Page 20 of Raise Up, Heart
“I know,” Cole breathes, and he feels Damon relax a little against him. “How long?” Cole asks. “How long have you been here, just out of my reach?”
“Six months,” Damon says. “Give or take.”
“You’ve been here, living in this cabin, for six months? And you—”
“Well,I’vebeen here for six months, but Alex was here longer than that.” Damon shifts a little and then moves up to the couch, pulling Cole along with him.
“My knees,” Damon says by way of explanation for the move.
For a moment, Cole isn’t sure what to do with himself, but then he climbs on top of Damon, who looks a little startled but mostly pleased by Cole’s choice. Cole plasters his body to Damon’s, feeling the length of him against his own, clinging to his shoulders, pressing his ass back into Damon’s groin, and Damon gets hard against him.
“How could you never come to me?”
“What was I supposed to do? Waltz into your house and say, ‘Hi, honey, I’m home?’ I wasdead.”
“Yes?” Cole asks, breathing so close to Damon’s lips, pressing a kiss by the side of his mouth, moving against him, and getting hard again. If this is going to be a sex dream, he really should speed the whole thing up. He doesn’t want to wake up before it’s too late.
Damon is babbling, though, agitated. “Was I supposed to go to the hospital and tell them, ‘Hi, hand over the pediatric charts to the living-dead oncologist. First one to make a zombie joke buys beer!’ Go to Emily? Explain to her what I did to Alex? Hurt her like that? I’ve seen her, Cole. Who’d believe me? You don’t. Hell, even I don’t. I don’t know what to do.”
“Damon,” Cole says, trying to calm him, wondering if Damon is always this strange in his dreams. He doesn’t think so. Usually they’re playing chess, or making love, and this is so incredibly different. This feels so raw and real.
“Cole, I only want one thing. I want you to be happy, and then this can be over.”
“What do you mean ‘over?’” Cole says. His heart’s trip-hammering now, and he’s still got his coat on, but it doesn’t stop the chill. “I can’t be happy without you. I tried. It doesn’t work. I need you.”
“Ah, Cole,” Damon sighs. He brings his hand up to Cole’s jaw, thumbs his chin, and says, “You could love him. You could be happy. He seems like a good man.”
“What are youtalking about?” Cole thinks this dream, or hallucination, has taken a very wrong turn.
Things had just started making sense, albeit in a gruesome horror-story kind of way, and now he’s lost again. Lost and scared, because Damon is talking about things being over, and what if he wakes up now? He doesn’t want to wake up. Not now. Not ever. He wants to take Damon’s clothes off, and make love to him, and do all the sweet, dirty things he’s always wanted to do, and he wants to walk out of this cabin with him in the light of day, and take him home and keep him there forever.
“The man you were with tonight,” Damon says. “You’re with him almost every night. You smile. You laugh. I hoped—”
“Michael?” Cole says, and he laughs, but it sounds crazed. “He’s my employee. He’s a friend, I guess. We work together.”
“He’s good for you,” Damon says. “You look different when you’re near him.”
Cole says, “He’s straight, and I’m not even interested, I mean, I don’t want…and he’s in love with Emily. You—hoped? You wanted me to—what are you saying? Are you, do you… You don’t want me?” He feels the tears coming again, and he can’t believe there are any left to cry. But he’s wounded now. Damon’s returned but not for him, not for him at all.
“I want you so much I killed a man to be near you,” Damon says, fiercely. “Stop the waterworks.”
“Yeah, well, this is killingme,” Cole says, brushing the tears away. “I think I’ve lost my mind.”
Damon softens. “You and me both.”
“Is it? Is it you and me? Or am I all alone in some mad dream and I’m gonna wake up and this is going to rip me open all over again, ’cause I can’t do it, Damon. I can’t go through that again.”
Cole’s still on Damon’s lap, still covering as much of him as he can with his body, feeling Damon’s face with his fingertips, kissing his lips between words, and rubbing against him. “I can’t do this if it’s gonna be the same. It hurts too much. I’d rather die.”
Damon grips him close, his body starting to respond to Cole’s movements, his hips grinding up into Cole’s ass. “No,” Damon says. “You’re gonna have the whole package.”
“Damn you,” Cole says, breathless. Kissing Damon’s neck, tasting his sweat, Cole works to pull off his coat and throws it on the floor behind him.
“Give it to me, then,” Cole says, fingers on Damon’s buttons, opening his shirt, wanting to feel his skin. “I want everything with you. Only you.”
“Cole,” Damon gasps, and he’s working at the buttons on Cole’s shirt, too.
This is more familiar. Cole’s used to this in the dreams. It’s closer to what he understands, but it’s different, too, because in his dreams Damon holds him more gently, not so rough, and he’s not asDamon-likein the way he kisses, and sometimes, terrifyingly, he morphs into a stranger in the middle of it all, and that usually jolts Cole awake in sick sadness.
