DREAM LOVER (3 page)

“What if you stop breathing in your sleep when you die in the dream?”  Monica had asked, her big blue eyes misting with tears.

Rachel laughed it off.  “If my dream was going to kill me, don’t you think it would have done so by now?”

“I’m worried about you, Rach.  You look so tired all the time and if anything happened to you…”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me, I promise.  Now tell me about your new boyfriend.  I suppose he’s incredibly handsome and obnoxiously rich.”

Monica had set her chin in that determined manner that told Rachel she wasn’t going to give up.  “Don’t try to change the subject.  Something has got to be done about the nightmares, and I know just the thing.”

The
thing
Monica referred to was an appointment at the dream study clinic.  So here she was with her overnight bag, feeling a little sick to her stomach at the prospect of being watched while she was dreaming of dying and having hot sex.  At least she had the comfort of knowing whatever happened would never go beyond these walls, although she was a little concerned about running into Dr. Covelli outside the office once she started working on his grandfather’s mansion.  It wasn’t likely he’d show up while she was there since the mansion hadn’t been lived in for years but it was possible he’d be curious enough to come and check it out once the restructuring began.  Well, she supposed she’d have to deal with it when or if it happened.

                         ***

Nic hovered outside the doorway feeling foolish as hell for being so nervous about meeting Rachel Delacourte.  If his dream the night before hadn’t been so vivid he might have been able to convince himself it wasn’t the same woman and that he’d only imagined it was because there were a few similarities between them.  But the sex had been so…raw, so intensely passionate he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away from her face as she’d writhed beneath him, her sexy voice gravelly and breathless when she begged him for more, more, more. 

Nic had happily obliged, sending her delectable body into convulsions as she climaxed time after time until he’d finally exploded inside of her.  How was he supposed to walk in there and act as if they’d never met when an image of the soft smile she’d worn after they’d made love was still lingering in his mind?  Thank God he’d had enough sense to grab his lab coat so he’d at least be spared the embarrassment of having her notice the raging hard on he was sporting.  Yeah, he was the epitome of professionalism all right.

Drawing in a lung full of air, Nic pushed the door open and strode purposefully into the room to greet his new patient.  Pasting a smile on his face as Rachel rose to her feet, he managed to get all the way across the room without making an idiot of himself, though he wasn’t quite sure how he did it when his legs felt as if they were made of rubber.  He supposed he looked like a love sick teenager as he took the hand she offered but for the life of him, Nic couldn’t help the surge of emotion that swept over him when her soft skin touched his.

An entire gymnastic routine played out in Rachel’s stomach when Nic Covelli’s hand enveloped hers.  It wasn’t just that he was drop dead gorgeous or that he exuded sexuality in spades, it was the way those dark eyes searched hers as if he’d find the answer to some puzzling question hidden in their depths.  The intensity of his gaze should have made her uneasy, but it seemed to have just the opposite effect. There was only this strange sense of…familiarity, and the inexplicable feeling they had met somewhere before.

Rachel tilted her head.  “Do I know you?”

Intimately
.  How would she respond to that answer, he wondered.  “No, I don’t believe we’ve ever met but you
do
remind me of someone I’ve just recently become acquainted with.  Please forgive me for staring,” he smiled down at her.  “It’s just that the resemblance is so amazing it threw me for a moment.”

She returned his smile with one that was as teasing as her tone.  “Then you won’t mind giving my hand back now?”

Nic glanced down at their joined hands before reluctantly releasing his hold on her.  As he offered her a seat and took his place behind his desk, he tried not to think about where those elegant hands had wandered last night in his dreams or the way her slender fingers had curled around the back of his neck and pulled his mouth down onto hers.  Blocking out the image of Rachel lying beneath him, her breasts heaving as she gasped for air each time he thrust into her was not an easy feat.  Nor was hiding the disappointment he felt when he found no sign of recognition in her beautiful green eyes.

Nic leaned back in his chair, doing his level best not to look as if he wanted to pounce on her.  “I’ve gone over the notes Dr. Agostino made yesterday and have a few questions before I explain the process of the dream study.  You said the nightmare started about the same time you agreed to take on the Covelli mansion.”

“That’s right.”

“Have you noticed the nightmare becoming more vivid the closer it gets to starting the job?”

Rachel shifted in her chair.  “As a matter of fact it has, but I really don’t see what one has to do with the other.”

“You’re not worried about taking on such a high profile project?”

“High profile?  I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“You mean my grandfather didn’t tell you anything about the mansion’s history?”

“Only that it’s been in the family for generations and that no one has lived there for close to fifty years.”

“Well,” Nic sighed, “there goes one of my theories.  I thought I might have been onto something when you said the nightmare was becoming more vivid, but that was because I assumed you knew about the mansion and why it was abandoned by the family.”

Rachel was intrigued.  “Is there some dark secret about the place?”

“Not exactly.”  Nic considered whether or not to tell her and decided she was probably right about the two not being related.  “According to Grandfather, it started around the time his father was in his mid-thirties.  Apparently, a young woman who worked there as a maid disappeared one night and was never heard from or seen again.  Rumor has it she was murdered somewhere on the grounds and buried there and has been haunting the place ever since.”

“I see, so you thought I’d heard the story and was spooked by it.”

Nic grinned.  “I guess that theory got shot down pretty quick.”

“Even if Antonio had told me, it wouldn’t have bothered me.  I’m not saying I don’t believe her spirit couldn’t be lingering around, especially if the poor girl really was murdered, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done work on a place that was supposedly haunted.”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you one way or the other since I’ve only been inside the mansion a couple of times, but I’d love the chance to see it again before you start working on it.  I could even fill you in on some of its history if you’re interested.”

Rachel’s stomach fluttered.  “That would be nice.  I’ll let you know when I’m ready so you can coordinate it with your work schedule.”

“Speaking of work…maybe we should get started on curing you of this nightmare.”

“Dr. Agostino explained a little bit of it to me.  He said you’d have me hooked up to monitors that will record my brain waves.”

“We also monitor your eye and muscle movements.”

“I’m sure he mentioned that too,” she smiled apologetically, “but I’m afraid I wasn’t giving him my full attention.”

Nic’s eyes were drawn to her mouth for a moment before he gave himself a mental kick.  “Yes, the…uh…monitors will give us some physiological feedback on what’s happening as you pass through the four stages of sleep and while this nightmare is taking place.”

“How do you know when I’m having the nightmare?”

“That’s what the monitors will tell me.  Most people think dreaming happens in the fourth stage of sleep which is understandable because it seems reasonable to assume you fall into a deeper sleep as the night progresses.  In reality, you move in and out of deep sleep all through the night.  The first stage only lasts a few minutes before you move into stage two where you’re pulled into a deeper sleep.”

Rachel listened intently as he explained the difference between the tests that he’d be running while she slept.  An EOG would measure her eye movement, which in turn would tell him how deeply she was sleeping since the eye movement becomes more rapid as you get into a deep sleep.  The EMG monitored any muscle activity like leg movement or teeth grinding.  It was another method of telling how deeply she was sleeping because her muscle movement would gradually decrease.  The EKG would record her heart activity and the last monitor was the EEG which tracked her brain waves.

“It’s during the third and fourth stages that you progress into a deeper sleep,” Nic told her.

“I’m a little confused.  At what point do I start to dream?”

“It takes about ninety minutes for the cycle to run its course and then the stages go in reverse.  When it gets back to stage one, that’s when I’ll see rapid eye movement or REM.  You should also have decreased muscle movement unless you talk in your sleep.  The only time you experience the vivid dreaming you’ve been having is in the REM state which usually lasts from five to fifteen minutes on the first cycle and gets longer with each successive cycle, possibly lasting up to an hour.”

“That’s a lot to digest all at one time.”

“Not if you think of it in more familiar terms,” Nic patiently explained.  “It’s simply a chain of events broken down into four stages that repeats itself over and over and gets longer with each repetition.  That’s why the dreams you have close to morning time are more vivid and easily recalled, because they last longer than the ones you had earlier in the night.”

Still puzzled, Rachel felt compelled to ask more questions before they began the study.  “How is monitoring my brain waves and face twitches going to help get rid of the nightmare?”

Nic chuckled.  “Believe it or not those face twitches, or actually the lack of them, will tell me when you move into the REM state.  Once I determine when the nightmare is most likely to occur in your regular sleep pattern we can work on getting rid of it.”

This time it was Rachel’s turn to laugh.  “What are you going to do, wake me up every time I start to dream?”

“Something like that.  I’ll attempt to break the cycle of the nightmare by waking you in the middle of it.  Sometimes disrupting the pattern is all it takes.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then we try a different method called lucid dreaming.”

Rachel’s brows drew together.  “By lucid you mean that I’m aware of the fact that I’m dreaming.”

“Exactly,” Nic replied.  “Basically, you wake up inside the dream and confront your fears.”

“Confront them,” she repeated feebly.  “You do understand that I
die
in the nightmare, right?  What am I supposed to do, convince myself I’m not scared of suffocating to death?”

Nic gave her a reassuring smile.  “No, Miss Delacourte, I’m going to teach you how to alter the course of the dream so that you
don’t
die at all.”

Her eyes widened.  “You can do that?”

“With practice you can develop full control of your dream. You can do anything you want because you’re aware that whatever is going on around you is made up by your own mind.”

“You mean I could change it so that the room isn’t airtight and I don’t suffocate?”

Nic’s eyes danced with amusement.  “You could do that…or you could create a door to walk out of or even knock the brick wall down altogether so you can never be trapped in there again.”

“Wow…I mean…wow.”

“I take it that means you’re open to the idea?”

“At this point, Dr. Covelli, I’d stand on my head and sing The Star Spangled Banner if I thought it would make the nightmare stop.”

Nic laughed as he rose to his feet.  “If the lucid dreaming doesn’t work, we just may have to try that.” 

                         ***

Even with electrodes placed all over her head and face, Rachel Delacourte still had the power to take his breath away.  From behind the two way mirror, he’d watched her slip past the first four stages of sleep and begin the ascent back to stage one feeling a bit guilty for paying more attention to Rachel than the readouts from the monitors.  Not that it deterred him, but at least he could pretend he wasn’t a total letch for doing it as long as there was a smidgeon of remorse.

It had taken a good forty-five minutes for her to finally drift off, which had given him time to check the monitors to ensure they were working properly.  After that, there wasn’t much to it until she actually hit the REM state, so he’d simply watched her while she slept.  He hadn’t been lying when he told Rachel he could teach her how to have lucid dreams or how successful he’d been with his other patients over the years.  What Nic had purposely left out of the conversation was that he’d been a miserable failure at having lucid dreams himself. 

When he’d first started dreaming about her it hadn’t really bothered him much, and why would it?  Every night he got to have explosive sex with a beautiful woman and he didn’t have to concern himself with things like using protection or whether she’d demand that he make a commitment.  There were no awkward moments the morning after and she was right back in his bed the next night.  But as time went on and he actually started to
feel
something for the woman, Nic thought it was best if he gave up the fantasy and got control of his life again.