DREAM LOVER Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
     
    He’d tried setting his alarm clock so it would go off every five hours, which should have been about the time she slipped into his bed, but it hadn’t worked.  He’d slept right through the alarm, usually waking to its loud clanging two hours
after
the time he’d set it for.  Changing his sleeping routine hadn’t worked either, nor had visualizing himself with a different woman before he fell asleep in the hopes of at least altering the dream to break the cycle.  As for lucid dreaming, something he’d been able to do before Rachel made her first appearance, he no longer seemed to have the capability.
     
    Nic’s attention was suddenly drawn to the heart monitor when the rhythm began to pick up tempo.  Damn, she was waking up, which meant it would be another ninety minutes once she fell asleep again before she’d hit the REM state.  That’s when he noticed the changes in the readings from the other monitors.  He checked his watch, and then glanced at the clock on the wall to confirm the time.
     
    “Impossible,” he muttered.
     
    Rachel had only been asleep for two hours.  At this point she should be in the middle of the second stage and taking the next hour to work her way back down to stage four.  Incredibly, she was quickly advancing towards the REM again…or maybe she was being sucked down, Nic thought as he studied the readouts.  Eye movement was becoming more rapid, muscle movement practically non-existent, and her brain waves had slowed to a crawl.  She was definitely dreaming.
     
    In all the years he’d been doing this, Nic had never seen anyone go into the REM state so fast, but there was only a niggling of concern because he knew it was too early in her sleep cycle to have the nightmare.  According to what Rachel told Luis, the nightmare was quite lengthy, her death a long drawn out process that ended when her spirit fled her body and entered her lover’s dreams.  Based on the amount of time it would take to get through the nightmare and the…mind blowing sex, as Rachel called it, she wasn’t likely to have anything but a few inconsequential dreams until close to dawn.
     
    Having come to that conclusion through logic and experience, Nic was startled when Rachel let out a terrified scream that reverberated off the lab walls and sent an icy chill racing through him.
     
                        ***
     
    Her throat was so dry it felt as if she’d swallowed sawdust and no matter how hard she tried there simply wasn’t enough air left her lungs to scream again.  She could feel her heart hammering in her chest, the fear so tangible it clung to her like a second skin.  So this was how it was going to end.  She was going to die all alone in a cold, dark room and the secret she’d carried around inside of her for the past two weeks would die with her. 
     
    They’d broken her, but what did it matter?  He