All was quiet in the room for a while. But just then, Natalie began to hear footsteps in the room. Her heart beat in trepidation. The closer the footsteps came, the harder her heart beat.

She chided herself for that. She shouldn't be nervous now. Afterall, she had agreed to this. She gripped the sheets of the soft bed as her eyes became moist with sweat under the silk cloth that was tied around it to blindfold it. Her mind drifted to three days ago.

The billionaire had wanted a child and she needed money. The deal was made. After a series of tests, and examinations done on her, she was finally taken to the villa of the NewYork billionaire, but her eyes had been blindfolded. She was not supposed to know who he was and she did not. The deal was going to be as secret as possible.

Natalie sat now, her fingers on the smooth silk sheets, counting the seconds as the footfalls of the one who had entered the room got closer. For sometime she did not hear any more footsteps, just the slight rustling of clothes.

The man was undressing, she surmised. She tried to conceal her nervousness but her nerves were having a field day.

"Natalie Williams?"

"Yes...sir?" She replied.

A hand traced a meandering line from her cheek down her neck to her collar bone.Natalie shuddered under the touch, affected, wanting to pull away the blindfold, yet not wanting to renege on her part of the deal.

"Are you scared?"The man asked her, his voice cool to her ears. The voice was like ice to her heated skin, calming and cooling everywhere it touched.

"A little…" Natalie replied truthfully. She had never done something like this before.

"Don't be," the cool voice was in her ears again. From her ears, she felt his lips travel to her own lips and take her lips in his in a deep searching kiss.

From then on, Natalie was at his mercy and he was in control. She let him in and out of her until he was sated.

He visited her almost every night.

The exercise lasted for only a month before Natalie was confirmed pregnant.

The surrogate of the billionaire was pregnant. The billionaire never visited after she was confirmed to be carrying his child.

********************

"Breathe, Natalie, breathe," a voice said."Keep pushing. The baby's head is almost out."

But Natalie was past caring. She was weak and tired and beads of sweat decorated her forehead.The blindfold on her face was becoming too restrictive. At this point she wanted out of this. The pain was unbearable.

The delivery room was hot and blood had stained the sheets she lay on. Worried attendants circled around her, encouraging her.

"She does not have much strength left," someone said."She should have a Caesarean section."

Another voice spoke. Natalie in the haze of pain she was in, recognized this one to be that of the housekeeper.

"The child is very important to the boss. At all costs, the child must survive. Do what you must," the woman said.

The doctors nodded.

Some time later when the sound of a crying baby bounced inside Natalie's ears, she couldn't help but smile even in her spent state.

"It's a girl," the housekeeper announced, answering Natalie's unasked question.

The blindfold was torn off Natalie's face at that moment and it took her a while to adjust her eyes to the light in the room. Her eyes met that of a tall, well-built man who stared back at her. Shock filled her eyes as they filled his.

She was only able to mutter a few words when her vision began to blur then as the effect of the sedatives she was injected with began to kick in.

She slipped into a quiet coma.

***********************

Five years later

It was the early hours of the morning when Natalie awoke from the dream she'd had, breathing hard. She took a moment to slow her breaths, wondering about the dream she had just had.

The problem wasn't just that she had had the dream, but also because it had become a recurring dream for the past five years of her life.

She smoothed her dark brown hair from her face. She was a beautiful woman with brown soulful eyes framed with thick lashes. Her lips were full; a pale pink shade. Her brows were arched and angular, giving her a model look. Now, those brows creased in worry.

How come? She wondered as she leaned back on the bedpost. Why this dream? For the past five years, this dream had haunted her. She had a child in the dream even though she was not even married neither did she remember ever getting pregnant.

Natalie sighed as she got up to prepare for her day, brushing he thoughts from her head. She had an interview to prepare for. This was just a dream, she told herself. Only a dream…