Motes of dust swirled in the column of sunlight beside me, churning like minute insects in the brightness. Reaching out, I put my hand into the light and kept it palm up, the sun making my pale skin look much whiter than I’d seen it appear before.
And I wasn’t burning.
The heat coming off the light was amazing, warmth without pain, a sensation of tingles causing my hairs to stand on end, but not from cold. A shiver of excitement riveted me, and I brought my hand back to my face, sniffing my skin. I could smell the sunlight.
“Oh God…”
My fingers were still warm when I touched them to my lips.
And I wasn’t burning.
I wasn’t burning.
Stepping into the light went against every logical fiber of my being, but I had to know. First I angled my foot and then my leg into the sunshine. Then I was standing in the light entirely, squinting at the shocking brightness.
My breath caught, and I let out a shaky sigh. I had to be dreaming, but this was so far beyond anything I’d ever imagined. This was too much. In my dreams, sunlight was fleeting and often a force of foreboding. But nothing here was hurting me.
I stood in the hall, blinded by the brightness but able to feel a previously unknown abundance of sensation. I’d only once ventured out into the sun, and it was by necessity, not desire. Even then I’d been so densely bundled that barely an inch of skin was showing on my whole body. Now I was barefoot, my toes curling against the warm pile of the carpet, and my eyelids were glowing pinkish-gold from the sunlight I couldn’t yet face head-on.
Leaning forward, I braced myself against the wall I knew was there and pressed my cheek to it. Was this what everything felt like in the sunlight? As if it were a living thing with a pulse, giving energy to every item it fell on? Each thing I touched in my apartment that I used to take for granted, was now warm like the body of a lover.
A sigh escaped my lips, and it was such a rapturous sound it should have followed an orgasm. Instead it was from touching a warm living room wall. What would it feel like to stand outside? Would I become this warm? Against all reason I wanted to try it.
“Secret?” A groggy male voice broke through my reverie. “Secret, what the hell?” The panic in the second sentence made me open my eyes finally.
Was I on fire? I didn’t feel like I was on fire.
Desmond was butt naked and standing next to my loveseat, a tangled blanket bunched at his feet where it must have fallen when he rushed to his feet. He looked frantic with worry, but also afraid. I surveyed my arms and hands, still squinting from the shock of the sunlight. I wasn’t on fire. There wasn’t even a mild burning smell to give warning. Just my ghastly pale arms.
“Am I dreaming?” I asked him.
He shook out of his own stupor and grabbed my extended arm, hauling me out of the living room and back into my dark tomb of a bedroom, where he slammed the door shut behind us, blocking out all of the sunshine. I felt colder, and after being exposed to the light, the darkness was more encompassing.
“I can’t see. ”
The overhead light snapped on, bathing the room in dim yellow. I wanted to go back into the living room.
“Are you okay?” Desmond came close, his rough fingertips trailing over my tingling skin as he inspected me, presumably for any signs of damage. “What did you do to your knees?”
I followed his gaze down and saw what he was looking at. Both my knees were an angry shade of red. They weren’t bleeding, but they looked nasty. Rug burn might be unpleasant, but there was no way it wouldn’t have healed in a matter of seconds. Desmond and I both stared at my knees.
“You can tell me if I’m dreaming,” I said.
“You’re not dreaming. ”
“Then why are you naked?”
He rubbed his thumb over my knee, and I winced, sucking in a breath through gritted teeth. “Usually people dream of themselves being naked, not other people,” he reminded me.
“You’ve obviously never seen how you look naked if you think people would rather dream about themselves instead of you. ” My view of his perfect ass was obstructed by the top of his head, but he had a nice head so I wasn’t goi
ng to complain too much.
“Are you drunk?” he asked.
“You mean did I sleep-drink myself to a point where I woke up at nine in the morning and stumbled out into a sunlit living room?”
Desmond glanced up, and we stared at each other. “It didn’t seem like a stupid question when I asked it. Yet somehow you word it like that and I come across as a moron. ”