"Are you quite done, Miss Folorunsho?"
The voice startles her because though it is quiet, it cuts through all the laughter with calm authority and finally, blessedly ends it.
Also - it is Sango's voice.
Obviously, that has never happened beforein the dream - so she looks up.
He is at the other end of the table, the only face aside from Aina's she can make out.
The Oxblood leather chair from her living room now holds pride of place at the head of the conference table and in it, still wearing the black jalabiya from last night, still lazily sprawled like an ancient feudal lord (which, if vague memory of things she'd read served her right, he technically was) is her lord, Sango.
What's crazy is that it doesn't seem incongruous at all. It feels like he belongs here, in this room of power, much more than anybody else present does.
Deep set, shadowed eyes hold her gaze from across the room and Bisola finally thinks to block her raggedy underwear with her arms. Humiliation warms her chest and face. But not.. quite... all humiliation... her heart is beating fast again but she doesn't think she's afraid.
He tilts his head slightly as if silently judging her belated attempt to cover herself.
"I asked you," his deep voice comes again with a trace of impatience, "are you done?"
Bisola isn't sure what he means; done with the presentation? Done with her career? Done with life???
She nods yes to all three, pretty much.
"Finally," she hears him snort before rising to that full, stunning height that makes enclosed spaces shrink.
No one in the room moves. Even Aina seems more like a frozen shadow than a person now.
Bisola flinches when he reaches a huge arm over the table towards her, palm offered up.
That beautiful sculpted mouth she'd only seen shaped in a scowl suddenly hitches up on one side, and a devastating masculine dimple grooves it's way under one prominent cheekbone out of nowhere.
Bisola feels the breath huff audibly out of her before she can stop it. She feels like she's been sucker punched.
She'd thought she'd been building immunity to his looks but clearly that was because he'd never yet smiled at her.
"Come with me, Folorunso," he says.
"Wh-ere are we going?"
She stumbles over her words breathlessly but she is already reaching for the large, masculine hand extended towards her, already anticipating the strange, cool frisson she still remembers from the last time her fingers touched his skin and -
That was when she woke up with her face pressed up against cold, saliva slicked granite.
Bisola lay there for a while trying to get her bearings.
For one horrible moment she thought she'd fallen asleep In a bar and been abandoned by Aina and her "friends" again.
But then that alarmingly familiar baritone drawl drifted over her again.
"Awake? Finally."
Bisola jerked up, instantly alert enough to keep herself from tumbling off the stool she'd fallen asleep on. She glared blearily at Sango.
He was perched on the stool next to her and appeared to be peering at her from an unexpectedly close distance, his light brown eye bright with curiosity. He was so close she could smell the delicious aroma of some gloriously herbal soap coming off him and see little droplets from his recent shower in his dense beard.
Bisola leaned away from him uncomfortably. Had he been sitting there watching her sleep?
"I was watching you sleep," he supplied helpfully.
"What?" Bisola gasped.
"I thought you might be dead the way you were lying there but I'm still here so..." he gave her another genuinely curious glance, "Tell me... Do all mortal women drool when they sleep or is that just you?"