The Night Mark(31)

“You were gone, and I missed you so much,” she said, crying against his strong shoulder, her chest heaving with the force of her sobs. “You don’t know how much I missed you.”

“Hush now,” he said, patting her back. “You’ll make yourself sick crying like this—and all over a dream. Getting knocked off the pier isn’t much fun. I thought I’d lost you when that wave hit. You’re the one who was nearly fish food tonight, not me.”

She clung to his body, absorbed his heat, inhaled his scent, salt water and sweat. His hair was wet and lay in messy rust-colored waves over his forehead. She rubbed his chest and neck, needing to feel the solidity of him, the realness, the flesh and bone of him. His heart beat under her palms, steady and hard, even as her nervous hands fluttered like butterflies. Faye looked up and into Will’s light brown eyes. They gleamed like copper in the lamplight. He had a few wrinkles around his eyes that she’d never noticed before. He looked older in this dream. Thirty-two? Thirty-five at most? She smiled wider. The stupid man was even more handsome with crow’s-feet than he was without them. How unfair.

“You grew a beard,” she said, laughing and crying and smiling and gasping all at once. She touched his face, caressed his cheeks. “Is it the play-offs already?”

“You did hit your head, didn’t you?” He ran his hand over her hair gently. “Did you lose time? I’ve had the beard ever since you got here.”

“Yes, I lost time. So much time. Years,” she said, playing along, afraid if she contradicted him the dream would evaporate. And she had lost time; it was true. Four years of her life that she should have spent with him. She brought his mouth to hers and kissed him.

The kiss seemed to startle him—he grabbed her by the upper arms and held her away.

“What?” she asked, panting.

“You kissed me,” he said.

“Is that bad?”

His eyes were wide with shock. “Yes, and you know it.”

“But I don’t know it,” Faye said. “Why can’t I kiss you?”

“More reasons than I can count.”

“What reasons?” Could this dream be any stranger? Why would she dream of her husband and then dream he wouldn’t kiss her?

“I...” He looked at her in the bed, at the V in the shirt and her bare legs against his thigh. “I knew them a minute ago.”

“Kiss me, and maybe you’ll think of them,” Faye said.

“Good idea,” he said and kissed her.

The kiss was undeniably Will’s. Playful when he nipped her bottom lip with his teeth. Passionate when he waited for her smile to press his tongue into her mouth. Intense when he gave her no mercy as he kissed her and kissed her until her whole body ached and tingled and she could hardly breathe and didn’t want to. But who needed to breathe when she had Will? Who needed anything at all?

“I swear I thought I’d lost you tonight,” he rasped into her ear. His arms encircled her, and she’d never felt so safe. Lost her? She’d never been so found. “You took the heart right out of me. Don’t scare me like that again.”

“Never,” she said. She had no idea what she was saying, because she would say anything to keep him kissing her.

He kissed her from her mouth to her ear and up and down her neck. He kissed her like he’d been waiting years for this kiss and had planned it in advance so that when the time came, it would be perfect. And it was perfect.

But it wasn’t enough. Faye reached between their bodies, seeking out the top button of his pants. He inhaled sharply and pulled back.

“Whoa, there, love.” He captured her hands again. “That is more than kissing there. And you’ve had a hard night.”

“I want a hard you,” she said.

He held her by the upper arms and looked at her face, studied it as if seeking an injury or recognition.

“What has gotten into you?” he asked, laughing nervously at her ardor. Was this a game? Was he playing hard to get? Did people in dreams do that?

“I thought you were dead,” she said. “And you aren’t.”

“You’re the one who fell off the dock tonight.”

She touched his face again, caressing his cheeks and delighting in the softness of his beard and the little lines around his eyes. He was breathing hard and shallowly, like he always did when aroused. But he looked scared, too, nervous. Why would her Will be nervous to make love to her?

He pushed a lock of wet hair off her face. What could she say to convince him?

“I love you,” she said.

“You do?”

Faye nodded. “All this time I loved you.” It was true. She’d never fallen out of love with him. The dead can’t love the living but the living can love the dead, and that was the greatest tragedy of her life.

“You love me?” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

He looked away to the corner of the room, his brow furrowed, his hands clenched into fists as if he was trying to hold himself back from touching her again.

“Don’t you love me, too?” Faye asked.

He pressed his lips to her forehead and his body vibrated with the shuddering breath he took.