Dream Lover

by Cassie Walder

  “Can you come to dinner tonight. We can talk more then.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I have family obligations tonight. It’s my grandmother’s birthday. There’s a party at her club in her honor.”

  Karen sighed. “I understand that. Family is important.”

  “You were on your way to the stables from your dress.”

  “Do you ride?”

  “Yes. I’ve always liked horses.”

  “You are welcome to come out here any time and use any of the horses.”

  “That’s kind of you.”

  “No, it’s rather selfish, if you must know the truth. Even with the exercise boys, the animals do not get the amount of work they need. And Klaus only has time to ride at night. I’d like to get to know you better.”

  “That would be nice. I think I’d enjoy that.”

  “I’ll leave you to your work. It’s nice to meet you, Edwina.”

  “Nice to meet you, too, Karen.”

  “My brother is not an easy man. However, he’s well worth the effort. He can be quite charming when he sets his mind to it.”

  “I had noticed that. He can also be quite intimidating. Of course, it would never do to let him know just how intimidating he appears.”

  “An understatement of purely British proportions. He has a big enough head as it is,” Karen agreed, still speaking German. “He’s just so perfect at everything he puts his hand to. I’ve always been envious of him. Everything has always seemed to come so easy for him. It wasn’t until the last few years I’ve understood just how hard he works and how seriously he takes his obligations.”

  “Whether those obligations are real or imagined,” Edwina added quietly.

  Klaus’ sister laughed boldly. Then she spoke in English, “I like you, Edwina. It will be good to have you for a sister-in-law.”

  “Don’t rush me.”

  Karen’s eyes sparkled with humor. “Oh, I’d imagine that my brother is doing a good enough job of that all by himself. Has he proposed yet?”

  “Is that a common practice with him?”

  Karen laughed. “Of course not. I’ve never known him to let any woman get under his skin the way that he has with you. He’s utterly besotted.”

  “Don’t tell him, but I think it’s very mutual.”

  “Yes. You will be very good for him.”

  “It’s a wise sister who knows her brother.”

  Karen just smiled. “I’ll let you get to work now.”

  Jennifer looked at Edwina after Karen walked away. “I didn’t know that you were seeing the guy who lives here.”

  “No reason that you should have known.”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  “I’m not quite certain. Probably.”

  “Is he as filthy rich as this place would indicate?”

  “I really wouldn’t know. Money hasn’t been a serious discussion with us. Now can we get back to work?”

  “You know that we’re on candid camera?” Jennifer asked. “Security cameras have been monitoring us from the moment that we stepped foot on the place.”

  “I am aware of that,” Edwina replied. “But we still have work to do. So let’s get to it, Jen. Okay? The sooner we get done the sooner we can get back to the shop and get the plans drawn. I pretty well know what is going in here but I need measurements and soil samples to be sure.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “No,” Edwina said as she nodded towards the house, “he’s the boss. We both just work for him.”

  When Edwina was nearly done with the measurements, Klaus’ butler, Kaufman, came out to speak to her. “Herr Baron von Bruner would like to speak with you, Fraulein Doctor.”

  “You go back to the nursery Jen. I’ll get back to town later.”

  Jennifer smiled at her friend. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Fraulein Doctor?”

  “Ja, Kaufman. I am coming.”

  Chapter Nine

  Edwina hadn’t wanted to face the fact that her dreams had revealed this house with such accuracy. She knew the full layout of the building.

  “Fraulein,” Kaufman said quietly. “Herr Baron is in his office. If you would walk this way.”

  “I know the way, Kaufman, thank you. You may return to your regular duties.”

  Kaufman looked at her in disbelief. “Fraulein?”

  She smiled and gave him directions to Klaus’ office. “I do know where I am going Kaufman. You may return to your regular duties.”

  Edwina made her way to his office without assistance. Klaus was watching on the monitors. She didn’t bother knocking. She simply walked in, closed the door behind her, and sat down.

  “You summoned me?”

  Klaus smiled at her. “I asked you to come see me.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “What do you think about the garden?”

  “I feel guilty taking your money. This is going to be fun.”

  Klaus rose from his desk and walked over to her. He pulled her to her feet and into his arms. “Surely you didn’t think I asked you here for the sake of talking business?”

  “Whatever else I am, I am not naïve, Klaus.”

  “You are in a strange mood, Edwina.”

  “It’s been a strange morning so far.”

  “In what way, Edwina?”

  “What? Your watchdogs didn’t tell you?” she demanded with a hint of bitterness in her voice. She heard that attitude in her voice and was ashamed. Klaus had shown her nothing but kindness and gentleness, along with the passion of his soul. He didn’t deserve her taking her bad mood out on him.

  “The bodyguards are there to protect you not to report to me about your comings and goings. What do you think I should have known?”

  Edwina sighed. “Jim, my paint store tenant, left a threatening message on my machine this morning.”

  “What kind of threat?”

  “He says that he will burn the building.”

  “That man needs serious help.”

  “I’m swearing out a complaint to get him taken in for a psychiatric evaluation.”

  “That sounds prudent.”

  “Yeah that’s me, Miss Prudence,” Edwina said dryly.

  Klaus looked at her questioningly. “Prudence is often a good thing.”

  “It’s a safe thing. Whether it’s good or not depends on the risks one foregoes and on one’s comfort level for midnight regrets for sins of omission. Of course I don’t believe them to be any worse than regrets for sins of commission.”

  “Edwina?” Klaus asked carefully. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “Just be quiet and hold me, Klaus. I need the comfort of your arms.”

  “My arms are yours whenever you want them.”

  “I’ve never been comfortable leaning on others,” she said quietly. “I could become too dependent on you Klaus.”

  “A woman can never be too dependent on a man who loves her.”

  One corner of Edwina’s mouth twitched upwards in a parody of a smile. “And when that love dies?”

  “My love for you will never die. Don’t worry about that.”

  “How can you be so certain Klaus? I know very few people who have managed to have happy marriages.”

  “We will. We both take the idea of marriage seriously.”

  “I wish I could be that confident.”

  “Anytime you want to walk away from me, just say the word, Edwina. I will not force my presence on you.”

  “I’ve got to get back to town shortly. The shop won’t open without me there. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rather be here with you, Klaus.”

  “I know. I’d love to take you upstairs to my bedroom and keep you there the rest of the day, tomorrow, the rest of the week, as long as I could get by with keeping you here until people came looking for you. Yet we both have obligations. I’ve got a teleconference in just under an hour and I’ll be tied up most of the rest of the
day with other conferences.”

  “Sometimes I’d love to be able to just play hooky.”

  “Play hooky?”

  “That’s an Americanism, Klaus. It means to leave one’s obligations untended in favor of going off to do other more pleasurable things.”

  “What would give you pleasure?”

  Edwina smiled at him. “I can think of a number of things.”

  “Can you? My list may be longer than yours.”

  “Maybe. Mine begins by taking your clothes off of you and spending the rest of the day in your bed making love,” Edwina offered.

  “Hmmm… Well, our lists are similar in that respect.”

  “I suppose I had better be leaving you. You probably have a good deal of work to do.”

  “Don’t go yet. There are some things I need to show to you.”

  “Then show them to me. I sent Jen back alone. So I’m at your mercy. Can you free Schmidt or someone to drive me back to town?”

  “I’m sure Hans is out there. He’ll drive you back to town. If he’s not there I’ll free Schmidt to drive you.”

  “I could phone for a taxi.”

  “Nonsense. Can you spare about a half hour?”

  She looked at her watch. “Not much more than that.”

  “Come with me. There are things I want you to see while you are here.”

  Klaus led her to his personal lab. He opened a file cabinet and removed a large envelope. Out of the envelope, he brought five DNA test strips. He hung those on the glass and turned on the light behind the glass so that she could easily read them.

  Edwina looked at the strips for a long time. “I’ve never seen anything like it. What species is this describing?”

  “Liebling, that’s my DNA.”

  She looked at him, then at the strips, then back at him. “It can’t be. There’s only a four percent change in the DNA from ape to man,” she said pointedly. “There has to be at least a ten percent differential between this and normal human DNA.”

  Klaus nodded. “There is eleven percent. And it is my DNA.”

  She turned her eyes back to the strips, trying hard to keep this in perspective. “You are certain that the tests were done correctly?”

  “They were done correctly. I’ve had the tests run every year for thirty years, Edwina. The results are always the same. The technology has improved. But the results remain consistent. What you have up there are the last five years’ tests.”

  “Well this,” she said pointing at an area of the strip with a laser pointer she picked up, “is not entirely unexpected. Neither is this. This area is another matter, entirely. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “I don’t imagine that you have. There are only two rare medical conditions we’ve been able to identify that have similar DNA.”

  “Yours and what other?”

  “Lycanthropy,” he said quietly.

  Her head jerked around suddenly to look at him. “What did you say?” she demanded harshly.

  “You heard me quite well, Edwina.”

  “Lycanthropy is a rare mental illness characterized by delusions of transformations into wolves or other dangerous animals, acute anxiety, obsession with cemeteries and forests, preoccupation with religious phenomenology—particularly with a sense of being cursed, and an expression of sexual and aggressive urges centering on bestiality. It often correlates with profound schizophrenia,” Edwina replied, her voice more sharp than she had intended. “People who believe they are were-animals are insane. No one can become a wolf. Life just doesn’t work that way.”

  Klaus smiled then quoted from Shakespeare, “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’“

  “And what has Hamlet to do with this discussion?”

  “Watch, carefully, my beloved, learn without fear. Know that I would never, in any form, harm you or allow any harm to come to you. Above everything trust me, Edwina, I beg of you.”

  He stepped back from her several paces.

  Edwina watched in growing horror as Klaus morphed into a large wolf. She wanted to scream, but the sound would not come from her throat. His clothes were loosely around the form of the wolf. The wolf walked to her, as he did, he walked out of Klaus’ clothes leaving them lay on the floor behind him.

  Then the wolf stuck his nose under her skirt and began to lick her knees. His licks went higher up her leg until he was nuzzling and licking at her panties. She stepped backwards into the wall. The animal followed her.

  The wolf stood on its hind legs and placed its front paws on her shoulders. It began to lick her face and neck.

  Edwina forced herself to take a deep breath. This was Klaus. As hard as that was to believe, this was Klaus. This fur-covered mass of muscle laving her face was the man she loved. It didn’t make sense, but she couldn’t deny the evidence of her own eyes. This utterly boggled her mind. This was completely beyond everything that she knew. There were only two options. She could go into denial—fight the evidence of her own senses—or she could deal with this. He’d asked her to trust him. She let out that deep breath in a slow stream and imagined the stress and tension leaving her body as she exhaled.

  Then she started to laugh because Klaus’ wolf-tongue tickled as it danced across the sensitive skin of her throat. Lifting her hand, she began to rub the wolf behind his ears. “Okay, that’s enough already. I took a bath this morning. I don’t need another,” she teased. “You make a gorgeous wolf, but you are a more handsome man. You want to come back to me now?”

  Just as suddenly as the wolf had appeared, the wolf was gone. A naked Klaus stood before her. “Oh no, it’s not enough, Edwina. It has barely begun. You scratched behind my ears and now I’ll follow you anywhere,” he said with a teasing glint in his eye.

  “The only place I want you to follow me is into ecstasy.”

  “Liebling, that can be easily arranged.”

  “There’s not time this morning.”

  “There’s always time,” he countered as just before he kissed her hard. His hands went beneath her skirt and tugged down her panties. They fell to her ankles. “Haven’t we had this conversation before? Time is nearly irrelevant.”

  She stepped out of her panties. “I can almost believe that.”

  “‘Come live with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove,’“ he said, quoting Christopher Marlowe’s poem, as he lifted her skirt and kneed her legs apart.

  “‘Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds,’“ she answered with a line from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets as she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tightly.

  His hands went to her thighs and lifted her legs up around his hips. Without another word, he drove his hard length into her.

  She moaned raggedly as he stretched and filled her. There was only time to feel, not to think. Sensations overwhelmed her. Very shortly, she found herself on the brink of release. What was it with this man that he could give her so much satisfaction?

  Edwina cried out a few moments later as she climaxed and the world around her went dark.

  When she came back to herself, she was sitting on Klaus’ lap, on the floor of his lab. He was still naked.

  “I take it you found pleasure?” he teased her.

  She kissed his cheek. “You know I did. Did you?”

  “Frau ! I could never fail to take pleasure in you.”

  “Get dressed,” she said as she stood. “We need to talk.” She reached down and pulled on her panties.

  He nodded. Then he morphed into a mass of vapor which floated over to the empty clothes on the floor. The garments filled up, and then Klaus was back. He rose to his feet.

  She looked at him for a long moment. Then she swallowed hard, “That was…er…some trick… Klaus. “

  He nodded. “I know that this all must be difficult for you to accept. You are doing much better with it than I had expected you to.”

  She looked back at the DNA strip because
she didn’t feel able to look at him. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m still not sure I believe it, although I have seen it.”

  “Believe it. I find that it is advisable to shift into forms that are about the same mass and density. But other forms—like that wolf and the cloud I just did—are quite possible. They’re just much more difficult.”

  “But in spite of the fact that you morphed into a wolf, lycanthropy is not your condition. You said that there were two conditions with the same DNA pattern—your condition and lycanthropy,” she said thinking aloud, her voice shaking.

  “That is correct. I am not a lycanthrope.”

  She looked back at the DNA strip. She sighed heavily as she tried to absorb this revelation and sort out what it means. “Yes. Perhaps that would fit what I’m seeing here. And this area here,” she said pointing at another spot on the DNA report. “This is beyond merely interesting.”

  “I thought you’d see that.”

  “Just how old are you, Klaus?”

  He sighed. “I brought you here to see this. I thought you ought to know the full truth about the man you are considering marrying.”

  “How old are you, Klaus?” she demanded once more.

  “The man you see before you was born forty-one years ago.”

  “That isn’t what I asked,” Edwina replied sharply. “How old are you, not the form you appear to have, you?”

  Klaus sighed. Then he spoke with patience and pride mingling in his voice, “Very good, Edwina. You do think outside conventions extremely effectively. I hoped that you would see this and understand. Ways of reckoning time, and the importance of doing so, have changed substantially over the course of my life to date, making an accurate number for my age difficult to determine. I am one thousand, six hundred, and twenty-seven years old, Edwina, at least that’s the best approximate reckoning of my age that I’ve been able to make.”

  She sat down on a nearby stool and looked at him as she tried to think this out. “One thousand…” she echoed on a disbelieving breath. “How in the…” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Your sisters, are they…?”

  “The girls are normal humans. I took this form when Klaus was a toddler just as I’ve taken the forms of other young men in my family over the centuries in order to continue living among people. My sisters don’t know this part of it. They are my people. We are just more distantly related than they believe. I adopted them as sisters when they were born. In every way that counts they are my sisters. And I love them dearly.”