A hint of laughter bubbled up as she reached into her pocket for a phone. “This time. But only if you take over my class full of adolescent male shifters. Perhaps a weekly reminder of the crippling effects of male ego will teach you a valuable lesson.”
It was far more than he deserved, but there was no way he’d squander a chance to make up for the hurts he’d visited on her in the past — the distant and the not so distant. “Make your call, Zola. The faster we get these two out of here, the faster we can be alone.”
The faster he could convince her she’d made the right choice.
“. . so after the Scion representatives struck their deal with you, the Alpha escorted the whole mess of them back to New York on his jet. Got a call from him last night to let me know they’d left the country.”
Zola made a non-committal noise, only half of her attention on Alec’s voice as it spilled out of her phone. There were only six students in her adolescent shifter group — only males, because she refused to teach them in a mixed class when their hormones would be driving them to posture and preen for their classmates’ feminine attention. Any urge they might have had to fight for her attention had been knocked out of them within their first week, leaving a moderately serious group of youths on the cusp of manhood.
Manageable enough, until confronted with a shapeshifter male in his prime. Zola hid a smile behind her hand as Walker deftly handled another borderline challenge, patiently but firmly, setting the boy in his place without damaging more than his ego.
Alec was still talking, and Zola made a conscious effort to drag her attention back to the conversation in time to hear, “. . all taken care of, then. Paperwork for the pride should be ready in a few days. If you need help getting them across the border—”
“We will be fine.” Considering all the trouble Alec Jacobson got himself into, owing him too many favours could prove to be an uncomfortable situation. “Thank you.”
She ended the conversation just as Walker ended the class, sending the boys out into the cool New Orleans evening. When the door swung shut behind the last one, she lifted an eyebrow. “Well?”
He flashed her a hint of a smile as he cracked open a bottle of water. “Well what?”
“Nothing.” Impossible not to admire the beauty of him, sweat-sheened golden skin and hard muscles and those eyes she’d now seen glazed with passion. Making love to him was new, but loving him was like remembering a move so ingrained it was instinct. Muscle memory, an amused part of her noted as she crossed the room to slip her arms around him. The heart is just another muscle.
Walker wove his fingers through her ponytail and pulled her closer, tilting her head up for a slow kiss, his open mouth teasing over hers. Hot, perfect, even before she parted her lips on a moan and realized he was determined to kiss her within an inch of her life.
Which made it even easier to catch his leg with her foot and spill them both to the ground. A breathless moment later she was straddling his waist with her hands on either side of his head. And because English was his native language, she ignored her self-consciousness and her odd accent and spoke from her heart. The words, in any case, were simple enough. “I love you.”
“Love you too.” He slid one hand to her hip, the other around to her back, cradling her close. “That’s why we’re stronger together.”
“And you should never forget it,” she whispered, before leaning in to kiss him again. Soft and slow, like she had all the time in the world.
Because she did.
Elissa Wilds
In Dreams
Time didn’t exist here. Not in this place. Not in these moments. Here, the air held an electric charge that swept through Anna when her feet touched the soft-as-silk sand and made her limbs shiver with excitement. Here, she breathed in the salty ocean air instead of city smog and the exhaust fumes of rush-hour traffic. No worries touched her mind. Nothing of the two-dimensional world she called reality could penetrate to this realm.
Which was a good thing.
The whole reason she’d decided to attempt astral travel was to escape from an unbearable reality. From a world where her husband was dead and she was alone. Two years had passed since Richard’s death, but it seemed to her a lifetime.
In the astral realm, a quiet peace filled her being and made the world she called home seem but a dream. A sad, unnecessary dream.
Anna glanced around with a quiet calm she had only recently developed. The first few times she’d attempted to astral travel, she’d been nervous and uncertain. She’d read books on the subject, but as much as the authors of those books reassured that nothing could hurt her here, it had taken a few successful trips for her to believe them. She’d learned quickly. With the slightest focus Anna could create what she wanted to see and experience. So of course, she came back here. To her dreamtime beach.
She loved the beach, but hadn’t seen much of it since she’d accepted the job in D.C. She’d been anxious to get out of Santa Barbara. To go anywhere as long as it was far away from her life in California and the life she’d shared with Richard.
But running had proved pointless. Wherever you go, there you are.
Anna dug her feet farther into the sand and stared at the water rippling along the shore. Light flickered off the tourmaline blue waves. She wandered closer to the shore and knelt, catching her reflection in the water. Her dirty blond hair sparkled gold and her face was worry-crease free. She smiled with the realization once again that in the astral realm she was her brightest, most radiant self. The few extra pounds she’d gained over the holidays were irrelevant. Here, her slightly rounded hips and shorter than average frame was exotic, beautiful.
A slight breeze brushed over her skin, not too cool, not too hot.
“Perfect,” she murmured.
“Of course,” a deep voice spoke at her side. “All is perfect in the astral realm.”
Anna started, but before the sensation of fear could creep into her gut and send her hurtling back to her body — a lesson she’d learned the hard way the first few times she’d encountered another being during one of her astral trips — she forced herself to calmly turn and face the individual who’d spoken.
Her breath caught. He was tall and lean. Dark hair curled over the nape of his neck. He wore white pants and nothing else. The material hugged him in all the right places and shimmered as though the cloth were threaded with tiny diamonds.
The man stared, his emerald gaze studying her, his lips curved into a half smile.
“I know you,” he said.
She shook her head. This was not a man she’d soon forget. “No, I don’t think so.”
He circled her, his limbs moving in that soft, unfocused way in which everything moved in the astral realm. Images, places, things, seemed to shift on a sigh. Anna still found the process disorienting. He was disorienting.
He was behind her. She shivered as his hand touched her hair and he fingered the strands lightly. “Your hair shines like gold.”
He trailed his fingers over her shoulder and arm, then her back. His touch was soft, fleeting, yet it seemed to Anna that there was fire beneath his fingertips. A heat that made her insides quiver and dance in a way they hadn’t in a long time. Another time, another place, she would have yanked herself away from this man, this stranger who approached her with such strange familiarity. But she didn’t have to follow normal convention here. She didn’t have to behave with propriety. In this hazy place of no time, she could do exactly as she wished. . without concern for consequence.