I was pulling my first ever “five more minutes!” card.
Gripping the blanket, I attempted to roll over, and that was the first time I felt a weight settled next to me. At first, I thought it was Concrete, but then I looked down. What I saw made me think I was on some sort of psychedelic drug.
“Cherri?” I said quietly.
There was a woman laying across my chest, snoozing away quietly. Her hair was different from Cherri’s, short cut, with brown hair at the roots and fading to blond at the tips, but some of the naturally blond roots were starting to show right at the top of her head. For a moment, I tried to convince myself it wasn’t her. She looked slightly more rugged than the Cherri I remembered, but then I looked at her face. Those cheeks, those lips.
It was definitely my Cherri.
The dream I’d had with Nathan and Cherri in it crossed my mind, and I quickly realized the same was true here. Maybe my mind was forming some new image of Cherri to account for how much time had passed since I’d last seen her. I had dreams like that all the time in prison. Because it was impossible that Cherri was actually laying in bed with me, it was easy to draw the next natural conclusion.
I was dreaming.
My other dream felt so real too, and I actually had a chance to touch and kiss her then, and I didn’t. I wouldn’t miss my opportunity the second time around. If the only way I got to enjoy Cherri was in my dreams, then enjoy her I would.
Twisting my arm around to comb into her hair, I was surprised by the silken feeling of the strands between my fingertips. My brain was going the distance with the dream. I curled her head towards me and ducked my head down so I could kiss her. Her lips were sweet and warm and I wrapped my other arm around her waist to pull her even closer. At first, she was still asleep in my arms, but then she blinked and groaned and slowly came to. Her pristine blue eyes opened and met mine, and my heart slammed in my chest.
“I love you,” I said.
Tears carried to her eyes. “I love you, too.”
Her lips were back on mine a moment later. She pressed her body flush against mine and laced her arms behind my head and into my hair. The way she lightly tugged at my hair had the animal in me trying to break through to the surface. My tongue left my lips in search of hers, and she opened her mouth to allow me entry. It all felt so intensely real. I ran my hands along the bend of her waist and the arch in her back. I could only pray that my dream would allow me enough time to refamiliarize myself with every inch of her.
Like a flip had been switched within us, we turned the dial up on the fire. Cherri’s hands slipped from around my neck and down under my shirt to drag along my skin. The coolness of her fingertips somehow burned, and I hoped they would leave marks. She pushed until my shirt was bunched around my neck and I had no choice but to break away from her to take it off. Her eyes flashed at the sight of me, and I smiled. Having a woman like Cherri look at you like Cherri looked at me could give a man a dangerous amount of confidence.
I pushed against her to pin her back against the bed and hovered over her. She was wearing a dark blue t-shirt that clung to her form, and as sexy as the simple look was, I wanted it off. I grabbed the hem and dragged it upwards until I was able to toss it off of her. My hands quickly traveled then to the front clasp of her bra and undid it. Her perfect, round breasts came free, and I dipped in to take a taste. Her body was hot and her peach skin was flushed red.
A body blusher—one of the sexiest things about Cherri.
“Deon,” she squeaked in my ear as I sucked one of her pert nipples, and when I switched to the other she arched her back upwards. Her hands dropped between us and grabbed at my pants. “I need you, baby.”
I hugged my arms around her back and held her tight. “I don’t want to rush,” I said.
“I’ve missed you,” she complained. “Please.”
But I knew how dreams worked. All I had was until just before the end. The sooner I got inside her, the closer I got to exploding, the quicker I approached the end of my dream. Just before I came, I’d wake up and Cherri would be ripped from my arms again. I couldn’t handle it. I had to hand onto her for as long as I could.
To my surprise, tears filled my eyes and I simply set my head on her chest. “I can’t. I don’t want this to end.”
“End?” Cherri questioned. “Why would it end?”
“I’ll wake up,” I admitted. “I have to make it last.”
“Deon,” Cherri said in a serious voice. “Look at me.”
Part of me was too embarrassed to listen. Not because I was crying, but because it was all just a manifestation of my imagination anyway. Was I going to cry to myself and beg myself not to go? Cherri was back in Postings somewhere. I was getting high off a placebo.
But I twisted my head back anyway, placing my chin on her chest and looking up into her eyes. She put her hands on my face and rubbed my cheeks gently. “Baby, I’m real. I’m here. This isn’t a dream.”
I smiled. “I wish that were true.”
She pulled, bringing my face up to hers and pressed our lips together again. Her mouth caressed mine, taking a passionate kiss, at the end of which she bit down on my bottom lip. It stung, and I grunted.
But it stung.
I leaned back a little bit, setting my fingers to my lip to feel the spot, and there was a small bump forming there. Cherri put each of her hands on my arms, and pinched spots that hurt as well.
They hurt.
I wasn’t dreaming. Cherri was lying beneath me, looking at me with the eyes I’d longed to look into every single day. “Cherri?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
It shifted me sideways, out of my own body. Anything in me that wasn’t focused on Cherri had to take a back seat. I wrapped my arms around her and lifted her off the bed. There was an armchair in the corner of the room, and I backed up until I was sitting in it. The sun glinted in through the window and bounced off her perfect skin, giving her an angelic glow. She undid the button of her shorts as I slid my lips along the curve of her neck. It only took a little bit of shifting to slide our pants off, and then I was standing at attention between Cherri’s legs.
Cherri grabbed me and stroked me a little. “So is it okay to jump ahead a little?” she asked with a coy smile. “We’ve got all the time we need to double back.”
“Fuck yes,” I said.
That was all the go-ahead Cherri needed. She lifted off of me just enough to brace me at her entrance and then slowly started to lower herself onto me. It was so much hotter than I remembered, and I had to grip her hips to stop her.
“What?” Cherri said.
“I forgot how fucking good it feels,” I replied. It had been close to nine months since I saw and got to be with Cherri last, and being on the run didn’t afford a ton of time for helping myself out. Even since I settled down at Felicity’s, we spent most of our time together, and I had a tendency to pass out at the end of the day. “I’m not gonna last long this go round.”
“That’s okay,” Cherri said, setting her hands on my face and kissing me. “Like I said, we have plenty of time.”
With that assurance, I released Cherri’s hips and she continued to fall. She sucked me in, enticingly slow, reminding me of exactly what I’d missed in the past eight months. The way we fit together, as cheesy as it sounded, felt like it was fated, and when she was finally fully sitting in my lap, we both threw our heads back, breathing in the ecstasy of the moment. The bed couldn’t have offered this forced closeness, and as I wrapped my arms behind her back and pulled her snug to me, I pushed even past what the chair was demanding to get closer.