Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Earth 2 & am not making any money off this.
Summary: Danziger realizes something disturbing is going on.
Waterfall–Chapter 3
The encampment fell away behind Danziger as he drove the 'Rail into uncharted territory. He'd drawn scouting duty today, which he felt grateful for because it gave him time alone to figure out what was going on. He'd been confused about Devon and Bess for a long time and trying to ignore it, but last night had convinced him that deeper, weirder things were happening than he had thought. Once again he stared down at the marks on his left forearm. It frightened him, but he had said nothing to anyone. Rational explanations were a dime a dozen. Trouble was that he didn't believe any of them. Not after that dream.
He'd entered Bess's tent just before dawn, to find her sprawled on her stomach, those red-brown curls spread untidy across her pillow, only the tip of her nose and chin visible to him in the darkness. Martin was nowhere around, and Danziger didn't spare a thought for her husband's whereabouts. It was unnecessary. He was unimportant.
Shedding his clothing, he settled himself next to Bess. Pulling the sheet down to bare her back, he did what he had wanted to do earlier that night and began massaging the soreness out of her muscles. She moaned and he eased up a little; after all, he didn't want to hurt her. It took several minutes before suppleness replaced the stiffness in her back, but he didn't mind. The touch of her skin under his palms sent electric shocks all through him. He could have done this to her for the rest of the night, but she had a different idea.
Bess tried to turn over, but Danziger moved his hand to the center of her back and pressed her into the mattress again. His other hand he used to push the waterfall of curls away so he could admire the grace of her back and shoulders, her body gleaming pale in the dim light. The need for her raged along his every nerve ending, every cell, making him burn with its sheer force. He touched his mouth to the back of her neck, breathing in the fragrance of her skin and hair, lapping at the line of her spine with his tongue. She shivered at the kiss and he rolled over on top of her, needing the head-to-toe contact with her body. When Bess groaned, he smiled. She needed him just as much.
Her soft warmth went straight to his head and he wrapped an arm around her waist, rolling them over so she was on her side. The tropical scent of her surrounded him. He breathed in, trying to saturate himself with it. This was crazy, every single aspect of this situation was insane, but the protests of his rational mind washed away as she shifted against him and made a contented noise. Danziger was lost.
He loosened his hold on her waist so that hand could caress her breast, his callused fingers brushing gently across her nipple, which hardened instantly. Her responsiveness pleased him. He took the hard little bud and rolled it between his fingertips as his other hand slid over her belly to the soft tangle of hair between her legs. All the time he dropped kisses over her bare shoulder, teasing her with the light touch. She squirmed with pleasure and whispered, "Morgan."
A shaft of anger shot through him and he snapped, "I'm not Morgan."
She tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold on her and kept his fingers moving on the slick, hot flesh between her thighs, feeling her tremors mounting and her body arching into his. "Danziger, what are you doing?"
He heard the tremble of arousal in her voice and grinned. "John. I want to hear you call me John. You know how long I've been waiting for that?"
Bess moved with him, rubbing herself against his body even as her nails dug hard into his forearm. The stinging pain broke his tenuous control and he sank his teeth into her shoulder, marking her as his. A faint tang of her blood filled his mouth as he sucked on her skin. "John, John," she moaned. Her passion sounded as wonderful as he'd thought it would. "You like this?" she murmured.
He could barely speak through the fog of desire. "Yes. God, yes."
"None of this has to end, John. This can be more real than the real."
All he could feel was her bare skin against his hardness, and it was driving him crazy with lust. He buried his face in her hair and tried to distract himself. Her hips moved with the maddening rhythm of his fingers on her clit and he clung to the remnants of his control. If only she were really his...
"Want that, John? Do you want this to be real?"
"Yes," he gasped as he felt her begin to spasm and a scream of satisfaction broke the quiet of the encampment. Too much for him to take, the sight and sound of her pleasure, and he came with a dizzying rush over the warm skin of her back.
Under ordinary circumstances, Danziger would write the entire event off as a surprisingly vivid erotic dream, but the marks on his arm lifted it out of the ordinary. When he'd awakened the next morning, he'd been sporting eight crescent-shaped gouges on his left forearm. They must have oozed blood in the night, since dried blood decorated both his skin and the sheets. He would bet money they matched Bess Martin's nails exactly.
For an instant after he first saw them, he thought he must have been sleepwalking and the dream had been real, but then he saw True still sleeping in her bedroll and his clothes, undisturbed since he fell asleep last night. Plus, if he had walked over to the Martin tent, his feet would be dirty, which they weren't. The logical explanation was that he had made the marks himself during the night, but his mind wouldn't leave it at that. It was just a dream, but this had been the most realistic dream of his life. Awakening had been a transition from wakefulness to wakefulness, which both unsettled and disoriented him. Only a firm grip on reality enabled him to put the experience of touching Bess aside as fantasy. It pained him that it had been.
His mind dwelled on the night before for the rest of the day, while he struggled to fix the machinery that kept breaking and maintain what still worked, as well as keep an eye on True. Not many worries there, though–she was playing tag with Uly while Devon watched.
Devon. Danziger still found her very attractive and didn't think he'd turn down a chance to get better acquainted with her physically, but the sensation of Bess's body against him still lingered. He wished he had the right to touch her the way he'd dreamed of. He ran his gaze over Devon, admiring the slender body and her smooth, straight dark hair, but his body didn't manifest so much as a flicker of interest. Tired, he told himself, irritated. Just a bad night's sleep, nothing else, not side effects of a teenage-boy crush.
She strode over to him and he admired the smooth motion of her legs as she walked. As usual, she was all business. "Can you take scouting duty today? Walman's sprained his ankle."
"No problem. I'll get going right now." Knowing he would be alone with his thoughts for a few hours raised his spirits. That weird dream was a puzzle, like broken bits of metal, and all he needed was time to uncover how they fit together.
On the way out of camp, he detoured by the Martins'. Bess was hanging laundry outside, her hair ruffled by the breeze. Martin emerged from the tent and put a hand on her shoulder to get her attention. She flinched at his touch. "What's wrong?" he asked, sliding down the shoulder of her flowered cotton blouse. He whistled a little and placed a brief kiss on the bared skin. "Guess I got a little rough with you last night. Forgive me?"
"Always," she answered, bending to retrieve the freshly washed shirt that she had dropped. Danziger was close enough to see the bruise and knew beyond any doubt that it had come from his mouth, his teeth, when he nipped her shoulder in that damned dream.
He sighed as he drove the 'Rail across the plain the Eden Advance party was approaching. Bess had not bitten her own shoulder, so the theory of the simple sex dream went out the window. Then again, nothing had been simple since they landed on G-889.