Nocturne

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
--Iris Murdon

He didn't think he'd closed his eyes for more than a second...but there she was.

Wrapped in shadows, her sparkling eyes reflecting moonlight, she lounged casually at the end of the bed. Languorously stretching her limbs, all curves and flesh, beckoning in silent invitation. A naughty, tantalizing dream...but only a dream, nonetheless. Still, the recognition didn't stop him from growing hard with urgent arousal. It didn't staunch the low moan released from deep in his throat. Even when his sweaty hand clutched the starch-stiffened sheets, she didn't disappear.

"What are you waiting for?" The question was light and teasing, followed by a quick sweep of her tongue across those luscious lips. "The alarm clock's tickin'."

"You aren't real--"

"Who says I'm not?"

"And I'm not in any mood to wake up with my sheets sticky."

She pouted slightly, rising up to lean on her forearm. "You didn't seem to mind a few days ago."

"A few days ago, I didn't have to worry about the maid."

Crawling lazily up to his shins, her breasts and belly rubbing across the sheet, she nipped at his knee through the white fabric. She grinned slyly when he flinched. "I imagine she's seen worse."

"I haven't had a wet dream in years. I'm not about to start now."

Sitting back on her heels, she finally met his gaze with a serious expression. "You don't want to play with me?"

He glanced down at the tented sheet, looking at a cock so erect and eager it made the fabric around it shiver. "The hell I don't. But not here, and not now. I need to rest. I've got work--"

"Work to do, people to kill, worlds to save...it's all the same song and dance. You make me want you and then you walk away. No wonder you're always alone, Alex Krycek."

"Sabryn--"

Before he could finish his thought, she disappeared. Gone in the blink of an eye...or so she would have been, had he been awake. All his dream-self could do was groan and thump his fist against the sagging mattress in frustration. She was right. He shouldn't have been surprised. She was always one step ahead of him. And he never seemed to figure it out until it was too late. He willed her back, sheets-be-damned, to no avail.

"Stupid. Stupid, stupid son-of-a-bitch."

*No wonder you're always alone, Alex Krycek.*

He didn't have to be alone. It was a conscious decision he made. It always had been. He played the mythical hero, fighting monsters, taking the prize, being tempted by false comrades. And when he finally held the true jewel in his hands, he threw it away. Believing he'd been deceived. Never trusting. Never stopping the crusade. Needing to prove his own worth. Always running.

And he only had himself to blame. But even blame didn't stop him for long.

Faced with a fitful night's sleep without relief, he reluctantly released his death grip on the sheet and slid his hand down his naked torso. Eyes closed, his dream-self let imagination take over. Fingers pressing, dancing along ticklish flesh, combing through wiry curls, before deftly circling the pulsing length of his erection. He hissed, sucking in a deep breath as his balls lurched in excitement. Barely one stroke of his hand passed, up and then down the turgid shaft, before he felt it...

He wasn't even sure he could believe his senses. So deep in arousal, he could have imagined it entirely. But he could have sworn he felt the lightning-quick brush of a slick tongue across the head of his cock.

His hips bucked and he swiftly opened his eyes. Nothing but his fist moving beneath the sheets. And yet, such an erotic sight was not to be missed. So much for not mussing the sheets. A dark circle of precum dampened the white cotton, leaving the otherwise starch-ridden fabric to sag limply over his pumping fist. Short bursts of air left his lungs, shoving little moans out of his lips ahead of them.

His slippery fingers twisted around the shaft, teasing. And for a moment, the feel of her warm mouth settling over the swollen head was so perfect and familiar he didn't notice it.

Alex jerked upright in the bed, caught somewhere between awareness and the dream, his hand balancing his weight as his gaze darted around the darkened room. Barely a sliver of light crept through the closed curtains, but it was enough to see that he was alone. As ever.

Alone, in an empty bed, with the unmistakable sensation of his lover's mouth around his erection.

He stared, his mouth dropped open, seeing nothing. Feeling everything. The delicate rasp of her teeth against his sensitized skin. The wet, plump pillows of her lips, tightened and drawn into a taut circle, rolling up and down the length of his shaft. The slick, hard muscles of her flexing cheeks, holding him firmly and sucking at him until he thought he might lose his mind. And her tongue. God, that tongue. Drawing tiny little circles, tracing every ridge and vein, molesting his flesh.

"Jesus, Sabryn..."

He head fell back weakly, rolling heavily against his shoulders. His entire arm shook with the effort to hold him up, debilitated by the lack of blood pumping through his system. His hips shifted involuntarily, uncomfortably, beneath her touch. She didn't seem to weigh a single pound. But, then, dreams never did, did they?

And then suddenly, she just stopped.

"Sabryn--"

Her voice was soft, barely recognizable, as easily manifested as her body itself. "How do you know who I am? Maybe I'm Marita."

He couldn't help the half-smile that curved his mouth...even though he wasn't sure she could see it any more clearly than he could see her.

"You definitely aren't Marita. She couldn't get me this hard in a million years." He thought she might have smiled at that, but her silence didn't articulate a damned thing. "Don't stop now. You were just about to reach the creamy filling."

This time, her answering snort was completely unequivocal. "I thought you didn't want to make a mess?"

"You made a mess out of me a long time ago."

He could feel the bed shifting on either side of him, felt the weight of her invisible body brushing up the underside of his cock as she drew closer. The heat of her breath made the tiny hairs next to his ear stand on end.

"I hate to tell you this, lover, but you're the one who fucked me up."

He lifted his hand, trying to touch her, but encountered nothing but open space. "Don't go--"

"I'm still here."

"I can't feel you."

The hot, damp sweep of her tongue against his cheek proved otherwise. "You feel that, don't you?"

"Yes, but I want to touch you."

"Sorry."

"Sorry? I can't see you, I can't touch you..."

"You said you didn't want me...not here, not now."

"Now. Right now."

He could feel her settle against him, straddling his waist, sitting down just in front of his aching erection. She must have grabbed the headboard behind him, because his head was pressed forward, brushing lightly against her tightened nipples. Yet when he opened his mouth to taste one of them, he swallowed nothing but air.

"Please, Sabryn."

"What do you want from me?"

"Everything."

"So you've said. A man who wants everything shouldn't walk away with nothing, you know. It's counterproductive."

"You're such a pain in the ass," he muttered, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

"That's easily remedied."

He made a last desperate grasp for her, knowing it was futile but unable to let her slip away so easily. When his fingers encountered solid flesh and he met her silvery-blue gaze, he didn't waste another second.

Rolling in twisted sheets, he pinned her beneath him and smothered her lips with his own. He didn't bother closing his eyes when he kissed her. She wasn't going to disappear from him again. His sight was awash with blue. A dazzling smear of color, as brilliant up close as one of her paintings. Freeing his hand from beneath her neck, his slid his fingers down her side. Grasping her thigh and pulling it up tighter against his hip. Pushing his over-eager cock into the clutching warmth of her body. She gasped, pulling away from his kiss but never leaving his stare. Her eyes were an artist's palette of brilliance, shifting from sapphire arousal to cerulean rapture.

She moved with him, grasping, and he felt everything. From the sharp bite of her fingernails scraping his lower back to the lightest butterfly fluctuations of her inner muscles. He saw everything. The way she helplessly bit her lip. The dotting of sweat on her forehead. The widening of her pupils as she neared climax. Her could taste the sweetness of her saliva in his mouth. Could hear the uneven exhalations leaving her mouth. And he could smell her. That heated, mouth-watering aroma that was all woman, all sex, completely Sabryn.

"God, I missed you," she sobbed, so close to his ear.

His words came out of his mouth, disjointed, between pants. "I've...only been gone...two days."

"I need you."

He pressed his forehead against hers, driving harder into her body.

"Come back to me, Alex."

"I will, soon."

"Come back."

"I promise..."

He was so close, so damned his close. His balls tightened against his body, his gut clenching in delicious agony, little shivers of anticipation singing through his veins.

"Come to me, Alex."

"Yes."

"Come to me."

*Oh God, yes!*

"Come...Alex..."

His next breath burst out of his lungs with amazing intensity, but nowhere near the force of the semen that shot from his pulsating cock. He surged into her, draining himself, leaving nothing but a weak mass of heavy muscle. Not even his bones seemed to support him anymore. And as the dream drifted away, he settled even deeper into her embrace.

It shouldn't have been any surprise when he woke up early the next morning to find himself lying in his own wasted fluids. His face buried in the pillow, his body sore from viciously rubbing against the mattress, he pounded his fist against the headboard and fought down disgust at his own adolescent behavior. It had seemed so real at the time. Now, he could only roll away from the wet spot in embarrassment.

Twenty minutes later, freshly showered and back on the road to Washington, he could still hear her voice as clearly as if she were sitting next to him.

*No wonder you're always alone, Alex Krycek.*