Chapter 124: Better with Chocolate
- RAYA -
Gooey marshmallows and melted chocolate squeeze out of the graham cracker between my fingers, quickly coating them. I lick them off and giggle when Dex arches a brow at me, heat simmering in his honey brown eyes while the literal fire we’re sitting by reflects off of them.
"Good?" He smirks.
"So good."
We’re outside in the backyard with the fire before us in a stone pit and the stars above us, twinkling almost as bright. There’s a cool breeze promising autumn days ahead, which is my favorite time of year.
I love all things that have to do with autumn. The crisp, falling leaves that skitter across the street, the smell of rain mingling with black nights coated in mystery and intrigue, the pumpkins, the gathered straw, the gothic decorations that start adorning shops and houses.
If I could drape myself in a black velvet cape and live the rest of my days in a secluded little stone cottage in a perpetual autumn forest, I would. I would live there forever, making friends with wildlife and following babbling streams just to see which stone the lone leaf I threw in gets snagged on while icy water rushes on around it.
To me, that’s bliss. That and literally anything I’m doing with Dex, which right now is moaning seductively around the taste of melted chocolate.
"There is no way to eat this and not get it everywhere," I chuckle, once again licking the excess from my fingers and rolling my tongue around my lips. I probably have chocolate all over my face by now. Hopefully Dex will lick off whatever I miss.
"I wonder how s’mores were invented," Dex muses, looking at his own melty, gooey snack. "Who thought: ’You know what would be good with this toasted marshmallow? Chocolate and graham crackers.’"
"I think you could add melted chocolate to literally anything and make it better," I suggest.
"Anything?"
"Probably," I shrug.
"Pasta?" His eyebrows shoot up.
"Maybe," I chuckle. "I’m sure it’s been done."
He hums in thought, clearly not sharing my sentiment about the melted chocolate. Probably because he is a cook and I am SO not. If anything, the s’mores suggestion reveals just how unsophisticated my own palette is.
"Melted chocolate on a strawberry croissant," he offers, sticking his bottom lip out like he thinks it might work.
"I don’t know. Those croissants from Melon Pan don’t need anything. They are basically perfection."
"Just like you," he says in a sinfully husky voice, leaning towards me and licking the corner of my lips.
"I don’t taste better with melted chocolate?" I ask, quirking my head with a smirk curving on my lips.
Dex sticks his thumb in his mouth, sucking on the end of it and simultaneously making warmth pool between my thighs. "You would taste good any way, but you’re perfection as is."
OKay, now the s’mores between my fingers is entirely forgotten. But I can’t get distracted by Dex’s sexy... everything... until we at least do what we set out to do with this fire and burn the evidence of my obsessive, erotic, possibly prophetic dreams. So I finish the last bite of the treat, brush my hands together to remove the cracker crumbs, and grab the journals from the ground next to me.
When I cast a glance at Dex, he is staring at the journals in my hands, a muscle working extra hard in his jaw while he chews and his gaze darkens. The anger he can’t seem to let go of makes me feel guilty that these journals even existed in the first place.
If I hadn’t written the dreams down, Lawson wouldn’t have had anything to steal. He wouldn’t have shown up at the house. He wouldn’t have been looking at me like he was, circling me like a predator. He wouldn’t have been crowding me or pinning me against the wall.
"What are you thinking about?" Dex asks, cutting into my thoughts.
"I should have never written them," I say solemnly.
"Yes, you should have. It’s what helped you." His brows pinch. "This isn’t your fault. You have every right to write whatever the hell you want, Raya. My brother is..."
"Okay, you’re right," I interrupt, not wanting to give him a reason to express the extent of his anger. "I know. I just..." I sigh heavily, opening the cover of one of them and letting the pages fall in a small cascade with the words flitting by so quickly they are only a blur.
So many nights—one after the other—I would awake with a start, panicked at the fact that yet another dream had found me. Once more the mysterious visitor had come into my room, slid in next to me, made me feel things I had never felt before. He knew me so well, and I didn’t even have to speak a single word to him. I didn’t have to tell him how to touch me. He knew. It consumed me to the point of having to write them down just to get them out of my head, just to keep them from gobbling up every waking thought.
"I thought I was crazy," I chuckle, recalling how I went to the library seeking that massive book to look for a condition that explained this mental illness I was suffering.
I still haven’t discovered if there is one. It would be interesting to research at some point, but the urgency to know is gone. Now the dream man is real.
"I thought I was crazy, too," Dex says, the warm glow from the fire illuminating his features and creating shadows that deepen his face and his eyes.
Every shadow of his, I want to explore. Every mystery that exists between us, originating first in these dreams, I want to unearth. I could easily spend a lifetime searching the depths of him, appreciating every new little detail I find.
There is so much beauty and intrigue that exists in his soul, and I know, because I can feel it. I can feel it twisted and tangled so completely with mine—like two trees woven together in an endless wood.
That is the autumn forest I want to exist forever in—the one where we only grow more and more inseparable to the point where it is impossible to divide us. If one were to be successfully removed, then the other’s limbs would still be bent around the ghost of its partner—it’s shape a testament to the one who was lost.
Without dwelling on it further, I toss the journals in together—the one I bought and the identical one that Dex gave me. Immediately, the pale pages glow bright orange and then curl into themselves. The dreams turn to smoke and fire, spiraling up into the night air.
Dex asked if I wanted to watch the news tonight about Kenneth Rider. I don’t. There’s too much drama battling for attention in my mind, and I don’t want to know the grisly details of his crimes just yet, because then my mind will run wild with what could have happened—what would have likely happened if Dex hadn’t been in my apartment and seen the peephole and offered me a place to stay.
Kenneth was probably battling himself for a long time to keep from making me another one of his victims. Who knows just how close I came?
I blow out a breath, feeling something heavy release from my chest as I watch the journals slowly turn into ash. Dex says the dreams were sacred. That’s why he is so angry with his brother—in addition to the rest of what Lawson did. I told Dex the sacred part is what is between us right now.
"Do you feel better?" Dex asks, grabbing my fingers and playing with them between his own.
There’s nothing left of the two journals now other than a pile of black and gray that crumbles when I poke with a stick, briefly smudging out a small tongue of the fire before the flame returns.
"Yeah, I do," I sigh.
If I’m not mistaken, with the softness that has returned to Dex’s eyes and the lines of tension that have also smoothed, I would say he feels better, too. Maybe he felt like they were one more thing he needed to protect.
"I still can’t believe you got them back. Thank you."
"Don’t mention it," he says, a crooked smile making one of his dimples appear in a way that makes me ache.
I want to ask him how he did it—how he got into Lawson’s apartment in order to get them back. I know the building Lawson lives in. He’s bragged about it more than once. So there was no way to break in unless Dex is involved in some mission impossible stuff that I’m not aware of.
But asking Dex about it would also entail risking that anger in him returning, so I don’t. Instead, I just watch as his hand reaches for me, wiping what is presumably another bit of chocolate from my cheek.
"Tired?" He asks.
I nod, stomach swimming with the thought of following him back up to his bedroom. He puts out the fire and offers his hand, a different fire beginning to burn in my veins. I wonder if he is still intent on showing me heaven again like he whispered so seductively to me earlier. I could fall asleep in his arms or fall asleep filled with him, and I’m positive either of those would qualify.
