They weren’t just lovers for the moment; they were lovers for eternity.

*********

Bulma Briefs awoke a moment later drenched in a cold sweat, her entire body trembling.

She quickly sat up in bed, hugging her knees to her chest. One hand reached out instantly to turn on the bedside lamp, illuminating the room with its eerie dull light. She looked beside her, feeling another presence; the other half of her queen sized bed was empty. Perfect and pristine, unslept in. No dent in the pillow from the presence of a man’s head. No rumpled covers that had glided over a man’s skin as he lay beneath them. No man, no lover had lain beside her at all this past night.

It’s that dream again.

She closed her eyes for an instant, shuddering. She could still feel his hands and lips skillfully caressing her body. She could still hear his husky chuckle in her ear. She could still taste the salty sweetness of his skin.

She could still feel him, hot and hard, inside her.

Bulma shot out of bed, leaving a scattered trail of sheets and pillows behind her. She had to get away from there. From the sheets that reeked of sweat and her womanly arousal. From these dreams that had been plaguing her. Dreams of another place, another time, another life.

Dreams of a man she did not know.

If she had been one to believe in reincarnation, she would have sworn that these dreams were her subconscious’s way of reliving a past life.

But Dr. Bulma Briefs, world famous astrophysicist of Satan City University, didn’t believe in such nonsense. She believed in facts, data, pure scientific logic. Vague theories and dream sequences had no place in her orderly world. Only reason prevailed in her mind, never abstraction.

Which was why these dreams made no sense to her. She knew they weren’t taking place in modern times—who wore silk stockings these days, anyway, it would be such a frivolous expense—and they always starred the same man. A nameless man, whose face she couldn’t quite make out.

But his body …

She knew his body even better than she knew her own.

She shivered again as she padded across her room’s royal blue carpet and through the French doors leading onto her private balcony.

She leaned against the railing, letting the cool night air sweep across her heated body as she stared at the brilliant, twinkling lights of the Satan City skyline. A single tear formed as the wind whipped her aquamarine hair across her eyes, but she quickly brushed away both the wetness and the offending strand of hair. She frowned, holding the wisp of blue between her fingers, staring at it.

How odd … her hair was just as long as it had always been, but she distinctly remembered it being much shorter in the dream.

She shook her head, trying to clear it of anymore thoughts of those dreams. She hated them, couldn’t wait until they stopped altogether.

She shivered again, her body now feeling both the cold and the wetness of the sweat-soaked satin nightgown she wore. She walked inside and carefully closed the French doors, making sure to lock them. Even in her lush two-story penthouse on the twenty-first floor of one of the most secure apartment complexes in the city, she still felt incredibly paranoid about unlocked doors and windows. She shivered yet again as a small flash of a long-forgotten memory began to stir within her, almost unsettling the dream from the top tier of her mind’s eye. She leaned her forehead against the glass, taking a deep breath as she forcefully pushed the startling sound of breaking glass, the feel of a sharp, cold knife digging into her flesh, and a passionate, burning kiss to the back of her mind.

Her blue eyes took on a haunted look in spite of her efforts, and she quickly turned away from the breathtaking view of the city below, turning her back not just on the windows but on her memories, as well.

Why was it that her life had become filled with so many things she longed to forget—dreams, memories, and tiny glimpses of the past that just could not or would not leave her alone.

She shrugged, telling herself that she didn’t care. None of this mattered.

"Life does not belong in the past; it belongs in the future," she murmured to herself. "It is not when we look to the past that we find answers. Answers only lie in the future. We must look ahead to what will be, not to what has been, or what might have been. The only truth is in what is to come. I have to remember that."

I have to keep telling myself that.

For a moment there, she had almost believed her own platitudes.

She attempted to act nonchalantly then, as she always did after something disturbing or unexplainable occurred in her life. She shed her nightgown, letting the soft material slip off her shoulders and slide down her silky smooth skin to pool at her feet. She daintily stepped from within the cream-colored satin puddle and walked with an innate grace to the walk-in closet directly across from her war-zone-like bed.

She rummaged through the neatly organized clothes for a moment, pushing aside all unnecessary garments until her gaze fell upon her metaphorical safety blanket: the old, well-worn white terrycloth bathrobe that, to this day, remained as warm and as fluffy as the day she had taken it from her deceased mother’s closet twenty years ago. Then, she had held it in her arms and cried, remembering all the times her mother had worn that same bathrobe over the years, ever since Bulma was a little girl staring up at her beautiful, blond mother with admiration. Nowadays, she simply wore it whenever she felt scared or lonely. Whenever she put it on, it felt as though her mother were there with her, watching over her. She smiled and blinked away the tears as she ran her hand down the soft terrycloth. She had to remember what she’d just told herself moments before: Memories were things of the past. It was the future she had to keep in mind now.

Bulma sighed. "But it’s so much easier to remember than to forget," she whispered to herself.

Carefully taking her bathrobe from its scented, padded hanger, she slipped it over her shoulders, tying the sash and pulling the edges as close together as possible.

Even with her mother’s loving arms wrapped around her, she could still sense him, still feel him.

That mysterious, faceless man from her dreams.

All she could think of was his beautiful, muscular body. So strong and yet so gentle, he held her so tightly and yet she felt no threat as she lay beneath him, quivering in pleasure.

Hugging herself, Bulma stared at the bed. Her bed seemed so foreign to her; one half was rumpled, quite a mess since she had taken nearly half the sheets with her when she stood up in such a hurry. The other side hardly looked touched at all.

But then the lamplight flickered for a moment, and she could have sworn that she saw a man—not just any man, it was him, she knew it—lying there, naked, atop the sheets, inviting her to join him, beckoning her with his sweat-slicked body.

Forcing herself to take deep, calm breaths, Bulma fled her bedroom.

It had been this way ever since her divorce from Yamcha. No, before. She’d been having these dreams since she was a teenager, after that other little incident that she longed to forget. And in addition to the dreams, there were times when she felt as though she were being watched, as cliché as the thought seemed to her. And other times, like now, she thought she saw an apparition of that man. Always the same man, even though she had never been able to see his face—and always the same dreams, too, over and over again. Some pleasant, and some …

"Stop this, Bulma," she chastised herself as she entered the large, stainless steel kitchen filled with the latest in modern kitchen technology. What she needed was two or three cups of hot, black coffee.

Anything to keep her awake.

Anything to keep her from those dreams.

With the press of a button she heard the comfortingly familiar whir of the coffee-maker as it stirred to life, forming a potent brew that smelled absolutely heavenly to Bulma.

At least this time the dream had been a good one, she thought to herself. He had been making love to her with such tender care that she had almost believed for a moment that he loved her. No, this had been a very pleasant dream. Not like that other dream, the one where he—where he—

She cried out at the shock of remembering; her legs suddenly gave out, and she had to catch herself on the countertop to keep from falling as her body wracked with sobs. She’d been doing so well, hadn’t thought at all of that other dream, but now, thinking of it, she could hardly move, could hardly breathe. The terror welled up within her to the point where she felt as though she would burst if she didn’t forget.

Why could she never forget?

After another few moments, her racing heart slowed down, and the pounding dulled in her ears. She took in a shaky breath and stood, holding herself up against the counter. She looked down and saw that in her panic she had knocked over the coffeepot; hot coffee had dripped onto her prized robe, creating a jet black stain on the snowy white material. Some of the coffee had even dripped onto her smooth legs, burning them; she hadn’t even noticed the hot, searing pain in her delirium.

Oh, how she hated that dream.

"Dammit!" Her palm slammed down onto the kitchen counter, causing all the neatly stacked jars and tins to rattle with the force of her blow. "I have to stop doing this to myself." She buried her face in her arms, letting her forehead rest against the cool metal of the counter as she steadied herself, trying to stop the trembling that had suddenly taken over her body. In a few moments she would have to grab some paper towels and get to work cleaning up this mess; she’d have to throw out her mother’s robe, too. A stain that deep and that dark would never come out, and she knew instinctively that looking at it would make her remember.

But for now, she wasn’t thinking of such mundane things as cleaning up; she was thinking of that dream. The effect it always had on her, even when she only recalled a small part of it—although, admittedly, it was one small part in particular that did her in every time …

Thankfully, it had only been a memory; she had not dreamed that horrible dream this night.

And she hoped to God that she would never have that dream again.

* * * * *