DISCLAIMER: CSI and its characters are the property of Jerry Bruckheimer and CBS.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Dreams?
By Shatterpath
It is quiet here, at the jagged fringes of the true desert. The oasis of civilization is a smudge of light on the horizon, and the darkness is near complete. The isolation is total, nothing here but rocks, sand, moonlight and me. Well, and that completely quiet and unobtrusive cop watching over the crime scene.
He barely acknowledged me, quietly rattling off the bare bones of what had been discovered on the scene before retreating to his squad car. Creep…
Creepy or no, my job is to process the crime scene. So, once again I trust that the officer cleared the scene, glance around myself to be sure, and get to work. Generally speaking, I function better this way, undistracted by masses of uniforms and looky-loos and coworkers.
Time passes in the push and pull of my work that consumes me utterly. It's my stomach that finally knocks me out of the zone with unignorable protests of hunger. So, I retreat back to my car, glancing at the quiet hulk of the police cruiser and Officer Creepy. If he's even still in there, I sure can't see him. This is a lousy scene to pull on Halloween…
It's cold out, and there's a strange damp in the air, so I start the Denali up and defrost while I attack my sandwich and coffee. This is one of the few days where I've remembered food, and the solidness of it soothes me in the spooky night. Veggies and pita and whatever the hell else I packed in the cooler as the sun went down, quickly vanishes. Sated and warmed up, I lean my head back, marveling at what appears to be actual, visible fog in these dry desert mountains. Weird…
In a jarring moment of complete disorientation, I blink and search the confines of the big SUV with bleary eyes. Did I fall asleep? In the fading burn of headlights, the squad car completes its U-turn and roars away. What the hell? After the muffled cacophony of engine and flying gravel, the silence is complete.
In fact, it's eerie.
The fog is thick and muffling, giving me flashbacks of a past I'd like to forget.
Wait…
Was that movement?
Eddies in the fog, misleading and spooky, have my nerves on end. Wait… was that? At the geometric shadow of my crime scene, there is a figure, night-darkened eyes watching me with a piercing energy despite the fog.
I know her.
Did she replace Officer Creepy? Did I really see her at all? The energy I associate with Sofia Curtis burns hot in me now, and even fear cannot keep me in the car.
Cool damp caresses my skin and lungs. Without a jacket, gun in hand, I skulk towards the ramshackle old building where I am drawn like iron ore to a magnet. Oddly, the fog is here as well, the spooky, dreamy quality carrying within.
"Sof…" my voice is a cracked, broken whimper. "Sofia?"
With the faint moan of the wind through the broken windows is the even fainter tune of a throaty chuckle, I am alerted to another presence. But when I whirl around, gun up…
There is no one there.
Ooookay then, I am now officially getting freaked out. Once more, the low, sexy chuckle alerts me, even as the fine hairs on my spine bristle. In one move, I turn and my gun hand is grabbed in a vice-like grip.
Terror melts into relief at the presence of the swaggering, sexual enigma that haunts my dreams. "Oh god," breathes up from my chest, where the abrupt swings in emotions, not to mention adrenaline, makes my head pound and my head swim. "You scared the hell out of me."
That smirk deepens, and the steadying hands on gun hand and hip flexes to remind me of the press of her on my body. If she stood any closer, we would touch, and that both thrills and terrifies me. There is no warmth in here, but my body is drawn to her, and some alien heat rises in the cold space between us.
My eyes close despite my rising nervousness, intoxicated by her closeness as she leans in. Her breath drifts past my ear, cold like the fog, in a non-sound that might be my name. I am still dizzy with the sensations pounding within me, heart like jungle drums.
Icy lips tickle my skin, her cold breath whispering through the dark strands of my hair and I can't help the shudder of reaction. How long I've fantasized her like this, close to me, seducing me. Even as my brain shrieks with white noise about rules, I arch my neck towards the tickle of her mouth.
The chuckle sounds like a growl now, and something in me shies like an anxious horse. Startled by my pulling away, the hard hands on my body are unable to keep me trapped. Within the small space, the tendrils of fog are harmony to the unspoken symphony playing between our loaded gazes.
She's different tonight; there is something about her that is causing a conflict in me that I don't understand. She looks no different then she always does: sleek, arrogant and competent and sinfully sexy; but there is something different now, a dark presence to her that thrills and scares me.
Damn, stupid Halloween.
My mind is playing tricks on me, mean ones, ones that see a flash of teeth in her faint smile. Teeth that, perhaps, do not belong in the human mouth.
"Dammit, Sofia," my voice whispers, reed thin. "You're scaring me."
"Am I?" she purrs feather-soft, and I'm not entirely certain that her mouth actually moved to form the words. "I certainly didn't intend."
I don't move as she sashays close once more, too caught up in the sultry movement of her slender body. There are no words in my nerdy, overeducated brain for the way she makes me feel. The hunger is desperate and gnawing, like thirst or starvation.
The brush of her lips feels very much like the swirling fog, insubstantial and fleeting.
I dreamed this; I had to be dreaming this! For so long now, I've been so desperate to assuage my curiosity of her touch that I must be making this up.
But the cool lips are persistent, the press of them heavier and heavier, coaxing at me, demanding my acquiescence. Whatever I have fantasized about, this is another realm entirely. Like a telepath, she reads every mood, every want, every strum of my sexual wires like sound on piano strings.
Good lord, if she kisses like this…
The wondering thought is lost as those seductive, cool lips drift away from my happily swollen mouth, leaving me gasping for oxygen. I'm pliant like clay in her hands, willing and able to play her game. Even as my upper brain tries to get a grip, the mouth that I'm mad for touches my skin, tracing my jaw line to my ear. Her hands are like steel cables, her mouth like a predator on warm flesh.
I'm barely aware of the flash fire of razor pain on my trustingly exposed neck as an unspeakable pleasure swamps over me. It's an exquisite sensation, my bones gone to crystallized honey, melting in the heat. Sound buzzes in my ears, I cling to Sofia hard enough that my fingers hurt, my fingernails nearly cracking under the pressure. Like a loose tooth on a string, my hips jerk towards her, and my head spins at tornado velocity.
This is like nothing I have ever felt, and the gradual quagmire of darkness as it swamps over me is almost a relief from the intensity.
The End