He Took Me in the Night

Chapter XXII: Awakened

“Madness were easy to bear compared with truth like this.” -Bram Stoker, Dracula

Chapter XXII: Awakened

Light fills the room, coaxing me from deep sleep to wakefulness. I moan and burrow my face into the pillow, not wanting to wake up and leave my private dreamland. I hear the window curtain being drawn open and then the duvet is thrown partially off my body. Frowning, I stretch out and slowly open my eyes.

Sunlight blinds me for a moment and I blink against the brightness. When my eyes adapt, I look around for the culprit who disturbed me from my slumber and see that it’s Erik who’s sitting beside me on the bed, gazing down at me with an amused expression plastered on his handsome face.

“Afternoon sleepyhead,” Erik says.

I groan, and turn onto my side to face him. “Afternoon?”

His smile is smug. “Yeah. You slept in late. It’s one thirty.”

“What!?” I gasp.

I sit up in bed and look out the window. It’s a beautiful spring day, with the sun shining high in a cloudless blue sky. The morning has come and gone without me.

“I think you need to get an alarm clock,” Erik says, chuckling.

“I don’t usually need this much sleep,” I reply, as I tie my hair up with an elastic band that’s around my wrist and sit with my legs crossed. “I’m sorry Erik. My sleeping patterns have been really out of wack these last few weeks. How long have you been here?”

“Forty- five minutes.” He shrugs as if it’s nothing.

“Why didn’t you wake me up earlier? Now we only have another fifteen minutes together,” I complain, the thought making me frown.

“I like watching you sleep,” Erik says truthfully, giving me one of his genuine half smiles that warms his face and crinkles the corners by his eyes. He scarcely gives me these smiles anymore. They’re so rare that I cherish them. “It’s one of the only times I ever see you truly at peace.”

“Really?” I ask. My eyebrows furrow as I contemplate this.

“Yes. It’s like you’ve escaped to your own world and nothing can touch you. It makes me wonder what you dream about.” He searches my face solemnly, as if he’s trying to understand me.

Now that I think about it, I was dreaming about Drake all night. They weren’t nightmares exactly, but they still haunted me and had me tossing and turning between the sheets. Drake’s grey eyes were cold and lost as I fought to save him, and it pained me.

I shake my head as if to clear it, and look up at Erik guilty. The dreams were pointless and didn’t mean anything, but I still don’t want to keep having them. I should be dreaming about my family and my life back home, not the wicked, yet impossibly sexy and handsome man who doesn’t have a soul.

“I don’t really remember my dreams,” I reply, hoping Erik won’t call me out on the lie. It seems I’ve been doing that a lot lately. I hate lying, but if it means protecting his feelings, then so be it.

“I know what I dream about,” Erik says. His expression is fierce and it has the little hairs on the back of my neck standing tall, and his blue eyes do strange things to my stomach and my heart rate. His voice goes all deep and intense. “You.”

I flush fifty shades of scarlet. “Me?”

“Always you,” Erik confirms with finality and passion, as if it were a promise. Somehow I know he’s not just referring to his dreams, and this makes me feel special and uncomfortable simultaneously.