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She laughed. “I might. But as long as they’re all you—”

  “All me.” He kissed her again. “I know what you want, don’t I?”

  His hands crept over her, stroking.

  “Yes.” She shuddered. Need filled her, rushing into the empty spaces inside. “Yes, you do.”

  “Then let me give it to you. Don’t ask why. Don’t question a gift.”

  “Is this something I need, again?” she asked, sly, as her body responded to his touch.

  Her lover laughed and mouthed her shoulder. “Something we both need.”

  “I need you inside me,” she said.

  He looked into her eyes. “Say it again.”

  “I need you inside me. All the way inside me.”

  “I think I can oblige.”

  He shifted his weight and sank into her with a smooth, slow motion. His pelvis nudged hers. His first thrust took an eternity as he pulled out and pushed in, settling against her.

  “You fit me just right. And I don’t have to do anything to make it so, it just is.” His slightly formal tone was like a burr on silk, ragged and a bit out of place, but making interesting patterns all the same. He moved inside her, propped on his arms to hold himself upright.

  Then there were no more words. The world around them blurred at the edges, unnoticed and unneeded. Her lover pulled her close, turning them so she was astride him. They paused, settling this way. His hands held her hips. Tovah looked down at him. The chest beneath her hands was smooth, with twin dark nipples. His belly, taut and covered with hair thickening around the base of his cock. The thighs beneath her ass were hard with muscle. He might not look the same all the time, but those changes were minor and cosmetic. The man beneath was the same, and it didn’t matter how he represented.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked when she stopped moving.

  This wasn’t love. She couldn’t fall in love with someone she didn’t really know. This was pleasure and passion, the fulfillment of needs.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said.

  Passion and pleasure. Her body wanted it. So did her mind. Tovah moved and her lover followed, each motion point and counterpoint. He groaned and the sound of his desire called out her own small gasp. Together they collapsed onto the bed, much solider now that it had become necessary. A room formed around them, small and not so lushly appointed as the ones he’d formed for them in the past.

  After a second, she realized it was because she had shaped this place. No billowing curtains or aphrodisiacs or flickering candles. Bare walls, a soft place to lie and the warmth of her lover beside her. Those were the important things. To test herself, she opened the ceiling to reveal a nighttime sky littered with stars.

  He turned on his side to pull her close, spooning. It took a moment for her to relax, but she did. He smelled good, not of stale sex. She smiled.

  “What?” he murmured into her hair. “You’re laughing.”

  “I’m not laughing. I’m just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “This is nice, that’s all.”

  His hand rested flat on her belly. “It is nice.”

  The in-out of their breathing met and matched. Tovah drew her knees closer to her, rubbing the left one absently. It didn’t hurt, but sometimes having it here felt as awkward as missing it did in the waking world.

  “Most people don’t bother with this part,” she said. “The afterward.”

  “You mean sleepers?”

  She rolled to look at him. “I guess so. Yes. I mean, to them this isn’t real. Well, it’s not real.”

  He didn’t laugh with her, this time. “Of course it’s real.”

  “I mean…at least for them, it doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t last.”

  “Does something have to last to be real?” He reached to grab her hip a little too hard. “Doesn’t this feel real?”

  “It feels real now,” she said. “But when I wake up I’ll only have a memory of it. It doesn’t last.”

  He kissed her slowly, squeezing her hip and stealing her breath. He pulled away, searching her gaze with his. “It wouldn’t in the waking world, either. What makes it more real there, than here?”

  “It just is,” she said, and sat. “I don’t know why.”

  He sat too. “Then you’re not much better than a sleeper, even if you can shape.”

  He made it sound like an insult, and she frowned. She gathered the folds of her robe from the Ephemeros around her and pulled it over her nakedness. “You make that sound bad.”

  “Would you like to go back to it? Never knowing your potential?” He got out of bed. Tall, lean, unconcerned with his nudity, he stood before her. “Then again, if you never explore it, what use is it? You might as well never have learned you could shape at all.”

  “That’s not fair!” she protested. “I practice! I learn! Just because I don’t want to be a guide—”

  “I’m not talking about being a guide.” Her lover knelt before her and clasped her hands.

  Startled, she tried to pull away but he held her fast. “What are you talking about then?”

  “I’m talking about the way you tie yourself to this form. This one way of thinking. I bet you’re like that in the waking world, too. Afraid.” His lip curled, just a little. “Scared to take chances.”

  Her throat tightened as emotion rushed through her, sharp as knives. “You don’t even know me.”

  “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  She shook her head, pulling at his hands now encircling her wrists. “Let me go.”

  “You can be free of me. All you have to do is shape it.”

  “You’re stronger than I am.”

  He pushed her back without letting go of her wrists. Looming over her, he brought his mouth close to hers, but didn’t kiss. “Is that what you’d say if someone tried this in the waking world? You’d just lie back and take it? Let someone put their hands on you like this?”

  He let go of a hand to grab her hip again, harder even than before.

  “Stop it!” Tovah shoved him back, hard, adding the force of her will to her physical push.

  Her lover let go and moved back. He smiled. “Look around you.”

  The room had lost its walls. The entire world revolved around them, earth, sky, sea. He pointed outward, to the line of dark mountains along the horizon.

  “What is that?”

  “A mountain,” Tovah said.

  “No. It’s an obstacle. Would you climb a mountain in the waking world?”

  “I—” She refused to say she could not. She could. Her disability did not mean she couldn’t climb a mountain. It might make it more difficult than it might otherwise have been, but it would not keep her from doing it.

  Only she could do that.

  “Climb that mountain without falling, and you’ll learn something about yourself,” her lover said. “Something real. Something that will last.”

  The gust of his breath caressed her from behind. After a second, the pressure of his hand on her shoulder turned her to face him. She didn’t want to, but she did, and it had nothing to do with him shaping her to do it.

  “I don’t even know you,” she whispered miserably.

  “But you trust me,” he said in a gentler voice. “Why don’t you ask yourself why?”

  Tovah shook her head. Her hair fell over her face, covering her from his gaze. Her lover, the stranger with many faces, pulled her close. He smelled the same as he always did. His hand stroked over her hair.

  “You won’t even tell me your name!” The accusation burst from her throat without warning. “I don’t even have anything to call you. And you look different every fucking time I see you!”

  He said nothing, for a time. Somewhere, eyes were trying to open. Her bladder had filled, her stomach emptied, her dog would be nosing her hand. The waking world tugged her with supple, ignorable fingers, but it wouldn’t be ignored for long.

  “Why don’t you call me Edward?”

  She lifted her face to look at