Page 5 of Precipitous Nightmare's Valentine Dream

He leveled his unfathomable gaze at her, a steady glare that usually made even the strongest of Nightmares squirm. With one eyebrow raised, he questioned her brazen demands.

“You expect me to depart at your command?”

She swallowed hard and met him with an angry stare of her own.

“I expect you to not terrorize a sleeper I’ve been cultivating.” Indignant offense laced her voice. “This one’s mine, and so you’re the one overstepping here.”

Foolish or courageous? Precipitous wasn’t certain which applied, but staring at her across the mortal’s messy bedroom, he had to admit the woman was absolutely gorgeous. Long silvery hair glimmered in the moonlight streaming through a window off to her left. A pert nose, decorated with freckles like tiny stars across an alabaster sky lay beneath bright golden eyes filled with flecks of wonder and possibility. Lips of rose-gold with a shimmery soft gleam made Precipitous wonder if the texture might be more silk or velvet.

He’d grown unmistakably aroused watching her, though he knew he’d break the poor creature should he attempt any of the things his fevered imagination envisaged. A creature could dream, though. And he knew he would have many future late-night fantasies about this shimmering little thing.

As Precipitous considered the Dream, she in turn swept her eyes down his body in a slow perusal. Unexpectedly, there was no distaste, no terror, in that golden gaze. Instead, her expression shifted to calculated interest.

Perhaps skin-tight garb hadn’t been the best choice. Precipitous let himself shift ever so slightly toward the monstrous, abandoning the illusion of being merely a man.

He heard her heartbeat speed up as his horns emerged, as his teeth elongated and his form stretched the fabric of the clothing he’d formed around him almost to tearing. He let his tongue split, slid the twining halves across his upper lip as though he wanted to taste her, to pierce her, to devour her.

The sharp fear rolling off the little Dream didn’t surprise him. The lust did.

“Yum,” she whispered, though perhaps she hadn’t meant him to hear. “Boy’s got fuck-me horns.”

Precipitous recalled the words of the rag-bone puppet, of the Crone who had pushed past that broken creature to deliver her hard-earned wisdom.

A Nightmare and a Dream. Together, they could become real. Might there be truth in those words?

Here before him stood a Dream. If he could win her over, might she be his path out? His way to escape the Nightmare Realm and become something — someone — mortal?

Would she be interested? Could he make her so? Was that even what he truly wished for?

He wasn’t certain, but he did know that something in his existence had to change. He’d been monstrous for as long as he could recall. He would, perhaps, like to at least try being something else.

Precipitous considered the Dream before him. Surely, it could not be so difficult to fall in love. Mortals seemed to do it all the time, stumbling blindly into the condition without consideration for what came next.

If he and this Dream could experience a connection he’d only seen through others’ nighttime musings, might they turn that key to escape their respective realms? If the prophecies held true, then achieving love would make them real. Afterward, they could go their separate ways with no harm done. It did not occur to Precipitous that all he knew of love was Nightmare.

Precipitous stepped forward.

“Yes, little Dream,” he said as she backed up one step, then another. “What you sense is true.”

He drew ever closer, but restrained himself from reverting fully to his true form. He wished to provoke her, not subject her to the absolute terrors of the night. “I desire you.”

His chest met the end of her toothpick umbrella as her back hit the wall and she let out a little gasp. There was nowhere else for this Dream to go. He smiled, letting those rows of teeth emerge.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said in a trembling singsong voice. Up close, her near-translucent skin shined with an internal glow. Her golden eyes flashed with defiance. She smelled like a feast and he wanted nothing more than to succumb to pure, unrestrained hunger. A delicate scoff brought him back to reality. “You’re just a Dream gone wrong.”

That gave him pause. He arched one dark eyebrow at her.

A Dream gone wrong? What exactly did they teach Dreams about Nightmares anyway?

Precipitous backed off to contemplate this odd little Dream, cocked his head to better study her. Disappointment shadowed the woman’s features, but she didn’t follow as he pulled back. Her eyes kept darting to his horns, though. Suppressing a smile became difficult in the wake of those quick, fascinated glances.

“You know we are both made of stardust and desires,” he finally said, watching her for a response. “Neither wrong nor right on either of our parts.”

The toothpick descended as she dropped her hand.

“Oh,” she said, surprise in her expression. “Didn’t mean to offend.”

The clock on the mortal woman’s bedside table switched over to midnight, and in an impulsive move, Precipitous Nightmare extended a hand toward this lovely Dream girl.

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