Heart In A Cage

44

Isabella

My dream was better than stars and fireworks.

I wasn't soaring through clouds with a fierce breeze blowing over my face, wandering through a meadow of daisies with a chiffon dress billowing under a broad blue sky, or even bathing in a beach flecked with rays of golden light shooting from a spring sun.

No—I'd been centred in a sunless bedroom of black drapes and dark wood flooring, stripped of clothing, bound to a bed by nothing but invisible restraints, glued to the surface of navy covers scented of cologne.

The dream was so illusory that I hadn't heard any creak of timber or squeak of the bed when a huge muscular body appeared over me, illustrations of roses and vines and leaves spread over it and shadowed by the gloominess of the room.

A man.

He had dominated me; he had conquered the planes of my body, made my blood glow with those flicks of his tongue between my legs, over my breasts. He'd taken himself in me, but I felt every touch like I was being handled with more than one set of hands. My chin had been lifted, breast clutched, waist gripped, head massaged—all of it serving me at once.

And those hands travelling from my head to toes weren't foreign. They were familiar. Common and welcomed. His.

I let it all replay as I'm plucked into reality by a dreamt orgasm. Flashes of my handling slicken me as I twist in the covers, moaning to the sensations echoing through me. I get those aftershocks, and my thighs press together, the products of the slept-through fantasy still zapping my core.

Tossing and turning—those are what I do. All I can do until the memories, both physical and mental, settle down.

But before they can, I land into a chest.

Solid lava. Hot against my flushed cheeks.

Andreas.

A hand comes over my cheek, and I let him fondle me as I recover and breathe evenly again. He'd been watching. He saw me twirl and moan as those blurry erotic scenes treated me in my sleep. I know it because through small slits, I see that his head is inclined, rested on several pillows.

And I know it because of the way he poises over my body to contemplate how he'll give it what it needs, his palms pinned on the mattress on either side of my shoulders.

My collectiveness is lost beneath him. I go to have at his naked torso, but my wrists are taken ahold of and guided back down. Shackles, which I hadn't noticed due to the ongoing stimulation of the dream and dim lighting, appear in his hold.

His mouth drops to my ear just as my wrists are restrained above my head. He whispers, with a voice so soft and promising, from a face etched with affection and rid of that expected roughness, "I'm gonna make you feel so good, baby."

The shackles click in place.

I'm being looked down at, untouched. His heavy exhales wash over my sweating face through hungrily parted lips that seem like they want to consume me. But to them, there's an odd gentleness, especially seen as he reaches down to me and takes my lips in his. So soft. So careful. His mouth presses against mine, yet there's no tongue slipping in and across my teeth. No biting or any of those rough slips between our skin.

It's just a peaceful merge of our lips, and within that span of time where I feel like we're combined as one, a new desire ignites in me—rather one I've been ignoring, one I've told myself can't be fulfilled in this...game of ours. But below my heated skin, masked with the scornful looks I give him when he does something to pester me, there's that hope I tried to crush so long ago sizzling in my blood. Hope thriving on something real.