Chapter 14

When Gavin enters her, he and Elena cry out simultaneously. The doubled perspective is at once exhilarating and disorienting. He can feel himself, harder and longer than he's ever been before, sliding into a caressing warm wetness. At the same time, she is aware of being spread, wider and wider, until at last, hot smooth skin is pressing forward, and then deeper still, filling her completely. From him, there is nothing but pleasure, and a triumphal sense of achievement, "At last, I'm doing it!" From Elena, there is some discomfort, a sensation of momentarily being stretched beyond endurance, and then a slow easing of pressure.

He desperately wants to go crazy, rut inside her for the few seconds it will take before he explodes in orgasm, but instead holds himself under tight control. What they are doing is only gradually beginning to feel pleasurable to Elena, and more than anything else, he wants her to share in his building ecstasy.

{Wow, I think I'm a little bit jealous. It's good being a guy, huh?}

Even though he knows she's teasing, and apart from the words feels her overwhelming happiness at being with him, Gavin is still embarrassed. His next thought makes it worse, and it's impossible to hide it from her.

{Actually, since you're a virgin, I thought it'd probably hurt even more.}

At least, linked as they are now, he doesn't have to explain his embarrassment, or try to convince her just how relieved he is to be wrong.

{Oh, that!}

He senses that she is a little embarrassed herself, and catches the vignette she is remembering, sheets marred by a streak of blood, and the smooth handle of an old toothbrush, also stained red.

{It's good to be Colgate, too!}

{Shut up!}

Pressed as deep inside her as he can possibly reach, he flexes, withdraws slightly, and flexes again. Tightening around him, she moans, and begins a deliciously slow rocking motion. Gavin experiments, shifting his hips beneath her slightly, pressing forward at the new angle, withdrawing, and then starting the whole process over again. He's switched to featherlike touches with both hands around and across her breasts, stroking one area, moving to another, and keeping his movements as random as possible.

Her own movements atop him are growing more vigorous, pushing downward to meet his gentle thrusts, and rotating her hips as she rises upward. Speech is now completely unnecessary between them, but she is making soft whimpering noises, and Gavin thinks they are the sexiest sounds he's ever heard. Somehow, she's also started massaging him with her internal muscles, and he's beginning to feel a growing pressure in his balls.

{Oh God, Elena, we've only just started, and you're going to make me come soon.}

She giggles.

{That's a problem?}

He is unable to resist, and his thrusts are faster now, as there mutual excitement increases. She slides her hands down his legs until they reach his kneecaps, leans backward, and propels her hips to meet every one of his upward lunges.

{Only because I want this to go on for hours, and I want you to come too.}

Her amusement flows to him across the link, but she doesn't laugh this time. They are both panting, rising together towards a mutual release of pleasure. The picture she sends him is of himself, convulsed above her in a state of ecstasy, with Elena sprawled beneath him, looking bored and indifferent.

{As if! You think I could stop myself from coming when I'm connected to you like this?}

It's true of course, everything they are experiencing now is shared. He worries briefly what life will be like if the link in-between them never ends, and then pushes the concern away. If there's ever been a time to live totally in the moment, now is that time. Her warmth around him; what it feels like to be so thoroughly filled up by him inside; the squeezing pressure of her walls against his length; the delicious tease of his hardness against her outer lips, followed by the warm rush as he pushes back inside. It no longer seems to matter which sensation originated with him, and which began with her. They are both caught up in the same whirlpool of awareness, stretched taut, striving towards a release that is only seconds away.

Their bodies slam together one last time, and they feel the serge of Gavin's orgasm pulsing into Elena. Just as when they were first joined, they cry out in unison, and then collapse against each other, totally spent.

The big room Elena's in is crowded, and a continuous stream of people are rushing by pulling suitcases. She recognizes the long rows of chairs, the ticket counters with lines of fidgeting people standing in front of them, the blaringly loud and sometimes overlapping announcements, and the walls of windows on either side. All these things are burned into her awareness, not only because this place had been the setting for her first vision in the dreamscape, but also because it had been the location of several nightmares for months afterwards.

{Oh shit! Gavin?}

For an instant, she is convinced that Gavin is gone, the link is broken, and she is completely and horribly alone. She knows instinctively that being here is wrong, that this is no true viewing being projected by the dreamscape.

{Yes, I'm here.}

{Thank God!}

As long as she's still linked with him, she feels certain she can handle anything. He is her anchor, her path back to the real world should anything happen in the dreamscape.

{Yes, I feel that too. It's weird, I couldn't tell you how, but I know I could bring you back any time I wanted. In fact... }

She feels a tug on her awareness, similar but not identical to the compulsion she experiences when being forced to watch a specific sequence of events, and the airport terminal begins to fade around her.

{No!}

She objects immediately, without even thinking about it.

{But, if you're that certain it's a trap.}

{Wait, just let me think for a second.}

Gavin acquiesces, but she senses how on edge he is, ready to pull her back to him in an instant.

Her surroundings snap back to their former clarity, and she studies the crowd while trying to figure out her reluctance to leave. Yes, there he is, the fat guy in the Hawaiian shirt. She doesn't have very long, probably no more than a few seconds until her father appears. If this is yet another trap designed by the couple hunting herself and Gavin, how will it be sprung?

{Do you think maybe they expect you to react exactly the way you did when you were nine? I mean, you haven't seen him in five years.}

She's startled at first, and then nods. Of course, Gavin is still linked to her, and would've been able to access the viewing of her father's death as soon as she thought about it.

{Mr. P told me they could appear like avatars in the dreamscape. They were using the shadow things to disguise themselves, but there's no reason they couldn't appear as my father as well.}

{And the link, we already know it feeds off touch to some extent. If you touch their avatar... }

{They want to break our link and trap me here, that much hasn't changed. There's no swimming pool to drown me in this time, but it won't matter, I'll die anyway if they never let me leave this place.}

In the distance, she spots the figure she's been watching for. His clothes, the way he walks, the overnight bag swinging at his side, everything is achingly familiar. It is her father, and yet she knows it cannot be.

{Elena, this is crazy, you can't... }

She spreads her arms, and begins running towards the apparition of her father. The tears falling from her eyes are real, but have nothing whatsoever to do with the joyful reunion she is faking. Their source is a burning rage, an overwhelming desire to destroy the threat to Gavin and herself.

{Gavin, they're never ever going to stop, not until one of us is dead. You know that!}

{But... }

The figure in front of her stops, drops the overnight bag, and spreads its arms in greeting. Stupid, do they think she's still a child, to be taken in by such an obvious sham?

{You know what to do!}

Elena leaps forward.

Gavin screams. The pain throughout his body is unbearable, as though he's been doused with gasoline and set on fire. He had expected an attack, some sort of trick that would fool him into severing his link with Elena, but nothing like this torture. She is inside him, suffering from the same agony that is tearing him apart, an agony she had willingly leapt forward to intercept.

Sobbing, he curls into a fetal position, but there's no escaping the awful pain, the searing flames on every side. If she had left, allowed him to pull her back from the dreamscape when he suggested it, none of this would've happened. And, if he pulls her back now?