This was Quentin. This was the man who had made such a vital place in the life of the Haven. The man who had held her in the dream, claimed her long before Fenris broke free to taunt and bully.
But no man claimed her. She belonged only to herself. She couldn’t be taken.
She could give.
She leaned over the bed and kissed his brow, meaning it to end there. His skin was warm and slightly damp, tasting of male. One taste was somehow not enough. She kissed the outer corner of his eyelid, and then the high arch of his cheekbone. He sighed through slightly parted lips. She caught the last trace of his breath with her own mouth.
The dream wasn’t over. She felt his arms come up around her, gently, neither constraining nor demanding.
“Johanna?” he murmured.
She tensed to flee, suddenly aware of where she was and what she did. The darkness was no hiding place. Quentin was awake. He held her. Not like Fenris, with the desire to seize and devour, but as if he had the most uncertain clasp on a miracle and might crush it with a twitch of his finger.
The decision was hers to make. She wasn’t even sure how she’d come to this moment.
But she did know: She’d come to it step by slow, plodding step, just as she treated her patients in small, alternating increments of gratifying progress and frustrating reversal.
The dream was only an excuse. Hadn’t it all been leading to this, from the hour she’d saved him by the lane? Hadn’t she admitted her attraction at the beginning, no matter how much she fought it?
Quentin faced a terrible challenge. She’d vowed to see him through it, regardless of the cost. Fenris wished to drive her away from this man, who knew but half of himself.
She wouldn’t be driven. But she must choose, now for all time: to remain apart from him, clutching at the last scraps of objectivity, or to forsake her principles and surrender to her heart.
Logic dictated the obvious answer. Logic, which had no more power to force her hand than did fear. But once she abandoned it, she couldn’t turn back.
“Am I dreaming?” Quentin asked. “Are you here, Johanna?”
Muscle by muscle she allowed her body to melt against him. “I’m here.”
He stroked the palm of his hand up her cheek and across her hairline, smoothing the stray wisps that had come loose from her braids. “Why?”
Answer him. Answer with the truth…
“I dreamed,” she said. “Dreamed of you.”
“What did you dream?”
“That… I was with you. Here, in your room.”
“With me.” His hand, stilled in its motion, moved again to cup the back of her head. But he drew her no closer. “As you are now?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve also dreamed, Johanna,” he said, stroking the pad of his thumb along the bridge of her nose. “But dreams do not always match reality.”
As if she, of all women, were not fully cognizant of such facts. “Sometimes dreams reflect reality very well indeed.”
“Or give us warnings.” He let her go. Her skin felt suddenly cold in the absence of his touch. “Johanna, I think you’d better leave.”
“You want me to go?” she said. “After all the—” She stopped herself, moved back to sit on the edge of the bed and began again. “You have, in the past, led me to believe that you are attracted to me. Was I mistaken?”
He sat up, and the sheets slid down to pool in his lap. She bit down hard on her lower lip.
“Why the change, Johanna?” he countered. “Why come to me now? You’ve been avoiding me.” He smiled in self-mockery. “With good cause. I’ve behaved… less than admirably. Yesterday was just more proof that I’m not to be trusted.”
“Yesterday you said that I couldn’t help you—”
“You said it yourself, Johanna. I told you that you were right.”
“I was wrong.” She glared at him, trying to make him understand.
“I thought that I was no longer to be your patient.”
“No. Not my patient.”
“Then what, Johanna?”
That was the question, and now she had no choice but to answer. Answer him.