Remember Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #3)(73)

He brought my hand to his lips, and his eyes fell shut as he kissed me softly on my inner wrist. “I need you.”

It was a desperate plea, an irresistible plea. I couldn’t deny him any more than I could deny I wanted him. I was still nervous. “I want to…but…I’ve never…”

“I know, Sunshine.” He leaned forward, giving me a tender kiss. “We don’t have to, if you’re not ready…I just…”

He took a deep breath and leaned back. The feeling of him pulling away was what drove me to grab his wrist and say, “I’m ready.”

With a hard swallow, I lay back, placing myself in his care, never breaking eye contact. “Are you sure?” he whispered.

My body was sure, if nothing else, so I nodded again.

Ryan needed no other prompt. “I love you, Jamielynn Baker. I always have, and always will.” He leaned over me, kissing me deeply. His body, warm and solid pressed against me, ignited a fire inside me that might just have been hot enough to melt the sand around us. I gasped…

…and shot to a sitting position, in a bed, groggy from sleep and yet flushed from the heat coursing my body.

“Jamie?”

Ryan was there, but the beach was gone. He was back in his army green and my swimsuit was probably still tucked in my dresser in the desert safe house where it had always been. Though, the heat I’d been consumed with was lingering inside me. Placing the back of my hand to my cheek, I took a breath, shook myself, and rubbed my neck as I slowly released the air from my lungs. Man, it was hot in here.

“Jamie? Are you okay?”

Blinking in the dimly lit room, I looked at Ryan, perched in a chair beside the head of my bed—I was back in my room at ACE headquarters—and realized what had happened. “I dreamed!”

I shook my head in awe. “It was a dream.” I flinched as the implications hit me full force. “Ryan! I had a dream!”

Ryan flashed me a crooked grin. “A pretty hot one, from the looks of it.”

I was so not responding to that.

“Was it about me?”

Or that.

“Don’t you get it? I dreamed. I’ve never dreamed before. I couldn’t. That means the serum worked!”

I thought about it again, still fascinated by what I’d experienced. I knew what dreams were, and Teddy had told me about some of his, but I’d never really been able to understand before. “It was so real. So vivid. It was like I was really there.”

“With me?” Ryan asked again. “Where were we? What were we doing?”

I glared at him to try to keep from blushing. Not sure it worked. “I never said it was about you.”

Ryan’s grin doubled. “But it was, wasn’t it? I can tell. You’re all flushed. Come on, babe. Give me all the juicy details. You can’t have that kind of fun without me.”

“Oh my gosh, would you shut up? I didn’t dream about you.”

Lie. But he didn’t need to know about my dream; his head was big enough already.

Ryan didn’t buy it, and countered with an excellent argument. “But what if it wasn’t just a dream? What if it was a memory?”

“You think?” I gasped. My heart may have stopped from the excitement that surged through me.

Ryan shrugged. “People have memories in dreams all the time.”

He was right. I’d read all about amnesia, and there were many times when people’s memories started coming back in bits and pieces, often in their dreams. I was a special case, of course, but if my brain was healing and I was starting to get my memories back, it was possible. My dream could have really happened. I shivered at the thought. “Did we ever go to a beach?”

“So it was about me. I knew it.”

“No,” I said stubbornly, rolling my eyes when he smirked. “Fine. Maybe you were there. Did we ever go to a beach, or not?”

Ryan rose from his chair, puffing out his chest like a proud peacock. “The beach, huh?”

I was about to comment on his gigantic ego, but he moved from his chair onto my bed and leaned close—very close—causing my mouth to dry up before I could get the words out. “Were you wearing the pink polka dots?” he asked. “Because I love the pink polka dots. They’re so girly and cute. You never do cute except for that one swimsuit.”

I may as well have been back in my dream the way my heart was pounding. He was just so close, pushing all of my senses into overdrive. He smelled so good, and I could feel heat rising off his body. I was practically shaking from the anticipation of his kiss. “So we did go to a beach?” I asked. My voice was shaky and barely above a whisper.

His gaze zeroed in on my mouth. “A few times.”

He captured me in a firm kiss that made my head swim. I broke it with a gasp, desperate to finish this conversation and confirm that my dream was a real memory. “Was it a beautiful, tropical one? Probably in Central or South America somewhere?”

“Santa Cruz,” he said, stealing another kiss. “Northern California.”

My heart sank a little. California wasn’t tropical. It couldn’t have been the same beach. But the swimsuit was right, so maybe only parts of the memory had been incorporated into the dream. “What did we normally do when we went there?”

That was a dangerous question considering Ryan’s current mood, but I had to know. Ryan moved his mouth to my neck. His lips stretched into a smile against my skin, and a low chuckle vibrated in his chest. “What were we doing in your dream, babe?”