Come to Me (5 page)

Samira dove into Nicolae's thoughts and memories, searching for the keys to his fantasies and secret desires. She had to swim past scene after scene of violent battle and angry men, dark village streets and flaming torches. They crowded Nicolae's mind, blinding Samira to anything else.

He was so dark inside, so lost within horrors. She turned away from the raging scenes and felt carefully for the thrum of sexual desire that was sunken somewhere deep within him. She knew it was there: She
felt
it. And besides, there was no man alive who didn't have desire living within him, whether it was desire for women, men, the switch to one's bottom, a woman's dirty chemise, bare feet, farm animals,
something
.

A wisp of desire floated by her, and she grabbed tight to it. She ignored the anger and loss, the fear and pain, the loneliness and devastation within Nicolae, and followed that wisp toward its source within his psyche.

It led her to the outer edge of his darkness and then disappeared behind a black wall. Samira felt over the surface of the wall, looking for some small crevice in which she could dig her fingers and pry open a door, but the wall was smooth and impenetrable. She tried to force her way straight through its surface.

Nothing. It didn't allow her through so much as an inch.

She blew out a breath in frustration. She'd often come across such barriers, in men who for one reason or another didn't want to allow themselves the freedom of their sexuality. Usually, with persistence, she could find a way inside and give the man the pleasure of his own deepest fantasies, lived out in his dreams.

She'd rarely come across a barrier so firmly established as this one. Nicolae wanted nothing to do with his lustful desires. She wrinkled her nose, annoyed with the wall. She was here to
help
the man, and look at the obstacles he put up. The only time a wall like this was worth anything was when the desires of a man were evil.

She chewed her bottom lip. Might Nicolae's wishes be evil? He was full of enough pain that it seemed possible. Pain seemed to warp some men.

Wondering at the wall wasn't going to solve the problem it presented, though. She'd just have to go around it, using her own creativity to build a dream for Nicolae, and hoping she hit upon something he liked.

She floated away from the wall and entered the network in his mind that formed his nightly dreams. It was inactive at the moment, an empty stage upon which she could create whatever scene she wished.

A classic fantasy would be a good, safe place to start. The favorite of most men, of course, was the innocent girl behaving like a sex-starved wench. It rarely failed to please.

She created a dream self for Nicolae: the burns were gone, and he stood strong and vibrant at the edge of a meadow. Golden sunlight painted the grasses and flowers and gilded the leaves of the oak and beech forest surrounding the open space.

Samira felt Nicolae's dreaming acceptance of the scene. The sunlight was warm on his skin, encouraging him to step out into the meadow. As he did so, he noticed that he was not limping. His mind tossed the incongruity back and forth, and his dream self lifted his left hand in front of his face. It was unscarred. He frowned at it, and his mind started to tell him that this was not real, this was a fantasy.

Midnight sun
! Samira silently cursed, and she focused her powers on the disbelieving part of Nicolae's mind.
Accept, accept
, she told it.
Ask no questions. Enjoy. The scars are gone. Accept
.

Nicolae let go of his doubts, dropping his hand back down by his side. He took a deep breath and released it. The dark aspects of his thoughts—the battle, the flames, the blood—tried to force their way into the meadow, but Samira held them back. Nothing was going to disturb Nicolae, except…

Samira caught hold of his thrum of desire and let him feel it. A sense of hungry anticipation immediately filled him, and he looked around the meadow expectantly.

Somewhere in the woods, a soft female voice sang. Nicolae loped across the meadow toward it, his stride as smooth and strong as a wolfs. The joy of moving freely, unhindered by injury, infected his mood, and he whooped, dashing into the trees and leaping over logs and ferns in pursuit of the voice.

A flash of movement through the trees caught his eye and he halted, head lifted, eyes tracking his prey. A dozen yards through the trees, a young girl in kerchief and richly embroidered blouse passed by. Samira gave in to vanity and gave the girl her own face and figure, her own red hair and blue eyes.

Nicolae stalked in quiet pursuit of the dream Samira. He followed her as she picked herbs and wildflowers, bending over in her brightly colored skirt, a basket on her arm.

Older female voices called in the distance: "Samira! Samira!"

Samira felt a flush of embarrassment at giving in to the impulse to give the girl her own name.
But why not
? she asked herself. There were no rules against enjoying the fantasy herself. She liked watching Nicolae pursue her double through the woods, lusting after her.

The girl glanced over her shoulder, in the direction of the voices, and saw Nicolae. She sucked in a breath in surprise, her creamy cheeks flushing a virginal pink. "Oh! Sir!"

Nicolae stood still, staring at her, his breathing still heavy from his lope through the woods.

The girl put a nervous, fluttering hand to her neck. "You frightened me, sir!"

Nicolae tilted his head toward the voices. "They're calling you."

She looked down, lashes falling heavy on her cheeks, and fiddled with the handle of her basket. "I do not wish to answer." She glanced up at him through her lashes, then back down again. "The nuns keep such close watch on me every hour. Time alone is rare, and precious."

"And dangerous. Do you not know what lurks in the forest?"

"All manner of wild beasts," she admitted. "But surely they only come out at night?"

"Some walk by day."

"Then I shall have to trust you to kill them for me."

The nuns again called. "Samira! Samira!"

Nicolae frowned. "An unusual name."

A smile flashed across her lips, even as she glanced, worried, in the direction of the unseen nuns. "Yes. It means 'She who entertains.'"

"Does it?" he said, and he stepped closer. The frown was still between his brows. Samira felt his skepticism again asserting itself, trying to break the spell of the dream. "I think I have heard it once before…"

Summer solstice
! Samira cursed silently.
Why can he not just enjoy this
?

"They will find me. I must go!" The girl turned quickly, her skirt swirling with the movement, and hurried away from the calling voices. Her quick movement startled Nicolae out of thinking about her name, and he set off after her. The silent pursuit drew up deep predator/prey urges from within him, his blood heating with the need to possess the girl.

The voices fell away behind them. After a few minutes of hurrying through underbrush and pathless forest, they came out of the trees and to the edge of a brook. Its surface glittered with sunlight, its banks green with tender ferns and grasses.

The girl set down her basket. She grasped hold of the neckline of her blouse and billowed it in and out, fanning herself. "I'm so hot."

The power of speech was quickly abandoning Nicolae's dream self, his animal instincts rising to the fore. His eyes went to the neckline of the girl's blouse and stayed there, his mind torn between wanting to watch her and wanting to pull her to the ground and plant himself between her damp thighs.

The girl untied her blouse and touched the dewy skin above her breasts. "I wish I could lie down in that water," she said. "It would feel so good, rushing over my skin. So cool. It's tempting, don't you think?"

"I would not mind if you wanted to do that," he managed to say.

"Oh, I couldn't. It wouldn't be proper. I shouldn't even be here, talking to you."

He shook his head. "No, you shouldn't."

"You won't hurt me, though, will you?" she asked, wide eyes looking up at him, full of innocence.

His throat refused to work for several moments, and then he managed, against all his desires, to growl out, "You shouldn't trust men you meet in the woods." He pointed with his chin back in the direction from which they'd come. "You should go back to them. Now! Before you're sorry."

Samira muttered in frustration. What was this? Nobility? The wench was begging to be taken. What was wrong with him? Samira felt a sting of rejection, as if it was she herself he did not find tempting enough to take advantage of.

The girl stepped closer to Nicolae and parted her lips. She put her hand on his chest, then trailed her fingertips down to his groin. "They never let me near a man."

He was already hard with desire, and moaned as the dream Samira's hand pressed over him through his clothes. His hands came up and tugged the kerchief off her head; then he dug his fingers into her braided hair and tilted her face up toward him.

Samira felt herself on the verge of victory and shivered with pleasure. Nicolae's desire was doubling and trebling, pushing him down the path toward release, and creating an echo of delight in her own ethereal body. The innocent-girl-gone-wild fantasy never failed to push a man to the brink. Never!

"Take me," the girl begged. "I want you to be the first. Take me, quickly, before they find us."

Nicolae's desire froze. It went cold within him, the burning heat of it flaming out. He stared at the face of the girl—at Samira's face—and suddenly shoved her away from him.

"No!"

The girl stood staring in shock at the rejection, just as Samira herself mentally gaped at what had just happened. No? He was saying no?

"Get away from me," Nicolae said, backing away from the girl, shaking his head in refusal. Tremors ran through his body, and a sick, nauseated feeling was uncoiling in his gut.

It was
fear
, Samira realized. What in night's blazing stars was wrong with him?

"We'll be quick, they won't catch us," the girl said, going after him. She pulled the gaping neck of her blouse down over one shoulder, freeing her arm and one breast.

Nicolae barely glanced at it, his eyes making frantic scans of the woods around the small clearing, as if seeking either intruders or an escape route.

"They won't find us," the girl said, and Samira put all her power behind the words. "It's all right. They won't find us."

Nicolae wasn't listening, the force of his fear blocking out everything but its panicky need to flee.

Maybe it wasn't the threat of intruders that was scaring him. Samira cursed that black wall that had hidden his innermost desires from her. There was something back there that scared him to death.

Could he be a virgin, terrified of humiliation?

"You don't have to do a thing," the girl said, reaching out and touching him. Her hands slid down to his hips, and she dropped to her knees. "Just let me touch you." She reached up under his short tunic, her hands brushing against the folds of the linen loincloth exposed by the gap between the legs of his hose. She plucked at the ties of his hose, even as Samira plucked at the strings of his desire, trying to recapture the tension.