that’d decided the matter for her, she climbed up onto his lap, too quick for him to do much more than rock back in surprise—the weight of her plopped astride, pressing hard down on him. One small breast seemed almost to lunge itself into his hand, nipple scarring the palm, as she traced a thumb ’round the shape of his lips like she was measuring his mouth for size, or trying to sell herself on what might be the best thing to do next.

“No need to be over-formal, in a dream,” she said, carefully.

Through a suddenly dry mouth: “Guess not.”

Though he couldn’t’ve told what she tasted of, he somehow knew it was the exact same way he’d always hoped she would. As they kissed with lips and teeth, messily, Morrow thrust his other hand up under her skirts, only to meet with no real resistance; everything just peeled away to his touch, skinned itself the way a flower drops its petals. There was a fine dusting of hairs all up and down the insides of her thighs, dusky-silky, to match the thatch on her innermost parts; when he slipped two fingers inside, a smell emerged both fresh and salt. He groaned at the feel, out loud, and loudly: so long, so damn long. . . .

With a last sticky nip, Yancey sat back, both breasts unlaced and blushing prettily. Said, breathless, “I’m unsullied yet, Mister Morrow, if you’d wondered. Uther and I never got so far; he was old-fashioned in some ways, which I found charming. Still, I’d take it as a great kindness were you to relieve me of that particular burden, if only in metaphor, before waking.”

Morrow blinked, stupid. “Oh. Yes?”

“Yes.” She sat forward, solemn: “Ruin me, Ed.”

“I’ll . . . do my very best.”

A twist, a tumble, and the bench fell away, the garden itself dissolving around them—sand turned to silk, sheets on a phantom bed slipping down ’round both their hips. And they were naked, too—conveniently so, scrabbling and grabbing at each other, with him pressing forward, she straining to widen herself around him. He was simultaneously surprised and not by her apparent understanding of the act, for wasn’t this what dreams were for? To play out in full whatever actions the day’s demands had denied them, truncated by duty’s call or time’s restraints?

One leg wrapped ’round his, calf to calf, while the other arched up and back, so she could hook it ’round his hip; he sunk deep, drawing a double gasp. “Oh God,” she said, through her teeth, as the movement lit them both

up from inside out. “God, sweet Christ, good God Jesus—”

(good God almighty, go on and hit that)

What?

(You heard me, Edward.)

Hands in his hair, digging. Her breath in his ear, a bite grazing the lobe. While the whole of her clamped down on him, back locked in spasm, wet and hot and glorious as spilled blood.

“Harder,” she told him, voice rising and sinking both, a fucked cat’s mean-ass squall. “Harder, harder, Jesus God, who’s the Goddamn faggot here, ’tween the both of us? Stick it in, twist it like you mean it, motherfucker, do me ’til it damn well hurts—I said hard, you dumb ox, HARD!”

“Gah! What the shit-fuck son-of-a-gun—”

Morrow went leaping back, pecker out and near to spitting, from Chess’s violent embrace. Chess bolted upright too, mussed from the bottom up with his customarily immaculate hair sweat-stuck every which way, face red as his wilting prick. To spit out, mouth caught in a betrayed half-snarl: “Were you screwin’ that damn girl in your dreams?”

Morrow clutched at himself, instinctually modest, though it wasn’t like the two of ’em hadn’t seen everything the other had on offer. “What’s it to you, if I was? You even think t’ask me, ’fore you started using me for entertainment?”

“I didn’t think I had to!”

“Then we both know somethin’ new, now, don’t we?”

For all he knew, Chess’d been dreaming too, and couldn’t really help it. But still, Morrow found, he’d genuinely believed they were past all that—how he wasn’t simply some muscle-bound toy for Chess to amuse himself with, some handy object to rub against, but . . . a pal, Goddamnit. The way he most-times felt Chess was to him, these days.

Poised to spit out his ire, Chess abruptly seemed to think better, and let himself settle. Allowing, finally: “S’pose I might’a surprised you.”

“Oh, just a tad.”

“Though it ain’t like you seemed exactly reluctant, at the time.”

Morrow made his voice gentler. “Dreaming, Chess. Just the way you said.”

Those green eyes flared. “Dreaming of her, is what I said.”

“I think she somewhat started it, comes to that. But—yes.”

“That’s right. ’Cause, I mean . . . you don’t even want to be here, with me. Do ya? Not really. Not anymore.”