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.