Page 2 of Somno Slave

My head strikes up.

The dreams around me tear, thousands of them, each one fading when I pass. They know who I am. They bow, they break, they scatter.

Only one holds.

Only one refuses to yield.

Hers.

Her pulse draws a trail through the dark like a red thread. The farther I follow it, the clearer the rhythm becomes. It hums inside my skull, matching the rise and fall of my own heartbeat until I can no longer tell which one of us is leading.

I finally find her at the edge of a threshold, buried beneath four larger, quivering souls.

There she is.

A small, trembling thing buried beneath the others. Soft enough to ruin. Mine the second she looks back at me.

Before the thought even finishes forming, I’m already on my knees, dragging her out of the dreamscape. Heat spikes instantly. Her dream ignites—flames licking at my palm like a beast on a too-short chain. Each lick is barbed, flaying thin strips of pain across my skin.

She pushes back. She rejects my touch.

No...

She fucking marks me.

I bite back the growl, refusing to let go. Instead, I curl each finger around her dream andsqueeze. She stills under my grip so completely it feels less like surrender and more like the moment prey realises it has been caught.

I bend over her like a sinner over an offering, and fuck, she is blistering with life. It rolls off her in panicked waves, hot enough to make my hunger vicious.

The silence parts for me: a hush before the strike.

I tap into her mind and lull her into a false sense of security. And her dream—God, her beautiful, helpless, unguarded dream—moans.

Soft.

Needy.

Inviting in the very monster it should run from.

I drag her closer. She resists but still comes. She breathes, shivering in my grip like something caught between terror and want. The pulse of it flutters against my palm.

The seam along her dream splits ever so slightly in my grip. She swells with heat, with colour, with the liquid panic of a creature that knows it’s being watched. That knows it’s about to be violated.

The surface of her dream ripples, trying to seal itself. I watch the hole tighten.

My thoughts blacken.

She’s trying so hard not to part for me, and she’s failing so beautifully.

Hunger coils low.

My cock aches angrily, and I can’t deprive myself any longer. With my other hand, I quickly free myself. Next to her small red ruby, it looks huge and thick and furious. It’ll pierce right through her whimpering slit. It’ll ruin her. It’ll probably kill her.

Her dream quakes. It begs to scream, but the sound lodges in the throat of her sleeping body light years away—a body that doesn’t know what’s happening to its mind.

I do not need her body to break into her. Her mind is enough for now.

I press my thumb against her glistening hole until the seam quivers. The wound in her world parts for me, with a sigh, spilling the colour and sound of her dream: Noise from a market. Laughter. Bells. Smoke curling from a thousand small fires. Heat, motion, life—it all rushes at me like a tide.