Chapter Four
Shyla felt like she was drifting on an ebbing sea of lassitude. Sometimes she felt a little more lucid than others, but mostly she just felt like she’d been dunked in a cold bath, submerged for a while, wrung out roughly, and put away wet.
Her entire body felt like it had been forced through an old-fashioned mangle to aid that process, and her mind felt woolly; her thoughts kind of foggy.
She felt like there was something important that she should know, but couldn’t quite seem to grasp, and every time she tried to concentrate her thoughts drifted away into the ephemera until she became a little more lucid again. She didn’t know if it was minutes or hours. Time ceased to have any meaning. There was just cold and pain and the heavy fatigue that threatened to drown her.
There was something else too.
A voice.
A deep, soothing voice which calmed her fears and enveloped her in a gratifying feeling of safety.
That voice was her anchor; her lifeline.
Sometimes the voice changed a little. Sometimes it sounded like it talked over itself. But it always maintained that satisfyingly rich resonance and an attentive quality that made her feel like she would be taken care of, no matter what happened.
It was a voice with warmth and depth and knowledge, and she willingly gave herself over to its benevolent cadence.
It must have been later… earlier? Because the light was brighter behind her eyelids. Not really bright, but not pitch black anymore. Just a subtle difference.
She might have been scared… She would have been scared, if it weren’t for the two long, comfortable pillars of warm, tensile strength that protected her on either side. Keeping her safe and snug and sheltered from all the bad things. Just like the voice.
Maybe they were the voice.
Or maybe they weren’t.
It didn’t matter. They gave her the same feeling of security as the voice, so it was all good.
Shyla snuggled between the two in her safe little cocoon as the cold that had seemed to permeate her entire body began to dissipate.
It was because of those protective bastions. They were enshrouding her with their heat and solidity and helping her heal.
They were sentries, shielding her while the voice soothed, and they had chased away the darkness.
Warm.
She felt warm and safe for the first time in what might as well have been a lifetime.
Things were still blurry, like the residue of a bad dream always was, but the bitter, biting cold which had felt like it would last forever was gone.
Shyla didn’t think she had ever appreciated warmth so much in her life. And what a sexy, muscled heat it was. Maybe her dreams had been getting a bit raunchy and that’s what had warmed her up, she thought with a small giggle.
She was still floating in that sublime half and half suspension between dreams and reality. Not quite sleeping; not quite awake.
There were some residual aches and pains niggling in the background, but nothing so worrying that it disrupted the lovely languor within which she floated.
Damn she hoped she remembered this dream when she woke up because it was a doozy! And until she woke up fully, she was going to enjoy every second she had left before the nasty reality her sixth sense told her existed, stuck its ugly head back into her consciousness.
She reached out her hand and it connected with lean, muscled flesh. Her fingers feathered over the strong contours of bone and sinew. Damn, when she conjured a dream man her subconscious knew what it was doing, because she could feel the definition of her dream lover's abs beneath her exploring fingers.
She moved her leg and teased the hairy limb she connected with her foot.
There was a twinge in her other foot. Keep that one still. She didn’t want to interrupt this dream just yet.
The new angle made her aware of the hot length behind her, which now nuzzled up to her back.
And what an impressive length it was too, if the hardness she could feel nudging at her butt was anything to go by.