Dreamscapes

Monday #2

The day passes slowly. She alternates between boredom and anxiety. She isn't busy enough to keep her mind off the previous night. Not once has she had a dream with that level of detail. She is used to hazy dreams. Some elements of her dreams normally stand out, with vague connections between. Timelines skip, locations melt away, events shift and blur. Even her old nightmares when Edward was gone were never this sharp and focused. It felt so real. All her five senses were in overdrive. The sight of his rich, sweat dampened skin. The touch of his rough fingers sending electricity zinging up her spine. The heavy scent of musky s*x surrounding them as they moved against one another. The sound of his rumbling moans from deep in his chest as she touched his shaft. The sharp, salty taste of his precum on her tongue.

How does her subconscious know how to supply such details? She is inexperienced, and normally her dreams reflect that. She has woken in the night slipping out of erotic dreams about Edward, but they always fade into a hazy sense of desire when she reaches a point in the dream with which she has no experience. They are rather like her real life in that way- just when things start to heat up, Edward always pulls away. He doesn't pull away in her dreams, but her mind, lacking any firsthand knowledge of the actual sensations of s*x, supply only the vaguest of details when she dreams. And at night, lying in Edward's cool embrace, she has little privacy with which to indulge her fantasies. It normally leaves her aroused and frustrated, and unable to bring herself release.

That must be it. She has been sexually frustrated for the duration of their relationship. Now the wedding is only weeks away, and he has promised to finally make love to her. Now that the moment is close to arriving, she can't help but think about it, even when asleep. And if the man in her dream is the wrong one, it really should come as no surprise. After all, Jacob has never hidden his feelings from her. Has never hidden his desire. And she has felt so guilty for hurting him. So it makes perfect sense that her subconscious would cast him in the starring role. It's a combination of s****l frustration and guilt.

She feels better having come to this conclusion. Guilt she can live with. Guilt she can understand, even embrace. It is her love for Jacob Black that she can't accept.

X-x-x-x-X

Jacob has never before been grateful to be responsible for all the laundry in his house. Today, though, it's a blessing. Around the same time he realized that Bella had never come into his room the night before, he also realized he had had his first ever wet dream. His sheets are a mess. He feels completely ridiculous. This didn't even happen when he was first going through puberty. So on top of being in pain (he still winces every time he moves), he is deeply frustrated, generally humiliated, and of course heartbroken, and he can now add to the list annoyed and horny.

He sighs and strips his bed, picking up odd pieces of clothing off the floor on his way to the washing machine. He hears a knock at the front door, and Billy's voice in greeting, "Afternoon, dear. He's up and about now. Take a peek in the laundry room."

Leah Clearwater steps into the small room. She tips her head in greeting, and he does the same. She has been acting almost solicitous to him in the past few days. Apparently all it takes to get on Leah's good side is to save her life, or be related to her. The list of people she seems to like is short. It contains Jacob, her brother, and her mother. He figures he's probably being unfair to her. She would probably be doing well if she wasn't stuck here on the rez against her will, with only her pack brothers and their imprints for company.

"Did I miss anything at the pack meeting?"

"Yeah. Everyone says 'hi'. Quil wanted to come over last night to entertain you with a Girls Gone Wild video, but I stopped him. You can correct me if I was wrong, but I figured that even if you weren't resting up like you're supposed to be doing, watching lame soft core porn with one of your closest male friends wasn't high on the list of things you wanted to be doing." She passes Jacob the bottle of detergent on the shelf behind her.

"Thanks. You were right." It was a good thing too, considering the dream he would probably have interrupted. The last thing I needed was for anyone to bust in on me while I was lying unconscious on my bed with a raging b***r. "Any updates I should know about?" He finishes putting the load of laundry in, and they move into the kitchen.

"Unfortunately, yes. You know how we noticed some residual vamp trails around the battle site? Well, it turns out that they aren't all from those Italian bloodsuckers or the Cullens cleaning up the area. There's one scent in particular that we keep running across, and Dr. Fang told Sam he's sure it belongs to none of them. It's pretty fresh."

"s**t. I was really hoping we could catch a break for once. Do you want something to drink, by the way?"

Leah nods. "Sure, thanks. It gets worse. The trail passes by the Swan place. I don't know what it is about that girl, Jake, but she's gotta be some kind of bloodsucker catnip." She stops and rolls her eyes. "I really, really don't get what it is about that girl."

Jacob realizes that he's about to spill the orange juice he's holding, he's started shaking so hard. Leah puts her hand out to take the juice away before it all ends up on the floor. "It's okay, Jake, we're keeping a close eye on her. Since no one really knows what's going on yet, Sam and Dr. Fang decided to keep playing fast and loose with the boundary line. They're still not allowed on our land, but we can patrol anywhere we need to."

"I'll get back on the rotation today."

"You know you're not supposed to do that yet. You'll be no good to her or to us limping around on a bunch of broken bones. Although I'd pay good money to get one of those giant cones around your wolf's head," she says with a grin.

Her attempt at levity falls on deaf ears. "Look, Jake, I don't understand her in the least. I pretty much despise her, as a matter of fact. And the guys aren't exactly thrilled with her, either. But none of us are going to let anything happen to her, or any other human being. We're running extra patrols, and we're practically sitting on her 24/7."

"And if she asks for something to happen to her?" Jacob asks, an agonized expression on his face.

Leah knows exactly to what he is referring. It's his worst nightmare: her plans to be turned into one of them, and it's about to come true. "You mean her suicide pact? Our response is still a matter of debate."