Luke (Bear Shifter) (New World Shifters) (20 page)

“Before we really start though,” I said hesitantly, “let’s just make sure you and I are on the same page.” I was nervous. “I wasn't used to having to teach him anything. It was completely opposite our normal dynamic, but it had to be done. “What do you dream about?”

“You,” he told me, his big hand gently coming down to touch my shoulder before drifting over to cup my cheek in the hollow of his palm.

If I’d ever really wondered if you could blush in a dream, that question was quickly answered as I felt myself flush bright red. Even if he didn't see it, and I don't know how he could miss it, there was no way he couldn't have felt the burn in my cheeks. “Other than me.”

Darius shrugged. “I don't know,” he admitted. It sounded like he’d never really thought about it before. “Just you, maybe?”

I rolled my eyes. “That's touching and all. Really romantic, but incredibly difficult for me to believe. You’re a red-blooded male. Whether or not you can turn into a Bear, I’d expect you to dream of a few things other than me. Other women, for a start. And before you answer, remember that they’re dreams Darius, I won’t get jealous.”

He frowned, as he clearly racked his brain for some memory of what I was searching for. I already knew in my heart that Darius was as honest as the day was long. He was no fool, but he saw no place for deception or dishonesty. If he told me it didn't happen, it was because it didn't happen. “Sorry,” he said. “If I dream of anything else, I don’t remember it.”

“That's fine. How about places, then? When you drift off to sleep, do you find your dreams often returning to the same place again and again?”

“No. Not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“It's strange. Hard to describe… I suppose that I do dream of places, but I’m never
me
when I do. When I’m a man, I’m always with you. Even if we’re only thinking about each other in the warm and quiet of the cave, whenever you're near me I walk on two legs and I think like a man. The Bear goes away.”

“You mean, like back inside you or something?”

He shook his head forcefully, and even then his close trimmed hair barely moved. “Not exactly.”

“You mean the Bear isn’t a part of you when I’m around?”

He nodded. “It's like I send him away. Except not really. Maybe it's more like he leaves of his own accord.”

I swallowed hard and bit my lip before asking the inevitable question. “Darius, are you trying to say your Bear doesn't like me?”

“No. It's not like that. I think it just… I think it just would prefer to give us time together. Three's a crowd, you know? So I think it goes away when you're there. To give me space.”

“And when I'm not there, those are the times when you're dreaming but you're not really you. Not completely. Is that right?”

“That's when I'm the Bear,” he agreed. “I’m just a passenger in the dream. A spectator.”

“That's good for us,” I said. “So long as you can remember what you were spectating.”

He grinned. “I know the places he goes, if that’s what you mean. There aren’t many, but they’re well hidden. If he's hiding, or trying to get away, there's only a few spots that he'd think safe enough. If you want to track him down, we can find him.”

“Good. That's where we'll start.”

Darius looked out the window into the moonlight. “The places he goes are far away. It's dark. The Wolves could attack. Anything could happen to us out there in the night.”

“You’re thinking like a human,” I told him. “And one who isn’t very good at controlling their dreams. We aren’t heading out on foot, not really. We'll find him, and when we do we'll see if we can put the two of you back together again.”

“As easy as that, huh?”

I shrugged. “I guess we won't know until we try.”

“I want you to tell me about one of the places you think the Bear will be.”

There was a pause as Darius thought for a moment, and then the words spilled out of him. “There’s a stretch of beach beside a lake. There isn't any sand on the shore, only millions of well-rounded rocks that had been pushed here by the river over the centuries. In the shallows, when the light is right, you can look down through the water and see tiny pockets of gold. I don't think the prospectors ever came through here. The whole place feels untouched by man, and that was one of the many things that attracted the Bear and I to it. The forest ends a few hundred yards away from the lake so it's hard to get snuck up on. The sun is warm and it isn't far to a spawning ground of salmon.”

“It sounds gorgeous.”

Darius nodded. “It is. Absolutely beautiful. Whenever I go there all I can think of is showing it to you, but the Bear growls at me for that.”

“Because I'm human?”

“I think so. It's just such a wild place. I don't think it's anything personal, but you have to understand that it's just trying to protect what wild still remains in the world.”

I nodded. I wasn't about to take offense at that, not at all. Just from the few sentences he told me about the spot, I would've felt like I was walking around someone's house in muddy shoes if I dared to intrude on it.

“Let's leave that place for later,” I said softly. “Tell me about another.”

I couldn't help but notice that Darius seemed relieved when I asked for a second spot. He obviously was worried about the repercussions if he took me there and found his Bear after all.

“Take your time,” I said.

“There's a field not far from the cave where I grew up. It isn’t really very big, but when my brothers and I were cubs it felt like that thing stretched on to every horizon and beyond. The grass grew to our shoulders, which isn't saying much about it now but it sure felt like a jungle back then. There was always some type of wildflower blooming, and I'd be damned if you could always hear the buzzing of the bees. The wind made songs through that grass, Grace. It's hard to explain, but I don't think I've ever felt safer than in that meadow.”

“Let's go there.”

“How?” he asked. “I'm sure I can work out where we are for the stars, but we could be hundreds of miles from there. Maybe more. I have no idea where this cabin is, remember?

I shook my head. “We’re not going to walk there. It’s a dream. We’re just going to arrive there.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. Listen, just hear me out. When was the last time you needed to go from one place to another in a dream and you got shown the journey? I'd be willing to bet it didn't happen, not unless something exciting happened to you along the way.”

He nodded. “You’re the expert.”

I reached out and took his hands, then went one better and pressed my face softly against his broad chest so that I could listen to the steady thrum of his powerful heart. “Think of that place again, only this time think about being there with me. Think about the things you want to see. Think about what time of day it is, the angle of the light, the warmth of the sun.”

I felt his muscles tense as he concentrated on the meadow, and I closed my eyes tightly and pressed myself against him as he wrapped his massive arms around my frame and pulled me close. It was easy to feel safe with Darius. His presence was like a light in my life, and no sooner had that thought crossed my mind that I felt the sun against the side of my face. The wind really was like a song in the grass, lilting just above the steady droning of the bees.

We were there.

“He isn’t here,” Darius told me with unshakable certainty.

I wasn't about to argue with him. Yes, I may be better at manipulating my dreams than him, but I had a pretty good feeling that if one of the two of us was going to know if the Bear was around, it was going to be Darius for sure.

Even so, I couldn't stop myself from looking. The meadow that we found ourselves in was breathtaking. I was sure we were still in Alaska, but it was warm and the sun shone brightly upon our bodies. He'd been right about the wildflowers as well. Everywhere I looked I saw little purple blossoms scattered about between green grass and the yellow petals of something that looked like daisies. A gentle army of busy bees drifted from one flower to the next, their wings occasionally catching the light and throwing up sparkles into the air.

It was too good to be true, but that didn't bother me. After all, that's what dreams are, right? They’re idealized visions of the past, and ones like this one, a cherished memory that had been played over and over and over again, often took on a brilliance that real-life could never live up to.

I certainly didn't see the Bear in the clearing. The tree line was some ways off, and I was fairly certain that the grizzly wouldn't sneak up on us without Darius or myself realizing it.

“It seems a special place,” I said to Darius. “I can see why you’re so certain that your childhood dreams live here.”

He frowned. He hadn't used those words, and I could see that me putting them in his mouth was more than a little disconcerting. He didn't argue with me though. How could he? It was obvious that we were standing in one of the happiest places he’d ever been, and I was touched that he’d taken me here.

“What we do now?” He asked. “Zip off to the next place?”

I shook my head. “It doesn't work like that. At least, it never has for me. We’re here because we’re meant to be here. Bouncing around from one memory to the next isn't going to get us anywhere.”

“What you mean?” Darius asked me, the frustration rife in his voice. “You told me if we came here we might find him. Well, we haven't. He isn’t here, which means it’s time to move on.”

“I don't think so. Something is meant to happen here, or our dreams would have just skipped it. Think about it, Darius. Have you ever lost something in your dream? Your keys, or-”

“I live in a cave,” he grunted, cutting me off with a grin. “We don't have keys.”

“All right then,” I sighed. “Something else then. Your favorite rock. Imagine you're dreaming that you lost your favorite rock. You might look thirty or forty places in your dream, but your brain doesn't make those pictures for you because it's boring. Dreams aren’t boring. They might not make sense to you at the time, but they aren’t nonsense.”

Darius shaded his eyes and scanned the field again, clearly not finding what he was looking for. “So you're saying something happens here?”

I nodded.

“Something to bring the Bear?”

“Ideally,” I said. “I mean, that would sure make our lives easier, wouldn't it?”

“Let's find out,” he said, his voice a low growl as it rumbled with need. He stepped to me and swept me up, and I felt his hands slide up my bare back underneath my shirt and unhook my bra.

It was one of those times when everything moved in slow motion, which gave me plenty of opportunity for my mind to race. In the long moment before his lips touched mine, it seemed like a million thoughts were racing through my head. And not all of them made a whole lot of sense. Some of them were louder than others, but that didn't make them any more valuable to me.

Had I been wearing a bra? Of course not. There was no way my mind would've bothered to fill that detail in, at least not until it was necessary. But it was sexier if I was, because it gave Darius’s thick fingers something to be nimble and agile with as he undid it.

But did he really want me as badly as I wanted him, or was the dream pushing us together?

He answered that last one for me, at least, as his mouth covered mine and I craned my neck up at him, the height difference making me feel small next to his bulk. Our tongues met with silken suddenness, and I moaned into his open mouth as the strength of him lifted me up on my tiptoes and made me arch my back at the same time.

When I finally pulled away a little to come up for air, he broke the kiss and pulled me closer, until his mouth was at the shell of my ear. “The Bear doesn't always like you.”

“Really?” I was too on fire to concentrate fully, but I knew I should probably be offended. “How come?”

“He doesn't like anyone who hasn't proven themselves. You and I may have been rendezvousing in one another’s dreams for years, but I don't know if that counts for much in the real world. At least not to him.”

“What about to you?”

“To me…” He paused, and then whispered, “to me I live to make it to you in my dreams. The days don't hold the joys that the nights do, which may be one more reason my Bear doesn't like you. You’re turning me into some nocturnal creature, and the Bear isn’t impressed. If you keep making me hunt at night like this, you're liable to turn me into a damn Wolf.”

I peeled his shirt up over his head, exposing his rock hard abs and the slab of muscles that made up his chest. I wanted to lick him, to bite him, to feel the tautness of his skin between my teeth. His muscles beneath my hands rippled and flexed, and I couldn’t bring myself to let go of him. Even when I repositioned my hands, I slid my palms along his body instead of pulling them away.

But mostly, I wanted to look at him. I wanted to memorize every angle, to drink in every line of his form.

Darius undid his belt buckle and pushed his jeans down just past the cut of the muscles that defined his hips. I sucked in my bottom lip as I stared at the growing bulge outlined between his legs.

“Is that for me?” I asked, surprising myself by the coy, sexy husk in my voice.

“It is.” He hooked his thumbs into his waistband, catching the material of his boxers and the jeans at the same time. Slowly, making sure I was watching every movement, he slid his clothes off and lay down on his back in the grass. His cock lay, thick and ready, on his muscled stomach.

I didn’t need any more of an invitation than that. I was wearing a flirty little sundress, and I wasn’t at all surprised to find that I wasn’t wearing any panties.

Even though I’d never had sex this way, my lust made me bold. I stepped over him, putting my feet on either side of his hips so that I could straddle him as I slowly lowered myself down on to him. He was hot. I could feel the temperature rise as my pussy got closer to him, and he shifted his hips and lifted his ass ever so slightly up off of the ground to meet me.

I threw my head back and stared at the sun, letting it burn its light into me as I let me weight settle on Darius. I braced myself against his chest with my hands and pushed my hips down even harder. He filled me, and his hands grabbed my waist hard and lifted me a little before bringing me crashing down on to his cock again.

“I’ve always wanted you like this,” he said, his voice low and strained. “I want to watch your silhouette against the summer sky as I fuck you.”

“Please,” I moaned, though I don’t know if I was talking to him or to the Universe. All I could think was
Please don’t let this ever end, please don’t take my sight from me again, please give me Darius forever and ever Amen.