Was I ready for that? If I wasn’t then I had better get ready for it because I wasn’t ready to give up Gray and I didn’t think he was going to allow me a whole lot of time to decide. He seemed to be interested in consolidating his victory now that he’d found me.
Syl served me an excellent meal and three more glasses of wine because he was worried about my nerves. Syl didn’t believe in the newfangled medicines and found a good Sauvignon Blanc cured most things that ailed a person. When my stomach was full and my brain was pleasantly buzzed, he insisted I take myself off to bed. I climbed into a hot shower and when I emerged, Syl had left a T-shirt of Gray’s on the sink and a towel he’d obviously warmed in the dryer. By the time I sank between the sheets, I fell asleep almost immediately.
For the first time in a long time, I had the dream. This was the dream from my childhood, the one I never, ever talked about around my father.
I am running, but on four legs instead of two. The moon is full and silvery on the sky. It hangs there, dominating the landscape and my life. I move to it and hear its call.
The forest is my home and I am the queen of it. It is simple to live here. I sleep. I hunt. I feed. I do each thing when I want and where I want. The world is suited to my needs. I stare at myself for a long time in the crystal water of the stream. I am brown and beautiful. My father runs beside me, showing me how to hunt and thrive. He is brown like me and he protects me in a way my human father never did. Large, he is the largest wolf I’ve ever seen, but he’s so gentle.
I know that other wolves run in packs, but it has always been just me and my father. We like it this way.
Yes, this is my dream. The one that sustained me when I was young. And then it changes for the first time I can remember.
I stop when I feel eyes on me, and when I turn he is there in the dewy morning light. He isn’t like me, but I know in an instant that he’s mine. His deep blue eyes are kind as they look down on me and he holds out his hand and asks me to change so we can be together.
He is more than a friend or a lover or a husband.
He is Gray. He is my mate.
I love him with everything I have inside me. I change and walk toward him on two human feet, never forgetting the wolf inside me. She is a part of me, sometimes the better part. Gray is two natured as well, though not the same. He will accept my wolf and I will accept his second self. I walk to him and his arms go around me.
His lips meet mine and I am complete.
The world and everything in it is perfect until I hear a low growl. My father stands waiting. He peers at us, and I know that he will not allow this. He will never allow this. The enormous brown wolf that represented everything I wanted in a father shifts and suddenly he is a child. A black haired, brown-eyed child I had seen before.
“No,” Lee Quinn says. “It’s no good.”
I woke up with a start. Fear hadn’t been a part of the dream, but I had to force myself to breathe. It had been so real. I could practically still feel the ground under my feet, the air on my skin.
Why would I dream of Lee Quinn? In the dream he’d spoken with a deeper voice, the voice of an adult. It had rumbled out of his child’s body.
“Hello, baby,” Gray said lazily in my ear as he pushed up the bottom of the shirt I was wearing. “I’m making a new rule. No clothes in our bed. It’s inconvenient.”
With my pulse pounding, I turned toward him. He could banish the dream and the jittery feeling it gave me. I would stay away from wine from now on. It gave me weird dreams.
“Is it?” I lifted up for him to pull the bothersome shirt off my body.
His hands trailed up and tugged gently on my nipples. I sighed and he chuckled against my neck, trailing kisses even as his hands cupped my breast.
“Yes, it is. It is horribly inconvenient.” He didn’t bother to keep his weight off me. He pinned me down and took up all the space. “I might keep you naked all the time, Kelsey mine. If we’re alone, I want you naked. When we eat dinner, I want you naked. When we sit and watch TV, I want you cuddling against me naked.”
His fully clothed body rested against mine. I could feel the hard ridge of his erection against my thigh. He pumped softly in a preview of what he wanted to do to my pussy. “That’s an awful lot of nudity for poor Syl to endure.”
Gray’s face hardened. His hands smoothed back my hair. “He won’t be in our lives much longer. We’ll have to get along without a butler. I want to be alone with you, Kelsey. I want it to be you and me. They’re going to leave us alone.”
I felt the intensity of his will and found I couldn’t argue with him. “Did everything go all right at the station?”