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He arrived forty minutes later and stood on the pavement looking up at her balcony. He did not ring the bell. He called instead. Once. Twice. Four times. No answer.

He went up the side of the garage with the ease of a man who has navigated worse, grabbed the railing and pulled himself over, landed on the tiles without a sound.

Through the glass he could see her.

She had made it as far as the bed. One leg hanging off the edge, hair spread across the pillow, the buttons of her shirt open, the lace of her lingerie catching the moonlight. Even like this, completely unconscious, she was more than the photograph had suggested. More than the video. More than anything he had been prepared for.

He worked the lock with the metal rod he kept beneath the flower pot, stepped inside, and pulled the door shut behind him.

He stood at the side of the bed and looked at her for a long moment. Her white skin luminous in the dark. Her hair spilling off the pillow. The slow uneven rhythm of her breathing.

He sat on the edge of the bed and said quietly: Wake up. You called me here.

She didn't wake.

He reached out and brushed the hair from her face. Then her bare shoulder. Then his hand moved lower, tracing along the lace of her lingerie where it curved over her chest, and the fire that moved through him then had nothing patient left in it.

Still she slept.

He tried her name. Trailed his fingers down the length of her thigh, slow and deliberate. Her body answered before she did, a slight shiver moving through her, her lips curving into something private and hungry even in sleep.

His patience gave out.

He gathered her up, one hand at the back of her neck, the other sliding to the curve of her hips, and pressed his mouth to the warm skin below her shoulder. He bit down gently, half teasing, half something less gentle. A soft moan escaped her throat. Her face creased with that particular expression that sits exactly between pleasure and pain.

Wake up, he said against her skin.

He moved his hand from her hip, sliding it up between her thighs, finding the heat of her through the thin fabric. He circled her slowly, deliberately, feeling her pulse quicken under his fingers, feeling her body arch toward him even as her mind stayed somewhere else. She was trembling. So, he realized, were his hands.

A sound tore out of him that he hadn't intended. He pulled her against him, let her feel exactly what she was doing to him, and caught her mouth with his, biting her lower lip the way you punish someone for making you wait too long.

Her eyes opened.

She blinked at him in the dark, that unfocused sleepy gaze, and then she smiled with the total unguarded warmth of someone who thinks they are still dreaming and therefore has nothing to protect.

My dreams are really getting out of hand, she said.

He laughed despite himself. Despite everything.

He cupped her face. What do you want, he said. His voice had gone very quiet. Should we.

God, she said, if I don't take advantage of a man like you while I'm dreaming I will never forgive myself.

She pulled him down by the back of his neck and kissed him with everything she had, and for a while the room ceased to exist in any meaningful sense. Her hands were in his hair. Her body pressed into his. Her breath came in short urgent pulls between kisses and she tasted like whiskey and something underneath it that had nothing to do with the whiskey.

This feels very real, she whispered.

He tightened his hands at her waist. Because it is, Lilya. Wake up. This is real.

But her eyes were already closing again. The alcohol pulled her back faster than he could hold her, and within minutes she was gone, her breath deepening, her body going soft and still against his.

He lay beside her for a long time. Looked at the ceiling. Listened to her breathe.

I never forgot you, little sparrow, he said.

She didn't hear him.

He watched her until the first grey light came through the curtains. Then he pulled the blanket carefully over her, traced his fingers one last time along the line of her jaw, and slipped back out through the balcony door into the cold morning air.

He left nothing behind except the marks on her skin, the locked door she would have no memory of locking, and the long slow burn of something that had started years ago and had never, it turned out, gone out at all.

She woke to pounding on her bedroom door.

Her head felt like concrete. She stumbled toward the door and found it locked. She never locked her door. She was afraid of locks.

She turned the key and opened it.

Natya stood in the doorway, pale with worry.

Miss Lilya. Are you alright. You never lock your door. I couldn't wake you.

Lilya pressed her hand to her forehead. I'm fine. What time is it.

Natya glanced at her watch. Ten o'clock.

Lilya turned to look at the clock on the wall. Natya was right. She never slept past nine. Not even after a bad night. Not even after the worst nights.

She looked down at her arms.

At her chest. Her neck.

The marks were everywhere. Dark against her skin, blooming like something that had been pressed there with intention. Kiss marks. The unmistakable evidence of a mouth that had taken its time.

The room went very quiet inside her head.

Then she whispered:

Oh God. It wasn't a dream...