“I cried out, I screamed. I was a woman and a man screaming, I was Rebecca helpless and in torment and near to fainting yet unable to faint, and I was Quinn, protective and horrified and yet desperately trying to see the evil ones who were doing this, and there were two of them, yes, definitely two of them, and I had to know if it was Manfred. And then I was Rebecca screaming and the pain went on, the unendurable pain that was endured—it went on and on, and then the scene, blessedly, started to shift.

“ ‘Oh, God, Rebecca,’ I heard myself whispering. ‘I know what they did—hung you by the hook beneath your rib and left you here to die.’

“Someone shook me awake. I looked up.

“It was Rebecca, and she was smiling, and she said, ‘Quinn, you came. You didn’t let me down. You came.’

“I was shocked. She was as real as she had been in the house, only she wore the gorgeous burgundy dress she’d worn in the dream.

“ ‘Oh, thank Heaven, you’re all right!’ I cried. ‘It couldn’t be going on forever.’

“ ‘Don’t think about it now, my darling,’ she said. ‘Now you know it, and you know what the fifth chain was for. Just be with me, my darling.’

“As I sat up she sat down beside me and I turned to face her, and our lips met. I kissed her clumsily and she put her tongue into my mouth, and I was as aroused as I’d been in the house.

“I was pure male, quite divided from her and quite locked to her, enchanted by the low-cut burgundy dress and the pink nipples that had to be so close, and ah, how precious the cameo on its black ribbon around her naked throat.

“Her breasts were only half covered by the burgundy velvet, and I shoved my hand into her dress awkwardly, and when I felt her nipples I went a little bit mad.

“ ‘Love you, positively love you,’ I said with gritted teeth, and then I pushed the cloth down and I kissed her nipples until she drew me back up.

“I looked into her eyes.

“I wanted her too much to talk, and she allowed it, taking my hand and putting it under her skirts. Real, all real, all savory and frenzied, and finally, her little sex gasping for me, closing on me, and then the moment of fulfillment—so sudden, so jarring, so total. So gone.

“I found myself staring down at her—I was actually lying on top of her—and the flush in her cheeks took my breath away. I muttered some obscenity, some crudity. But I was so purely satisfied, so blissful that I could question nothing in these moments. I kissed her in the same open-mouthed passionate way I had kissed her the very first time.