Free Before I Wake by Kathryn Smith

bad horror movie. I reached out and grabbed Noah’s hand.
    “Come on, Dawnie,” the monster said, his face coming closer as his hands reached for me. “Let’s get it on.”
    I screamed.

Chapter Five
    I slammed back into the real world still screaming.
    I was also in bed with Noah. I was pressed against him, his hand in mine. He was panting. I was panting. This might have been hot were I not so freaked-out.
    He was solid and warm against me. His heart was a heavy pounding beneath my other hand, his chest a golden sheen of muscle.
    My own heart kicked up a notch. Cardiac arrest seemed imminent.
    I let go of him, but I didn’t have the strength—or the inclination—to move from the bed. “What the hell just happened?”
    “You were there.” His voice was a hoarse whisper as he slumped against the pillows, the electrodes I attached to him in his hand.
    The sheets were tangled around his waist, his long legs still beneath the blankets. He hadn’t left the bed. He hadn’t moved, but I had.
    “Sleepwalking.” I nodded, numb inside. “I must have fallen asleep and heard you.” Or maybe when I entered the Dream Realm, I really entered it—corporeal form and all. Was that possible?
    I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything.
    “You were inside my dream.” He lay there staring at me, rumpled and surprised. “Inside my head.”
    I shook my own head with great determination. “That’s not possible.” It wasn’t a total lie. I hadn’t been inside his head, I had been inside his dream—there was a difference.
    One look at his face, and I knew he wanted to believe me and also that he didn’t. “No, but it happened.”
    I could have argued—I would have if the words and certainty had been there, but they weren’t. This had never happened to me before. I was always in control of my dreams. No one got in, and I didn’t get out. Morpheus’s world did not encroach on mine.
    My arm trembled as I braced myself on my elbow. Adrenaline pulsed in my veins—pumping through my heart as though I’d had ten espressos. I looked down at Noah, into his dark eyes, and saw so much there. He was looking at me as though I was the most amazing creature in the universe, and he didn’t know whether to bow or run screaming. I could have kissed him right then, and he’d have let me. And then he’d wipe his mouth after.
    “Are you okay?” I asked him.
    He nodded, obviously still a little dazed. “You?”
    I laughed. Not a good sign. “No, but I will be once I make sense of this.”
    Tossing back the blankets, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. He turned his head to look at me, his gaze dark and shrewd. “It knew you.”
    Shit. Once I admitted this, there was no coming back. No going back to pretending there was a sane explanation for what had happened. “I’ve dreamed it before.” And I was beginning to wonder if It was what my dream version of David Boreanaz had tried to warm me about.
    “You dreamed it before?” Now he looked disgusted. Pissed, even. “You’ve dreamed this thing, but when I told you about my dreams, you acted like I was crazy.”
    I sat up as well, holding my hands out in surrender. “Noah, I’m not sure I’m not crazy.”

    “That thing is real.” He stood. “Don’t tell me you need more proof.”
    Proof, no. I knew that thing was real, and I knew it was dangerous.
    I looked up. The chiseled perfection of his chest was marred by flushed circles raised by the electrodes he had just ripped off. I couldn’t even stop to appreciate the view because the bizarreness of my life had just caught up with me big-time.
    He had bruises—bruises that hadn’t been there when he first went to bed.
    “What I need,” I informed him in my best I’ve-got-a-handle-on-this voice, “is some time to think about this and figure out what is going on.”
    He offered me his hand, and I stared at it. Should I be a big girl and take it? Or should I be sullen and rude and get to my feet on my own? My