‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Liz as she ignored Helena’s protests and swung her feet to the floor, gritting her teeth against her giddiness as she made herself stand up. ‘I don’t really have much of a head for vintage champagne,’ she excused herself, giving the other woman a brief smile.
Of course there was no question of either Helena or Bob allowing her to drive home, nor of her being allowed to return home on her own. Instead she was put to bed in the bedroom which had been hers whilst she was recuperating, with Helena fussing round her and announcing that she felt it might be a good idea if she were to have a full check-up.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ Annie insisted. ‘I just had a bit of a shock, that’s all.’
‘A shock? What kind of shock?’ Helena demanded anxiously.
‘I…I thought I saw someone I…’ Annie paused and shook her head, her mouth dry as she told her, ‘I must have made a mistake, imagined it. I know, because it just isn’t possible that…’
‘Who was it? Who did you think you saw, Annie?’ Helena probed.
‘It…it wasn’t anyone. It was…just…just a mistake,’ Annie repeated stubbornly, but as she reached for the cup of tea Bob had brought her she started to tremble so violently that she had to put it down again.
Covering her face with her hands she admitted shakily, ‘Oh, Helena…it was so…so surreal. I don’t…I saw him…the man…from my dreams…He was…’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘I know that I can’t have done, that he just doesn’t exist, but…’
‘You’re getting yourself all worked up,’ Helena told her firmly. ‘I’ll give you something to help you relax and go to sleep, and then in the morning we can talk about it properly.’
As she lay back against the pillows Annie gave her a small weak smile. She knew that her friend was right, of course.
Several minutes later Helena, who had left the room, came back with a glass of water and two tablets for her to take. She watched with maternal tenderness as Annie dutifully swallowed them down.
‘I’m sorry if I spoiled your evening,’ she whispered drowsily to Helena as the tablets started to work.
Now that she was beginning to feel calmer she couldn’t understand why she had overreacted so foolishly, just because of some minor and no doubt imagined similarity between the man she had seen in the restaurant and her own fantasy lover. And anyway, now that she really thought about it, there was no way her dream lover would ever have looked at her the way the man in the restaurant had, with that look of implacable cold hostility in his dense, darkly blue eyes, that blanked-out look of icy contempt and banked-down anger.
Wearily Annie felt her eyes starting to close, and ten minutes later, when Helena quietly shut the bedroom door behind herself, Annie was deeply and completely asleep.
‘I suspect that the emotion of the evening and the memories it stirred up are the root cause of what happened,’ Helena announced to her husband Bob as she went back downstairs to join him.
‘Mmm…There’s no way the man she saw could be someone she knew, is there?’ Bob asked her curiously.
‘Well, it is a possibility I suppose,’ Helena agreed. ‘After all, as you know, there are still some missing pieces from her memory. She can remember arriving here in Wryminster, but she can’t remember when she arrived. It’s difficult to imagine that anyone who was involved with her to the extent they would have had to be involved with her to be responsible for dreams of the intensity of those that Annie has been having could ever be cold-hearted enough, uncaring enough, not to get in touch after the accident. After all, it was reported in the local papers.’
‘No, it does seem improbable,’ Bob agreed.
Upstairs in her sleep Annie started to smile, her body quivering with a mixture of nervousness and excitement.
‘God, but you feel so good…Will you let me look at you as well as hold you, little Annie? I want to so much…’
Annie tensed a little as the warm, knowing male hands began to gently undress her, nervous at first, her heart thumping anxiously, but then, as pleasure and excitement took over from her initial apprehension, her tension started to fade, her body beginning to relax as she started to respond to the soft verbal praise of her lover whilst he, oh, so slowly and carefully, laid her body bare to his gaze, peeling back the protective layers of her clothing, freeing her flesh to the warmth of his hands, their warmth, like their strength, a benediction as well as a nerve-thrilling wonderful new sensation.
He knew that this was her first real experience of a man’s love, her first time, and he had told her, reassured her, that the choice, the decision was to be hers, that he would, if she asked him to do so, stop and allow her to change her mind. But she didn’t want to change her mind, nor did she want him to stop. She wanted…
She gave a small gasp of delight as his touch set fire to her desires, igniting all the passion she had somehow known she was capable of feeling but which hitherto had been locked up inside her, hidden away in a secret place to which only he had the key.
She loved him so much…wanted him so much…What had been unthinkable with anyone else was not just ‘thinkable’ with him, but desirable…must-haveable…Her whole body shook with the force of what she was feeling…with her longing for him…her love for him. He only had to look at her and she melted.
Just the way he said her name was a form of poetry greater than even the greatest love sonnets. Just the way he looked at her more beautiful than any love song ever sung. The way he made her feel was so intense it was scary…He thrilled her, excited her, made her want to laugh and cry at the same time, filled her with such happiness that it made her feel afraid. He made her feel almost immortal, and yet, at the same time, he filled her with such a sense of her fragile vulnerability, her own frightening dependence on him and his love, that she was consumed with terror at the thought of losing him.
He stroked her breasts, watching her as she quivered in instant response, her eyes darkening, her lips parting.
‘Has anyone ever told you that you have the sexiest mouth in the whole world?’ he asked her softly, rimming it with his fingertip and smiling as she made an instinctive movement to catch hold of it.
‘Not like that,’ he whispered to her. ‘Like this…’ And then he slid his fingertip into her mouth, coaxing her to fasten her lips around it and slowly suck on it.
In her dream Annie moaned out loud in shocked delight, her body moving restlessly as it sought the intimacy of its lover’s embrace.
The evening sun slanted through the wide windows. Beyond them, if she opened her eyes, Annie knew she would see the purple haze of the distant hills, and if she stood close to them she could look down on the mellow wash of the river. Even at this distance she could hear its soft rhythmic whisper, almost feel the insidious pull of its tide, just as she could feel the urgent tug of the female tide within her own body. She drew a sharp breath as she felt the male hunger in the hands that caressed her.
‘Tell me now if you want me to stop,’ he was whispering huskily, insistently, to her. ‘Tell me now, Annie, otherwise it will be too late.’
But she knew she would say nothing, that she wanted him too much, loved him too much, even though the things he was doing to her, with her, were a world away from her own childish experience, limited to a few fumbled kisses.
‘I’m much, much too old for you,’ he had already told her, but somehow, instead of putting her off, hi
s bold confession had only heightened and intensified her desire for him, imbuing him with a magical, almost mystical worldliness, a male knowledge and awareness that galvanised her body into excited little shivers.
And now it was nearly here, the moment of supreme revelation, the moment when…
Annie gave a sharp, piercing cry and she suddenly woke up, her body drenched in perspiration, her mind racing. As she sat up in her bed she covered her face with trembling hands.
Her dream had been so strong, so real, and the man in it, her dream lover, had been so—so scarily alive.
Shakily she tried to draw a calming breath of air into her lungs, and then she closed her eyes, reliving the moment when she had traced with her lips the shape of the tiny scar she had seen on her lover’s temple, the same scar in exactly the same spot that the man in the restaurant had had. How many times had she dreamed of that scar and not really known it?
She didn’t know. She only knew that a small fierce stillness had gripped him as she touched it. It was as familiar to her as her own reflection. But how could that be? What was happening to her? Was she experiencing some kind of sixth sense, some kind of special awareness, some kind of inexplicable glimpse into the future? Were they perhaps fated to meet, and was this—these dreams—fate’s way of warning her of what was to come, of what was to be? Her whole body started to tremble.
She had been so very close to death, and, although she was extremely loath to acknowledge it, never mind discuss it openly, had experienced the sensation she had read avidly and secretly about that was reportedly so common to people who shared her near-death experience: that feeling of rushing towards a wonderful welcoming place, being propelled through darkness into an indescribable sense of awesome light, then that sudden awareness of being turned back, pulled back, that voice that was not actually a voice announcing that it was not yet her time.
Had that experience somehow or other, illogical and implausible though it might sound, given her the ability to sense, to feel, to experience a special, wonderful event in her life that had yet to take place?