Chapter 4: Stories and Seduction
The bus ride home was a slow-motion agony. Every muscle in Nate’s body protested, a symphony of aches from shoulders to calves. He’d spent twelve hours on his feet, hauling cable, fetching iced lattes with precise, absurd modifications, standing for forty-five minutes blocking a pedestrian walkway while a famously temperamental director framed a single shot of a ghostly hand touching a window. His shoes, cheap and unscuffed that morning, were now dusty and pinched. The temporary pass, which he’d clutched like a talisman on the way in, was tucked into his back pocket, damp with sweat. The exhilaration of the morning had been sanded down by the relentless, mundane grind of the job. He was a cog. An invisible, replaceable cog.
He pushed open the creaking gate of the bungalow as the sun bled orange into the lavender dusk. The smell of patchouli and stale popcorn greeted him like a familiar ghost. Inside, the living room was cast in the blue-gray glow of the silent television, static flickering across a forgotten channel. Charlie and Frankie were curled on opposite ends of the threadbare couch, a half-empty bottle of cheap tequila and a plate of lime wedges between them on the upturned crate they used as a coffee table. They were in matching gray yoga pants and sports bras, their hair piled up messily. They looked like a painting of indolent, beautiful exhaustion.
“The unicorn returns,” Charlie said, not looking away from the static. Her voice was slightly slurred, warm.
Frankie turned her head, her dark eyes scanning him from the doorway. “You look like you got run over by a golf cart.”
“It feels like a fleet of them,” Nate mumbled, dropping his backpack by the door with a thud. He toed off his ruined shoes.
“Details,” Charlie commanded, finally looking at him. She swung her legs to the floor and patted the cushion between them. “Sit. Liquid anesthesia first, then story time.”
Nate shuffled over and sank into the couch. The springs groaned. The worn fabric felt like heaven against his aching back. Frankie leaned forward, her breasts straining against the thin sports bra as she poured a generous shot of clear liquid into a reasonably clean glass. She pushed it toward him along with a lime wedge. The smell, sharp and alcoholic, cut through his fatigue.
“Drink,” Frankie said.
He didn’t hesitate. He tossed it back, the fire tearing a path down his throat and exploding in his stomach. He gasped, sucking on the lime to dull the burn. The warmth spread instantly, unknotting the tightest coil of tension between his shoulder blades.
“Okay,” Charlie said, scooting closer until her thigh pressed against his. “Start at the beginning. Five a.m. What did they make you do?”
So he told them. Haltingly at first, then with more fluency as the tequila loosened his tongue and their focused attention—Frankie’s knowing gaze, Charlie’s wide, incredulous eyes—made the absurdities feel like lore. He described the cattle call of PAs at the gate, the barked orders from a harried AD with a clipboard permanently fused to her hand. He told them about the craft service table, a surreal oasis of donuts and baby carrots, and the actor who played the brooding teenage vampire, who was fifty if he was a day and demanded his coffee be stirred exactly eleven times counter-clockwise.
Charlie howled with laughter, throwing her head back. “That’s Jeremy Fucking Kline! He was huge in the nineties! You didn’t recognize him?”
Nate shook his head, bewildered. “He just looked like a sad man in a lot of eyeliner.”
Frankie’s shoulders shook with silent mirth. “Go on.”
He told them about the ‘naked rehearsal.’ A scene in a boiler room where the female lead, a waifish actress with eyes too big for her face, had to emerge from a steam pipe wearing only strategic grime. The director, a man with a manicured beard and the patience of a toddler, had her do it fifteen times, fully nude, while the crew, including Nate, averted their eyes or didn’t. Nate had stood holding a heavy coiled rope, staring fixedly at a water stain on the wall, his face burning.
“You peeked,” Charlie said, grinning slyly.
“I… my eyes may have drifted.”
“Of course they did. She’s got implants that could dent a car. Good for her.”
Then the stunt. A practical effect where a ghoul was set on fire and had to run twenty feet before diving into a crash pad. Something went wrong with the flame retardant gel. The stuntman, a wiry guy named Dave, went up like a torch for three terrifying seconds before the safety crew doused him. The smell of burnt sugar and singed hair. The stunned silence, then Dave sitting up on the pads, coughing, giving a shaky thumbs-up. Nate had been the one sent to fetch the ambulance crew, his legs pumping with an adrenaline he could still feel in his jitters.
“Holy shit,” Frankie breathed, her amusement gone, replaced by professional interest. “Was he okay?”
“Mostly. Second-degree burns on his back. He called it ‘Tuesday.’”
They were silent for a moment, the gravity of it settling over the tequila haze. Charlie poured them all another shot. This one went down smoother. The room felt closer, warmer. Charlie’s thigh was a line of heat against his. Frankie had shifted, one arm stretched along the back of the couch behind his head.
“You survived,” Frankie said, her voice low. “Your first day in the belly of the beast. And you’re still our little unicorn.” She reached out and brushed a lock of his sweaty hair off his forehead. The touch was startlingly tender.
“A pure, innocent unicorn in a den of wolves,” Charlie echoed, her voice husky. She leaned in, her green eyes gleaming in the TV’s light. Her breath smelled of lime and salt. “You know what we do with unicorns in Hollywood, Nate?”
His heart began to hammer against his ribs, a different kind of exhaustion taking over—a heavy, anticipatory thrum. “What?”
“We corrupt them.” She said it simply, a statement of fact.
Then she kissed him. It wasn’t like the hungry, shared kiss in the shower. This was slow, deliberate. Her lips were soft, parting his. Her tongue slipped inside, tasting him, sharing the tang of tequila. A moan caught in his throat. He kissed her back, his hands coming up to cradle her face, his fingers sliding into her thick auburn hair.
As he lost himself in her mouth, he felt Frankie move behind him. Her hands came to his shoulders, kneading the knotted muscles there with a firm, practiced pressure. He groaned into Charlie’s mouth. Frankie’s lips found the sensitive spot just below his ear. “You worked so hard today,” she murmured, her voice a vibration against his skin. “Carrying ropes. Getting coffee. Watching naked starlets.” Her teeth grazed his earlobe. “Let us reward you.”
Charlie broke the kiss, her eyes dark with intent. “Yeah,” she whispered, her hand sliding down his chest, over the damp fabric of his work shirt, down to the buckle of his belt. “Just sit back. You don’t have to do a thing.”
His brain, fogged with tequila and fatigue and the visceral memory of the last two days, offered no resistance. A feeble ‘I should’ died before it formed. He was tired. He was wanted. The complexity of morality, the weight of his choices, felt like distant concepts from a dusty textbook. This was sensation. This was now.
Frankie’s hands went to work on his belt, her fingers deft. Charlie popped the button of his khakis, pulled down the zipper. Together, they maneuvered his pants and boxers down over his hips. His cock, already half-hard from their attentions, sprang free into the cool room air.
“There he is,” Charlie purred, wrapping her hand around him, giving a slow, slick stroke. Pre-cum beaded at the tip. She leaned down, her breath hot on the sensitive head. “Such a good boy, working all day. You deserve a treat.”
She took him into her mouth, swallowing him deep in one smooth, practiced motion. The heat and wetness were absolute, shocking. Nate cried out, his head falling back against Frankie’s shoulder. She held him, her arms wrapping around his chest, her breasts soft against his back. She nuzzled his neck as Charlie began to bob her head, her tongue doing wicked, clever things along his shaft.
“Watch her,” Frankie whispered in his ear, her voice thick. “Watch her suck your cock. Look at how pretty her mouth looks stretched around you.”
Nate forced his heavy lids open. The sight was obscenely beautiful. Charlie’s green eyes were locked on his, glazed with a fierce concentration. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked, a strand of saliva connecting her lips to his shaft. The wet, rhythmic sounds filled the quiet room, punctuated by his own ragged gasps. He felt the familiar, terrifying coil of tension building in his groin, amplified tenfold by his exhaustion and the tequila.
“I’m… I’m gonna…” he stammered.
Charlie pulled off with a wet pop. “Not yet,” she said, her lips swollen and slick. She stood up, shimmying out of her yoga pants and underwear in one fluid motion. She knelt on the couch, straddling his lap, but facing away from him. She looked over her shoulder, her expression feral. “Eat me first. I’m fucking dripping.”
She lowered herself, guiding herself onto his face. The musky, sweet scent of her arousal filled his senses. Her wet folds brushed his lips. He needed no further instruction. His hands came up to grip her hips, pulling her down onto his mouth. He licked her, thrust his tongue inside her, found the hard, swollen bud of her clit and circled it with a frantic urgency driven by the exquisite torture of Frankie’s hands now roaming his chest and the sight of Charlie’s perfect ass rocking back against him.
Charlie moaned, a deep, rolling sound. “Yes, just like that. Oh, fuck, your tongue…” She ground herself against his face, taking her pleasure from his mouth. Frankie’s hand snaked between his legs, her fingers cupping his balls, rolling them, then tracing the tight, sensitive space behind them. Nate was dissolving, a creature of pure sensation. He feasted on Charlie, drinking her in, as Frankie’s other hand pinched and twisted his nipple through his shirt.
Charlie’s movements became jerky, frantic. “I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come on your fucking face, you beautiful unicorn.” Her thighs tightened around his head. A series of sharp, guttural cries tore from her throat as she orgasmed, her cunt pulsing against his tongue. He held her through it, licking gently until she sagged, spent.
She slid off him, collapsing onto the other end of the couch, breathing heavily. She was glistening, her face flushed with pleasure. “Your turn, Frankie,” she panted, a lazy smile on her face.
Frankie didn’t need telling. She pushed Nate forward gently until he was on his knees on the worn carpet in front of the couch. The rough texture bit into his skin. She stood before him, peeling off her yoga pants and underwear. She was already wet, her olive skin flushed, her dark hair damp at the juncture of her thighs. She pushed him back onto his haunches and then stepped over him, one foot on either side of his hips. She looked down at him, a goddess of vengeance and desire.
“You fucked me in my bed,” she said, her voice steady though her breathing was quick. “Now fuck me like you mean it. Like you’re not some shy boy. Fuck me like the wolf you’re becoming.”
She lowered herself onto his waiting, throbbing cock. It was a smoother penetration this time, her body welcoming him with a slick, hot embrace. She sank all the way down until their hips met, and let out a long, shuddering sigh. Then she began to ride him, her hands braced on his shoulders for leverage.
This was different. This was not the slow, controlled pace of her bedroom. This was raw, animalistic. She rose and fell with a brutal, demanding rhythm, driving him deep into her with each descent. Her breasts swayed, her head thrown back, tendons standing out in her neck. The slap of skin on skin was loud in the quiet room.
“Is this what you wanted?” she grunted, her eyes blazing down at him. “When you were fetching coffee for has-beens and holding traffic cones? Was this the fantasy getting you through the day? To be back here, with your cock buried in a willing cunt?”
“Yes,” he growled, the word torn from him. His hands gripped her hips, fingers digging in, helping to drive her down onto him. The tequila and fatigue had burned away, leaving only this pure, predatory hunger. He was no longer a passive recipient. He was a participant, meeting her thrust for thrust.
“Then take it,” she snarled. “Fuck me back, Nate. Show me you’re not just a toy.”
He obeyed. He surged upwards, pounding into her from below. The angle was deep, devastating. Frankie cried out, her nails biting into his shoulders through the fabric of his shirt. The pace became a frenzied, pounding beat. Charlie watched from the couch, her hand drifting between her own legs again, her eyes fixed on where they joined.
“God, look at you two,” Charlie breathed. “You’re fucking wrecking her. Harder.”
Nate drove into Frankie with a force that felt like it might break them both. Her cries became wordless, rhythmic shrieks that matched the punishing tempo. He could feel her tightening around him, her inner muscles beginning their frantic flutter.
“I’m close, I’m so close,” Frankie chanted. “Don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop!”
He didn’t. He pistoned into her, a machine fueled by pure, uncut desire. The coil in his own gut was a white-hot wire about to snap.
“Come in me,” Frankie demanded, her voice a ragged wreck. “Fill me up. Do it.”
Her orgasm hit like a seizure. Her body clamped around his cock in a series of violent, milking spasms. The sight of her coming apart above him, the feel of her hot, gripping flesh, was the final trigger.
With a roar that came from a place he didn’t recognize, Nate slammed up into her one last time and erupted. His release was a scalding flood, wave after wave pumping into her depths. His vision blurred, his body convulsing with the force of it. He held her tight against him as he spilled himself, until he was utterly empty, physically and mentally spent.
They collapsed together in a heap on the carpet, a tangle of slick limbs. Frankie lay half on top of him, her body still shuddering with aftershocks. Nate stared up at the ceiling fan, its blades turning in a slow, lazy circle, the only movement in the world. The smell of sex and tequila and sweat was overpowering.
After a long while, Charlie slid off the couch and onto the floor beside them. She stretched out like a cat, her head propped on her hand. “Best first day ever,” she said, her voice sleepy and satisfied.
Frankie stirred, rolling off Nate with a soft groan. She lay on her back beside him. “Welcome to the wolf pack, kid,” she murmured, her eyes closed.
Nate said nothing. He just breathed. The aches from the day were still there, but they were buried under a profound, boneless lethargy. The static from the television was a gentle white noise. He looked at the two women beside him—Charlie, already drifting to sleep, a smile on her lips; Frankie, her chest rising and falling evenly.
The corruption was complete. He knew it with a certainty that was beyond guilt or pride. The innocent unicorn was a ghost, a story he’d once told himself. The naive boy from the fundamentalist university was gone, shed like a skin on the dusty floor of a Hollywood soundstage and finished off here, on this grimy carpet.
He wasn’t sure what was left in his place. Something harder. Something hungrier. Something that knew the taste of tequila and pussy and the burn of a long day’s labor. Something that could look at the static on a screen and see not emptiness, but infinite possibility, much of it dark and delicious.
He closed his eyes. Outside, a siren wailed, then faded into the hum of the city. Inside, the three of them slept on the floor, under the spinning fan, in the blue electronic glow of a forgotten dream.
Inside, the three of them slept on the floor, under the spinning fan, in the blue electronic glow of a forgotten dream.
Nate woke to a sharp cramp in his neck and the deep, hollow ache of true hunger. The static was still whispering from the television. Frankie was curled against his back, one arm flung heavily over his ribs. Charlie was a warm weight across his legs, her breathing a soft, even rhythm. For a disorienting moment, he didn’t know where he was. The feeling wasn’t panic, but a profound dislocation. This tangled pile of limbs on a dirty carpet was his life. This was his reality.
He shifted, and the movement woke them. A symphony of groans echoed his own.
“Fuck,” Charlie mumbled into the carpet. “My back is a crime scene.”
“My mouth tastes like a condemned strip club,” Frankie said, her voice raspy against his shoulder blade. She pushed herself up on one elbow. “I need grease. I need cheese.”
“Pizza,” Charlie declared, not moving. “The greasiest, cheesiest, most ashamed-of-itself pizza in a five-mile radius.”
Nate’s stomach growled in violent agreement. The tequila was a sour memory in his veins, and the colossal physical expenditure had left him ravenous. “Yes,” he said, the word scraping out. “Please.”
Frankie extracted herself, standing on shaky legs. She found her phone, its screen blinding in the dark room. “Meat lover’s?” she asked, already tapping.
“Double everything,” Charlie said, finally rolling onto her back. She stretched, a long, feline arch that made her spine crack. “And garlic knots. And that weird cheese dip. The nuclear orange one.”
Nate sat up, the events of the evening—the laughter, the storytelling, the desperate, floor-pounding sex—cascading back into his mind with perfect, pornographic clarity. He felt no immediate shame. Just a weary, satiated acceptance. He looked at his own nakedness, at the bite mark blooming on his shoulder from Frankie, at the dried sweat and other fluids cooling on his skin. He needed a shower almost as badly as he needed food.
“Forty-five minutes,” Frankie announced, dropping the phone onto the couch. She looked at the two of them on the floor. “We smell like a bar fight in a brothel. Shower. Now.”
It wasn’t a suggestion. Charlie groaned again but got to her feet, offering a hand to pull Nate up. His muscles protested, a cacophony of aches from the day’s labor and the night’s gymnastics. They shuffled in a daze toward the bathroom, a parade of worn-out, beautiful wrecks.
The bathroom was still humid from their earlier uses, the mirror fogged. Frankie cranked the water, and steam began to billow, erasing their reflections. Charlie stepped in first, tilting her head back into the spray with a grateful sigh. Frankie followed, pulling Nate in after. The hot water was a baptism. It sluiced over his head, his shoulders, washing the salt and sex and studio grime into a grey river at their feet.
For a few minutes, they just stood there, three bodies under the one stream, passing a bar of soap like survivors sharing rations. The simplicity of it was disarming. Nate soaped Charlie’s back, his hands moving over the defined muscles of her shoulders, the wings of her scapulae. She leaned into his touch. Frankie washed her hair, suds dripping down the long, sleek line of her spine, over the curve of her ass. The hunger in the room shifted, evolved from a need for food to something slower, more luxuriant.
Charlie turned under the water, facing him. Her auburn hair was plastered dark to her skull, her eyelashes spiky with droplets. Water coursed over the small, perfect mounds of her breasts, her nipples tight and pink. She put her hands on his hips.
“Clean enough?” she asked, a ghost of her earlier mischief returning to her eyes.
Frankie moved behind Charlie, her body a warm, wet contrast against Charlie’s back. She looked at Nate over Charlie’s shoulder. Her dark eyes were unreadable in the steam. “Not even close,” she murmured.
Then Frankie’s hands were on Charlie’s breasts, cupping them, her thumbs brushing the nipples. Charlie’s breath hitched. She closed her eyes, leaning back into Frankie. Nate watched, mesmerized, as Frankie pinched Charlie’s nipples, rolling them between her fingers. Charlie moaned, her head falling back onto Frankie’s shoulder.
“Touch her,” Frankie said to Nate, her voice a low command in the drumming water. “She likes it when you use your mouth.”
Nate dropped to his knees on the hard tub floor. The water pounded on his back. He took one of Charlie’s breasts into his mouth, sucking the tight peak, flicking it with his tongue. She cried out, her hands flying to his wet hair, holding him there. Her skin tasted of clean soap and underlying salt. Frankie’s hands continued their work on Charlie’s other breast, twisting, teasing, while her mouth found Charlie’s neck, biting and sucking.
Charlie was panting, her hips making small, involuntary circles. “Fingers,” she gasped down at Nate. “Inside me. Now.”
He didn’t hesitate. He slid a hand between her legs, finding her already slick and swollen despite the shower’s runoff. He pushed two fingers inside her. She was hot and impossibly tight. She gasped, bucking against his hand.
“Yeah, just like that,” Frankie whispered, her own hand sliding down Charlie’s stomach, joining Nate’s. Their fingers tangled, working in tandem, stretching Charlie, stroking her inner walls. Frankie’s middle finger found a different rhythm, pressing higher, deeper.
Charlie’s legs began to tremble. “There, fuck, right there,” she sobbed, her nails scraping Nate’s scalp. “Don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop.”
Nate sucked harder on her breast, his fingers pistoning in and out of her cunt while Frankie’s finger worked that secret, spongy spot inside her. The sounds were obscene: the slap of wet skin, the choked, desperate cries swallowed by the shower’s roar, the slick, squelching noise of their combined efforts. Charlie’s orgasm built quickly, a gathering storm. Her whole body went rigid, her back arching sharply off Frankie’s body.
She came with a shattered, watery scream, her cunt clamping rhythmically around their invading fingers. Wave after wave shook her. Nate kept his mouth on her, gentling now to soft kisses as she shuddered through it. Frankie held her upright, her own breathing ragged against Charlie’s neck.
When Charlie finally sagged, boneless, Frankie guided her to sit on the ledge of the tub. Charlie slumped against the tile, eyes closed, a spent smile on her lips. Frankie turned her attention to Nate. He was still on his knees, his cock jutting out, hard and aching amidst the chaos of water.
Frankie looked down at him, water streaming down her face. “My turn,” she said, and it was neither a request nor a seduction. It was a statement of inevitability.
She turned around, bracing her hands against the slick tile wall. She looked back at him over her shoulder, presenting herself. The water cascaded down the deep cleft of her ass, over the dark, wet curls between her thighs. “Fuck me,” she said. “Hard. I don’t want gentle. I want to feel it tomorrow.”
Nate stood, his knees protesting. He stepped close, the head of his cock nestling against her entrance. He gripped her hips, his fingers finding purchase on her wet skin. He pushed inside her in one relentless, deep stroke. She was tight, gloriously so, her body gripping him like a heated fist.
A guttural groan was torn from both of them. He didn’t wait. He set a brutal, driving pace from the first moment, slamming into her, his hips meeting the firm flesh of her ass with each thrust. The noise was animalistic, a wet, smacking rhythm that echoed off the tiles. Charlie watched from her perch, her hand drifting lazily between her own legs again, her eyes heavy-lidded.
“Yes,” Frankie grunted, pushing back against him. “Just like that. Use me. Fucking use me.” Her words, filthy and direct, poured gasoline on the fire in his gut. He fucked her with a single-minded ferocity that had nothing to do with love or tenderness and everything to do with a consuming, mutual hunger. This was a physical conversation, a battle for sensation. He drilled into her, each impact jolting through his entire frame.
Frankie’s cries grew higher, more frantic. “Deeper, you bastard, get deeper!” He obeyed, angling her hips, finding a spot that made her scream. Her inner muscles began to flutter around his shaft, a frantic, pre-orgasmic pulse. “I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come on your cock, don’t you dare stop!”
He wouldn’t. Couldn’t. His world was the white tile, the steam, the sound of her, the exquisite friction of her cunt milking him. He felt his own climax coiling, a spring wound to its breaking point.
“Come in me,” she demanded, her voice breaking. “Fill me up, Nate. Do it.”
Her command shattered the last of his control. As her own orgasm ripped through her, her body clamping down on him in violent, rhythmic spasms, he drove in one last time and let go. His release was a scalding, endless flood, pumping into her depths. He saw stars behind his eyelids, his knees buckling as he emptied himself into her with a ragged, broken cry.
He stayed there, buried inside her, panting, leaning his forehead against her wet back as the water beat down on them. Slowly, carefully, he pulled out. Frankie stayed braced against the wall for a moment, catching her breath, before turning to face him. Her face was flushed, her expression one of pure, sated wreckage. She reached out a trembling hand and touched his cheek.
The doorbell rang, a jarring electronic bleat that sliced through the steam.
“Pizza,” Charlie sighed, not opening her eyes. “Savior.”
They dried off with damp towels, not bothering with clothes. The scent of jasmine and sex was replaced by the glorious, greasy aroma of cheese, pepperoni, and baked dough. Frankie grabbed a pile of cash from a kitchen drawer and paid the delivery guy, not caring about her nudity behind the half-opened door. They descended on the boxes in the living room, eating straight from the cardboard, garlic cheese dip dripping onto their chests, licked off by fingers or, in one lazy, laughing moment by Charlie, from Frankie’s collarbone.
They were quiet, the only sounds those of chewing and low sighs of contentment. The exhaustion was total now, a pleasant, weighted blanket. When the last garlic knot was gone and the dip container scraped clean, they looked at each other.
“I can’t move to my room,” Charlie stated, lying back on the carpet amid the carnage.
“Mine,” Frankie said. “Bigger bed.”
There were no discussions, no awkward negotiations. It was a logistical decision. They trudged the short distance down the hall to Frankie’s room and collapsed onto the wide platform bed in a heap. The red coverlet was cool against their skin. They arranged themselves by unspoken consensus: Nate in the middle, Frankie on his left, Charlie on his right. Charlie curled into his side, her head on his chest, her leg thrown over his. Frankie draped an arm across his stomach, her face buried in the space between his shoulder and neck.
Their naked bodies were spent, a landscape of warm skin and slowing heartbeats. Nate lay on his back, staring into the darkness above him. He felt the weight of them, the heat of them, anchoring him to the bed, to this city, to this new and terrifying version of himself. He was sandwiched between them, between Charlie’s vivacious hunger and Frankie’s pragmatic fire. He was no longer a unicorn, or a wolf. He was something being forged in the space between, a creature of conflicting hungers.
Frankie’s breathing evened out into sleep first. Then Charlie’s. Nate remained awake, listening to the sounds of the house settling, to the distant, endless sirens of Los Angeles. The question Frankie had posed—You don’t have to answer it today. Or ever. Sometimes you just have to live in the question—echoed in the quiet. The question wasn’t about God anymore. It was simpler, and more complex: What are you becoming?
He had no answer. Only the evidence of his body: the aches, the smells, the memory of Frankie’s cunt gripping him, of Charlie’s taste on his tongue, of the stuntman on fire giving a thumbs-up. He had a job to go to in a few hours. A meaningless, essential job. He had this bed. These women. This hunger.
He closed his eyes. The guilt, when it flickered, felt like an echo from a distant room, a weak signal. It was drowned out by the solid, breathing reality pressed against both sides of him. He slept, and did not dream.