by Trisha Telep
No kidding, Natalia thought bitterly.
He chuckled, the sound rough but warm. These women need their rules and their taboos to keep from remembering they are alive. They want to forget. You, Natalia, know you are alive.
Yes, unfortunately. Natalia’s dreams, her needs, never went away. Maybe she was as disgusting as Ivan thought she was.
No, the Dream Catcher said. You are beautiful.
All high-born women were beautiful. They could afford to be. You flatter me.
Ivan had flattered her before their marriage. Natalia had resigned herself to the fact that he’d used her. Now she preferred to be left alone, far from men with honeyed tongues.
She had a sudden flash of licking honey off the Dream Catcher’s tongue. The heat of the vision seared her, and she heard his laugh again.
Yes.
Natalia jerked her gaze from him, breathing hard. As soon as she looked away, his voice, his presence vanished from her head, and she was simply standing in her best gown amid a crowd of women who did not like her.
“What did you see?” Delia demanded eagerly.
Natalia flushed. “Nothing.”
“Oh, come now. You saw something.”
Natalia could feel the Dream Catcher’s smile, though his mouth never moved. It gave her a warm, tickly feeling. She couldn’t help but turn to him again. He stood calmly, but the witch rope held him as securely as chains.
Let me in, he whispered in her mind. I need this as much as you do.
How do you know what I need? she thought angrily.
I know.
Natalia pressed her hands to her hot face. She felt the weight of stares around her, of envy, curiosity, maliciousness.
These ladies wanted her to experience her deepest fantasies right there in front of them. They wanted to watch her rolling around on the floor, moaning and perhaps doing something embarrassing while they watched and laughed.
She risked a quick glance around. Dear gods, they did want that. They would make her a laughing stock.
Well, Mother, you did try to warn me.
The trouble was, Delia was right. Natalia wanted the Dream Catcher. She wanted his voice in her head again, wanted to hear his deep-throated laugh, wanted him to say her name and tell her she was beautiful. She wanted the fantasies he could give her, wanted him to fulfil her need for passion. He could do this. She could experience it once and let him go.
But not in front of all these people. She’d die first. Nor could she stalk away in a huff as she’d begun to, letting Delia win. She could hear Delia’s taunting laugh already. She had to bring the power back into her own hands.
Natalia resorted to the lowest trick she could think of. She’d only done it once before, the night her mother-in-law had started raving in the middle of the theatre about how disappointing Natalia was. She’d gone on and on at the top of her wine-laden lungs about how Natalia should give her money and property to Ivan absolutely and retire to a meditation centre in the desert.
Natalia’s ruse had worked then like a charm. It was the only time in two years the woman had shut up.
Natalia let her eyes roll back in her head, let her body grow limp and hoped she landed on something soft. She heard the velvet laughter of the Dream Catcher over the startled gasps of the guests. Ah, sweetling, good choice.
Ochen watched Lady Delia, the bitch who’d caught him, snap her fingers and order her servants to carry Natalia to a bedchamber. Ochen sensed that Delia wanted to toss Natalia’s body out into the night but knew she could never do such a thing to a high-born woman. Instead she put on the mask of a concerned hostess.
Liar.
Natalia was far more honest. And beautiful. She wore a simple gown of brilliant red, uncluttered by ruffles and stones and the strange fripperies the other women wore. The plainness of the gown enhanced her full breasts, her long legs, the soft roundness of her hips.
Ochen wanted her. He wanted to strip off the sensible clothing and run his hands up and down her blushing body. He wanted to cup her breasts, flick his thumbs across her nipples. He wanted to spread her legs and lick between them, then he wanted to slide his wanting arousal in the place his tongue had wet.
She was starved for desire. In this sprawling desert city women had suppressed such things, making them taboo. Wives and husbands never touched each other, producing offspring by strange methods involving needles that Ochen’s people didn’t understand and thought barbaric.
But Natalia had desire in her foremost thoughts. She craved it; she needed it. She’d never been properly loved, had never moaned with passion as she rubbed her body over a man’s.
Ochen’s nature made him look deep into people’s minds to pull out their fantasies, but rarely did a woman’s mind intrigue him like hers did. The other women here were selfish, bent on their own amusement. Their souls were sticky, like too much sugar candy. The one who had bound him, this Lady Delia, had a weak soul, dark and hungry and stupidly cruel. She hadn’t even braved the wilds to find him, but had sent out men to trap him.
When he’d looked at Natalia, the small woman with red hair that looped and curled down her back, he’d seen pure, silver light. She had beauty, both outward and inward. The weak Lady Delia hated her because Natalia had what she did not: the ability to feel, the ability to love.
Two servants carried Natalia away. She never once betrayed the fact that she hadn’t really fainted. He smiled, amused.
Lady Delia was glaring at him. Ochen dropped his eyes and refused to raise them, refused to interact with her.
He wouldn’t interact with any other woman in the room either, no matter how much Lady Delia had her hunters beat him. Disappointed, the guests drifted from the ballroom. Lady Delia ordered her men to drag Ochen back down to the tiny room in the cellar and beat him again, just to relieve her feelings.
Natalia dreamed. She’d kept up the pretence of her fainting fit -the Dream Catcher had been too much for her delicate sensibilities, she’d whispered when her eyes fluttered open. She’d accepted a glass of cold water laced with chamomile and lay down in one of Delia’s spare bedchambers.
She hadn’t meant to sleep, but she was exhausted. Maintaining her false front at the ball plus the heady invasion of the Dream Catcher had worn her out.
How pathetic, she thought, but drifted off to sleep anyway.
“Natalia.”
He stood at the foot of the bed, his hands free of the witch rope, naked except for the loincloth. His silver eyes were luminescent in the moonlight.
Natalia gasped and sat up. The Dream Catcher stood still, straight and tall, the embodiment of desire. “What are you doing here? Did Delia release you?”
“No.”
She realized that he was speaking with his mouth, out loud. His voice was no longer just in her head.
Natalia’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “Did she send you up here? Well, you can tell her I’ll have nothing more to do with her games.”
The Dream Catcher moved around the huge four-poster bed and rested one knee on the mattress. “Delia did not send me. You asked me to come.”
“Did I?” Natalia raised her brows at him. “Funny, I don’t remember that.”
“You asked me with your heart.” He placed his fingertips between her breasts.
The heart in question banged fast and hard. “You aren’t really here, are you?”
“I am a Dream Catcher, Natalia.” He slid his hand down her breasts and splayed it across her belly. “Welcome to your dreams.”
Natalia tried to make herself wake up, but nothing happened. If she were asleep, she remained stubbornly so.
The Dream Catcher moved his hand across her abdomen, gliding on the silk of her dress. “Don’t send me away, Natalia, not yet.”
She liked the heat of his hand. “Let me understand. A Dream Catcher is supposed to read my fantasies and let me live them. Make them seem real.”
“Yes.” His silver eyes warmed.
“Then why are you he
re? I am supposed to see my fantasy, not you in person.”
“You know why.”
Natalia swallowed, embarrassed by her own thoughts. “Because my fantasies are about you?”
He lowered himself to the bed, never taking his hand from her waist. “When you looked at me, I saw, deep inside you, what you wanted. I was so pleased, Natalia, that you wanted me.”
“How mortifying.”
“It is wonderful. Because when I saw you, I wanted you too.” He stroked his hand through her red hair, loosening it.
“Is this a dream?” she breathed.
“In a sense.”
She felt a bite of disappointment. “So whatever happens, it won’t be real?”
“It will be real to you. You can do anything you want, and have anything you need, without fear. You can live out your wildest fantasies without coming to any harm, or anyone ever knowing.”
“Except you.”
“Except me.” He grinned, a mischievous spark entering his eyes. “And I won’t tell.”
Natalia drew a breath. She knew what she wanted, but she suddenly realized that if she let herself have it, she’d never be able to go back to her tedious existence, the narrow confines of a woman of the Bor Nargan upper classes. She’d be too aware of what she was missing.
“I’d rather wake up,” she said.
He stroked her hair, the warmth of his body covering the length of her own. “Please, stay with me.”
His voice wavered slightly, as though he feared something and tried to hide it.
“Why?”
“Because I am in pain. They beat me until I fell into unconsciousness.”
Natalia sat up again. “What?”
“Here, in your dream, I feel no pain. Let me stay.”
Anger and worry swirled together. “How dare she? I knew Delia was ill-natured, but this—”
He laid his cheek on her hair, his strong fingers finding the lacings of her gown. “I am proud that you have no fear of her.”
“I will certainly say a few things to Delia when I wake up.”
He nuzzled her. “That’s my girl. So brave.”
Natalia closed her eyes at the feeling of his warm breath, of his fingers slowly unlacing the front of her gown. “No one has ever called me that before.”
“Brave and beautiful.” He kissed her hair. “You are all that.” He spread his hand, parting the placket and finding her bare skin.
“What are my fantasies?” she murmured.
“You know,” he said, his breath hot. “You tell me.”
“Do you have a name?”
“You may call me Ochen, if you wish.”
“Ochen.” She closed her eyes, loving his fingers on her hair. “I like that. It sounds exotic.”
“Where I come from it sounds ordinary. Not like you, Natalia Sorvenska. Tell me your fantasies.”
“But you already know them.”
“I want to hear you speak them. Out loud. No one can hear but me.”
Natalia remained silent, not sure she could voice what she wanted, even to him. But if I can’t talk to a fantasy man inside my own dreams, who can I talk to?
“I want to be loved.”
She clamped her lips shut, amazed she’d said that out loud. Bor Nargan women were above such emotions as love, need, passion. They filled their mind with higher things. And the moons spin backwards, and the sand seas are full of water.
“That is not a bad thing to want. You are a loving woman.”
“That’s not the kind of fantasy you meant.”
“Yes it is.” He kissed her forehead. “I need to know everything you need, and everything you want. Do you love, Natalia?”
She thought of her mother, her grandmother, women who had accepted her love. A warmth began to fill her body, chasing away her irritation at Delia and the negative energy that filled Delia’s house.
“Think on that,” Ochen said. “Think of love.”
Natalia smiled, warmth filling her, relaxing her limbs.
Ochen ran his fingers up the inside of her arm. “Now. What do you want?”
“Pleasure.”
“Of course.”
She blushed hard. Ochen was grinning. The man was as handsome as sin, but when he smiled she didn’t want to look at anything but him. Ivan was a pale shadow compared to this man.
He leaned down and licked her mouth from corner to corner. “You have the sweetest smile,” he whispered.
She wanted to melt into the bed. “You must say that to all the women you pleasure.”
“I do not pleasure them.” He dipped his finger behind her lips. “I make their fantasies real. I am not in them as myself.” He trailed his wet finger down her throat to the hollow. “But with you I am.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s what’s in your dreams.”
Natalia laced one hand behind his neck. His hair was warm and silken, feeling so real. She daringly drew his mouth down to hers, and he kissed her.
A soft kiss, no demands. Natalia explored the pads of his lips, hesitant, shy.
“This is a fantasy,” Ochen whispered. “You can do whatever you want. There is no one to judge.”
“Except you. Obviously.”
“But I’m only a Dream Catcher. An animal. A reminder of what civilized people have lost.”
Natalia slid fingers through his hair. “You don’t look like any animal I’ve ever seen. I once had a pet sand lizard, but he was scaly and slithered everywhere.”
His smile widened. “I’m not human. I can be held in place simply with a piece of bewitched rope. I am a creature of base emotion. What does it matter what I think of you?”
Natalia held his face between her hands. “It matters a great deal.”
“Does it?” His hot breath scalded where he kissed the line of her hair. “But you’re a great lady of Bor Narga.”
“A Sorvenska. Rich, eccentric, despised.”
“Shh.” He stilled her lips with light kisses. “Beautiful, passionate, envied.”
“Shunned.”
“They all want to feel what you do. But only you are brave enough to seek it out.”
Natalia pulled him close, suddenly impatient. “Make love to me. Please. Let me know what it feels like. I’m burning up for you.”
He laughed again, low and throaty. “I burn for you. Can you not feel?”
He positioned his body on top of hers, his hardness pressing through the thin fabric of her gown. It was positively wicked how good that felt. She wriggled against him.
Ochen parted her gown with firm hands, lowered his head and traced her bare nipple with his tongue. Natalia arched against him, the heat of his mouth was incredible. Fire licked her body, making it tight and wonderfully loose at the same time.
“Is this orgasm?” she moaned.
“Not yet, my love. Not even close.”
“I’m coming apart.”
“No, you’re not. You’re beautifully whole.”
“Do more.”
“Mmm, so demanding.”
“Please.”
Ochen nuzzled her neck, lowering his bare chest to hers. The weight of him, the heat of his body, the tickle of his hair made her wild. She lifted her hips, loving the feel of his hardness behind his loincloth. She wanted no fabric between them.
She slid her hands down his back, exploring his hard muscles. She lingered at the small of his back, then shivered as she moved to the bare mound of his backside. His eyes softened.
Natalia had never touched a man’s backside before. She’d never seen one. Ochen’s was tight and compact, his skin smooth. She traced circles on it while he smiled at her.
“Natalia, I want you so much.”
She sighed happily. “This is a good dream.”
His smile faded. A sharp sadness flickered through his eyes, then he kissed her. His tongue moved through her mouth in slow swipes, a man tasting her. His mouth was warm and velvety, wet and hot. Natalia moved her tongue to imitate his, lovin
g the taste of him. She never knew kissing was like this, but it seemed so natural, so normal. Why shouldn’t men and women drink of each other?
He pressed his body against hers, rocking into her to fit himself between her legs. The sensation burned, and she wound her arms around him.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please.”
He rose on his elbows, looking down into her face. His black hair hung like a curtain around them. “I want ...”
“What? What do you want?” She was desperate for him.
He lightly traced her cheek. “I want this to be real.”
“Isn’t it real? It feels so real.”
“I’m lying, broken, in an underground place. You are sleeping in a room far above me. The darkness, it presses me.” His gaze was remote, like he saw two things at once.
“But you’re here with me.”
“It’s illusion, all illusion. I’m very good at illusion.”
“Show me what’s real then.”
His mouth twisted. “You don’t want to see that.”
“I do.” Natalia touched his face. “All my life I’ve only had dreams. When I thought I’d found real love, real life, I was deceived.”
Ochen seized her hand in his strong one. “Then come to me. Help me. I’m at the bottom of the house. They locked me in a room behind . . .” His brow puckered. “Long stems that make noise.”
Pipes, Natalia thought. Delia had put him behind her boiler room, the cow. “I’ll come to you,” she said. “Now.”
His dazzling, sinful smile returned. “I will be waiting.”
“I’d be more flattered if I didn’t know you had no choice.”
“I would wait for you if I were free in my forest or across the wildest deserts. I’d wait.”
“Oh,” she said. “I like that.”
He gave her a slow kiss, his mouth playful and at the same time masterful. “Please come to me,” he said.
He kissed her again, then his body faded, the press of his lips the last thing to go. Natalia found herself holding empty air, and then she woke with a gasp.
She sat up on the bed, her dress whole and laced. The room was darker, most of the lights burned out, and she was alone. She swung her legs out of bed, slid her feet into her shoes and quietly left the room.
