The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

by Trisha Telep

Ochen lay cramped in the dark, his hands twisted behind him, the rope burning his throat. If not for the witch rope, he could transport himself instantly back home. He couldn’t even wriggle free because the bewitched rope drained him of strength. He could only think and wait. Would she come?

  It had been tempting to stay in her fantasy, to make love to her. But he hadn’t lied when he’d said he wanted it to be real. All his life he’d searched for a female he could love, one he could take as his own. He never thought it would be a human woman, a high-born lady of the hated Bor Nargans.

  The people who ruled this land took and took and took. They used Dream Catchers - when they could find them - like beasts of burden. They were used until drained of magic, and then discarded, left for dead. Dream Catchers thrived on emotion and passion, something these people had banished from their lives.

  Lady Delia fitted that pattern. She’d kill Ochen in the end. Natalia, on the other hand, had compassion in her. Her fantasy contained nothing brutal or selfish. She was starved for love, craving the physical satisfaction that the women of her land shunned. They thought her horrible for giving in to her true nature. Ochen found her beautiful.

  He heard footsteps outside the door, light ones, not the heavy tread of Delia’s tame hunters. The hunters had not even bothered to stand guard, knowing Ochen couldn’t possibly escape.

  Something scraped at the lock on the door, then it gave a satisfactory click. Cool air flooded him as the door opened. Natalia dropped to her knees beside him.

  “Ochen,” she whispered. She lifted his head into her lap, ran light fingers over his hurt body. “They broke your leg. The bastards.”

  “Because I’m so dangerous.” Ochen tried to smile then clenched his teeth over the pain.

  “I’ll take you to my house. My servants will help me get you out. They’re loyal to me. I have healers.”

  “No,” he croaked. “I must be freed.”

  He peered up at her with the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. She glowed with beauty. Her red hair flowed like flame over her shoulders to be swallowed by the red of the dress. “I don’t know how.”

  “Cut the witch ropes, take them from my skin. Then I can return to my people who will heal me.”

  Natalia bit her lip. “I’ll never see you again.”

  “I will come to you. When I’m healed I’ll come back for you.”

  She didn’t believe him. Indecision warred in her brown eyes. “You’re using me. You came to me and said those things so I would help you get free.”

  “No, my love.”

  “Why should you come back to me? I’m just a human who would trap you and make you fulfil her fantasies.”

  “I promise, Natalia.”

  Tears streaked down her cheeks. “Why can’t my own healers help you?”

  Ochen touched the rope around his neck, jerked his fingers away when it singed him. “This won’t let me heal all the way. I’ll weaken and die.”

  “You might be lying to me, so I’ll set you free.”

  “I might be.” He closed his eyes. She didn’t trust him, and he was a fool to think she would. “But I’m not.” His death would be proof he had told her the truth, but he wouldn’t be in a position to care then.

  He felt her hands on his skin again, soothing, cool. He loved her touch.

  And then, unbelievably, he felt a press of cold blade and a jerk of the ropes. He opened his eyes to see Natalia busily sawing at the ropes around his throat with a tiny knife. Her face screwed up with the effort, she was a lady not used to cutting anything more difficult than an apple.

  Ochen watched her, unable to help, as the knots loosened and the horrible pain lessened. At last she pulled the ropes from around his neck. She touched the burned flesh where the rope had been, tears tumbling down her cheeks.

  Ochen licked away a tear, loving the salty taste of it. She moved around him so she could reach the witch rope that bound his wrists. Her dress brushed his skin, her perfume sweet.

  “I can’t let you die,” Natalia whispered. “It doesn’t matter whether I see you again. You’ll be alive and safe.”

  Pain robbed him of too much breath to argue. His leg throbbed in agony, and it was tempting to slip back inside her fantasies to ease the pain. But too dangerous.

  “What are you doing?” someone shrieked.

  Lady Delia stood in the doorway, still in her overly ruffled ball gown, flanked by the two hunters who’d beaten Ochen senseless.

  Natalia didn’t look up or stop cutting the ropes. “I’m letting him go.”

  Delia strode in and seized Natalia’s shoulder. “You have no right to. He’s mine.”

  Natalia shook her off. “He’s a living creature, not a slave.”

  “He’s a Dream Catcher. Do you know how hard they are to find, you stupid woman?”

  “He’ll die if I leave him here,” Natalia snapped. “Then you won’t have him any more. What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is that he hasn’t done my fantasy yet. You had your turn. Now it’s mine.”

  “I can’t help it if he connected with me first.” Natalia sounded the slightest bit smug as she continued to work on the ropes.

  “You really are stupid, Natalia. He ‘connected’ with you because I told him to. I promised I’d free him if he did. I wanted him to make a fool of you, because everyone knows what your fantasies are.”

  Natalia stiffened. She glanced at Ochen for confirmation and he nodded once. Delia had told him to choose Natalia, to let her live her sexual fantasies while she stood in the middle of the ballroom. If he did that, she’d have her hunters untie the ropes and let him go.

  Things hadn’t gone according to plan. Ochen had chosen Natalia all right, but the connection had been real, deep and strong. When Natalia would not let Delia humiliate her in front of the others, Delia had refused to let him go. Going to Natalia in her dreams had been his choice.

  The pain that flooded Natalia’s face flooded him, too. He expected her to stand up and walk away, to leave Ochen to Delia’s mercy.

  Instead she put the knife to the rope again. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You really are pathetic, Natalia. He is my property.”

  “Slavery is illegal on Bor Narga.”

  “Human slavery. He’s not human. He’s animal.”

  One more cut, and the ropes fell from his wrists. The burning ceased.

  “He is free,” Natalia said quietly.

  Ochen touched her cheek. “Thank you.”

  Delia shouted at her hunters and lunged for him, but Ochen had already formed the clear thought of his own lands in his mind. He aimed there, and Natalia, Delia, her hunters and the tiny room dissolved into light. The last things he saw were Natalia’s beautiful brown eyes, then he was home.

  “So how was it?” Natalia’s mother peered at her over breakfast the next morning in the elegant dining room. Carefully placed screens kept the desert sun from being too harsh, and the result was a room of cool shadows and splashes of light.

  “Terrible.” Natalia picked at her cold grouse eggs. “Delia did have a Dream Catcher, but he got away.”

  “Good for him.” Arene Sorvenska sniffed. “I’d hate to be bound to that woman.”

  “Yes, Delia’s men beat him. But he’s gone now.”

  “Evil little witch. Best you don’t have anything more to do with her, dear.”

  “No fear, Mama.”

  “Good.” Arene sniffed and went back to reading her beloved newspaper.

  Natalia had half-expected Ochen to come to her in the night. He hadn’t, of course. He was likely back in his mountain realm, wherever it was, healing and doing his best to forget about his captivity.

  It wasn’t his fault he had to use me to free himself. He was desperate. It’s nothing personal.

  She should be used to men using her by now. But the hurt when he’d confirmed that Delia had bribed him to choose her twisted like a hot knife. Of course he’d obeyed. His first concern had been to g
et away. If she were ever a captive, she’d be more worried about freeing herself than the feelings of her captors.

  At least he’d given her a glimpse of what passion was like. She should be satisfied with that and go on.

  Natalia threw down her napkin and sprang to her feet. No. She was tired of being unsatisfied, tired of making do, tired of resigning herself to disappointment. Was this what her life was to be, quietly living down her humiliation with no chance at real happiness?

  Her mother looked up in surprise. “Is something wrong, dear?”

  “I’m going out. A long way out. A trip into the desert. It may be a while.”

  “To a meditation centre? Good idea, dear. You’ve been restless lately.”

  “I’ll pack and go today.”

  Arene smiled. “Have a good time.” Natalia bent so her mother could kiss her cheek. She left the room, hearing her mother’s “Dear, dear,” before she turned back to her newspaper.

  The Sorvenskas’ hunter and gamekeeper wasn’t optimistic about Natalia’s chances of finding a Dream Catcher, let alone a specific one, but he agreed to take her to the mountains. After all, the Sorvenskas paid well.

  He led Natalia past the Eastern Rim to an area so remote and treacherous that they had to tackle the last miles on foot. Natalia had never been in mountains, had never left the great desert around the oasis city where most of humanity dwelled.

  The uplands were cool and moist, strange to her. Trees grew straight out of the cliffs so thick that the rocks could barely be seen. Even in her sturdy hunting boots and leggings, Natalia slipped and slid, cut her hands through her gloves. Exercises that kept a lady trim were not good training for climbing through mountains. The gamekeeper, Bahl, was patient with her, but she could see he worried.

  Ahead of her Bahl stopped suddenly. The trail he’d been breaking the last day or so ceased abruptly at the edge of a gorge. The gorge spanned at least 1,000 feet and dropped to a misty river far below.

  Bahl wiped his forehead. “We’ll have to turn back, my lady. We don’t have enough supplies to go much further, only enough to get back to our transport.”

  “You can go,” Natalia said, sitting on a boulder. “Leave me here.”

  He looked alarmed. “No, my lady. Your mother would kill me.”

  Natalia sighed. “I suppose she would. And it would be my fault. The gods save me from my keen sense of responsibility.”

  Bahl patted her shoulder in compassion. “Not everyone’s path is easy.”

  “Especially a gamekeeper’s whose mistress wants to go on damn fool expeditions.” She gave Bahl a tired smile. She wondered why she thought she could find Ochen. It had taken Delia’s two hunters years to find him, and he’d be doubly careful now.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, an emptiness inside her. “We’ll go back.”

  She stood up to turn around, and slipped on mud that sent her plunging to the edge of the gorge. Bahl grabbed at her and missed, his face terrified. Natalia scrambled for a hold then felt herself being lifted in strong, bare arms.

  Her feet left the ground and she rose, high, higher still, to the very tops of the trees. Bahl grabbed a rifle and pointed it skywards, but didn’t fire.

  Ochen deposited Natalia on a huge platform in the trees, held by strong boughs around a mighty trunk. She whirled around and stared at him, shocked and out of breath.

  Ochen’s face and body were completely healed. He looked as gorgeous and whole as he had when he lay on top of her in her dream, and he was wearing just as little. The dream had been but a taste of the real Ochen. This was his solid, beautiful flesh.

  But he was glaring at her, not looking pleased to see her. “What are you doing here? Having a society outing?”

  “Not . . . Not exactly.”

  “You were hunting a Dream Catcher.”

  “I was looking for you.”

  Ochen stopped. He studied her, his silver eyes regarding her in suspicion. It unnerved her.

  “I didn’t know you could fly,” she said.

  “I can do many things.” He looked her up and down, and she knew she didn’t look half as good as he did. She was sunburned, bug-bitten, scratched, sweat-stained and worn out.

  “Were you looking to relive your fantasy?” he asked.

  “No,” she said tartly. “I came to ask why you haven’t come back. I remember you promising you’d come to me.”

  “I did,” he said. He folded his arms, which did nice things to his shoulders and biceps. “I went to you, and you weren’t there.”

  “Because I was here. Didn’t you know?”

  “You didn’t leave a note.”

  “But I thought...” She stopped and rubbed a hand through her dirt-streaked hair. “You would know where I was.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Natalia. I read your fantasies and your dreams, yes, but I have to be within a certain range. I knew where you lived, but didn’t know where you’d gone.”

  “Well, I’m here now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to be with you.” She got to her feet, trying to adjust to the fact that she was hundreds of feet off the ground-in a tree. “I got tired of waiting.”

  “You didn’t wait very long.”

  Natalia jabbed her finger into his chest. “That’s not true. I’ve waited all my life. I’ve waited for someone who saw me, the real me, and didn’t find me disgusting.”

  He stared at her. “How could anyone find you disgusting?”

  “They do, my love. They think of you as a wild animal with no soul, but they see me as little better. I like emotion and feeling and desire. Ergo, there must be something wrong with me.”

  “No, there is something wrong with them.”

  Natalia brushed herself off and looked around the platform which, she realized, was built of woven, living tree limbs. For someone raised in the dead desert, the idea of plants having this much strength was decidedly odd.

  “Well, I didn’t come here to fall at your feet and beg you to take me in,” Natalia said. “I just wanted to see you. To find out if you’d healed. To properly say goodbye.”

  He closed his large hand around her arm. He didn’t hurt her, but the grip was so firm she knew she’d never break it. “Why should we say goodbye?”

  “You’re a Dream Catcher, I’m a city woman.” She tried to sound uncaring. “Although all this is beautiful.”

  “And it’s mine.”

  “You own the tree?”

  He laughed, his velvety, throaty laugh. He released her and gestured to the end of the platform. “Everything you see from here is mine. This is my realm.”

  Natalia peeped over the edge, dizzy from the height. She noted that no railing ran around the platform. No need, for a being who could fly. Between the boughs, she saw a carpet of forest that ran on endlessly. Mist from the gorge rose in the middle of it.

  “My family lives here too,” he said, his warmth at her back. “Sisters, brothers, cousins.”

  “Do they fly, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Ochen closed his arms around her waist. “I will hold you and not let you fall.”

  Natalia looked into his silver eyes. She felt herself caught, as she had in Delia’s ballroom, as though his eyes swallowed her. She blinked. “No. I don’t want the fantasy. I want you.” She had a panicked thought. “This isn’t a dream, is it? I’m not hanging on the edge of the gorge unconscious, am I?”

  Ochen flicked his fingers over her cheek. “You’d be cleaner in a fantasy.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “But I like you this way.” Ochen kissed the end of her nose. “Stay with me, Natalia.” His expression darkened. “Please.”

  “For now,” she whispered.

  He snatched her up in his arms and leaped from the platform. A wash of cold air robbed her of a scream, and then they were on another platform, smaller and higher, again made of living branches. This one
had a bed, or at least a pallet of fresh leaves. The garlands Delia had brought in for her soiree paled in comparison to this living bed. Ochen laid her down on it.

  “What am I, Queen of the forest?” she asked.

  In answer, he pulled off her boots, unlaced her leggings and tunic and tugged them off. Natalia instinctively grabbed at the fabric. She shouldn’t be unclothed outdoors. She shouldn’t be unclothed in front of another person. High-born ladies were never naked in front of anyone from two seconds after they were born until . . . well, never. Even bathing was done in absolute, strict privacy.

  Ochen plucked a leaf from a nearby branch, held it between his hands, then rubbed it over her skin. She started to ask what he was doing, but she saw that her scratches, her insect bites and the swelling in her hands faded and disappeared. He was healing her.

  “Is this how you healed yourself?” she asked.

  He nodded. “My brother had to charge the leaves for me, but yes.”

  “I’m surprised Dream Catchers aren’t captured for that skill instead.”

  “It only works with the leaves from one of the Dream Catcher’s own trees. How long do you think it would be before the trees were harvested and the Dream Catchers imprisoned?”

  “Not long.”

  “Your kind has their medicines of their own making. We have our leaves.”

  “I’m just surprised no one knows about it.”

  “They only see us as bringing their fantasies to life,” Ochen said. “They’ve so closed themselves off to joy and pleasure that they can only see us as a way to live their dreams. That is more important than healing to them.”

  Natalia looked at her clean skin. “Thank you.”

  Ochen pushed her back into the pallet. The leaves were soft, fragrant, embracing. Ochen nuzzled her, his kisses lazy.

  Natalia moved one bare foot along his leg, loving the sensation of his firm muscles. His kisses turned intense, bruising.

  “Please stay with me,” he whispered.

  “You are very demanding. My guide must be worried about what happened to me.”

  “I sent one of my brothers to explain and make him comfortable.”

  “Very civil of you.”

  His smile returned. “Do you want more persuasion?”