Every morning after, if I went to sleep beside him, I’d worry he wouldn’t be there when I woke, because I didn’t know what drove him away the first time.
I opened my eyes. “I need to know now.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Not now?”
A tightness in his voice turned the words into a query-or maybe a plea-and I sputtered a laugh.
He growled. “You have no respect for a mood, do you?”
I eyed him. Considered my options. Realized there was only one way I was getting my answers, as much as I hated to use it.
I grabbed the back of his head and pulled him down in a kiss. His hands went to my shirt, and he had it out of my jeans and over my head so quickly, I barely realized we’d broken the kiss. A snap of the front clasp on my bra, then his thumbs tickled over my breasts as he pushed it aside.
His shirt started to follow, but I caught his hands and whispered, “Let me. Please.” I took hold of the hem, met his gaze and said, “Right after you tell me why you left.”
He let out an oath on a blast of chaos so sharp I arched my head back and shuddered.
“Like that, do you?” he said.
I grinned. “You know I do.”
“Damn you.”
“Mmm.” I nibbled the side of his neck. “Tell me more…like what you meant that morning.”
A growl and another string of obscenities.
I writhed under him. “Not bad. But it needs a little more venom. Say it like you mean it.”
“I wish I could. You have no idea, sometimes, how much I wish I could.”
He grabbed me in a kiss so hard, so rich with frustration, that had he reached for my jeans again, I wouldn’t have stopped him. Instead, he broke it off and sighed.
“You’re right,” he said.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?”
“Damn you.”
A moment’s silence. Then he rolled off me and propped his head up on his arm. I twisted onto my side to face him.
“This is going to take a while.”
“I’ve got all night.”
A noise, half sigh, half growl. “All right then. When I went to Europe, I planned to take you with me. I’d make it sound like a whim. A lark. Light and casual. Then morning came, and I realized you’d know it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision, and if I was telling myself it was light or casual…”
He shook his head. “I wanted to forget about it, but I couldn’t. So I told myself I’d mention the job, see your reaction when I said I was leaving.”
“See how crushed I was?”
A muscle in his cheek twitched at the coolness in my voice, but after a moment he nodded.
“And when I wasn’t upset enough, you had to keep pushing. See what did upset me. Not just flying off to Europe for a few days, but indefinitely…and maybe I should date other guys while you were gone. See if anything dug in enough to hurt.”
“Yes.”
I scrambled up. “You bastard.”
“Hope-”
“No.” I backed away. “You want brownie points for being honest? You hurt me just to see if you could, just to prove that I have feelings for you?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t want to see if I could get a reaction. I wanted a reaction. I wanted you to think exactly what you did-that you’d been seduced, that I was just as cold and self-serving as you’ve always suspected. I wanted to walk away and close the door. Slam it, so I could never come back.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure I do either.”
He pushed to his feet and looked around, then settled onto the couch. I stayed on the floor, arms around my knees.
“I’ve never understood it,” he continued. “What happened that night at the museum. Why I helped you get away from Tristan and why, after I had helped, it was so hard to walk away. Why, even when I did, I couldn’t stay away.”
He shifted to see me better around the coffee table. “Not that I couldn’t understand the attraction. You’re beautiful. You’re smart. You’re fun to be around. But I’ve been with beautiful women, smart women, fun women, and there wasn’t one I didn’t walk away from in the morning. I only ever felt a twinge of regret if I had to leave a piece of jewelry behind. At first, I told myself it was because you were a challenge. You weren’t interested in me and I wanted to change your mind. But even when I knew I could change your mind, I didn’t. Because, if I seduced you, then I’d have no excuse for coming back, and…” A pause. “I wanted the excuse.”
I hugged my knees, wondering if I should say something, but feeling like I wasn’t supposed to.
“I’ve been having dreams. For a few months now…” Another pause, his jaw working, as if trying to figure out how to word something. “I don’t dream very often. It’s usually…wolf. If I postpone my Change, I dream of Changing. If I haven’t hunted, I dream of hunting. I’m reminded, prodded. Lately, I’ve been dreaming of you. Of us. Of…”
He fell silent, jaw tensing again.
“Cabins,” he spat finally, as if making some terrible confession. “I dream of forests and cabins and us, and no one else. I dream of taking you someplace, holing up, making love and making-” He clipped off the last word.
“Making what?”
He met my gaze and his lips twitched. “From that look on your face, you know what I was about to say. Let me remind you, emphatically, that it’s a dream. When I wake, I’m as horrified as you.”
“Thank God.”
He arched a brow. “Can you honestly see me living in a cabin? It’s a symbol, obviously. An impulse. Not to carry you off into the woods and raise a pack of squalling brats. Just to…be with you.”
“The instinct to mate.”
He gave a low growl, and I braced for an argument, but he only turned his gaze toward the window, as if he’d already figured out what the impulse was, and just hated hearing it put into words.
“It’s understandable, isn’t it?” I said. “You’re fifty years old with no children. The animal instinct to reproduce is sure to kick in-”
“So I start having caveman fantasies about the first woman in prime childbearing years to cross my path? In some ways, I wish to hell that’s all it was. A biological imperative that randomly fixed on an appropriate target.”
He stood and walked to the window, his back to me.
“I used to hear other werewolves talk about it,” he said. “The problems of living solitary lives. Fighting the urge to find a mate and settle. I’d commiserate, if it was to my advantage, but even as I was listening I was calling them fools. Weak. Convincing themselves it was an instinct because they didn’t have the balls to admit the truth-that they wanted a wife and kids and a picket-fence life. I’d never felt the urge to stay with a woman until morning, let alone for life, so I was living proof there was no mating instinct. The truth was, it seems, that I just hadn’t met…”