“No.” He snapped the word out, but then hesitated. “My taid was a half-breed. He had premonitions. He knew the hunters were coming, and that’s why he left. He thought he could avert the vision he’d seen, but he was wrong.”
“It just happened later than he thought,” whispered Mum.
“I hoped Jessie would find a nice young man one day. I never expected her to bring one of them home.”
“It’s probably because of Jessie’s bloodline that she could hear me.” Levi stuffed both hands in his pockets, and came to stare down at me. “I thought you were my Mate.” He stumbled over the words, and then swallowed hard. “I must have been mistaken.”
Chapter Sixteen
Levi’s face was pale, his eyes unnaturally bright. There was no trace of his seductive smile, and his face was completely blank of emotion. He looked numb. Dragging both hands through his hair, he gazed down at me. “I’m sorry, Jess.” A muscle flicked in his cheek, but otherwise he could have been a statue. “I’d better go.”
“I can still give you that ride to the station if you want it.” On the surface, Dad’s offer was polite, but his hostility was only thinly covered.
Mum made a little surprised noise. “You can’t be heading out now. There won’t be any trains.”
“I’m wolf,” Levi murmured. “I’ll be fine.” His eyes continued to eat at me, and the intensity finally broke through my shock.
“You’re leaving? Right now?” He gave a little nod. “But there’s so much I don’t understand. We haven’t even talked yet.” I didn’t dare look at Dad, but I had the stupid notion that if Levi walked out now, I’d never see him again. “And this is Manchester.” I improvised rapidly. “It’s not safe for you to hang around the streets.”
His eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Are you suggesting I can’t look after myself?”
“No, I’m suggesting you’re tired and jet-lagged.” His eyes darkened. “And you don’t have anywhere to go.”
Levi ducked his head, and then reached out to touch my cheek. “Goodbye, Jess.”
I couldn’t watch him walk out. I grabbed his hand and clung to it like a lifeline in a rough sea. “Wait. Don’t leave.” He hesitated and I tried again. “Just stay tonight. Please.”
“Family means everything. It’s not right for me to come between you and your parents.”
He didn’t sound as sure of himself, and so I appealed to Dad. “You said he could stay the night. That invitation still stands, doesn’t it?”
Mum nudged Dad in the ribs. “Yes, it does. And right now, your father and I are going out. He promised we’d go late night shopping.”
“I don’t think I did.” He sounded indignant.
“Maybe I dreamed it, but that’s what we’re doing.” Mum gave me a quick hug. “We’ll be a couple of hours. Plenty of time for you to talk.”
❄ ❄ ❄
I dug into the kitchen cupboard and found a bottle of Dad’s single malt. Grabbing a couple of glasses, I headed back to the living room and found Levi examining the tiny wolves on the Christmas tree.
“Don’t know about you, but I need a drink.” I held out the malt, and after a moment, he nodded, and took a glass from me. I sloshed two generous measures, and then settled back on the sofa. I was acutely aware we’d only have the house to ourselves for a couple of hours, if that. They might come back early.
Levi prowled up and down, all lean muscle and grace. Just watching him move gave me chills of the very best kind. I quashed those thoughts and wondered where the hell to start. There was only one place.
“Why me?” He cocked his head on one side in a very canine way, and I tried to explain. “Somehow, you came into my dreams. You knew I’d dreamed about Mighty Mike’s, and walking in the Rimutakas. And that bench in the Trafford Centre. But why me?” I took a sip of my drink, and rolled the liquor around my mouth. “I don’t understand any of it,” I finished, lamely.
“We met,” he began, as though choosing his words with care, “in Wellington.” He held up a hand when I opened my mouth to interrupt, and I subsided. I’d remember, surely. He was so distinctive, I couldn’t possibly forget him. “I liked you. A lot.” His eyes seemed to flash sparks in the flickering firelight. “I found you in your dream—and yes, I will explain that too—and I liked you even more.”
Enough to buy a ticket to come here, to try and meet me in person?
Glancing down into his glass, Levi wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I have contacts in Snowdonia, and I figured I’d try to see you before I headed there. It was just luck that we met in the mall.”
There were so many holes in his story, it barely held together. Was he even telling me the truth? I took a drink and gazed at him. He stared back, inscrutable. I took another sip to give me courage. “The wolf thing. What the hell is that all about?”
“Your father might be mistaken.”
That wasn’t an answer. Dad’s words buzzed in my head in an unrelenting chatter of background noise. Half-breed. Freaks. “He called you a werewolf, and you said shifter. You planned to tell me later.” When I trusted you.
Maybe I needed to extend the hand of trust first.
Taking a deep breath, I spoke over the hammering of my heart. I’d never laid myself on the line before, not like this. “When I dreamed about you, I’d wake up and wish you were real. I’ve never met anyone I’ve been so…connected to. And now you’re here, and, well, I’d like to take the time to get to know you. Properly.”
Doubt flickered in his eyes, but he didn’t move. I pressed on. “I know I never met you in Wellington, so please tell me the truth. I can’t trust you if you’re not honest with me.”
Levi placed his glass on the mantelpiece, and then took a position with his back to the fire, arms folded. “We met at the dog pound.”
The pound? I frowned as I thought back to that weird afternoon. “You weren’t the guy I spoke to in the office.” Something nudged at my memory, but I ignored it. “And I didn’t see anyone else there.”
“I asked you to help me.”
Jigsaw pieces slotted together in my head. Werewolf. The wolf-dog I’d freed from the cage. He said his name was Levi.
I scrambled from my seat, unable to stay still. “Oh my God, that was you? In the cage?”
Chapter Seventeen
“Don’t be afraid of me.” I saw pain in Levi’s eyes when he spoke. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”
“That was you,” I repeated. The wolf really had been talking to me. “They doped you with something.”
“Ketamine.”
“Oh my God.”
He gave me a faint smile. “You already said that.”
“It was really you.”
“Yep, you said that too.”
I blew out a breath, my head spinning. It felt as though the world was shifting beneath my feet. I wanted to run away and hide, but at the same time, I wanted to see him as a wolf again. It was the only thing that might convince me I hadn’t gone insane.
“Show me,” I whispered. “Please?”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded.
“I need to strip. Look the other way.” His lips curled up, and I nodded again, but didn’t move. He waved his fingers in a circle, and I tried to focus. Turn around. I moved to face the sofa and stared at the slightly faded cushions. How long would it take? Was he really going to change into a wolf? Anticipation skittered through my bloodstream, but for some bizarre reason, I was no longer scared. Nervous, yes. My palms were sticky, and my heart was racing, but I wasn’t afraid of him.
Behind me, I heard a rustle of clothing. A soft swish, that could have been a T-shirt dropping to the floor. A rasp and scrape, repeated, and two thuds. His boots. The sound of a zipper, and then another rustling noise, the sound of denim being shoved down.
He’d be standing there naked. How pervy would it be if I turned to look? Very, I told myself firmly. I had to wait until he’d changed, however long that took. Something occurred to me. “L
evi? I never thought to ask. It doesn’t hurt does it? When you, uh…”
A sharp yip was my reply, and my heart almost stopped. Hauling in a ragged breath, I counted to three in my head and then turned around.
Levi had vanished.
A wolf sat in his place.
My mouth was as dry as the Sahara, and for a second I felt light-headed. How was this even possible? Everything I thought I knew was false. A memory of Becca flashed in my head, her sobs when she told me how she’d caught her boyfriend with another girl. “I saw them together,” she’d cried. “No matter what I do, I can’t un-see them.”
I couldn’t un-see this.
The wolf looked the same as the beast I’d released from the pound. Staring at him, I realised how freakin’ big it was. Handsome too, with thick, dark fur, and the same brilliant blue eyes as Levi. Well, duh. This was Levi.
He took a step toward me, and then flopped to the floor, to roll onto his back. Lying there, mouth open and tongue lolling, he looked harmless, and very friendly. What would his fur be like to touch?
“Can I stroke you?” He stretched out, the picture of innocence. His jaws were huge, and the teeth long and deadly, and if he wanted to, he could snap my wrists without even thinking about it. Even so, I still wasn’t scared. I should have been running away, screeching, but I wasn’t. Deep inside me, buried and locked down tight, was a spark of recognition. An awareness. Levi had talked about bloodlines, and Dad’s heritage.
My father’s words were: My taid was a half-breed.
If my great-grandfather had wolf-blood in him, that meant I had a trace of it too.
I dropped to sit on the carpet, and reached out to touch Levi’s head. His ears were like velvet, the fur thick and soft, and I ran my fingers down his neck, to dig into the ruff. He made a rumbling noise of pleasure, and I gazed in awe. This was Levi. He was beautiful. How could Dad think him to be a freak?
He rolled to lie on his stomach, and then, without any warning, he just dissolved into a glorious rainbow of shimmering sparks. I sat spellbound, not daring to move, to even breathe. Next thing, Levi lay on his front, buck-naked, my hands on his bare shoulders.
In human form, he was even more devastating to my overloaded senses. Acres of tawny skin lay there, mine to touch. A tribal tattoo snaked down his spine, and another wrapped around his upper arm. He shifted position to rest his chin on his hands, and he looked up at me, the image of devilment.
“It doesn’t,” he said.
Huh? “Doesn’t what?”
“It doesn’t hurt. That’s what you asked, a minute ago.”
I had, before my entire knowledge of science had been blown out of the water.
His skin was warm. I could touch him all day in either form, if he’d let me. Without thinking, I stroked the inked characters down the line of his back, tracing them with my fingertips. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You’re still here. That’s a good place to start.”
Chapter Eighteen
“How do you do it? The changing thing?” I spoke quietly, unwilling to break this very intimate connection that had flared between us.
“I just think it, and it happens.” Levi’s voice dropped too, more husky by the second.
“It’s incredible.” I’d reached the curve of his waist, dangerously close to deliciously taut ass cheeks, and I began to caress upwards. I didn’t want to stop touching him. “So there’s more of you? Wolves?”
“We’re all over the world. There’ve been shifters for so long, nobody knows when or where they first emerged.”
“And yet you manage to keep hidden.” I remembered something. “At the pound, the guy was calling in the TV reporters. Did they know?”
Levi scowled briefly. “No, that was something else. They thought they’d trapped a wolf, and I didn’t get the opportunity to shift back to human form. There’s been a lot of press coverage recently about people sighting wolves in the hills. It’s crazy. If someone learns about us, we’ll be destroyed.”
I absorbed his words. “I saw something on the news when I was there. I just didn’t pay it any attention at the time. I wasn’t sure if wolves ran wild in New Zealand.”
“It’s a growing problem for us, and it’s never been before.” He stretched under my hands, relaxing at my touch. “Someone is trying to expose us. And that cannot happen.”
I reached his broad shoulders and the ends of his dark, rumpled hair. Stroking him was soothing my jangled nerves too. It was as though we’d woven a little bubble of calm around us, and I was loathe to break the spell. “You showed me. Don’t you worry that I might expose you?”
The blue eyes were limpid pools. “Will you?”
“Of course not.”
“You’re amazing, Jessie Morgan. Not only do you have shifter blood, but you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. From the first moment I saw you, I wanted you.”
My cheeks heated, and I looked away, my hands stilling on his back. He’d used that line on me in one of our dreams, and I was under no illusions. That reminded me. “Tell me about the dreaming thing. How does that work?”
“Ah, that.” His shoulder muscles rippled, causing the ink to flex and reform. “I’ll lie here all night, you know, letting you pet me.”
I smiled. “Are you asking me to stroke you some more?”
“Was it so obvious?” His answering smile was a thing of beauty. I pressed my knuckles into his skin, and he gave a low moan. “That feels good, baby.”
“Nice try, wolf boy. You were going to tell me about the dreaming thing.”
He stayed quiet and so I sat back, and dropped my hands into my lap. He sighed, and pulled a funny face, and then in a sinuous move, he sat up and tugged his T-shirt across to cover his groin.
I gazed at his firm, muscled chest and perfect hard abs. He looked as though he’d stepped off the cover of a sports magazine, toned and lean. “The dreams,” I prompted.
“Yeah. I guess some people are more receptive. It doesn’t happen to everyone.”
It wasn’t really an answer. “Mum said she shared dreams with Dad.” I thought some more. “Is this something you do with all the girls?”
“You mean lie naked on the floor while they give me a massage? No such luck.”
“I think you know what I mean.” I felt shy, and awkward, and completely out of my depth.
“There isn’t much to tell.” His fingers played with the edge of his shirt, and I fought to keep my gaze above his waist. “We connected so easily, and I couldn’t stay away. I wanted to get to know the real you. See if you were as lovely as I dreamed.”
The firelight flickered over his body, creating a golden halo around his hair, and casting interesting shadows over his face. I could stare at him for hours and not get bored. “Are you really heading up to Snowdonia? If I borrow Mum’s car, I could drive you there tomorrow.”
“Talking of your mum, they’ll be back soon. I can’t imagine your father would be too pleased to see me like this.” He made no move to dress, but his hand fisted around the soft cotton of his shirt. “I want you, Jess. And I don’t know how long I can keep my hands off you.”
My heart skittered. The urge to kiss him was overwhelming, to see if he tasted as good in real life as he had in my dreams. My nerve endings all prickled in anticipation, and I licked suddenly dry lips. Was it me, or was it hot in here?
“Then don’t,” I whispered.
Levi’s eyes darkened, almost burning me with the intensity of his gaze. “Come here,” he growled.
I knelt facing him, in the V of his legs, caged by his strong thighs, and waited to see what he’d do. My heart thumped double-speed, and I had to wipe my damp palms on my jeans. I’d never had a man look at me so intently, as though I was the reason he drew breath, and it made me giddy. Lust arced through me in a fierce, searing wave. My panties were damp, my breasts heavy and aching for his touch, and he hadn’t even moved yet.
With all the slowness of a man who had all ni
ght to play, he cupped my cheeks with both hands, and held me at the perfect angle to receive his kiss. Firm, blistering hot, and mind-meltingly good, his lips worked their magic on me, and I kissed him back just as hard.
This was better than I’d dreamed. This was real.
Chapter Nineteen
Levi kept up the pressure on my mouth, demanding and insistent. When he finally lifted his lips, it was to press them against my throat. “Take off your top. I want to see what it’s hiding.” His words vibrated against me, the stubbled jaw setting me alight.
My pulse sped into overdrive. With trembling fingers, I yanked my lightweight sweater over my head, and clutched it to my chest. I only had my bra underneath. A plain, white, cotton bra. If I’d had any idea of how today would play out, I’d have dressed with a little more care.
“Let me.” His smile was enticing, but his eyes were hungry. He closed one hand over mine, and pushed my top to the side, to place it on the carpet. “Oh, baby. So pretty.” He fingered the fine lacy strip across the curve of my breasts, the only adornment, and then, with care, folded down the cups to expose my nipples.
They plumped even further under his fleeting touch, and he smiled with pure male satisfaction. “You are so beautiful.” He pretended to weigh them in his hands. “All pink, and pretty, and waiting for me.”
Hot breath preceded his mouth closing around first one nipple, and then the other. Back and forth, he licked and sucked, driving me closer to insanity. Without conscious thought, I’d raised my hands to his shoulders, and I used him as an anchor, my fingers curling into the solid muscles. I needed something to hold on to.
I was drowning in pleasure. Surrounded by his green-woody scent, I knew if I ever smelled this fragrance again, it would remind me of this magical evening.
“Jess,” he whispered against my skin, his teeth grazing the curve of my breast. I whimpered, actual speech impossible, and let my head loll. In a flash, he slid one hand under my neck in a move so possessive I should have complained. Laying a trail of kisses up my arm, he slid the bra straps down, and pressed his lips in their wake.
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