Chapter 2: Waking Nightmare, Wet Dream
Chris’s eyes flew open. A choked gasp tore from his throat, raw and disbelieving. The fading echo of a dream—cold alley brick, the scent of jasmine—shattered against a visceral, present reality.
She was on top of him. Moving.
His body was already achingly hard, buried inside a heat so profound it felt less like flesh and more like falling into a sun. Her cunt gripped him, a slick, rhythmic pulse that drew a ragged moan from his chest before his mind could catch up. The thin sheet was tangled at his waist. His own bedroom walls, pale in the sickly glow of the streetlight outside, seemed to lean in, witnesses.
Dee’s silhouette rocked above him, a slow, tortuous roll of her hips. Her head was tilted back, a cascade of dark hair brushing the small of her back. The neon sign from the laundromat across the street flashed red, then blue, painting her skin in alternating strokes: a crimson shoulder, a cobalt curve of breast, the sharp cut of her smirk as she looked down and saw the awareness flood his terror-wide eyes.
“There he is,” she purred. Her voice was sleep-roughened, intimate. She didn’t stop moving. “Morning, Chris.”
He tried to speak. His mouth was desert-dry. He could only feel—the unbearable tightness of her, the scrape of her nails now dragging lightly up his bare chest, the dizzying scent of her perfume mingling with the smell of his own stale room, of sex. His hands flew to her hips, whether to push her away or pull her deeper, he didn’t know. They spasmed, indecisive, against the impossible silk of her skin.
“How…” he finally managed, the word a broken thing.
“You begged me to stay,” she said, as if explaining something simple to a child. She leaned forward, her breasts swaying inches from his face. The blue-red light glided over them. “You were shivering in that alley. So pathetic. I took pity.” She lowered her mouth to his ear. “You really shouldn’t sleep with your window unlocked.”
A fresh wave of sensation rolled through him, triggered by her voice, her closeness. His hips bucked upward involuntarily, seeking more of that devastating friction. He hated himself for it. A strangled sound, half-sob, half-ecstasy, escaped his lips.
“See?” she whispered. “Your body remembers. It’s smarter than you are.”
Terror finally crested through the pleasure. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be real. A break-in. A hallucination. He was still dreaming, trapped in some fevered loop from the alley. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to wake up.
The feeling intensified. The slow, grinding circle of her hips became a sharper, deeper stroke. His eyes snapped open.
“Look at me,” she commanded, her voice still soft, still light.
He did. Her eyes were bottomless in the half-light, fixed on his. The pleasure built, a terrifying pressure in his core, coiling tighter with each of her movements. He was a puppet, his strings pulled by the rhythm she set. His briefs were around one ankle. His faded Star Wars poster watched from the wall, a relic of a simpler self that felt a million miles away.
“I can’t…” he gasped. “Stop…”
“You can’t stop?” she asked, feigning misunderstanding. She rose up, almost leaving him, then sank down again with a deliberate, slow force that made him cry out. “Or you don’t want to?”
It was both. It was all of it. The conflict tore at him. Shame burned his face even as his hands slid up to grip her waist, holding her to him. The animal part of him, the part she had uncaged and fed in the alley, was winning. It chanted more, more, more in time with his pounding heart.
She read it all on his face. Her smirk widened. She began to move faster, not with passion, but with a devastating, practiced efficiency. The bedsprings let out a rhythmic whine. Each stroke was a masterful theft, drawing the energy, the will, the very essence from his bones. He felt himself unwinding, a clockwork toy running down. The pleasure was a cliff edge, and she was pushing him toward it.
“Please,” he whimpered, the word devoid of meaning, a pure sound of need.
“Please what, Chris?” Her breath hitched, but her eyes remained cool, observant. A scientist at the climax of an experiment.
He was beyond words. His back arched, every muscle tensing. The world dissolved into a white-hot static, a silent detonation that left him boneless, gasping, staring blankly at the water stain on his ceiling. For a few seconds, there was nothing. No thought. No fear. Just empty, spent relief.
She held still atop him, letting the final shudders pass through him. Then, with a soft, satisfied sigh, she dismounted. The loss was physical, a sudden cold vulnerability.
Chris lay paralyzed, his breath coming in ragged pants. He heard the soft pad of her feet on the thin carpet. The flick of his desk lamp switch.
Yellow light flooded the room, harsh and real.
He turned his head. She stood by his cluttered desk, completely naked, utterly unselfconscious. She picked up a small, sleek figurine—a vintage robot he’d had since childhood—turned it over in her hands, and set it down. As if browsing a museum. Her skin was flawless in the lamplight, no trace of the alley’s damp, no mark of his desperate hands.
“You,” he croaked, finding his voice. It was raw. “What are you?”
She glanced at him, one eyebrow arched. “Tired,” she said simply. “I was hungry. Now I’m not.” She gestured loosely at him, a dismissive flick of her wrist. “You were a snack. Now you’re… leftovers.”
The casual cruelty of it hit him harder than any slap. He pulled the sheet over himself, a feeble shield. The euphoric fog was receding, leaving behind a cold, sick hollow. He felt used. Drained. Literally.
“Get out,” he whispered, the command lacking any force.
Dee laughed. It was a genuine, light sound. “Or what? You’ll call the police? Tell them a beautiful woman broke into your apartment, fucked you senseless, and now you’re cross about it?” She leaned against the desk, crossing her arms under her breasts. “They’d laugh you out of the precinct. You’d laugh at you.”
He knew she was right. The story was absurd. The evidence was just his own trembling body and the lingering scent of jasmine in the air. He pushed himself up on his elbows, a headache beginning to pound behind his eyes. “What do you want from me?”
“Want?” She seemed to consider it. “Nothing. I took what I wanted.” She pushed off the desk and began gathering her clothes—the little black dress from the alley, materializing from a shadowed corner. She stepped into it, the fabric slithering up her body. “But you…” She zipped the side slowly, her eyes on him. “You want something from me. Don’t you?”
He said nothing. The silence was an admission.
She finished dressing, then walked to the side of the bed. She looked down at him, a clinical interest in her gaze. He shriveled under it. From his jeans, discarded on the floor, she plucked his wallet. He didn’t protest. She flipped it open, examined his driver’s license, then slipped a single, plain black card from a hidden compartment in her own clutch. She tucked it behind his license.
“I’m not a monster, Chris,” she said, dropping the wallet onto his chest. “I don’t do relationships. I don’t do cuddling. But if the craving gets bad enough…” She leaned down, her lips close to his ear once more. He flinched, but his blood stirred treacherously at her proximity. “The craving will get bad,” she whispered, confirming his deepest fear. “My number’s on the card. Don’t call it unless you’re ready to be empty again.”
She straightened up, smoothed her hair, and walked to the bedroom door. She didn’t look back.
He heard the front door of his apartment open, then click shut.
The room was suddenly, unbearably quiet. The flickering lamp was too bright. The neon sign outside continued its silent, garish cycle: red, blue, red, blue.
Chris stared at the ceiling for a long time. Then, slowly, he picked up his wallet. His fingers shook as he pulled out the black card. No name. No title. Just ten etched digits that seemed to drink in the light.
He threw it across the room. It fluttered and landed face-down by the leg of his desk.
He lay back, dragging the sheet over his head, trying to block out the world. But beneath the hollow ache, beneath the shame, a new current was already threading its way through his veins. A faint, desperate buzz. A memory of heat.
The craving.
It had already begun.