The full moon washed the quiet street, the pretty wood frame houses, shrubs, lawns and shade trees on their quarter acre lots. The tar and pavement street was quiet under his feet as he walked down the center of the lane, careless about cars in the middle of the night. Bags of garbage and recyclables were already sitting neatly at curbside, waiting for the next day's pickup.

As he passed a side street he glimpsed the tiny cemetery which contained century-old graves. It reminded him of the thin connections between past, present and future. It could be any of the small towns he'd lived in over the years: in Ohio, northern California, North Carolina. On this particular night it was a small town in upstate New York, where he'd lived for two years now, undetected, so far.

He was just about six feet tall, 175 pounds, twinges of grey in his dark hair at 35 years. A body strong and flexible from years of gymnastics in high school and college, and the contortions he'd practiced more recently. He was dressed in black jeans, a black button- down shirt and hightop black sneakers.

He'd first taken notice of his "gift" in his early teens.

Puberty was well underway and awash with the usual hormones and fears, he'd noticed something that no one else talked about and that he knew was out of place. One night at summer camp he awoke in the middle of night and found himself awash in voices, sensations, scents. There were loud, boisterous and frightened young male voices, but no sound came to his ears; they played only in his head. In the distance he could faintly hear and smell others. He left the bunkhouse and walked through the quiet woods.

Unafraid of the night after being raised in the country, he followed the dim voices across the camp until they grew louder as he approached the girls' bunkhouse. His ears detected no sound except the crickets and the lapping of the lake shore, yet his head was filled with sensations, people, sounds. And his nose held a musky scent standing just outside the girls' bunkhouse.

He suddenly felt himself in the lake and next to him one of the girls was thrashing in the water, panicked, unable to swim and terrorized. He reached over and held her, swam with her to the dock, helping her up. She relaxed, safe now, smiled and dissolved before his eyes. He was back standing in front of the girls' bunkhouse.

His mind reached out among the crowd of visions and found one of his young campmates dreaming of him; he willed it and entered her dream. They were in the woods, away from the others. They were kissing, pressed against a tree. He reached for her breast with one hand and let the other drop between her legs. She melted in his arms, moving against him and whispering his name.

Young and overcome with feelings she'd only had masturbating in bed at night, she pushed her 14-year-old body against his and bit his shoulder as his hand roughly, but accurately, rubbed her where she needed rubbing. She tensed, shook and cried out in the woods.

Then she dissolved into her pleasure and out of the dream state. Once again he stood in front of the girl's bunkhouse. Overcome, he stood there in the night, unzipped his pants and stroked his stiff maleness until he spurt on the ground in front of him, awash in young women's dreams.

That was the first time he realized he had a gift, or an abnormality. He could not penetrate fully conscious minds, but those in a dream state, drunk, high, or those disconnected from normal linear perceptive reality were accessible to him. He could read and feel their thoughts, enter their dreams, become part of their dreams, merge their dreams with waking reality and fold their waking night reality into a dream.

It almost ruined his life. The quiet night became a cacophony of noise each night during his adolescence until he learned to control its flow, shut it out. But still he was drawn, as men are, to the dreams of women and their scent. In high school and college he could avoid the gross insecurity of not knowing for sure if a woman was interested in him. If they drank, got high or slept and he was within reasonable distance, he could learn from them.

He ignored some women socially and could bring himself to those few who were interested, whose hearts and libidos ached for him. He came to realize, making lazy love in the middle of the night during his sophomore year, that if the woman was semi-conscious his mind could cloud her subconscious: their lovemaking was a dream to her that night. He could also sense exactly what his lover wanted and needed.

His lust became not just the usual male craving for women, but an obsession with the further joining of minds that he could accomplish. Women's dreams called out in the night, unheard but for him. He took satisfaction in their hunger meeting his. Entering their dreams, sharing and possessing them, controlling them so that the woman felt that everything that happened, including midnight couplings and suckings, was all a dream. Simple seduction and fucking were a pale substitute when compared to such intimacy.

And so, during most late nights in decent weather he walked the street, listening. On some nights he went home without satisfaction, on others, he crept into the homes and dreams of others.

College girls home for Thanksgiving vacation having gotten themselves deflowered and now constantly hungering for more. He came to them in the night as they slept, loving them, spurting on them, casting a spell that merged their dreams with their conscious lovemaking with him in the night. In the morning the memory of their lovemaking was only the whisp of last night's dream.

Single women, divorcees, married women whose husbands were away were all his lovers. He enjoyed reaching out to women coworkers, asking their dreaming minds if they were receptive to him, planting the fantasy in their dreams, climbing through their bedroom windows and converting dream fantasy into fleshy reality, all bathed in dreamscape. On one night he even entered a couple's bed chamber, cast the dream spell over both of them and sucked her nipples while he ate her. She sucked on his cock while her husband slapped into her from behind.

He could never tell anyone, they'd think he was crazy. He thought he was crazy, or at least a freak. No one would notice as long as he could place the dream spell on them as they awoke and as long as they drifted back to sleep afterwards, with no fresh memory of the dream. No point in making love, or having sex with someone who's asleep, they made love awake even though their minds told them otherwise and the next morning the experience to them was only a few scraps of melted memory, inseparable from a dream.

* * *

It was 2 A.M. before Elizabeth found sleep with the help of the brandy. She'd had to bring herself off a second time that night, lying on her stomach this time. One hand and a long body pillow beneath her for her pussy to grind against, another slid underneath her silk camisole, pinching her nipples.

As she fucked her hand she thought about being on top of Robert again like this, riding that hard, strong body, the base of his cock grinding against her clit as her palm did now. She kissed and licked the bed just as she would have kissed and licked his chest. As she came, she imagined his hands rubbing and squeezing her ass as they used to. She bucked and squirmed against the bed, grunting and then she called out his name.

"Shit! Bastard!" she screamed at herself immediately thrown the sonofabitch out and yet she was still obsessed. She'd had the strength to throw him out when she realized that he'd been cheating on her and spending their money on drugs. She'd denounced him, punched him in the stomach and didn't start crying until he'd left the house. She'd rolled up their old futon, and bought a new bed and mattress. The most overt signs of him had been removed from the house, the home, the trust that he had so callously betrayed.

But even before the final confrontation, when she had begun to suspect that he was destroying their lives, she'd continued to sleep with him. She was so used to his presence, his hard body and his smell. The sex continued to scratch an itch, even as she ignored or suppressed her growing fear of his betrayal. He had been so enthusiastic about being trained and he knew just what moves she needed from his tongue and fingers, when and why.

The rational part of her brain knew that there were other men out there, ones who would not betray her and would also be happy to learn how she liked her pussy licked and fingered and how she liked to ride men's cocks and faces. But recently, that part of her brain hadn't been making as many appearances as she'd like, leaving center stage for pain, anger and paranoia. She directed much of the anger at herself, anger that she still ached for him at night when her heart and mind would prefer that he be run over by a slow moving truck.

So here she was, again, sliding into sleep at 2 A.M. with her fingers and the body pillow still wet from her juices, her camisole scrunched up on her chest and her tap pants lying on the floor. She'd started the evening trying to fantasize a chance meeting-turned-into- threesome with Brad Pitt and Daniel Day-Lewis, like any healthy 34-year-old woman. Instead she ended up with that shit Robert again...

* * *

He caught her scent on the night air. The scent of arousal, a woman in heat. He also heard the need coming from her mind: pain/lust/loneliness. He could taste her juices, sweat and tears on her pillow. He stopped in front of her house.

He stood there in the middle of the street at 2:30 A.M., listening and sensing her further. Minutes passed as he listened and sensed. He knew she lay in a first floor bedroom, that she'd recently fallen asleep, and that she was alone except for a cat curled up by her side. Her bedroom window was open. A pizza box and beer bottle sat open in the kitchen and a glass with traces of brandy remained on her nightstand, next to a tube of lubricant.

He moved toward the house and drew himself up to the window. In the moonlight he saw clothes strewn across chairs, books piled on a desk with a personal computer and the woman partially sprawled, asleep, lying on her stomach on the bed. Covers had been pushed aside and she partially straddled a body pillow which he could tell was well acquainted with her womanhood. He drew himself up and, as he had done many times on the gymnast horse and parallel bars as well as houses like this one, moved his legs up, under and through, sliding himself silently into the room and onto the floor.

He stood at the foot of her bed, watching her sleep. So sweet, so beautiful. He could taste her already as he unsnapped and unzipped his pants and pulled them and his shoes off. The cat peered at him, decided he was beneath feline concern and jumped off the bed. He lay at the foot of her bed and brought his mouth to her feet. He began to lick and suck her toes. She began to stir and he projected his dream consciousness over her, convincing her brain that all that occurred should be perceived as her dream, and that all was well.

He sucked on the toes of each foot, she giggled in tickle reflex, still half asleep as he began to lick and kiss his way up her ankles and calves. He lay a series of slow, wet suction kisses behind each knee for a full five minutes while a hand slid up the back of her thighs and began to rub the cheeks of her ass, thumb sliding between her legs to brush and rub over her pussy lips. She began to move on the bed.

Moving up, he placed his mouth inches from her and let his warm breath wash over her pussy lips. He licked them several times and slid a finger between the lips to wet them and breathed on her again. She gasped quietly. He leaned forward and buried his face against her, licking her with long tongue strokes the length of her lips, reaching down with his tongue to almost touch her clit.

He slowly fingered her as he moved his tongue to her anus, flicking it rapidly there over and over. She gasped and moaned as his wet finger slid upward between her lips lengthwise and over her hardening clit. He spread her legs wider and lay on his back, moving his head beneath her, pulling her moist cunt down onto his face. He licked her slowly and sensuously, snaking his tongue in and out of her and up and down her pussy lips to her clit. One finger slid in and out of her pussy while another, wet with her juices, slid slowly into her ass up to the first joint. She let out a guttural moan, pushed the body pillow completely aside and lay on top of him, beginning to actively fuck his face, holding the top part of her body up on her elbows.

She felt free from threat, fear or even awkwardness, the thought of who or why rarely being raised in a dream. Her primary thought was that she desperately needed a friendly, willing mouth on her pussy, and one was there right now. And it wasn't Robert's. To the bottom of her subconscious, his spell had sent the message: no fear, no anger, no pain, take refuge. Her ass bobbed slowly up and down against his face as she moaned, babbled and whimpered almost continually now.

When, after many minutes of this activity, his lips finally surrounded her clit and his tongue slid between those lips to slide rapidly back and forth over it, she suddenly stiffened, and let out a cry that came from deep within her. Her body twitched violently as she locked her thighs around his head. He slid his entire finger into her ass as she came, shivering, jolting on the bed and over him.

He kissed his way down her pussy lips and then over her ass cheeks as she went through her after shocks. He rubbed her back, kissed her face, neck and shoulders. He pressed himself against her and rolled her over onto her back as she smiled and moved to kiss the unknown lips and face. He spread her legs wide and slowly entered her. She gasped again, simultaneously remembering the pleasure and comfort of a warm friendly body on top of her, taking pleasure in her, and knowing that this body was there for comfort, not betrayal.

His muscular form writhed and bobbed above her, sliding in and out, back and forth, waves of muscle against her. She held him, enveloped him as he nibbled and bit her neck. Her hands ran up and down his back, through his hair and beard, grabbed his ass. Her pussy held him and she whispered "Baby" in his ear as he stiffened and came.

She wrapped herself around him, holding him warm and close, still coupled until he softened. Later, she lay in his arms, fully asleep as he softly ran his fingers through her hair, gently kissed her, wondered and knew what the fuck he was doing there.

* * *

The next morning, Elizabeth awoke, Clem the Cat still asleep against her. Her head was a bit fuzzy - gotta quit the beer, pizza and brandy diet. If she wasn't sure about her head and stomach, she was more assured about her heart. She felt better than yesterday. Not completely back, but better.

She vaguely recalled a dream, a dream in which she was pretty sure she'd gotten laid. There was something strange about it. Unlike the 7,945 other sexy dreams she'd had, she was pretty sure that in this one, she'd come before she woke up.

Elizabeth showered, dressed and jumped into her car for the drive to work. As she pulled into the parking lot she thought about the man who'd been trying to flirt with her for the last few weeks. Who was that guy?

Maybe she would ask him to lunch.

The End