Perhaps three hours had passed in the dream library by the time I realized that I was starting to glaze over, that no more information was getting into my brain. I wondered how long the little study session had been going in the real world. One minute? Fifteen-minutes? An hour? More? I still didn’t have too good of a handle on this whole dreaming time dilation concept. Either way, I was fading, and there was no way I was going to be able to learn even one more of Barbas’ phoneme patterns tonight.

I shut the book and stood, and then circled the desk carefully to peer over Barbas' shoulder at the notes he was working on. He had drawn several lines, connecting several of the phonetic phrases, periodically circling the ones he found important. I leaned against his chair as he looked up, bending down to wrap my arms around his neck. My head pressed against his and my mouth was at about the level of his ear. The heady scent of him filled my nose and made me think of sawdust, cinnamon, and campfire smoke. He was an illusion; I knew that. This was a dream, an induced hallucination. I was really lying propped up against the base of my tower, motionless, encased in a shell of armor, dreaming the library, the books, my wonderful dress, the cascading waves of my hair spilling down about my face. It wasn't real- or was it? What was real, anyway? The smell of his hair was real. And but for him, but for this sweet illusion, I was alone.

Barbas reached up and ran his fingertips down my face gently, turning his head and murmuring, “Are you alright?”

“Just,” I hesitated. “I… I was just thinking about what really matters.”

Barbas pushed away from the desk, moving his chair back a half meter and turning so that he could pull me down to sit across his lap. “And what really matters?”

I thought about it for a minute, staring out at nothing, before I finally turned and met his eyes. They reflected the stolid light of the desk lamp back out at me as little twin candles burning copper oxide green. His face was dark, angular, and handsome as ever, but he seemed different tonight. His skin, usually the color of dark coffee, now seemed cut whole cloth from the shadows. What's more, he seemed blurry around the edges, like I was seeing him at a great distance through a heavy fog- rather than sitting on his lap, my face mere inches from his. As I watched, the green seemed to leak out of his eyes, swallowed up in the burning coals now smoldering in their place. I put a hand to his face, amazed, and felt it warm to the touch, hot as a fever. I smiled as I understood. He was choosing to appear as a djinni, ‘made from smokeless fire.' His suit was unaffected by the growing heat emanating from his skin, but the tie changed from bright green to a burnt orange, and the cufflinks at his wrists stopped being emeralds, winking to life as hot embers from the center of a fire.

“What matters, my qarin,” I whispered, “is that we’re here. It matters that we do what we came here to do, and make this world ready for the people coming after us.”

Barbas grinned, and his teeth stood out white-hot in the shimmering heat spilling from his mouth. “And what happens if we can’t? What if this tower we built does nothing and this place stays a frozen hell?”

“Then we make the best of what we have,” I replied immediately. “Our visitor and his people live here somehow. We’ll find a way, and no matter what, we’ve got this, the dream, each other.”

Barbas laughed, surging forward in his chair and taking me up in his arms, standing and lifting me up with him in the same motion. In the blink of an eye, he had dropped the burning semblance of the djinni, once more the handsome man with the viridian eyes and russet hair. His skin once more cool and smooth as cappuccino. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and for a moment we stayed that way, content in each other’s lips, in the flickering dance of our tongues. But then the hunger overtook us at the same time, and everything became urgent. A frantic stripping away of Barbas’ clothes, the tie of my dress coming untied from around my neck. One of his hands gripped my back while the other ran rampant, caressing my breasts with fingers dancing from one nipple to the other. He set me down on the edge of the desk so that he leaned into me where he stood, and together we swept notes and books aside in heedless abandon. There were more pressing things to attend to.

So distracted was I in the flurry of kisses, touching, and teasing, that Barbas almost took me by surprise when he slipped my dress up away from my hips and pushed into me, driving the breath out of me in a sharp cry. I circled my arms around his neck and kissed his lips, his face, his forehead; all thoughts were driven out of my mind with each push of his hips, each rock and circle of mine. My breathing came faster and faster, changing from the cycle of gasps and sighs to one of moan and cry. I bent forward and bit him, hard on the shoulder, delighting in the sudden ripple of tension that shot through him. "Come on ‘Bas," I hissed in his ear, "come and take me."

A growl was the only response I got, and this time, when Barbas pulled his hips back, he drew out of me completely, surprising me again. I let out a frustrated growl of my own and opened my mouth to goad him again. But before I could speak, Barbas gripped my shoulder in one strong hand and turned me, then bent me over the desk, pressing my breasts against the cool old wood. A moment later, one of his hands took a fistful of my hair and pulled- not too hard, just enough to make me arch my back, and then he was inside me again, driving into me with feral intensity. I gasped and gripped the edge of the desk like it was my only lifeline, the change in angle sent new, sharper spears of sensation burning into me from below. He thrust with metronomic rhythm, hard and powerful, not even slowing down when the orgasm wracked my body, lifting me back up off the desk so that I was standing with him, my back pressed against his chest. He gripped my breasts and continued his relentless conquest as I screamed with ecstasy. Time ceased to have any meaning at that moment. The sensation was overwhelming, all encompassing, and I was swept along before it like a leaf in a storm. Finally, the storm broke, and all the strength seemed to go out of Barbas at once. He sagged against my back and groaned as he spent himself inside me.

Suddenly, smoothly, with no discernable transition, we were stumbling back and falling into the soft, luxurious expanse of our bed in the cottage by the lake, the library gone as though it had never been. We lay tangled together, slick with sweat and panting, for what must have been ages. Then I rolled and curled up against Barbas’ broad chest, and sighed, ready for true sleep, my rest before what would be another hard day of work tomorrow. Just as my mind began to drift into the fuzziness of sleep, Barbas’ voice brought me back to consciousness. “I could almost believe this was real,” he murmured. “You make me feel real, Jo. I could almost believe…” His voice trailed off, and a moment later, I spiraled down into the dark, into true sleep. I dreamed of darkness and cold, the howl of a great storm, and of great, warm eyes staring into mine with fevered intensity. It wasn’t until the next day, when I woke up, that I realized that the eyes in my dream had not been the green eyes of my djinni.