Chapter Text
//
I was dreaming again, that much I knew.
Surrounded by a cacophony of swirling summer colors and fuzzy shapes that my languid mind couldn't decipher.
Until something, someone, took hold of me, coaxing me to open my eyes.
I found myself in bed entangled with another, pressed against his powerfully carved muscles that blazed hot beneath my fingertips, desperate to gather him closer, to burn just as he.
I felt the hard heat of his desire rolling down between us as he cupped and bruised my arse with the possessive grip of his hands, crushing our hips together that fitted perfectly.
I clutched his soft, fiery curls in both my fists as he fastened his mouth to my heavy breasts, marking me wet and red from my sore, suckled nipples down to my quivering belly, growling as he did so
He circled his tongue over the winged flare of my right hip where he imparted strange, wondrous words to my flushed skin that made my heart strike an ardent beat despite their meaning being a mystery to me.
I then gasped when he pressed a feral kiss between my legs that wrapped around his shoulders, and shuddered with unfathomable pleasure as he teased me, his tongue stroking long and deep, feeding a hunger that had me fisting the sheets beneath me for stability as my hips rose, keening for more.
"Aye, lemme hear ye, woman. Scream for me and no other."
He demanded with a beastly fervor, our eyes meeting like a matchstick to kindling, as he slid his long, calloused fingers inside me, setting me spectacularly aflame.
. . .
My heart was pounding like a thunderstorm when I came to while my lover chuckled with a ragged smugness against my all too tender flesh that had me squirming and swatting blindly at his head. The bastard only chuckled louder, holding my body still, as he dragged his rough stubbled cheek affectionately against my straining thighs with a fiendish persistence that had me trembling with anticipation.
All was not over it seemed.
I smiled blissfully and called him an arse with what little breath I had to spare and reached for the hazy figure below me . . .
Only to feel my body seize with crushing pressure as everything around me went pitch black.
//
I came awake with a sharp gasp in the gloomy gray of my bedroom, pinned beneath my sleeping boyfriend intent on smothering me alive.
"Bloody damn! Get off me, Frank!"
I cried out, pushing him off my chest with a force that landed him flat on his backside, graceless as a dead fish and snoring louder than ever.
I groaned and raked my hands through my sleep-knotted curls, clenching my eyes tight, trying to grasp the last strands of my sundipped dream but to no avail.
Wishing torment on my partner, I turned and reached for my phone on the nightstand. The bright light made my eyes squint and teary but I read a blurry 5:47 AM and flopped defeatedly back onto my pillow, puffing at my hair with righteous frustration.
No point in going back to bed when I had an early shift at the hospital to prepare for, I turned towards Frank, still happily asleep, and would probably be lost in his own little dreamworld until noon.
"Lucky bastard," I murmured enviously.
But as my eyes passed over his face, I noticed how much younger he looked as he slept, the hard lines of weariness that sometimes marked his dashing features having been smoothed away.
Though, I had to admit, I was responsible for a wrinkle here and there.
But it hadn't always been this way.
When we met, Frank was a history professor at Oxford alongside my dear Uncle Lamb, and while we had crossed each other's paths we never had much chance to speak until he found me alone in Lamb's office, or as I called it, his "Labyrinth", as it was crowded floor to ceiling in books and artifacts. Frank made a rather miserable attempt at flirting with me that consisted of babbling on about Jacobites while blushing profusely at his own ineptitude to keep the fluster from his voice. I however thought him dear before our first hullo and we had been inseparable ever since.
Until now.
After two quiet years our relationship was finally tested when I decided to move to Edinburgh to start my residency. Frank wasn't exactly enthralled by the arrangement my academic venture had forced upon him. But he was adamant that we could make a long distance relationship work and I felt so too with every heartbeat devoted to him. And it wouldn't be for long, we both promised, while each hoping the other would cave in, see reason, and finally make a proper home together.
Yet months had passed since then and still it was like we were a world apart. Our relationship was sustained by calls and texts at any and all odd hours, rarely seeing one another in person until now - a weeklong surprise from Frank.
Why couldn't it be forever?
I sighed and fondly smoothed a finger over the lines beside his thin parted mouth, thankfully gone quiet as a whisper now. I wanted him to wake and ease my heart unraveling slowly at the threadbare seams, something his sleeping presence alone couldn't give.
So softly I nuzzled at Frank's neck and kissed the shell of his ear, hoping he'd wake and finish what my dream started. Instead he responded with a loud, strangled gulp of air that sounded like a dying engine and turned away from me.
Strike two for the night, Beauchamp, I sighed.
I then swung my legs over the side of the bed where a tantalizing throb still bloomed between them and for a moment He was there with me again. Those flaming curls, his hungry voice, eyes of rapturous blue amidst a blur of features.
It gave my heart a thrill.
And I felt all the more pathetic.
He was after all, nothing more than a figment of my imagination.