Image - (A Romantic Post)

 A good twenty minutes had passed and Leigh had no idea if she had dreamed he was holding her, or if somehow, somewhere between the honey almond lotion and the intensely scented soy candles burning slowly into pools in their glass jars on the nightstand - if he had really been there. "Had he really been with me this time?" She thought she could actually taste him, feel his prickly two-day beard edging around her right inner thigh. 

 
It was a dream she moaned to herself. He wasn't real - again, he wasn't real, but the house on the beach, the rocks, the sand - the water - they were real. Too real. Who was this man? He stood in the window and watched her. Night after night he stared at her body lying on the beach. Sometimes he would stand there for minutes at a time and put his hand inside his opened shirt just above his belt line. What would it take to make this man stay even a minute longer - maybe long enough to see him slip his hand a bit further; would he let her watch? Would he know she wanted to? Could she hold her imagination long enough to fulfill this fantasy? She squeezed her eyes tightly, but as she did, he vanished. 
 
Perhaps dreaming of the house down the road would be easier to do if she were actually laying on the beach that she thought about - literally make the trip in life, as she had in her mind. Could that be considered trespass? Would anyone mind? No one really walks the beach much - it must be very private indeed. It was his, but who was he? He had to be alive inside that house. He couldn't just be a vapor or a ghost, she had seen someone once, once when she had actually completed her dare and walked as far as she could without fearing being seen. 
 
Who he was probably had a great deal with why he wouldn't come out of his house to question why she chose his beach to wander? He couldn't be married she pondered, no one disturbs the sand. Such a large and imposing home for just one man, she thought. Ghost or no ghost, she had seen him standing in the window watching. He had seen her yes, and at least been real enough to force her to recall him to her bed every night as she lay sleeping - dreaming. He had to be real. 
 
They're always so perfect in dreams, aren't they? Dark disheveled hair just long enough to run her hands through; that serious grey-eyed stare of his, who knows what he has been through? She wanted to ease just a little of his tension, but where could she? In her mind? The more she thought of his beard pressing against her skin the more she wanted to reach between her bare legs and lift his face to see him more fully - "Who are you? Why do I think about you?" she questioned out loud - no one answered.