Afterwards, he came to her only in dreams.

She didn't want him to, it would have been far nicer to have dreamt about clouds or sheep or something fluffy and pleasant, but every time she lay down, back into her mind he'd pop, all weepy eyes and pouting. It wasn't the strange connection Snoke had forced on her, in fact, she'd have preferred to use that as an excuse, but she was sure that the things he did and said in her dreams were drawn entirely from her own subconscious. That was what made the whole thing so embarrassing.

She'd spent the last few weeks since the flight from Crait helping to rebuild the Resistance, which in her case consisted mostly of lifting things. She was the vanguard of Leia's fabulous new plan to restore hope to the galaxy, by playing the video of Luke standing up to Kylo Ren without a scratch, closely followed by Rey lifting heavy objects to demonstrate her power. Clips of her dressed as a Jedi, swishing her lightsaber around in a purposeful fashion and then lifting a ship or two were flooding across the media channels on every system the Resistance could still reach, and Rey was glad to say she'd been spared the shame of watching any of them.

When she wasn't being filmed, she was meeting and greeting potential new recruits, being rolled out like a special competition prize at every gathering the Resistance organised. It was uncomfortable, much too public and made her acutely self-conscious, so the retreat to her own room at the end of the day was something she looked forward to.

Then the dreams started, and although once inside them she let go of her inhibitions completely, when she woke, she always felt slightly dirty, ashamed even.

It was always his eyes that started it. She'd be crossing the nebulous boundary between waking and sleep and she'd see his eyes, full of firelight, or through an escape pod window, or begging and accompanied by an outstretched hand. Her mind managed to supply a different ending to the story every time, one that didn't finish with him as the Supreme Leader of the First Order and her as the posterchild of the Resistance but brought them together.

Sometimes, in the dream, he flew to the island to find her. Sometimes, they jumped into a fighter the minute she'd clambered out of the escape pod and fought their way off the Supremacy together. Sometimes, he decided to save the Resistance and not succeed to the throne. Over the last month the dreams had shifted focus and become rather more specific, and instead of them just ending up together, they also ended up well, together. The next morning she'd wake sweaty and unsatisfied and was forced to burn off the excess energy in a long run or dampen her ardour with a cold shower.

So when she fell asleep one evening nearly five weeks since she'd last seen him on Crait, she knew exactly what to expect. It was the throne room this time.

'Join me, and I promise I'll save the Resistance, dismantle the First Order and be kind to small children and animals.'

She stepped closer, drawn irresistibly into the ambit of his magnetic eyes. 'I don't care about politics. Give me another reason to stay.'

His face softened, his gaze melted beneath her formidable stare and he swayed towards her, extending his hand into a soft caress to her cheek. 'Then stay because I love you, stay because I'll turn from the dark side for you. Stay because I don't want to be alone ever again.'

The words, the sincerity with which they were spoken, the trembling emotion writ large all over his poor, damaged face dissolved all her doubts and she completed the inevitable fall into his arms.

'You are not alone,' she murmured, and then his lips crashed down on hers, his hands spanned her back, pulling her into an intensely passionate kiss.

He withdrew a second later leaving her gasping, nuzzled her neck and whispered, 'This sounds like a really bad romance novel.'

'Of course I'll come to your bedroom,' she replied, dazed by lust and anticipation into answering a question he hadn't yet asked.

He bent backward so he could get a better look at her face, raised an eyebrow. 'Do you know where my bedroom is?'

She was hypnotised by his lips, stretched up to capture them again, but he avoided the movement and she wound her arms around his neck instead, digging a hand into his hair to hold his head still.

'Just over there. Second door on the right. Let's go right now.' She raised herself on tiptoe, ground her hips against his pelvis suggestively.

His eyes opened wide. She fell into them, sank into the depthless well of feeling he kept so carefully hidden, the secret currents of love and devotion that powered his conflict.

He said, 'Is that what we usually do? Go to my room?'

'Oh no.' She ran her fingertips over his chest, wondering at the ripple of muscle, the hard lines and hollows that the fabric couldn't entirely conceal. 'We can try the floor if you can't wait. Or the throne? How about the throne?'

She liked the direction the dream was taking this time, was well into the swing of it by now and she took a pace backwards, regarding him with a knowing eye.

'I think you'll find Snoke's still. Oh.' He scanned the rest of the scene quickly. 'I'm pretty sure there should be more dead people. And this room is usually a lot bigger. And less pink. More red. You might want to rethink. Oh.'

He turned his attention to her again, and his reaction was everything she'd expected since she'd shed her clothes in piles all over the floor and was ascending the throne completely naked.

He couldn't take his eyes off her, his words falling into a faltering silence. 'Do you have something, a cowl or something…'

A hot flush raced across his face, spotting his cheekbones with high points of colour and his throat worked convulsively.

Very slowly, and deliberately, she seated herself, and then separated her legs, hooking one casually over the arm of the chair and sliding herself forward to balance her hips on the edge. 'Kneel,' she commanded.

He took a step backwards, glancing around the room in the direction of the exit.

'I said, kneel.' She raised a finger, and the power of the Force compelled him to his knees, although from the strange twitching of his shoulders it looked like he was putting a lot of effort into resisting.

She took the raised finger, continued its movement downwards, ran it over her stomach and into the warm, welcoming gap between her thighs, rubbing herself lightly while he watched.

His mouth was hanging open, an expression almost of panic in those inky pools he used for seeing and the sight of him kneeling, so subservient to her will sent a flash of heat downwards. She stroked herself a little harder, ran her finger down and inserted it deep inside, searching for the gathering wetness, then extracted that finger and with it still glistening in the air, she crooked it into a beckoning motion.

He flew towards her, still on bended knee and she deposited him right in front of her spread legs. Then she reached out, and, slowly and deliberately, pushed her dirty finger between his lips.

His eyes bulged, but he couldn't look away and she dipped her finger into and out of his mouth, penetrating it in long, smooth strokes. She wiped her finger up his cheek, leaving a trail of moisture and then wound her hand deep into his hair, exerting a light pressure forwards.

He gabbled, 'You might want to reconsider this Rey, I'm not sure I'm ready for this kind of commitment.'

And then she yanked his face forward and smothered his words between her legs.

She held him there long enough that his colour went a faint pink through lack of oxygen and then pulled him back, allowing him to heave a few quick breaths.

His eyes were wild, and she bent down, took a firm grasp of his chin and gave the order. 'Lick me.'

His attention flickered between her eyes and her clitoris, as if he wasn't sure which part of her he was supposed to be addressing. 'Are you sure? I'm really out of practice.'

She knew he wouldn't be, that was the point of the dream after all. In the silence of her mind she could take any lover she wanted, as many times as she wanted, in as many ways as she wanted, and no one would ever know.

She tugged on his hair, but there was less resistance, and his tongue came out as he bent forward. He used the very end of it on her first, flicking at her with tiny, teasing strokes that made her sigh and gradually he built into a steady rhythm, the pointed pressure on the upstroke eliciting a run of shivers that made her thighs quake.

Her head lolled back against the chair, she released her Force led control of him and his hands came up, spreading her legs wider and he moved his head, encasing her flesh with his whole mouth. He sucked on her, alternating that with broad, side to side motions with the blade of his tongue that raised her hips off the seat, arching into this most intimate of kisses.

He put his hands beneath her backside, dropped his head and she felt his tongue prodding at her, then pushing inside her, shallow but incredibly erotic, and she moved her fingers downwards to touch herself as he fucked her with his tongue.

He extracted his hands, flicked her fingers away, set his own to work, exerting a hard friction that had her bucking out of the chair. Then he changed ends, his tongue returned to its steady licking and his fingers delved inside her instead.

She was going to come on his face.

The pleasure circled though her groin on a tight throb of exquisite tension, about to break. She tugged on his hair, and he glanced up at her, his nose buried in her pubic mound, tongue lapping her into oblivion and quite deliberately, he winked.

She came with a cry, her stomach clenching, legs clamping shut around his ears as his fingers filled her again and again and his tongue became a hot and heavy blur between her thighs.

The minute she sagged back, he surged upwards, capturing her mouth in a kiss so deep she could taste herself, his lips already wet with her moisture. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, once, twice, and then dropped back onto his heels, finally withdrawing from her depths with a slurping slither.

'What usually happens now?' he asked, hopefully.

'I pretend I never dreamt this,' she murmured, relaxing back into a deep and satisfied slumber.

The next morning for the first time in five weeks she felt relaxed, refreshed when she woke, although she could tell by the residue on the sheets that was because she'd managed to dream herself into an orgasm rather than from any mundane reason involving eight hours in bed.

She rolled off the tiny, uncomfortable cot, straightened the single blanket, picked up her threadbare towel and went to stand in line for the shower.

Poe caught up with her in the queue, whistling. 'Rey's got an admirer,' he said in an irritatingly smug voice, thrusting a screen in her face. 'Look - a message for you from one of your many fans. It was posted on a video clip from yesterday.'

Rey squinted at the screen. It was a hand drawn map, of a vaguely triangular shaped ship, with a large round space drawn in the middle, in the centre of which was a chair, marked in an almost unintelligible scrawl 'throne'.

Leading off this large, circular room were drawings of several other rooms, all of which had crosses through them and the label 'not my room'. On the opposite side of the circle a corridor had been drawn, with a dotted line indicating the correct route, and an X denoting the destination. Next to it was the legend 'my room'.

Rey looked at the picture, had a sudden and awful realisation about the nature of her dream and then flushed as red as the real life walls of the throneroom on the map.