Ensnared by the Dream Lord (Dark Lords) (2 page)

Straightening, he folded his arms over his chest, pondering a dilemma he had not anticipated.  He had decided err he left his realm to answer the summons that he would teach this mortal a lesson that would prevent future petitions upon his valuable time, and yet now that he looked upon her, he was suddenly at a loss as to just what he could bring himself to do to put fear into her heart and mind.  Grinding his teeth at the weakness, he settled beside her on the bed and lifted his hand.

Without touching her, he moved his hand just above her cool, pale brow, summoning the demons of sleep.

Chapter Two

Something huge crashed through the woods behind her.  Adriana’s breath caught in her throat, the coolness of the night making her lungs ache.  She whirled, trying to discern the direction from which the sound came, but the thick underbrush rattled with a sudden wind, masking its source.

Above the treetops, the moon crept out from hiding, dancing behind rain drenched clouds to lend her only flickering light.

Again the sound came, closer.  The great thwack of a naked blade against brush was unmistakable now.  Someone hacked through the wood, coming for her.  She turned from the sound, heading blindly into the thickness that surrounded her.  Brambles caught at her skirt.  Random stones and broken sticks stabbed her feet so that she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.  She wondered dimly why she’d not thought to wear her boots or cloak on a night such as this, but the looming sounds increasing behind her quickly drove such thinking from her mind.

A deer path opened before her and she stumbled onto it, and she ran, hoping to find some den to hide herself from whoever chased her.  Behind her, the crashing and slashing dimmed and finally stopped.  Above the pounding pulse in her ears, though, she heard a more terrifying sound—hoof beats.

Horror surged through her, but she dared not look back.  She ran, ran until her sides ached with the unaccustomed exercise, until her chest hurt from her ragged breaths.  A cold, thin creek darted through the darkened landscape, soft grasses along its bank rustling in the breeze.  The moon peeked from the sky again, revealing a tangled heap of ancient vine across the way.  They were curved near the bottom, as if many animals had taken shelter there over time.

Knowing she couldn’t outrun a horse, she crossed the stream and rushed to the vines.  Crouching on the ground, she scrambled inside the pitiful shelter, praying that her dress was not bright enough to draw attention through the sparsely cloaking plant.

When she could go no further, she stilled, listening for sounds of pursuit, hearing nothing but the maddening, masking sounds of the babbling brook and the creak of the vines as wind whistled through them.

Had her tormenter given up?  Adriana held her breath, straining to hear anything that presented itself, anything that would tell her that the danger had passed her by—or stalked her still.

Long, torturous moments passed before she heard it—a sudden series of splashes, and then they ceased.  A thud sounded then, followed by quiet rustles of grass, the soft swish of fabric caught in a wind.

Adriana held her breath, fearing even so small a movement would betray her.  She wished she could turn, but there’d been barely enough room to crawl inside her hiding place—and no room to turn and settle into a watchful position.  She bit her lip, clenched her hands into fists, praying he would pass her by, but she feared her hiding place was too obvious even to a man struck blind.

Unaccountable minutes passed, allowing her terror to increase with each second.  Her body was a bundle of tension, waiting to spring, waiting for something—anything—to happen.

Something seized her foot and yanked.

Adriana screamed, grabbing at the vines as she was dragged from her hiding place, pulled out into the grassy bed she’d trampled when she had scurried into the tangle to hide.

She twisted, rolling onto her back to fight her attacker.  Leather armor creaked as he knelt and trapped her legs between his knees, cutting off her kicks.  Hands clamped around her biceps, holding her against the ground until she was unable to move for the weight bearing down on her.  She shrieked, struggling against him, but he was too heavy and much too strong for her to even budge.

His first words shocked her with the deep, powerful resonance of his voice.  “Cease your struggles,” he commanded, his gloved fingers hard, tightening on her arms.

Thoroughly subdued, and contrary to all logic, her fright eased to a dull roar, enough so that she could think rationally.  Had he truly meant her harm, she realized, he would have cut her down immediately, or raped her once she’d been subdued.  Instead, he’d done nothing more than capture and study her as he held her beneath him. 

Comforted by those thoughts, Adriana quieted her struggles, allowing her breathing to return to normal as she attempted to discern who he was.  She could see nothing but the general shape of a man leaning above her.  The width of his shoulders and his whipping cloak obscured the light.  Squint as she might in the gloom, nothing availed his identity to her.

He remained silent so long after those three words, she thought perhaps he’d turned to stone.  Only the warmth of his body seeping through the supple leather to her trapped thighs alerted her that he lived.

Unable to bear the suspense any longer, she asked, “My lord, pray tell, who are you? Why have you pursued me?  Have I done you wrong?”

“I am Morpheus Dragunas, Lord of the Night.  You summoned me.”

She felt the deepness of his voice reverberate in her chest.  Elation surged through her body.  Her prayers had been answered!  But how had she arrived here, and why had he frightened her?  Had she been too dim-witted to recognize him when he came?  Surely that was it.  “My lord, forgive me.  Had I but known it was you, I would not have taken flight,” she said, breathless.

Strangely, the weight of his body on top of hers excited her.  Her belly quivered, her sex felt awakened and eager for exploration.  Her fingertips tingled with the need to touch him, and she longed to discover what he looked like.

She’d angered him, she realized suddenly.  She had summoned him, and he had come at last, and then she had fled him, and fought him.  “I will gladly accept whatever punishment you wish to mete out, my lord,” she whispered, anxiously touching her lips with her tongue to moisten her suddenly dry mouth.

Her voice, husky with fright still, quaking, washed over Morpheus like a warm tide.  He stared down piercingly at the girl’s face, frowning in confusion when he could not read her thoughts, struggling to ignore the unbidden surge of desire that tightened his loins at her supplication. 

Her mind was closed to him.  Tightening his hold on her, he leaned forward, as if closing the distance would open her mind to him.  It didn’t.  He could discern nothing of her inner thoughts.

He puzzled over it.  The dream world was his domain.  He should have had complete control, been able to twist her desires into nightmarish visions.

“What trickery is this?” he asked harshly, suspicious at her lack of fear, puzzled at the slip of his control.  He had no need to fear sorcery, in dream or in reality, but still, he was wary at the alteration to his plan.  She was supposed to be frightened witless. 

Adriana felt her heart skip uncomfortably at the anger in his voice, not from fear of him, but from the dread that he was so angry that he would decide not to grant her heart’s desire after all.  “No trickery.  I swear it!  I wouldn’t dare, not when I begged you to come,” she assured him earnestly, trying to summon the nerve to voice her request, trying to think of what words she would use to describe her heart’s desire.  If she merely asked for a man to love and a family of her own, how would he know what man to give her?  Could he see into her heart and know the perfect man for her?

It occurred to her quiet suddenly though that, perhaps, the wish she had intended to make would not be one that he could grant.  Perhaps it was not even what she really desired, for she could not begin to envision what sort of man she wanted.  In truth, she could not think beyond the ache that had come upon her at his nearness, at the sound of his voice. 

It dawned on her that, in all the times she had read of him, pleaded for him to come to her, she had not once thought of the vague wish for a man to love and a family of her own.  She had thought only of him.

“I—wanted to ask….  Would you grant me a boon?”  Her voice dropped to the merest whisper as doubt and fear warred in her breast, but she knew suddenly that it was exactly what she wanted.  “A kiss from your immortal lips?”

As the words left her mouth, Morpheus’ gaze seized on her full lips.  The darkness was no cloak to his vision.  He’d toyed with her before, building her terror to destroy her hopes of conjuring him again, but this was different.  Again the desire came, wholly unnatural and unwelcome.

That unfamiliar tightness grew in his loins.  His cock surged with blood, strained at the leather breeches which held it captive.  Now that the emboldened request hung in the air between them, Morpheus felt as powerless to resist her shy advance as he had been to resist her summons.

He leaned close, listening to the quickening sounds of her breath, the rapid beat of her heart as he bore down on her.  Her eyelids closed, her dark lashes hiding the excitement in her eyes, but he knew it was there.  He had seen her desire as she gazed up at him.  She was tense, her muscles strained.  As he hovered just above her, she parted her mouth in invitation, and it was more than he could resist.

Morpheus brushed his lips over hers.  The soft skin was alien to him, but pleasing.  He inhaled her sweet exhalation of breath, a gasp of surprise.  It was his undoing.

Yielding to his own burning need, his mouth locked onto hers.  Without remorse, he unleashed the full brunt of his desire. Dimly, even as he did so, he was aware that her innocence would not have prepared her for such dangerous passion.  He knew that it would frighten her, but he relished the thought of turning her innocent request against her. 

He ravished her mouth, plunging his tongue inside the moist, sweet crevice like a conqueror.  She moaned and arched her neck to meet his harsh possession and his purpose dimmed, banished from his mind by his own need and her eager response to his touch.  His grip on her arms relaxed until she was free and touching him.  She grasped his arms, tugging him closer, offering her breasts to him … anything he wished to possess.

She caught the back of his head, her rigid grip almost painfully desperate.

The roar of blood at his temples, in his ears enthralled him, threatened to wrench his control completely from his grasp. His heart beat wildly.  The need to be inside her—Now—pounded through his loins in a savage rhythm.

Abruptly, he tore his mouth from hers, wrenching his head free of her hand.

She cried out, reaching for him.  “Take me, my lord,” she begged.

* * * *

Morpheus pulled himself from her dream.  His harsh breath made his lungs and throat ache—forgotten sensation from his long ago mortality.  How long had it been since he’d been tempted by pleasures of the flesh?

Longer than his memory allowed.

He dragged in a deep, sustaining breath, fighting to reassert his control.

Adriana moaned in her sleep, drawing his gaze to her.  If she was pure, he thought irritably as he watched her writhing in desire, it was in body alone.  Her mind was that of a seductress.

Things had not gone entirely as planned—in fact, not at all.  It had begun well enough.  He knew that she had been terrified in the beginning, but what little he’d done to frighten her was not likely to deter her from summoning him again. 

Anger surfaced. 

No trickery, she had claimed, and yet she had welcomed his fierce desire, matched it, nearly turned it against him.  And yet she had to be pure of heart or she could not have summoned him at all.  It was a puzzle that he found disturbing.

He thought briefly of deflowering her while she slept, but the idea of taking her without her knowledge so repulsed him that he instantly regretted even thinking on it.

That also puzzled and disturbed him. 

He was forbidden to cross the boundary from the sleep world into the physical world and the desire to do so had not been spawned by the intention of despoiling her purity to free himself from her demands.  And even so, he should have felt no compunction about doing so, not on her account.

While he stood pondering the curious, unnerving situation, he sensed the rising sun threatening to crest the horizon, signaling that it was time to leave.

He would leave her to her dreams for now, he decided.  If she summoned him again, he would return on the morrow to finish what he had begun.  Seductress or not, she was still an innocent.  Perhaps that would be enough to convince her to plague him no more.  If not, he would unleash his full wrath upon her and she would come to rue the day she’d learned to summon the Lord of the Night.

Chapter Three

Adriana awoke exhausted.  Snatches of her dreams from the night before teased her memory, yet remained intangible, just out of reach.  Her stomach felt cramped, her sex achy, as if she’d been aroused and left unfulfilled.

She knew the sensation.  She’d experienced it before she’d discovered how to pleasure herself and find relief.  Yet what relief she found felt miserable to her now.  She longed to be filled with a man’s length, to have his weight on top of her, his hands touching and arousing her in ways she hadn’t yet imagined.  She longed for love eternal.