A/N: The image above does not belong to me. It belongs to the person who uploaded it on the internet.

Max's POV

I was awakened because for some reason I could not breathe.

Then I realized that someone's lips were on mine.

Then I realized that Tul was in my bed and that he was kissing me!

"Tul?"

"Huh?"

It looked like I had awakened him from a dream.

"Did you kiss me just now?" I asked.

"Huh?"

He didn't seem fully awake.

"I asked if you kissed me just now," I said. "Were you dreaming?"

I wanted to asked whom he was dreaming of but I was afraid to know the answer.

"I ... I ..." he started to scratch the side of his head.

I gave an awkward laugh.

"It better have been a lady but with a lovely face like mine," I teased, but my chest ached a little at the thought that he surely had someone else in mind.

"I can't remember what I was dreaming about," he said. "Does your head wound still hurt?"

Slick. Very slick. The change in topic distracted me.

I placed my fingers lightly to the bandaged area of my head.

"It still hurts," I said. "But it's a dull kind of ache. Tolerable."

"Do you want to take a regular pain pill for it?" he asked.

I could tell that Tul was wide awake now.

"Nah," I replied. "I can tolerate the pain."

I almost added, but not the pain in my heart.

"Alright then," he said. "Don't hesitate to wake me up if you need help with anything."

I almost said, "Can I wake you up with a kiss the way you woke me up with one?" But of course I had to keep it hidden in my heart.

I could tell that Tul was not affected at all by me lying beside him in bed because in a short time he had fallen asleep once more, snoring softly, not loud enough to keep me awake.

I lay awake beside him wondering who the person was in his dream. Could it have been Ella?

If it was Ella, I shouldn't be too surprised because after all Mook and I had brought them together with the goal of him becoming Ella's boyfriend.

Then it occurred to me that since they had spent hours at the beach today, there was the possibility that they had eventually shared a kiss. And that kiss must have been so memorable for Tul that it wandered into his dream.

Finally, out of mental exhaustion I found myself drifting off to sleep.

I was awakened by a clinking sound.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Tul said with a smile. "I brought you a bowl of seaweed and egg drop soup."

He was scooping some of it into a spoon and then dropping them back into the bowl to help speed up the cooling. That accounted for the clinking sound.

I tried to scoot up against the head board of the bed to go into a sitting position.

When he saw me grimacing, he set the bowl down on to the bedside table and helped me to sit up.

The nearness of him, the feel of his arms around my chest and back made me want so much to put my arms around him as well. It was all I could do to keep from losing control.

When he thought that I felt comfortable enough in the sitting position that he helped me get into, he took back the bowl of soup and scooped some of the soup into the mini ladle.

"Open up," he said as he brought it close to my mouth.

I made a face at him.

"My arms did not have any injury," I said. "I am perfectly capable of feeding myself."

"Let me pamper you today," he said with a smile.

The conversation at table during the dinner date that we had fixed Tul and Ella suddenly came back to me.

When Mook had told Tul not to spoil Ella when Mook saw Tul cutting up Ella's meat into bite size pieces, Tul had said, "I am a spoiler of women."

Was he trying to spoil me as well? But then again I realized that he would only do such things for the person that he loved, and that person definitely was not me.

"No," I said. "I refuse to be pampered."