Luke's Dream (10 page)

“Come on, Bethi,” I said, tapping her
cheek.

She blinked her eyes open and stared up at
me.

“We’re never going to get there at this
rate,” I said, more to myself than her.

“I’m not doing this on purpose.” She angrily
struggled to get off my lap.

I’d thoughtlessly hurt her feelings. Instead
of loosening my hold, I sighed and hugged her close.

“I know,” I said, kissing her hair.

She stilled then tipped her head to look up
at me again.

“Why?” she asked. “Why won’t you let me Claim
you?”

Her eyes held a hint of moisture, and her
scent reeked of desperation.

“Because you’re afraid and think it’s the
only way to help yourself.”

“And?” she demanded.

“And nothing. It’s not the way to make that
kind of decision.”

“What is the way, then?”

Knowing she wouldn’t stop until I gave her a
reasonable explanation, I offered that only one I thought wouldn’t
cause a fight. One I held true.

“With affection, not fear.”

Her mouth dropped open. Was it so hard to
believe I wanted my Mate to actually like me? What was I doing
wrong? I bathed, shaved, didn’t shy from work, treated her
respectfully—except for that one time. I quickly and gently lifted
her from my lap. Best not to think about that one time.

She remained quiet as she took her seat once
more.

“You’ve been without decent sleep for too
long,” I said, changing the subject. “We need to hole up somewhere
so you can get some rest. Then, maybe, driving won’t be such a
challenge.”

“We can try, but I doubt it,” she said as I
tightened the strap.

We’d barely reached the next curve in the
road when she went under again. Letting her sleep wasn’t an option
because she immediately started to twitch and jerk and cry out. No
wonder she didn’t feel rested when she woke. I repeated the process
of pulling over and waking her before setting out again.

Traveling any distance took far longer than
it should have. If we were in a safer place, I would have held her
in my arms and just let her sleep. However, the recent challenge
made sitting on the shoulder of a quiet back road, unsettling.
Likewise, the idea of driving on a highway at even greater speed
with increased traffic unsettled me. I could imagine Bethi passing
out and somehow falling off. Though I was fast and likely to
prevent such a thing from happening, I wouldn’t take that risk.
Stuck with our present course, we inched toward our
destination.

By midday, I realized meeting up with
Joshua’s contact would be impossible and started looking for
another motel. When I found one, I had to use some money from the
bag to rent a room for two nights. Bethi said nothing about the
long stay. I’d woken her up too many times already that day, after
she’d had a quality ten hours the night before, for her to wonder
why.

As soon as we walked into the room, she took
the bag into the bathroom and closed herself in.

I looked around the room, wondering what I
should do. Without a doubt, the neatly made queen bed would see
significant use. However, I wasn’t foolish enough to approach it.
Bethi’s attempts to Claim me were not due to affection, but because
she thought it would stop her dreams. I very much suspected she
would not welcome the idea of sleeping in my arms as a better
solution.

Moving to the only chair in the room, I sat.
Heavily cushioned with high arm rests, it would make a good place
to stay until she fell asleep.

When she reemerged wearing the Tinker Bell
pants and a thin long-sleeved top, I grinned. She was adorable. And
slightly grumpy. She crawled under the covers and frowned at me as
I sat back.

“I’ll be here,” I said, noting she’d also
brushed her hair.

She sighed and closed her eyes. It didn’t
take long for the twitching to start. I kicked off my shoes and lay
on the bed beside her. Gathering her in my arms, I pulled her close
and kissed her forehead.

“Enough of that,” I said when she continued
to twitch.

The dream that held her seemed to ease a
little. Her twitching stopped but her breathing remained choppy and
her eyes moved rapidly behind her lids.

I gently ran my hand down over her arm hidden
under the blankets. It didn’t seem to soothe her. I didn’t
understand why she wasn’t sleeping peacefully like she had in the
past when I’d held her. Her head turned, and with her nose pressed
to my shirt, she inhaled deeply.

The tightness around her eyes eased a bit.
Deciding to try something different, I sat up and removed my shirt.
After tossing it to the chair, I lay down once more and pulled
Bethi to me. As soon as her cheek rested against the skin of my
chest, she calmed and her breathing fell into the slow shallow
breaths of someone who slept. The problem with that was each warm
exhale brushing across my skin.

The exquisite torture increased an hour later
when she shifted in her sleep and tossed an arm over my waist. Her
fingers brushed over my lower ribs before stilling. I wanted to
groan. When she kicked off the covers after dusk and settled her
thigh over my groin, I was sure I was going to die.

Tremors shook the bed, and I forced myself to
calm down.

It was the longest night of my life.

* * * *

When her breathing changed, I froze. The
smart thing to do would have been to ease out from under her. But I
couldn’t. If I moved even a little, it would be to roll over on top
of her. A fine tremor raced through me as I imagined how right it
would feel to press every inch of me to every inch of her. I’d
endured hours of teasing grazes and now wanted so much more than I
should.

During the night, she’d shifted several times
in her sleep. Each time had brought a different degree of contact.
And, each one had brought me closer to losing control. Yet, I
hadn’t. The Tinker Bell wrapped thigh settled on my hips helped
remind me who I dealt with and what giving in would mean. I
wouldn’t take advantage of her. She was already far too important
to me, and my need to protect her extended even to myself.

She snuggled into my side, her lips brushing
the skin of my collar bone. I stopped breathing. She froze too.
Hope and fear filled me painfully. She could so easily Claim me in
this position, fulfilling my lifelong dream and ending my current
agony. And, ending my agony was something I wouldn’t be able to
resist once her teeth were on me. No, I needed to stay strong. For
me, there could be no Claiming without immediate Mating. I wanted
her too badly. Better to wait.

I knew the moment she realized her position.
Her pulse jumped just before she darted forward. I easily blocked
her attempt to Claim me.

“Arg!” she groaned in frustration against the
palm of my hand.

In that moment, I realized how much I’d
missed her the last several hours. How was that possible when she’d
been right beside me, using me as her personal pillow? Because
holding her wasn’t enough. I wanted to watch her eyes and talk to
her too.

“Fine,” she said, turning away from me and
getting out of bed.

I chuckled as she closed herself into the
bathroom. My girl had fire in her. While the water ran, I carefully
stood. Taking a slow breath, I focused on the lingering feel of
her.

“Someday, luv, you’ll get what you want.”

With a sigh, I rolled my shoulders then
reached for my shirt.

By the time she stepped out, I had the bed
made and was sitting in the chair, waiting for her. Her freshly
washed face had a healthy glow to it, even if her cheeks still
seemed a little hollow.

“Get dressed,” I said. “We’ll grab something
to eat and walk around a bit if you’re up for it.”

After she’d changed and I took a turn at the
restroom, we left to search for food. The motel manager was kind
enough to point out a small gas station not far away that offered
premade sandwiches. The town had diners, but they would require a
ride on the bike. Not ready to trust Bethi had enough rest, we
strolled side by side down the sidewalk.

When we reached the building, I held the door
and stepped inside behind her. Rows of chips met my eyes. Her
stomach growled and mine answered. I grinned and reached for a bag
of chips. She grabbed the sandwiches. Only four. I tried to console
myself by noting they were at least thick sandwiches. Moving to
another display, I grabbed several packages of dessert cakes and
two bottles of water.

The weight of the bag in my hand had my mouth
watering all the way back to the hotel. My kind didn’t endure
hunger well. Evolution had tamed the urge to hunt and feed, but not
by much.

I opened the door for Bethi and patiently
stood aside to let her in. She kicked off her shoes, sat on the
bed, and folded her legs under herself. By taking a position in the
center of the bed, she clearly let me know she didn’t want company.
That was okay. At the moment, my mind was on what we had in the
bag. Placing the sack beside her, I grabbed a sandwich from it and
sat on the chair. In one bite, a quarter of the sandwich was gone.
I couldn’t chew and swallow fast enough.

“Thank you for the food,” she said, reaching
for her own sandwich. “And for helping me sleep. And the walk. It
was good to get outside and not feel like I needed to run.”

I stopped chewing to stare at her. Is this
what real sleep did to her? Turned her nice? She continued to watch
me expectantly so I nodded.

She took a large bite of her sandwich and
chewed slowly. Shrugging off the moment, I focused on my food. Two
sandwiches went down without denting my hunger. I started on the
third, and Bethi opened the bag of chips and handed it to me. It
felt like I hadn’t eaten in weeks. The chips disappeared too
quickly. Looking up, I saw the other half of Bethi’s sandwich. She
caught me looking and offered it to me. I ate it in two bites and
reached for the dessert cakes.

“How long was I out?” she asked.

“Sixteen hours.”

“Sorry. Maybe we should go back and stockpile
some more food in case I crash hard again.”

I looked up from my food. Holding her for
another sixteen hours…a shiver raced down my spine. I wanted that
as much as I feared it.

“Do you think you’ll sleep that long
again?”

“I honestly don’t know. I don’t feel tired
yet, but I can feel another dream calling me.”

Putting the food aside, I leaned back to
study her. She didn’t seem as upset by the idea of dreaming this
time.

“What do you dream about? And I don’t mean
you dying. Sometimes, the dreams don’t seem to disturb you so
much.”

“If it’s not of death, it’s about a lady. I
think of her as the Taupe Lady because of the color of the gown she
always wears.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know, but from how the people dress
in the dreams, I get the feeling she’s always been here. Even in my
really old dreams, she shows up. She seems like she cares but never
really does anything to help me.” She started to sound annoyed. “I
mean, she says things that sound like cryptic advice; but if she
can show up whenever she wants, why doesn’t she show up when I
really need her? Why doesn’t she step in and stop some of the bad
stuff from happening?”

“Maybe she can’t,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“My kind has rules to follow and laws to
obey. Our laws can’t be broken even if we wanted to break them.
What if she has rules and laws, too?”

“What do you mean you can’t break them?”

“Sometimes you seem to know so much about
what I am. How did you learn about my kind?”

“My dreams,” she said. Her pulse remained
steady and her scent unchanged. She really wasn’t lying, but I
still had a hard time believing we could live more than once and
then remember those past lives.

“That’s not possible.”

“Okay, then how do I know?”

How? I exhaled slowly trying to think of a
realistic possibility and couldn’t. Dreams of past lives. I let the
idea settle in my mind and looked at Bethi. Every time she’d spoken
about her dreams, her past lives or the abuse she suffered, her
scent never changed and her pulse remained consistent. She truly
believed what she said. How could I call myself her Mate if I
didn’t believe her too? I couldn’t. So I chose to suspend my
disbelief and tried to accept what she said as fact.

“This is what I’ve figured out,” she said.
“There are dog-men out there that can shift between their dog form
and man form.”

“I prefer to think of myself as more of a
wolf. It’s more dignified.”

She rolled her eyes. “They want me, and the
few women like me, for some reason that I haven’t yet figured out.
We are reborn every one thousand years. There seems to be a period
of time within each cycle that we can be reborn several times.
Almost every time I’m found, they end up killing me after making me
Claim and mate with one of their own.”

“Almost every time?”

“Twice I’ve dreamt of one of your kind trying
to help me. I still died in the end, but someone did try.”

She made it sound like she’d lived many past
lives, and of those many only two hadn’t been complete shite even
though she had still died horribly. And why were those two better
in her mind? Because someone had tried to help her. Her suspicion
of me made complete sense. However, her growing trust in me didn’t
when she’d just hinted that she thought I would let her die
again.

No longer hungry, I threw away the empty
wrappers.

“Let’s get some more food,” she said.

I nodded.

* * * *

While she went into the bathroom to change
back into her Tinker Bell pajamas, I set the bag of snacks next to
the bed by the floor. If she needed another sixteen hours, I’d have
food to survive, but would I have the willpower to resist my other
hunger?