by Rebecca York
“I was hoping he would join my household.”
“As what?” Caleb asked, wondering if he was being offeredsome kind of charity.
“I’m trying to modernize our world. And you were able to repair that clock. As I told you, we have lots of equipment we don’t know how to run. If you could get some of it workingand maintain it for me, that would be of great help. Have you worked with steam engines?”
“Only for fun,” Caleb answered, feeling his throat clog. “I made myself a steam-driven motorcycle when I was a teenager.”
“Fantastic. We have an old steam car that I’d like to get operational. I hope you’ll bring us your talent for fixing things.”
Caleb swallowed and gestured toward Megan. “Dr. Marshalloffered me a treatment that might restore my ability to change to wolf form. If I went to your world, could I come back here for treatment?”
“Of course.”
“What do you want to do?” he asked Quinn.
Her eyes met his. “I want to be with you. Whichever place you choose.”
His chest tightened as he stared at her. He wanted that, too. “Yes,” he managed to say.
“You’re going to leave the portal open?” Rinna asked.
“Yes. But we’ll keep it hidden,” Griffin answered, then looked around at the modern conveniences. “I’d love to take some equipment from this world, but I think that would be a mistake. If people start wondering where we got it, there might be too much temptation to traffic back and forth.”
“Yes,” Ross agreed.
“But I was thinking that if we could find some old books on manufacturing processes, we could get some small factoriesgoing.” He looked at Caleb. “And maybe we can set you up as an inventor. You might come up with some actual inventions.But you could also duplicate what other men have done in this world . . . well, at a more primitive level.”
“Men and women,” Rinna said.
“Pardon.” He grinned at her. “Men and women.”
“Good ideas,” Ross answered. “If he sells the equipment in your world, he can get rich.”
Caleb’s mind was spinning. He hadn’t counted on anythinglike that. But he could see the possibilities. Maybe starting with telegraph or radio. A reliable means of communicationover long distances was something the other universecould use. And something faster than horses for travel. In this world that had been the railroad.
But that required a large industrial base. Maybe steam cars and trucks would be more practical in Quinn’s world.
Griffin looked at Zarah. “If you are well enough, I’d like to take you back now.”
“Yes,” she breathed. “I’ve longed to be with you.”
He turned to Caleb. “And if you wanted to come with us, I’ve taken the liberty of setting aside rooms for you.”
“They’ve had a lot to deal with,” Zarah said. “Not just them—the whole family. They just stopped a madman from setting off a deadly bomb in the capital city. It might have made the cable news channels by now.”
She picked up the remote from the coffee table and pointed it at the television.
Griffin jumped when the picture came on.
A reporter on CNN was excitedly describing a plot to blow up the U.S. Capitol. Then the picture switched to Flagstaff Farm, where they saw the blackened wreck of the van—and then a picture of the crate that held the bomb.
Rinna sucked in a sharp breath and looked at her husband.“That’s what you were doing?”
“Yeah. We got the bomb out of the van before it blew up and spewed radiation all over us.”
“Radiation. I assume that’s bad,” Griffin said.
“Very bad,” Ross answered. “You can’t taste it or feel it or smell it, but it will kill you—either quickly or slowly, dependingon how close you are to the source, and how much you absorb.”
Caleb saw Quinn shudder.
Griffin gestured to the television set. “How do they do that?”
Ross laughed. “Nobody here has the technical knowledge to explain how it works. But we watch it. Sometimes it’s an advantage to know what’s going on all over the world. And sometimes it’s too much information.” He picked up the remotethat Zarah had put down and switched to several other stations.
“From all over the world?” Griffin asked.
“Most of it’s recorded. But a few programs, like that newscast are live. I mean it’s happening right now.”
He handed Griffin the remote, and while he ran through the channels, Zarah went to get her things.
She was back quickly, with a small rolling suitcase. “One thing I’m going to hate is the maternity clothes back home. What they have here is a lot more comfortable.”
“Maybe you can start a new fashion,” her husband said.
“If I don’t scandalize half the city.”
She thanked Logan and Rinna profusely.
Griffin pulled a pouch of antique coins and jewelry from his carry bag. “I hope you’ll take this in payment for letting Zarah stay here.”
“There’s no need to pay us.”
“I want to. Don’t deprive me of that pleasure.”
Logan nodded.
“So I will expect you in a few days?” Griffin asked Caleb.
He looked at Quinn. When she nodded, he answered, “Yes.”
After they had said their good-byes, Caleb took Quinn out into the woods. To a secluded glen he remembered from when he’d been a ghost.
That seemed like a thousand years ago. The memories of a different man. And in reality, that was actually true. He had been very different. More primitive in his thinking and focusedon the wrong thing.
When he turned to face Quinn, he could see she was nervous.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Are you getting ready to say good-bye?” she asked.
“Lord no! How could you think that?”
“I . . .” She didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence, becausehe swept her into his arms and covered her mouth with his for a long, greedy kiss.
When he lifted his head, they stared into each other’s eyes.
“I love you. I want to spend my life with you,” he told her, his voice strong and sure.
She clasped her arms around his back, holding on tightly. “Even if that treatment Megan talked about doesn’t work?”
“Even if it doesn’t.”
“You were so . . . upset when you found out you couldn’t change.”
“Yes.” He heaved a deep sigh. “All I could think of was what I’d lost. I still hadn’t realized what a precious gift I’d been given.” He swallowed hard. “Two gifts—actually. My life and you.”
“Oh, Caleb.”
“You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Yes. I feel that way, too.”
He hitched in a breath. “Our children. They won’t be Caleb Marshall’s.”
“They will be—if you’re a good father to them.”
“I will be. Better than my father ever was to me. Ross and the others have shown me what family can mean to each other. I never thought it was possible for werewolves to . . . help each other. Too bad Aden couldn’t have seen it.”
“You forgive him?”
“Yes. Because he made it possible for me to find you. Maybe that was why I hung around for all that time.”
“Or maybe to save the world.” She brought her mouth back to his for a long, deep kiss. And as he kissed her, he rolled up her T-shirt, unsnapped her jeans, and lowered the zipper.
She wasn’t wearing a bra. And with a glad exclamation, he lowered his head to her breasts, pressing his cheeks against the inner curves, then claiming first one distended nipple and then the other with his mouth. At the same time, he slipped his hand into the pants he’d opened and found her pussy. She was slick and swollen for him.
“You’re working pretty fast,” she panted.
“Yeah. Because I’m going to explode if I don’t get inside you. Open these damn jeans for me.”
She
did as he asked, pulled them down his hips and freed him from his undershorts. Because his pants still trapped his legs, he pulled her down on top of him.
She quickly shucked out of her own jeans, then straddled his body and brought his cock inside her. They both exclaimedat the joy of their joining. And when she squeezed her inner muscles around him, he clasped her hips.
“What?”
“Hold still for a minute.”
She took a breath and did as he asked.
“I love you. I was crazy to think I could give you up. I want to tell you that now.”
“Oh, Caleb.” Her eyes turned misty. “I love you so much.”
He held her still for as long as he could stand it—another few seconds. Then he slid his hand to her clit and she began to move with quick, jerky motions.
They both came in a firestorm of release. And when she collapsed on top of him, he held her tightly.
“I have so much,” he whispered. “More than I ever dreamed possible.”
“Yes,” she answered. “That’s true for me. I never imaginedbeing this happy. Not in my most vivid dreams.”
He held her to him, knowing how lucky he was. And knowing that whatever happened in the future, he would have this woman at his side.
Turn the page for a special preview
of the next book in the series,
ETERNAL MOON
BY REBECCA YORK
Available soon from Berkley Sensation!
“YOU ARE NOT crazy.” Renata Cordona said the words aloud to the empty house because she needed to hear them. In the next second, she wanted to smack herself for being such a wuss.
She might be nervous about this assignment. But she’d been trained by the best PI in the business. She was armed with a Glock Model 28, designed for concealed carrying and with less recoil than the bigger models. And she was an excellentshot.
Still, as she stood without moving, listening to the sound of the wind blowing the branches of the trees outside the window, she couldn’t stop a shiver from traveling down her spine.
She heard the wind like that sometimes when she woke up and found herself barefoot in the backyard of her rented Ellicott City, Maryland, house. Or in the living room, surroundedby natural objects she didn’t remember gathering.
She’d been sleepwalking.
But sleepwalking wasn’t crazy!
“Stop it!” she ordered herself. “You’re not going to sleep now. It only happens after you’ve gone to bed for the night.”
But why was it happening at all?
She didn’t know. And she wouldn’t discuss it with her boss, Barry Caldwell. Or the police liaison detective, Greg Newcastle, of the Howard County, Maryland, PD.
Newcastle was already acting like a pain in the ass, and she wasn’t going to give him a valid reason to pull her off this assignment.
It was too important to let her own doubts stop her.
Three women agents, who all worked for Star Realty, had been murdered in the past nine months while showing houses to clients. And Renata was going to make sure it didn’t happen again—to her or to anyone else.
She walked to the front of the house and looked out the window. But she saw no cars coming up the long driveway that led to the wooded property she was supposed to be showingto a man named . . . She pulled out the slip of paper again.
Kurt Langana. He’d contacted Star Realty a few days ago, asking to see properties with several acres of land around them. Because that fit the MO of the murderer, Dick Trainer, the owner of the company, had given her the job— with the proviso that if she actually did end up selling anything,the money would come to him.
Which was fine with her. She wasn’t doing this for money. She hadn’t gone to work for Barry for money. Her parents had left her enough so that she could sit back and collect interest and dividend checks for the rest of her life.
She was just determined to make a difference.
So here she was, in an empty house, dressed in a baby blue pantsuit and open-toed high heels, waiting for a man who might be a killer.
She ran a hand through her long hair, then flipped it back over her shoulder. Her nerves were too on edge for her to stand there in the living room like Andromeda chained to a rock, waiting for the sea monster to come and get her.
She wasn’t sure why her mind had leaped to that image. But even as a child back in Costa Rica, she’d been fascinated by mythology and read and reread a lot of the old stories— from many different cultures. Today the Andromeda story was a dark vision, and she needed the sunlight.
So she stepped out the front door into the spring afternoonand looked up at the sunshine filtering through the leaves of the towering oaks and poplars that someone had planted sixty or seventy years ago.
With narrowed eyes, she checked her watch again. Where was the guy? Lost?
Well, he had her cell phone number if he needed directions.
Striding down the driveway past the house, she walked toward the detached garage. It was a little far from the house to be convenient, and she realized that she should have checked it out in case Mr. Langana turned out to be a legitimatecustomer.
That thought made her firm her lips. She was focusing on the murder part of this assignment and forgetting that she also had to play a convincing real estate agent, one who would obviously have paid more attention to the house.
Let’s see. She’d taken a good look at the kitchen. It had been updated, but maybe not recently enough to go with the $800,000 asking price for the property.
She was almost to the garage when movement in the woods made her stop. With a jolt, she turned. Had she and the police totally misread the killer’s method of stalking his victims? Was he coming on foot to isolated locations where female agents were showing houses?
All that ran through her mind in a split second. Then she saw it wasn’t a man at all, but a dog. A Rottweiler, she guessed.
He looked large and dangerous, and her blood ran cold when she realized he wasn’t alone.
Behind him, five more dogs stepped out of the underbrush.They were all about his size. One looked like a Shepherdmix. Another was a Doberman. And the remaining two appeared to have at least half pit bull genes.
But what they mostly had in common was the threatening look in their eyes.
Did they belong to someone? Or were they a feral pack? Peering at them more closely, she saw that none of them appearedto be wearing collars—which wasn’t reassuring.
Bent on getting out of their way, she took two quick steps to the side door of the garage and twisted the knob. Unfortunatelyit was locked, and she realized that the key was lying on the counter in the kitchen, along with the key to the house.
The Rottweiler, who appeared to be the leader of the pack, started barking. The others followed suit.
Then they broke off as quickly as they had started.
Somehow, that abrupt silence was more threatening than the previous noise.
The leader bared its teeth and snarled at her. The others did the same.
They were maybe sixty feet away, but she could clearly hear them growling.
Instinctively, she knew they were out for blood, and that she was no match for them.
She drew the gun hidden in a holster below her suit jacket at the small of her back. She’d never shot a dog in her life, and the idea of doing it now made her sick. But that might be her only chance to get out of there alive.
Would a warning shot scare them away—or send them charging toward her?
Her mind scrambled for what she remembered about canines.You weren’t supposed to challenge a dangerous dog by looking him in the eye. And you weren’t supposed to show fear.
Yeah, right.
Should she try to run back to the house? Or should she walk? And should she turn her back?
No, that had to be a mistake. Then she wouldn’t know what they were doing.
She took a step back and then another, keeping her gaze slightly to the side of the pack.
> But she saw the leader raise his head as the snapping and snarling become more furious.
And she knew in that moment that they were going to charge her.
Just before the leader could charge, another dog came dashing out of the woods. A bigger dog with gray fur. Her gaze took in the details. The pointed ears. The long, upturned tail. The dark gray fur along his back and flanks that graduallylightened as it reached his lower body and legs.
Was he a dog . . . or a wolf?
She did a fast recalculation. A wolf in the Maryland woods?
Was that possible? Still, she’d heard of coyotes returning to this area. So why not a wolf?
Whatever he was, she saw how the others reacted to him.
Moments ago they’d looked like they’d been ready to tear her to pieces. They were still agitated, but in a different way. Somehow the newcomer had changed the equation. It looked like he had taken over the position of alpha male in the pack within seconds of his arrival.
He faced the others squarely, his chest forward, his teeth bared, his tail puffed and standing straight out. Then he turned so that he was squarely between her and the feral animals,growling a warning.
In that moment she sensed that he had told them she was his property, and he would tear any dog apart who dared to get near her.
All of the other dogs had changed their stance. Their tails and heads were down.
When the newcomer took a step forward, the other dogs backed up. The former leader of the pack whined and kept moving backward.
The new dog kept advancing, challenging all of them at once, continuing with his calm aggression.
As if someone had flipped a switch, the former leader turned tail and ran. And the others followed his lead.
Her rescuer stood watching them disappear into the woods. His stance was still aggressive, but she saw a slight relaxation in his posture. He was probably pretty sure that he’d chased them away, but he was still waiting to be certain they didn’t come back. Long seconds ticked by. Then a minute. Then another. Finally he turned and gazed at her.
She’d only seen him from the back and the side. Now she caught her breath as she took in the handsome features—his light gray facial fur contrasting with his dark nose, and intelligentblue eyes, rimmed with dark margins.