Lingering nightmare

Caleb's POV

The car is going faster than usual. I gaze out of the window, my mood as stormy as the night outside. I wish I could lower the windows and let the naturally cool air to flow in, but that would ruin the seat covers and it would displease her.

Not that I cared what displeased whom at this moment.

There is a prominent smell of leather inside the car, but I can still detect her faint lavender scent. It was calming. Always had been. But I don't want calm. Not right now.

My arms cross over my chest, as I think up some kind of strategy. Anything to get things going my way.

I turn and look at her and from my angle her angelic face looks stressed, her green eyes narrowed to slits as she tries to make sense of the road ahead, her blonde hairs spilling over her shoulders in a frazzled kind of way.

She is talking. To me? Doesn't look like it. I turn my head, searching someone but all I see is darkness around us. I look back to her, confused.

Sensing my gaze, she glanced at me and wrinkled her brows in question. I can see her lips move, but no sound comes out of them. Her face is concerned. Frightened.

She's reaching out, touching me, shaking me, but all I do is sit and stare at her silently. Suddenly, my insides are filled with dread. I opened my mouth to... Do what, I wasn't sure.

"I'm okay," I scream at her repeatedly, senselessly, but no sounds comes out of my throat, no matter how loud I try to be. It's a weird thing to say in this moment, and somehow feels right and wrong all at once.

I struggled to move, reach out... do something. But I seemed to have turned into a stone statue. All I can do is sit and stare at her frantic eyes.

Something is filling me from inside. Something like gut-wrenching fear and regret.

A strange screeching noise filled the space. My vision black out for a moment, disoriented me and I blink, hard.

**

My eyes snapped open, moving restlessly around the darkness surrounding me. On a subconscious level, I knew I was awake, my eyes wide open, but the lucid visions from the nightmare still played in front of my eyes.

I moved, sitting up straight, standing, forcefully making my body move around in order to let my mind know that I was awake. That it was over. That it needs to stop the dream now, but as usual, it didn't work. Nothing ever did.

As if on auto-pilot, my feet moved, vaguely registering carpeted floor, even as my mind stubbornly stayed stuck onto the dream.

**

I am outside, though I'm not sure how. Kneeling on the hard ground, I shiver from more than just the cold that was radiating off me, feeling a warm weight in my arms. My head swam with confusion.

Ghostly pains were erupting throughout my body, but all I could do was sit and cradle something that was rapidly - frighteningly - cooling off. My vision blurred again, and then I saw something familiar.

Blonde hairs soaked in blood. Splatter of red mixed in water flowing away. Black asphalt of the road. Stench of burnt rubber and copper-y blood. And along with all that came, guilt. Overburdening, crushing guilt.

**

A sharp pain pierced through my body, cutting through the vision, and finally registering. I blinked to clear my sight, looking around at the gray light of the day that indicated that it was early. Way too early. It took me a moment to register other things about my surroundings.

I'm standing somewhere outside, near a pool that is reflecting the iron gray sky, with a gazebo on one side and french door on the other.

Where the hell was I?

It seemed to take way too long for my brain to start catching on. Suddenly, last two days came rushing back to my conscious, and for a minute I had to hold my head in my hands, overwhelmed with all that information overload.

"Caleb?"

I jumped at the sound of my name, even though it was spoken in a soft voice.

Turning, I see a disheveled looking Ruth standing in the doorway that leads out to the pool, looking adorably rumpled and confused.

Her sleep-swollen eyes roamed all over me, taking in my sweat-slicked chest and shoulders, making strange shivers run through my body.

I realised I was standing in front of her in nothing but a pair of black trunks, having been too tired to bother wearing anything more last night.

I swallowed, still feeling the after-effects of the nightmare mingling with my natural reaction to her.

My mind was muddled, still reeling, distinguishing between then and now. Between dream and reality. On top of that, Ruth's silent gaze was doing things to me on a subconscious level, making my body react, respond to hers.

I watched her throat work, feeling entranced by her instinctual response to me. Her lips parted slightly, reminding me what they tasted like. Damn.

Her gaze leisurely roamed over my body, travelling south making it feel like a physical caress. Her gaze went further down, alight with heat and I felt myself move without consciously deciding to.

When I was standing close enough to her, feeling warmth radiating from her, I paused. We had been here before. And sure enough, as I took another step closer to her, she stepped back, away from me.

There was an unnamed emotion uncurling within my chest, too delicate to poke and recognise so I let it happen without pondering over it, instead focusing on her. All of her.

When her back hit the opposite side of door, I raised my hand to trace her lower lip lightly. Her breathe hitched, responding to my touch and inched closer to me as if she cannot help itself. I was getting drawn to her warmth, and not just physical one.

Before I could even process my actions - understand or reason it - I had lowered my lips to hers. Even as my mind automatically picked on the familiarity of her lips, I could tell in an instant that this was different. But how, I wasn't exactly sure.

And as her lips curved themselves around mine and moved delicately, I decided that at the moment, I didn't care. The feel of her lips, softened by sleep made a moan rise from my throat and I found my arms had somehow made their way around her waist, pulling her body flush against mine.

I moved my lips over hers, intent to soak up the warmth she was emitting. In the very back of my brain somewhere, I knew I should stop. That maybe, I was using her to drive my demons away again, just like on my birthday evening a few weeks ago.

But as her small palms stroked my chest, warming the cold corners of my heart, I hushed that part of my brain.

The tip of my tongue traced her lower lip, and she instantly parted her lips, like that was the most natural response ever. I tightened my arms on her waist, and straightened, lifting her off the ground and pressed her to the wall behind her, pressing myself into the glowing warmth of her presence.

There was a nagging thought in my mind. Something that said it needed attention, but I was too greedy to pay it any. Her dangling feet hiked up my waist, and I felt a growl build in my chest.

Maybe it was the nightmare, or her near abduction or just the heat of the moment, but when she pulled her lips away from mine to breathe, I trailed kisses onto her neck and below, unable to pull away.

Supporting her weight between my body and the wall, I gently clawed at her night shirt, exposing her shoulder and felt her shudder as cool morning air hit her skin, followed by my lips. She swallowed audibly, and I buried my nose in her skin, inhaling her scent like an addict.

"Caleb. Oh my god, Caleb," she sighed, her nails scraping my scalp provocatively. The tip of my tongue ran over her skin and her head thumped back on a breathy moan.

Even though I wanted her with a desperation that surpassed my need to breathe, I couldn't help cherish the feel of her satin smooth skin beneath my lips.

"Caleb," she murmured again and I pressed closer into her but instead of losing herself into our closeness again, she tightened her grip on my hairs a tad too strongly.

"Oh my God, Caleb," the words, though an echo from just a few moments ago were spoken in an entirely different tone. It wasn't the breathy moan of desire that reflected in them. No, these words reflected horror and concern.

Confused, I pulled back to look at her, but her attention was on something behind me.

No, not again. A flashback of our canopy - disaster came back to me and I sighed, deciding to see what held her attention more than me this time.

Putting her down gently, I studied her face for a second which changed just like the atmosphere around us had. It went from heated to confused, and then settled on alarm.

She murmured something more, but I wasn't able to make out what it was because at that moment, I had followed her gaze.

The sight of shards of glass shining just a few feet away from where we stood greeted me and whether it was the conditions I had woken up in, the early morning hour or something else but it took my brain an embarrassingly long amount of time to process what I was looking at.

I stood stock still, staring at the small pool of blood, coating on and around the shards as Ruth dropped to her knees in front of me.

Even with the moment being as ruined as it was, I couldn't help but jump at her action as her small hands touched my ankle.

I gazed down at her head, only then realising she was holding her hand in front of her face. Her hand that was coated with blood.

For a second, the smell of copper registered, taking my mind back to that dark place again, but then I moved, and another shot of sharp pain lanced through me.

It was then that I realised that the pain that had pulled me out of those visions was still there. It was consistently travelling up from my feet that were cut up and covered in blood from the pieces of wine glass that I had broken last night and forgotten to get cleaned up.

"You're going to have to pay for that, literally."

Who knew how true Leo's words would truly be?