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“Don’t be. You probably won’t want all this stuff.”
“Are you kidding? This much recall is a gold mine.”
He wasn’t so sure. “Do I just give this to you, or what?”
She seemed surprised. “No, you have to describe the dreams in as much detail as possible.”
“What do you think all this is?”
She gave him a small tolerant smile that annoyed him. “A reminder for you. I promise that as you relate the events of the dream, you’ll begin to recall other details. There is nothing unimportant. Once you begin, keep talking. Let it all flow.”
Hell, this wasn’t going to work. He didn’t do “flow.”
“What’s wrong?” She laid down her pen. “You look distressed.”
“Hell, yeah, I’m distressed. You asked me to record all this stuff, and now you want me to go over it again.”
She had that tolerant, patient look down to a damn science.
“I know this isn’t easy. Dreams seem so personal—”
“Of course they’re personal.” He slouched in his chair, annoyed and frustrated.
“But you don’t have control over them. There’s no reason to be embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed.” He grunted. “That has nothing to do with it.”
She tapped her pencil on the desk with hard rapid intensity. Impatience pulled her lips into a straight line. “Let me be blunt. Brenda explained what we needed to do here before you set foot in the lab. What’s the problem?”
He glared back at her. Dammit. She was right. “Okay, you want the details. Here are the details…” He set his notes aside. He didn’t need them. One particular dream he remembered with so much clarity he still had a hard-on.
“Wait a second.” She flipped on the recorder.
“Is that necessary? You have my notes.”
She didn’t answer him. Just gave him one of those tolerant looks again, and then leaned back in her chair with a pencil in her hand. “Begin whenever you’re ready.”
Next year too soon? He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “I’ll start with my first memory,” he said, and she nodded. “I was in this—look, it’s going to sound weird.”
“Don’t worry about it. Most dreams do. Go on.”
He shifted to a more comfortable position. “There was this room with a bunch of chairs and sofas, almost like a waiting room, except there weren’t any people there, only me. Seconds later, women started to parade in, most of them topless. Some of them were big-busted, like really big, like augmented big. The blonde with the tassels started to unbutton my shirt.” He paused. “Can I have some water or coffee or something?”
Emma stared at him, wordlessly, and then she blinked. “Of course. I should have asked you before we started.”
They both stood at the same time.
Nick motioned for her to sit back down. “Tell me where it is. I’ll get it.”
She shook her head. “We have colas, orange juice and water. If you want coffee I’ll start a pot.”
“We?” Now he had her.
“I share this place with two other graduate students and we all chip in to keep the fridge stocked.”
Another graduate student. Of course.
“Water’s fine.” He sank into his seat, and watched her out of the corner of his eye as she hurried into the back room.
Well, now that he sort of knew who the other woman was, he couldn’t just come out and ask for her name and phone number.
Could he?
He sighed. He had his plate full for right now. Normally talking about sex in any form didn’t bother him, but he could tell he’d startled her, which made him uncomfortable.
To him sex was a game, harmless recreation, but only if both players agreed and got equally as much out of it. Nick very carefully stuck to partners who shared his philosophy. That way no one got hurt. However, he also understood that not every woman agreed with his attitude, and he respected their opinions, too.
Unfortunately, his dreams weren’t nearly as discreet.
He glanced at the binder he’d set on her desk. It seemed to take her a long time just to get a glass of water, and he was tempted to grab his notes and do some creative editing, maybe clean up the details a little, omit some of the more colorful parts.
Before he could think the possibility through, she was back with a bottle of Evian. It sure hadn’t taken nearly five minutes to grab that.
“Anything else before we resume?” she asked, her finger poised over the recorder button.
“I don’t think so.”
She made a face at the recorder. “I thought I’d stopped it. Let me rewind to where we left off.”
He took a long cold sip of the water while she fiddled with the machine. But he nearly spit it out when she stopped and hit play, and he heard his own mutterings. Not of his dream as he’d relayed it to her, but the mild oath he’d uttered after she’d left the room, and then the more damning murmurs expressing his doubts.
Hell, he hadn’t realized he’d said anything out loud. Fortunately most of it was unintelligible.
To her credit, she didn’t even try to listen. She quickly continued to rewind the tape further. She played the last few seconds to remind him where they’d stopped, and then settled back in her chair, her gaze lowered.
He took another sip of water. “Okay, the blonde undid the top three buttons of my shirt, but she stopped when a redhead came in and told her I wasn’t the one. By the way, the redhead had on clothes.”
Doc looked relieved.
“The blonde got angry and said she didn’t believe her, and then tried to unfasten my next button. The other woman said something but it was in another language, and the others started laughing.”
“The other women?”
“Yeah.”
“Where were they?”
“Sitting on the chairs or lying on the sofas. Do you need to know whether they had their clothes off or not?”
“Yes.” Her tone was crisp, professional, but a faint pink crept into her cheeks.
“All but three of them had taken everything off.” At the vivid memory he shifted to accommodate the strong reaction his body was having.
“Were they strangers, or did you know any of them?”
“Never saw them before.”
“Sometimes in our dreams people take on different shapes and forms. Did you believe any of these women to be someone you knew…even though she didn’t look like she was supposed to?”
He thought for a moment. “No.”
She made a brief notation. “How about the room? Did you know where you were?”
“Nope.”
“Any other details about it you remember?”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “I guess my mind was on the women.”
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth and she pressed her lips together. “Okay, let’s get back to the women. What else do you remember about them?”
“The redhead had a bag with her and she started taking out scarves and handcuffs and massage oils. When the blonde unzipped my fly, the redhead didn’t say anything. She just kept staring at me while she laid out the stuff she’d brought. But then the blonde reached into my pants to stroke me, and the redhead yanked her hair until she moved back.”
He paused for another sip of water. No surprise, he’d gotten harder than a rock replaying the scene.
“What were the other women doing?” Doc’s voice didn’t sound too steady and her face was getting redder.
He gladly avoided her gaze. “Kissing and fondling each other.” When the silence grew, he chanced a look at her. “Shall I leave out that part?”
“There’s more?”
He nearly laughed at her scandalized tone. “I’m not your first male subject, am I, Doc?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then you know men can have, um, wilder imaginations sometimes.”
“Of course.” She straightened, pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Her cheeks were still pink, her voice a little high, but her gaze narrowed suddenly, and when her glasses slipped, she looked over them at him. “There is a major difference between dreams and fantasy.”
“I know that.”
She stared at him in silence for a long torturous moment. “These are dreams you’re describing, and not wishful thinking, right?”
He chuckled. “Trust me. I would not be describing my fantasies to you.”
She blinked, lifted her chin. “As long as we understand each other.”
“Look, I’d be happy to edit some of this. It can’t all be that important—”
She vigorously shook her head. “That would compromise the results of the study. Tell me everything you remember.”
“Okay, Doc, where were we?”
She pressed rewind and kept her gaze on the tape. It took a couple of tries before she found where they’d left off, and each time she had to listen to him describe the dream, her cheeks got a shade pinker.
“There, I think you’ve got it,” he said, taking pity on her, and she immediately stopped the tape and pressed record.
“Okay, so while the other women were kissing, and the redhead and blonde were arguing about something—”
“About what?”
“I couldn’t tell. I don’t think I really heard what they were saying but just had a sense they were angry. Anyway, I was too concerned about this other woman who came in.”
“Another one?” Her eyebrows lifted in shock, and then she quickly wiped all expression from her face. “Tell me about her.”
“Let’s see, she had long dark hair, great legs, a great— I couldn’t see her face. I got really agitated about that, but the only view I got was the back of her.”
“Did you feel as though you knew her?”
“Nah, I think maybe I was trying to place her but I really had no idea.”
“What was she wearing?” She paused, frowning. “Nick?”
He slumped back. How could he have been so stupid! Through the haze of dawning, he vaguely heard Doc call his name. “A black thong,” he said absently. “That’s all.”
The woman in his dream was the same one he’d glimpsed yesterday. That’s why he couldn’t see her face in the dream. Wow, this was really something. Kind of weird. He’d never obsessed like this before.
“You’re remembering something, I take it?”
He stared blankly at her. Should he admit he saw someone else in the back room? She’d have to fess up then. But she’d also have a million questions about the woman being the centerpiece of his dream. No thanks.
“Not really.” He shrugged at the curiosity in her face. “Sorry, Doc, I guess I was too excited about, um, the upcoming events to think about anything else.”
“Right.” Emma fidgeted with the pencil, and then stared down at her pathetic notes. Good thing she was taping this interview or she’d be in sorry shape later. Either the other male subjects she’d studied had held back on her, or this guy had only sex on the brain. Of course the others had relayed some sexual encounters, but Nick was too much.
Part of her was glad for the opportunity to make her study so thorough. The other part wanted to sink into a hole and not surface for a month. It wasn’t that she was a prude, but it wasn’t easy to sit here and listen to this stuff and pretend it didn’t faze her. The last thing she wanted to do was spook him so that he started censoring himself.
On the other hand…
“Did you want me to continue?” he asked casually, as if they were discussing the weather.
“Yes, of course. You were telling me about the dark-haired woman.”
“Oh, I didn’t forget, Doc.” He smiled again, shifted in his seat, getting comfortable, his eyes half closing, probably trying to get back into the dream. Oh, boy. “She didn’t say anything, just watched the other two women argue. And then it was almost like she communicated to them silently because they stopped suddenly, and the redhead picked up the handcuffs and slapped them around my wrists.”
“Wait a minute, let’s back up.” She was really botching this. She hadn’t had him set the scene up properly. “You said you were sitting. Were you restrained in any way?”
“No.”
