The Dream
She awoke at midnight again, the way she had for the past three nights, the sheets twisted tightly into an umbilical cord binding her to the sweaty womb of her bed.
She disentangled herself from the tangled topsheet and laid back, closing her eyes. Immediately the dream from which she had awakened flashed into her consciousness: the utter darkness and the sudden, dim, slanting light; the stranger, the man she had seen and followed; the small anonymous room; the smell, the feel of him; the awful, all-consuming hunger.
She opened her eyes quickly, sat up and turned on the nightstand light to dispel the vision. No sense trying for sleep now, she thought. Why the dream had come, why it affected her, consumed her like this, she did not know; but for now it would not leave her.
She lit a cigarette, hoping to concentrate on that and occupy her mind, dispel the terrible demon that was the dream with the mundane, the ordinary. She sat back against the headboard, and without thinking closed her eyes tiredly.
Instantly the dream filled her vision again. A dark restaurant, club, bar, a place she had never been; a man she did not know — no, did not *want* to know; the small room, featureless apart from a bed against one wall, without blankets or frame or headboard; the feel of him against her, on top of her; feeling him between her legs, parting them, dividing her (divide and conquer, a part of her mind thought, unbidden), opening her….
She started suddenly, looking down. As of its own volition, her hand was caressing her bare thigh, grasping it, pulling her leg away from its mate…opening her….
She stubbed out the cigarette and jumped to her feet, her heart racing, pounding. This is ridiculous, she thought, pacing the floor. It’s a dream. *Only* a dream. I’m in control; it only affects me as much as I want it to.
Instantly upon thinking the phrase she stopped her pacing. The truth penetrated her mind: she *did* want it to affect her, to consume her. She wanted a reality to match the dream.
NO! she shouted inside herself, sitting on the bed and massaging her temples. All right, she admitted, your sex life hasn’t been that good lately: a series of nice guys, really sweet and kind and considerate and gentle, maybe lacking a certain fire, but good. So now, just for kicks, you’re going to go to bed with someone you know nothing about? Going to risk rape, abuse, VD? My God, risk AIDS? Is that what all of your rhetoric about male chauvinism, about the myth of machismo and how sex is sharing, is cooperation, comes to?
She tried to follow the old arguments playing now in her head, to hold back the dark tide of her dream with a teaspoon of reality, but it was no use. There was a kind of fire in her now, a heavy feeling, an electricity that began just behind her navel and traveled down her thighs, moving up again to nestle between her legs, to smolder in her womb. It spread upwards as well, moving along her skin and setting it ablaze, turning her nipples into pointed rosettes and moving toward her center, until finally it touched the pit of her heart.
She stood, and moved toward the closet to dress. She told herself that she had no choice, that the dream was in control of her. It was easier than admitting that she wanted what the dream had to offer.
The bar had no name, other than BAR. She stood in front of its gaudy red neon and its signs proclaiming COORS and MILLER On Tap. The sole window was heavily curtained, and the door was a solid wood portal, keeping the world out and its patrons in.
She had asked the taxi to stop here after passing by countless other places, establishments more well-known and better furnished than this. Trendy singles bars, dance clubs, places with live music or canned music or no music at all; a club downtown catering to orange-spike-haired aficionados of loud music and full-contact dancing; a bar full of ferns and imported beer and men and women in expensive sweaters and designer jeans, each with an edge of desperation in his or her eyes; a club with a long admittance line, and a muscular, well-groomed man at the door eyeing each potential entrant, judging their worthiness to enter.
She had almost stopped here, not doubting that she could have gotten in, no questions asked. After some thought as to what to wear, she had settles on a black jersey dress, its light knit fabric clinging oh-so-gently to her body, briefly hugging her hips before flowing freely around her legs, gracefully accenting her shoulders and arms. The open neckline sometimes slid down a little over one shoulder; she had discovered that the effect was intensified if she pretended not to notice, and if she went braless, as she was now. She had also worn black open-toed shoes, the heels bringing out the shape of her calf, and a purse of matching black fabric. The look was designed to convey innocence masking a secret knowledge.
Now, though, she felt the innocence winning out, becoming uncertainty. She had been vaguely dissatisfied with each bar and club, running an exorbitant fare crisscrossing the downtown area looking for a place that felt right. On one traverse of the city, the driver had taken a shortcut along a little-used street; and she had spotted the bar, quickly telling the driver to pull over, paying the fare absent-mindedly, not noticing the driver pull away. *Something* about this place had caught her eye.
This is insane, she thought, not for the first time since leaving her apartment. It’s nearly one A.M. and you’re standing in front of a bar in God knows what part of town, wearing an outfit that might as well have a sign on it saying Rape Me, and you don’t even know *why*, do you? She closed her eyes to think.
As if it had been waiting, growing inside her mind, the dream came to her, full-force. She felt again the weight of the stranger on her, felt his hands — not gentle, but not painful, as though touch was his only sense — and hers as well, touching him in like manner, kneading him, grasping him, holding his hips and pulling forward —
Her eyes snapped open, she gasped slightly. Where this dream had come from, and where its power came from, she did not know. She knew only that she had to follow, to find out if this tantalizing vision could possibly be real.
She stepped forward and, her heart pounding, pulled open the heavy door.
Her first impression was one of silence, and darkness. Even deserted as it was, the street behind her carried its own noise, its own rhythms; and the few streetlights and lit windows along the avenue did cast some light. Inside, though, the bar was much more dimly lit, catering perhaps to those who do not wish to be seen, and who prefer the sound of their own thoughts.
The change in lighting, however, threw her off for a moment. She found herself momentarily blind and deaf, so that for a moment her only sensation was the rough feel of the door jamb to which she clung with one hand, and the smooth fabric of her purse in the other, and the wooden floor beneath her feet; and the spasm she felt suddenly, the jump in the indescribable hunger in her. I’m very close, she thought.
As her eyes adjusted, she found, disconcertingly, that the few patrons of the bar, whom she had been unable to see, had been staring at her. There was a man in working clothes, who turned back to his drink uninterestedly; another man, who had not seen her and was too involved in his own alcoholic world to notice or care; and a third man, near the back.
It was this third man who captured her attention. He had jet black hair, slightly wavy, glossy but not enough to have been styled; just long enough not to be stylish, to be different. He stood casually, relaxed, the way a cat looks relaxed just before it pounces. Leather blazer, black or navy pants, it was too dark to tell. Shoulders — shoulders from ancient Greece or Rome, from a statue, the shoulders of an athlete or a swimmer, not the weekend-health-club type she was used to. Hands with slightly hairy knuckles and long fingers that held his glass, moving as though caressing it, as though they could not keep still.
She turned away, suddenly aware that she had been staring at him and trying to forget he had been staring back. She felt a hot flush rise in her cheeks as she found a stool at the bar. The bartender came and gave her a bored, questioning look; she asked for vodka. Nothing fancy, she told herself. One stiff drink, maybe that will clear this up. Inwardly, she doubted it.
The drink arrived; she half-emptied it in one gulp. The fluid ran burning down her throat, and she closed her eyes briefly.
Again the vision came to life, this time ten times more vivid: her hands on him, pulling him urgently onto her, into her; the white-hot feeling as he opened her, thrusting to her core in one swift stroke —
Her eyes snapped open, and the vision faded, mercifully. It was so much more intense now, so vivid. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, aware suddenly that she had made herself wet. The hunger was growing now, the feeling between her legs and in the pit of her stomach almost unbearable.
Almost against her will, she turned her head toward where the man had been sitting, and realized with a start that he was gone. She stood stunned for a moment, then looked around the bar, and gasped. He was standing right beside her.
“Hello,” he said. Baritone, slightly scratchy; smoker’s voice. There was a slight tobacco odor to him, blending with the scent of a cologne she couldn’t place and an indescribable smell she could place all too well. She still didn’t know where the dream had come from, but she knew now that its power had affected him too.
Wordlessly he reached out and touched her hand, which was gripping the railing of the bar tightly. His touch was hot, electric; her hand relaxed instinctively, and a small whimper escaped her lips. She found herself staring helplessly into his eyes, his blue-grey eyes that smiled slightly, just as his full lips did now. His index finger traced along the back of her hand, leaving an itch behind it, a burning itch that kindled a fire in her limbs. She had felt weak-kneed passion before, the kind every schoolgirl feels, but this was different, opposite. She felt energized by it, restless. Her knees weren’t weak; on the contrary, it was difficult to keep them still and straight.
She moved her hand so that it was palm-up now, and caressed his palm with her nails. His eyes clouded ever so slightly, still fixed on hers as hers were fixed on his, and she knew that the dream, the terrible vision was not hers alone. She slid off the barstool and stood, her hand still moving against his, no longer caressing or tickling but rubbing now, gently, palm-to-palm.
God, this is insane, she thought. Please let it stop — no, not stop — just end; please let me find a way to feed this hunger….
He took a step backwards, and she moved likewise. He turned then, and walked toward the back of the bar, toward an unmarked, unremarkable door. The eye contact broken, she stopped, feeling like a marionette suddenly hung on a hook, without guidance. Again she felt the uncertainty, the fear — the words Rape, Abuse, Kidnap flashing through her brain — and then the hunger flexed again, sending a pulse through her, strong, almost animal. Without thinking she moved forward, feeling as though she were floating rather than walking, catching up to him as he held the door open for her. She entered into another darkness.
The room was almost exactly as she had seen it in the vision: plain, featureless, only a bed without blankets or topsheet for furniture, the head against one wall, sitting on the floor without a frame. Who has a bed in a bar? she thought. This is ludicrous. The difference between the room in the dream and this room was that the dream-room had had that sourceless illumination only a dream can have, while this room was dimly lit by light leaking through the door jamb at the top. Her eyes adjusted quickly, after the dimness of the bar.
She turned, and saw him shedding his jacket, not quite smoothly, as though he too didn’t quite know what to do next. The dim light streaked across his face, casting deep shadows, accentuating his cheekbones and his lips. Half-illuminated, he looked incomplete, a mere shell, as though the surface of him — his skin, his lips, his hands — was all she knew of, all she wanted.
She felt adrift now, moved by forces she could not see or control; and those forces moved her to him now, moved her hands to his head, to his cheeks. She stroked his skin, held him, bent her head back as she pulled him to her lips; felt him move willingly, without protest; and then felt the excruciating touch of his lips on hers.
The kiss was energizing, electrifying, burning; she felt her lips part to receive his, the press of his flesh, just the barest hint of tongue; and suddenly the smoldering in her mind and between her legs burst into flame, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to drink him in, to consume him. His hands slid up her back, and their tongues wrestled; small moans escaped from both of them. She felt her hips undulating, and couldn’t stop — didn’t want to stop, she realized. This was the dream made reality, the spirit made flesh: this man to whom she had not said one word, possessing her and she him, in an anonymous room, for no reason other than sensation and pleasure.
He pulled back suddenly, breaking the kiss, and looked at her. All trace of a smile was gone now from his face, replaced now by a look of hunger, unmasked now, unconcealed. He put his hands on her shoulders, gripped the neckline of her dress, grasped, pulled suddenly apart. The fabric ripped violently, and she recoiled with a gasp. Her breasts bounced, steadied, their hard nipples proclaiming her arousal. She stepped backward toward the bed, and he followed. The backs of her knees touched the mattress. She reached out for him, and clutching a lapel in each hand, fell back onto the bed, pulling him onto her.
Their lips met again, hungrily, their tongues seeking each other. She pushed him away suddenly, still holding his shirt, and pulled with all her strength. Buttons popped and flew, and she grasped his shirt lower and finished the task, ripping the cloth off him. His chest stood bare now, almost hairless, the muscles well-defined in a way that suggested, not workouts, but honest use. Briefly she wondered who he was, what he did — but only briefly; she didn’t know and didn’t want to; this body, and the force driving it, were all she wanted now.
She ran her hands over his chest as he ripped the remainder of the fabric off her body. She had debated going out without panties, and had decided against it; now she regretted the decision. She wanted to be naked now, to be exposed before this man, and for him to be exposed to her. She acted on the second desire, unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants quickly, fumblingly. She felt his legs move, and heard his shoes drop to the floor as he slipped them off, first one, then the other. She finished with his pants, and he hurriedly slid them off onto the floor, along with his briefs. He was totally naked now, exposed, as she had wanted; and he was indeed like a statue, like a Greek god, the muscles in his legs as developed as those in his chest, hips not too narrow, ample enough for a good grip (a dream-image flashed through her, of her hands on those hips, pulling him into her), his cock hard, throbbing now with need.
She put her hands to the waist of her panties to slide them off, and then, on impulse, pulled instead, ripping them. His hands joined hers, ripping the remainder of the fabric; she lay now exposed, the scent of her wafting into his nostrils and his brain and his mind, as he closed his eyes, the fire no doubt building in him as it was in her.
She began to slide her shoes off with her toes, but he was on her suddenly, his lips against hers, then on her neck, as his hips thrust at her and his cock pushed against her belly, then slid down, seeking the heat between her legs. She opened her legs, pulling her thighs open with her hands as she had done in the dream, as he moved farther down, nestling father into her; and then he slid forward again, and she bucked her hips in response, as he entered her, penetrating her to her very core in one stroke.
She cried out then, the first truly audible sound she’d made since entering the bar, but her cry was quickly muffled by his lips. They fought again with their tongues, she trying again to drink him in, at the same time thrusting her hips to meet his as she tried to posers him this way also. She bit his neck, pulled at his hair, ran her nails over his skin; she flicked at his nipples, as hard as hers now, eliciting a cry from him; he pulled at her breasts, nibbling, nipping, pinching her nipples; and all the while they moved, bucked, slammed against each other.
His cock speared her again and again, hard and fast, reaching some center deep within her that knew nothing but white, clear pleasure. Her pussy closed around him, hugged him, clasping him in a grip which knew no surcease, which would never let him free, not while this intense pleasure could continue. Her legs spread wide for him, letting him deeper; her feet, still encased in the shoes, caressed his calves and the backs of his knees.
Suddenly the center deep within her exploded, a white-hot burst that stole her breath and her senses, left her falling endlessly in a world of pleasure. Dimly she was aware of his motions, and of hers, but she sensed nothing directly, nothing but the fire which burned her mind to ashes, left her with nothing but desire, nothing but lust.
She found her breath, and screamed, as the explosion repeated itself, her pussy throbbing, squeezing the cock within it now, as she reveled in the sensation. She felt him move faster now, working toward his own release, and she moved to help, feeling the fire inside her building once again. She flicked at his nipples, bit his neck, rocked her hips in time with his motions, felt herself throb inside as she tried to coax his pleasure out of him.
He stiffened, and she thrust her hips toward him, impaling herself deeply; and she felt the first wild, liquid burst, his entire body shuddering with the release of it. He arched his back, and she moved to follow, as he spasmed again and again, his release fueling her passion, bringing her closer to her own immolation once again.
Suddenly she felt him relax, though his cock was still hard inside her. Her own climax was only moments away, but he had stopped; he was not moving. Desperately, almost angrily, she brought her legs up, and, still wearing the shoes, dug her spike heels into his thighs, spurring him.
He gasped, and fell forward, and into her again. She flexed her legs even more, bringing her knees even with her breasts, and prodded him again, this time in his rear, at the top of his thighs.
She brought her hands down to his buttocks, pulling him into her desperately, raking her nails across his skin. She needed him — no, she thought, not him. She needed cock — pure, sweet, and simple, nothing and no one attached, just this, yes, just pure unadulterated pleasure, just a cock to fill her, to touch her so deeply, where she couldn’t touch herself, to fill her and ram into her, to stroke her, spread her, open her. Nothing but cock — no name, no face, nothing else, just this.
She was building toward her own private explosion again — as was he, impossibly, as she felt him shudder and stiffen again, his cock going very hard and meeting her center again. She summoned all her strength then, and stopped, holding him still, prolonging the moment, her mouth open in a silent scream; stretching the pleasure until it became unbearable, agonizing, until her entire body was straining for release, and she thought Yes, yes, just a little longer, just a moment, stretch it until it’s more than I can take, until I want to die from it, want it to possess me and take me, to burn me, to consume me, yes, yes — She arched her back, meeting his hips one last time, impaling herself impossibly deeply, her scream matching his, feeling herself throbbing, not merely between her legs but from head to toe, her arms and legs locking around him, holding him tight, as she felt him spend himself inside her, writhing against her, unable and unwilling to escape her passion, his hands balling into fists behind her back, striking the mattress, his thighs and arms clenching, relaxing, clenching, and relaxing again, as he laid down on her and she released her grip on him, caressing him, soothing him as he did her.
The fire was gone now, and a kind of sad peace crept into her mind and heart. She lay with her head to one side, hearing his breathing subside as he caught his breath. And suddenly, unbidden, a thought went through her head as she felt herself dozing off in this stranger’s arms:
To sleep…perchance to dream….
–the end–
by thomas frost
