He should have restrained himself. Should never have allowed his emotions to bleed so freely into the Fade. But emotion leaks into it with or without permission, and she felt it - just as he felt hers. The pull between them formed before either of them moved. He sat with it. Let her emotions lay themselves over his own in a tight embrace. He had looked away suddenly, uncertain.

And then - her hand against his cheek. Her mouth on his. That first contact broke something loose in him. She pulled back quickly, eyes wide. Startled by her own forwardness, which he found intoxicating.

He should have ended it there. Forced them both awake.

Instead, he reached for her. Drew her back to him. Even in the Fade, he could smell her skin, feel the warmth of her body pressed against his. Their mouths found each other again - urgent now, no longer tentative. Tongues meeting. His hands seeking familiar curves he had only studied from a distance. Her hips - how often had he watched her walk away, half-tempted to follow, lulled by the sway of them? Now they were beneath his hands, real and solid as can be in the dream, the softness of her body against his undoing him.

He pulled back, panicked by his own lack of control. But another glance - those lips, still parted, her eyes drawing him in - and his restraint faltered. He shook his head, as if it might dispel the madness. But he leaned in again, helpless against the pull of her mouth. She didn’t flinch from his intensity - she returned it, and that captivated him more than anything else. She kissed him like she had chosen him long ago. And in the answering of her kiss, he felt the full force of his own hunger for her - something long buried, now rising to devour them both.

He immersed himself in the pleasure of her. Savoured her. Wondered what she might taste like in the waking world.

That thought jolted him.

He surfaced from the moment and pulled away, his voice low, laced with regret.

“We shouldn’t. It isn’t right. Not even here.”

That was why he stopped. The desire still burned, but the Fade had begun to stir. Spirits gathered at the edges, drawn to the heat rising between them. The Fade was responding - shaping itself around the kiss, turning emotion into architecture, memory into permanence. A tether, already begun.

He awakens.

Cursing himself. Again. For returning to a memory he has vowed, over and over, to leave untouched. But each time he yields, the Fade builds more. The moment sharpens. The memory thickens into form - structure layered upon structure, now inhabited by spirits.

He tells himself, each time, that he will resist. That he will give the Fade no more of her and that he will not lay another stone in that memory.

But then her name dances through him. The curve of those lips. The kiss he never stopped tasting.

His own words come back to haunt him.

I have not forgotten the kiss.

And he hasn’t.

Nor has the Fade.

And it shows no sign of letting him go.