Also, there’d been a lot of eye contact for both the hair washing and the missionary position, helping tie them together. Recalling the eye contact reminded me of a question. “A couple of times, I think I saw your wolf… I mean, like he was looking out of your eyes. Is that normal?”
He kissed my hand again and nodded. “As you get used to us, I’ll let you see him more. He wasn’t on board with pushing you during sex, taking you past your comfort levels, and I needed to let him see you through my eyes, and smell through my nose, to reassure him you were okay.”
He glanced at me, then back to the road. “Not all shapeshifters tell their significant other their secret, but I can’t imagine not telling you who I really am, letting you see all of me.”
After a couple of moments of silence, he said, “You didn’t have a problem with my foot massages while you were recovering. Why did they not trigger you?”
I shrugged. “My toes didn’t hurt as bad as my fingers, and they all grew back in okay. My fingers were a pain on the keyboard without the nails — if I typed longer than ten or fifteen minutes, the bones hurt. I went swimming in the ocean a couple of weeks after my escape, and the salt burned the nailbeds of my fingers and toes like crazy, but my toes just never really bothered me again.”
“How did you explain your nails, on the cruise?”
“I bought a bunch of thin, nylon gloves before I got on, and I always wore them. No one asked me about them, I guess they just thought I was one of those eccentric rich women who can’t be expected to act logically.”
We pulled into the parking lot of what was obviously an ancient school, with beautiful architecture. There were no signs saying what was here, which I assumed meant it was probably the home office of Drake Security.
Brain told the receptionist our names, and within a few minutes Aaron Drake met us in the lobby. “Come on back, I have everything up on chalkboards in one of the locked wings, to make sure no one sees it.”
We went through a series of impressive locked doors before entering an old classroom. The chalkboard had writing all over it, and the bulletin boards had plans, pictures, and maps.
Aaron leaned over a table, his fists on the surface, his arm muscles in stark relief in the harsh classroom lighting. “I have a female shapeshifter who’s about your size, but Brain says you won’t go for us sending someone in besides you.”
I shook my head. “I won’t put anyone else in that kind of danger. I’d say goodbye to the money before I risked someone else. Ya’ll protecting me is bad enough, but it’ll be me walking into the bank and taking the biggest risk.”
He didn’t accuse me of not valuing my own life, he merely nodded and kept going. Whether he understood this was about more than just the money, or not, he accepted my reasoning without argument.
The three of us brainstormed and altered his initial plan until we were all convinced it would work.
“You’re certain the shapeshifter you’ll send into the bank with me can alter his face enough so no one will be able to find him later?”
This was the only part of the plan I was against, as it put this man in danger if the two of us were captured, but neither Brain nor Aaron was willing to go along with the rest of the plan unless I walked into the bank on the arm of a bodyguard.
Aaron nodded, and Brain said, “I know someone who can shift his human features around. It takes someone really strong to do it, but he can even reshape the bones of his face, so his cheekbones are more or less prominent, his jaw is narrower, his forehead smaller, even the space between his eyes can be different.”
I nodded and told them, “Okay, then. I like the rest of the plan, now let’s settle on a date.”
We wouldn’t be using Aaron’s plane, but one he had access to on the coast, as Brain wanted to be sure no one traced me back to Chattanooga. Aaron went through an intermediary to reserve the plane, and we got it for three weeks out.
“Now,” Aaron said, his body language and voice obviously moving from serious business to personal, “Sophia and I would like the two of you to have dinner with us. You can meet the kids when you arrive, but then we’ll send them below with a sitter — three toddlers do not make for a relaxing dinner with guests, and that’s what Sophia wants.” He looked at me. “She considers Brain a good friend, as do I, and my wife very much wants to spend some time with the woman he’s fallen for.”
Brain had told me Sophia had led an extremely sheltered life, and he and Duke were the first two non-related friends she’d ever had, who hadn’t been paid for and vetted by her father. He’d also verified he’d helped keep Sophia safe while she was in hiding, after she escaped her father’s mansion, where she’d lived the first twenty five years of her life without leaving a single time.