Page 67 of Zorro

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She dreamed in heat and honeyed shadow, her body floating in the strange haze of sleep, lulled by the soft crackle of a fire that wasn’t visible but pressed against her skin like memory. The dream didn’t come on like the others, with urgency or sweat, but with revelation. She wasn’t watching him this time.

She was watching herself.

For the first time in years, the woman in the dream didn’t look haunted.

She stood barefoot in golden light, soft and unguarded, her hair loose and wild, falling in waves down her back. Zorro’s shirt was draped over her shoulders like a benediction, cotton worn thin by use, the collar dipped just low enough to tease. Her arms were bare. Her toes gripped lightly into the warm wooden floor. She was smiling, no, laughing, the kind of laugh that broke something open in her chest.

Everly stared at the scene like an outsider peeking through a doorway. Distant. Dizzy. Dizzy because that wasn’t the woman she knew.

Then she heard his voice.

Low. Distant. Like it was curling in from the edge of the dream, smoke on a slow wind.

"God, you don’t even know, do you?"

She turned, but not toward him, toward his gaze. It hit her then. She wasn’t dreaming as herself. She was dreaming as him.

She was seeing herself through him.

The sight of her made his breath catch. She felt it. Like the beat of wings under her skin. Felt how the sight of her moved him, the reverence in it, no hunger yet, no urgency. Just awe. Her wrapped in domesticity and softness, barefoot and bare-faced, like she'd never belonged more to the world than in that moment.

"You look at me like I’m the one on fire," his voice murmured, low, destroyed, "but it’s you. You’re the one burning. You carry too much. But you’re so fucking good to love, Everly. So goddamn good."

The sound struck her like a chord strummed too hard. She felt every word wrap around her spine and settle low in her belly. Her dream-body, his dream, drifted closer, the air thick with slow heat and breathless ache.

"I’d stitch the world back together just to see you smile like that."

Her knees almost buckled. Her hands clutched at the edges of nothing.

"You think you're too much. That you’re too sharp. But I see the woman who makes me want to believe in heaven again."

Then she felt his mouth against her skin, just a whisper of it, the press of his lips to her shoulder in the dream, and it was so gentle, so good it hurt.

She woke gasping.

She didn’t bolt upright. She broke upright, her chest heaving like something had been pressing down on it for hours. Sweat slicked the inside of her thighs, a fine sheen covered her skin, and the scent of arousal clung to her like sin. Her core ached. Her breasts were tight, nipples stiff under the linen shirt still draped over her like borrowed heat.

She couldn’t breathe for want of him.

The dream wasn’t just sexual. It was transformational. She hadn’t seen a man ravish her with his hands, his tongue, or his body. She had seen one love her with his eyes.

She wanted him. Now.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she reached for the keycard still tucked in the shallow pocket of her cardigan, pressed tight to her side like a secret she'd kept too long. Her fingers wrapped around it.

She grabbed her own keycard and left her room. Went to his door and stood there for a moment, her heart in her throat.

A male voice broke the quiet, not him. God, it wasn’t him. “He’s not there.”

She froze. The hallway outside her door was dim, lit only by wall sconces that threw long, drowsy shadows across the carpet. D-Day stood there, leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes unreadable.

“He’s been wrestling with you all day,” he said, not unkind. “I know what that’s like.”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Her fingers still clutched the keycard like a lifeline.

D-Day took a slow step forward. Not intimidating, not like he had been yesterday morning, but with the urgency of a man speaking from the edge of his own pain.

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