Brett lay on top of Gwynn for several long minutes after reaching an orgasm that had rocked him everywhere, from his sated body to his wild but exhausted mind.
“Wow,” she finally said from beneath him, her skin hot and smooth and still highly enticing to his touch. She wasn’t moving either, though he worried that his weight was too much for her slender body.
“Yeah, wow,” he echoed.
“That was even better than…” She didn’t finish. Didn’t have to. But she stirred and added, “Not that things weren’t wonderful before, of course. But this was…”
“Yeah,” he said again. “It was.”
Her laugh bounced him slightly, and he rolled over carefully to lie beside her, keeping one arm over her.
She moved so she was facing him, her head tucked under his chin. Her breathing began to slow, and he let his hand move down her back so he could stroke her buttocks.
He couldn’t help himself. Even now, when he felt so good, he knew he hadn’t had enough of her, notwithstanding his vow to himself to indulge in sex with her just one more time.
He might never feel that he’d had enough of her, but he would have to deal with that. He’d found her. Was doing what he had to for his own sake, which happened to coincide with hers despite her not understanding that yet.
But he wouldn’t let himself get so involved with her again. Maybe, truthfully, it was a touch of revenge he’d had in mind, or maybe it was clear self-preservation, but he would get her to join Alpha Force, then ease himself away from her once more.
Permanently.
He was fascinated by shapeshifters. Definitely. But having an ongoing relationship with one? Especially this one, with whom he’d already had a relationship that she had fled from?
Not on his agenda.
For now, though, well, another bout of lovemaking could fit onto that amorphous agenda of his if he let it. It was still just one night, even if he indulged multiple times. Maybe he’d indulge even more than one night, too, till they got to Ft. Lukman. And then…
Gwynn moved away from his exploratory caresses. “I—I’ve got to leave,” she said.
“We haven’t had dinner yet,” he reminded her, speaking softly against her lemon-scented hair. “And maybe we could have some more dessert, both before and after.”
“No,” she said so firmly that it jarred him. “This was—well, you know I enjoyed it. But I have to run.”
Why? Did she have another guy in her life, one his research hadn’t discovered?
“After dinner,” he commanded. Then, because she froze, then started to move farther away, he said more softly, “I want to tell you more about Alpha Force. You haven’t said for sure that you’re coming to Ft. Lukman, and I need to convince you.”
He didn’t like her hesitation. But before he determined what to say next to ensure her cooperation, she said in a tone he couldn’t interpret, “Okay. Dinner. But let’s eat now.”
It wouldn’t be easy to get her family off her back that night, but she’d think of something, Gwynn told herself as she showered in the hotel bathroom before leaving for dinner. She had to, no matter how difficult they made it.
They couldn’t hurt her any more than they already had. She knew the ugliness she had to expect after disobeying their directives. She could deal with it.
She showered alone under the softly pelting water that touched parts of her that Brett had so recently stroked…and more. Of course she also remembered the times before when Brett and she had showered together….
But not now.
Now, she had to think of what to say when she got home that night. An excuse for being late, something related to her job and teaching and the school. Her family despised that she’d entered into a new career around here, but they hadn’t balked at her contributing her salary toward their comfort.
Not that she gave all of it to her parents and brother. She had a secret bank account where she saved as much as she could. She’d doubted at first that she would ever get up the nerve to leave here again, and the longer she stayed, the more remote the possibility seemed. But she had a nest egg, just in case.
And now…
Now, thanks to Brett, she just might, in fact, get up the nerve to do something positive with her life once more.
Do something that would make her proud to be a shapeshifter, instead of ashamed and terrified about it.
And with Brett remaining in her life?
Was that possible?
They’d just made love. And so far, since he’d found her, she had seen no reason not to trust him, except for his possibly crazy story about this Alpha Force.
Well, she’d see about that. Maybe.
If she dared to break away.
Dinner with Gwynn at the gourmet hotel restaurant was both enjoyable and frustrating.
She seemed remote now to Brett. Interested in Alpha Force. But she still didn’t commit to visiting Ft. Lukman with him.
She asked a lot of questions, though. Like how he had found her.
Hell, why not. He told her.
Facing her across the table as she nibbled on a serving of fish—her lack of interest in the food making it seem obvious why she’d lost weight—he said quietly, so no people sitting around them in the crowded room could hear, “After I saw you…you know, and you disappeared, I did a lot of online research trying to find you, and also to learn about what I’d seen.”
He’d found an amazing array of material on shapeshifting, ranging from pseudo-fiction to that which purported to be real but was available only to those with special online skills like his. Aka hacking, though he never admitted to that.
“Really?” she said, pausing. “I’ve looked, too, but haven’t found much—a good thing, I thought. What did you see?”
“Well,” he said in an even softer voice, “I learned that real, nonfictional shifters aren’t common, though they’re not extremely rare, either. But those who can control when they shift and who can maintain human awareness—they’re almost unheard-of. Except for those in Alpha Force.”
She blinked those gorgeous dark eyes, as if she still didn’t believe what he was saying.
He continued, “That’s why I sought it out after discovering that such a military unit existed. You got me so fascinated that I had to learn more, so I wound up enlisting.” Which took a lot of time to work out, time in which he had delayed coming here to confront Gwynn. He had located her not long after beginning his search, as soon as she had secured her teaching job. “Good thing I’m a computer geek.”
He could smile about that now, but he’d been highly conscious of it when in college and at his first job in the pharmaceutical company where he’d met Gwynn. He’d been all information technology nerd then, and she’d been a skilled lab technician. The differences and his consciousness of geekiness hadn’t stopped him from pursuing Gwynn and believing she’d cared for him back.
Of course he’d also fought it by building up his body to the max, too. Real geeks didn’t do that.
But not even that had been enough for Gwynn to tell him all there was to know about herself.
Or to keep her from running away after he found out.
Well, he’d do what he needed to for his newfound career, which would help her, too. And then he’d back off.
For revenge? He’d considered that before, still pondered it. But he thought of it more as self-preservation. She’d been the one to leave before. And now, he would be the one to show her that things could change and people didn’t have to hang around any longer than they chose to.
She was fascinated—not only by Brett’s description of how he had found this Alpha Force, but also by the fact that he’d changed his whole life as a result of seeing her shift.
Because he’d liked it? Or because of his keen intellectual curiosity, which had attracted her in the first place?
It didn’t really matter. As much as she cared about him, as wonderful as it was to make love with him, they were much too different to stay together even if she dared to leave again and follow him. She was a loner. She had to be.
Her family had taught her that. The hard way.
Her family. As she’d listened to Brett, a major part of her mind remained churning about how she was going to handle tonight. A lapse of a mere hour or two? They’d jump on her as if it had been another year.
When fleeing from Brett because he had seen her shift, Gwynn had considered alternatives besides returning to her childhood home. Nothing had seemed any better—not when she knew she had to hide that she was a shapeshifter, and her family, as difficult as they were, had been good at keeping that secret about all of them.
Now, she was under her family’s control, despite her quest for where she could go next, what she could do.
How on earth would she approach leaving long enough to go visit Alpha Force?
She would do it, though. She had to. In case it was real, she had to check it out.
“Isn’t that fish any good?” Brett asked. When she glanced at him, startled at his question, she noticed that his plate was empty while hers was still practically full of food. “I thought felines liked fish,” he said more quietly.
She forced a smile. He didn’t need to know all that was on her mind. He had been so protectively male before that she knew he would try to interfere, which could be a horrendous mistake.
“I do like fish,” she said. “And you obviously like pot roast. Now, tell me again about how we can travel most easily to Ft. Lukman this weekend.”
“You’ve decided to go?” His handsome face looked so pleased that she wished they weren’t in public. She wanted to lean over and kiss him.
What the hell? She leaned across the table and placed her lips on his. She’d planned on it being just a quick kiss, but it went on for longer than she’d anticipated.
When she finally pulled away, she sat back down and nodded, knowing her face was flushed and her hands were shaking.
“I’ve decided to go,” she confirmed.