Quinn jolted up in his bed, a cold sweat covering his body. He felt on fire where the touch of her finger still lingered on his skin, yet deep within him ran a cold thread that heralded more than seen in the dream. He inhaled, pulling at her lingering scent. Why he held to it so desperately eluded him in the still fogged haze of trying to wake. With hurried desperation, he placed the scent firmly in his mind, as a feeling of déjà vu sent yet another cold chill through him.

The woman beside him shifted. He looked over at the small blonde; a sheet half covering his newly made friend from the Saint Patrick’s party, Cindy, no Candy, his mind still split between dream and reality. The dream seemed a little more corporal each time he had it and this time, the scent made it too real. He let a single finger trace over his cheek as hers had in the dream, trying to recapture the jumble of feelings a moment more. The tingle of cold slithered up his spine. How could a woman, whose lips looked as though they could set a man ablaze with a passing touch, cause such a shiver? It was just a dream. Dreams are not suppose to make sense. He held on to more of the dream each time it came to him, even though he could not visualize her face as a whole. Eyes, lips, a piercing with a green stone in her left nostril, bits and pieces but never the whole. He tried his best to file each little clue to her, to the dream, away in his mind.

Candy shifted and sighed, seemingly lost in a dream of her own. Quinn’s gaze focused on the soft features of her face. His dream pushed to one side by the memory of watching this beautiful woman flirt with him across a crowded room. The way she seemed to appear and vanish at will among the other partygoers, a butterfly in a field of flowers, her antics held him captive most the evening. His mind filled with the music of their first dance. How when the third dance ended, he held up her hand and led them to the small terrace, taking two glasses of wine on the way. He handed her one, “Quinn White.”

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