CHAPTER 35
Nash started awake. An unfamiliar sound
had pulled him from his exhausted
slumber. It took him a moment to realize
Maralee’s terrified whimpers had woken
him. She was on the far side of the pallet,
curled up, trembling and crying out in her
sleep. Her oblivious suffering gnawed at
his chest. He crawled across the pallet
and took her firmly by the shoulder, giving
her a hard shake.
“Maralee.”
“No,” she groaned. “No!”
“Maralee, wake up,” he demanded
more forcefully, shaking her vigorously.
“Maralee!”
She cried out, still lost in the horror of
her dream. Nash panicked. This was no
ordinary nightmare. It was as if she
couldn’t be awoken from it. He feared she
would remain trapped within it forever.
“Please, Maralee, wake up,” he
murmured, drawing her against him in the
darkness, holding her face pressed against
his rapidly beating heart.
She fought his hold for a moment and
then relaxed against him. Though her
nightmare seemed to have subsided, Nash
continued to hold her. He knew she hadn’t
been having nightmares for the past
several days. He wondered what had
brought this one on. When he had
convinced himself that she was sleeping
peacefully, he loosened his hold and
eased away from her slightly. Her
unprovoked, terrified scream, startled
him. She sat up beside him, breathing
hard, tears flowing unfettered down her
cheeks, as at last, she awoke from the
dream.
“Maralee?” he whispered, reaching
out to touch her in the darkness.
She started when his fingers brushed
her side.
“Nash?” she murmured, as if she
wasn’t sure it was him.
“It’s me,” he assured her. “You were
having a nightmare. I tried to wake you up,
but...”
“Just a dream,” she whispered,
covering her trembling lips with her
fingertips. “Just a dream.”
“Were you dreaming about your family
again?” he asked her, sitting up beside her
and placing a comforting arm around her
lower back.
“Y-yes,” she whispered, “and other
things.”
She surprised him when she forced
him onto his back and rested her head on
his chest, breathing hard as tears dripped
from her eyes and trailed over his bare
skin.
“Just a dream,” she murmured. “Just a
dream.”
“Maralee?” he questioned, deeply
concerned.
“Don’t speak,” she insisted. “I need to
hear it.”
He tried listening for a moment, but he
didn’t hear anything at all. “Hear what?”
he asked finally.
“Your heartbeat.”
He stroked her hair and stilled his
breathing so she could listen to his
heartbeat. He didn’t understand why it
was suddenly so important to her, but it
seemed to soothe her. At least her tears
had stopped dripping down his side.
“Are you better now?” he asked after a
while.
She didn’t answer, but he knew she
wasn’t asleep, because her hand trailed
down his belly. His pulse accelerated
with awakening desire and she sighed
with contentment. Her touch became
bolder, teasing and deliberate, suffusing
him with pleasure and desire. She took his
cock in her hand, rubbing her palm along
its length. His heart raced faster and faster
until his need for her consumed him. He
shifted onto his side, trying to tumble her
onto her back, but she held onto him,
pressing her ear more firmly to his chest.
“Maralee, let me,” he begged, his
hands seeking her pliant flesh but found
her to be rigid and unyielding.
“No,” she said, trembling as she clung
“Then why were you touching me like
that?” he growled irritably.
“I wanted to hear your heart beat
faster,” she whispered. “Please let me
stay here a little longer.”
“Tell
me
what’s
wrong,”
he
demanded. “Why are you acting like this?”
“I just wanted to know if it sounded
different when you’re relaxed or excited,
happy or sad, angry or calm. I know the
heart feels different inside when you
experience emotions, but I wanted to
know if it sounded different.”
He relaxed, holding her close to his
chest, his frustration evaporating. “Can
you hear what I’m feeling now?” he asked
her, concentrating on the love he felt for
her. It always seemed to make his heart
flutter like the wings of a butterfly,
perhaps she would be able to hear it if she
listened closely.
“N-no,” she whispered and burst into
tears.
“Don’t cry anymore, Maralee,” he
begged. “If you can’t hear it, I’ll tell you
what it feels like.”
She sobbed and nodded wordlessly.
He stroked her hair as he whispered to her
in the darkness. “Right now my heart
aches. It feels like my ribs are crushing it
because I can’t stand for you to cry.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, wiping at
her tears. “How does it feel when you’re
happy?”
“Like it’s swelling with warm air,
trying to rise into the sky.”
“I want to hear what it sounds like
then,” she said. “Tell me the next time you
feel that way so I can listen.”
He smiled. At times, she was almost
childlike, and at others very much a
woman. “It feels that way now, because
you’ve stopped crying.”
“It doesn’t sound any different,” she
said. She continued to listen silently for
numerous minutes. Her warmth was
soothing and he found himself nodding off
to sleep again. He heard her words just
before he drifted away, though their
importance didn’t register.
“I’ll never allow this heart to stop
beating.”
CHAPTER 36
Long after Nash had fallen back to sleep,
Maralee continued to listen to his
heartbeat. She didn’t want to sleep ever
again. She couldn’t stand the idea of him
dying, and to see it happen by her own
sword, his blood dripping over their
combined hands, was more than she could
bear. Why did she keep dreaming this
horrible thing? And why did she keep
dreaming about the sons she would never
create with Nash? If one thing was
impos
sible, then the other had to be as
well. She almost had herself convinced of
this when she moved away from him and
found her discarded clothes.
She dressed in the dark, grinning when
she found she couldn’t lace her pants. The
string was snapped. She considered
crawling back into bed with him and
driving him to that frenzied state once
again, but decided against it. They had to
find a way to break this curse and if they
lingered in bed all day, they would never
make any progress.
She washed up in the water closet and
changed into pants she didn’t have to hold
up with one hand, before venturing to the
kitchen to steep some strong coffee. There
wasn’t much coffee left, most of the
supplies they’d bought when she had first
arrived were dwindling. They would have
to make a trip to Sarbough soon, or she
would have to learn to subside on a pure
meat diet.
Cup of coffee in hand, she moved to
the living area and reclaimed her book
from her knapsack. She sat down at his
desk and lit a candle for more light than
the dawn offered. She didn’t bother to
light the fire, thinking that perhaps the
combination of strong, black coffee and
chilly air would keep her awake. She took
a sip of scalding liquid and opened the
book, skimming the first few pages. She
sighed. The sage had gone into a lengthy
and detailed discussion about the ways
Burl had tried to prove his immortality.
She had never been an avid reader. She
wasn’t patient enough to wait to find out
how it ended. She never got more than half
way through a book before she turned to
the back and read the ending. After half an
hour of reading, she did exactly that,
turned to the last few pages and began to
read.
So saddened was I, that brothers could
become such embittered enemies, I
formulated a plan to draw them closer. If
one had to depend on the other, they
would be forced to work out their
differences and find peace between them.
I gave my own son the power to break the
curse if he so chose, at least temporarily,
on the night of every full moon. He had
been born with the crescent moon on his
forehead and thus it became the sign of his
power. A permanent solution was up to
him as the newly ordained Wolf Guardian.
If he was ever to find a permanent peace
between his mother’s people and his
father’s then he would have to break the
curse on his own.
His only clues would be found in the
dreams of the woman he loved, but only
under the circumstances that she was
human. My fondest wish for him is that he
might come to accept both sides of
himself: the Wolf, which he clings to
desperately, and the human which he
obsessively denies, just as he has denied
that I am his father.
One sentence jumped out at Maralee
as she read. Clues in the dreams of the
woman he loved, but only if she were
human? She reread the passage several
times, hoping that somehow she had
misinterpreted the sage’s final words. It
couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. Nash’s death
could not be the answer to the curse. It
was simply impossible. And even if it
were the answer, he’d never do something
like that just to break the curse. Would he?
“Yes, he would,” she whispered, a
tear tracing a path over her cheek. “That is
why I must never tell him what I dream.”
She heard the bedroom door open and
Nash’s soft footsteps approach. She turned
to the front of the book and pretended to
be reading it from the beginning. She
tensed when his paused behind her, hands
sliding over her shoulders and then lower
to cup her breasts.
“I was dreaming about you,” he
murmured, leaning over the back of the
chair so he could kiss her just beneath her
earlobe. “I woke up determined to make
my dream a reality, but you were
missing.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I thought
I should start trying to figure out how to
break this curse.”
“Did you find anything yet?” he asked,
leaning over her to look at the book.
“No,” she lied, reaching behind her to
find him naked and ready to claim her
body as his. “That must have been some
dream,” she murmured huskily.
“I’ll show you,” he promised, in a low
growl, and pulled her from the chair to her
feet.
His hands were trembling as he
worked at removing her clothes. She
grinned at him impishly. “Let me do this,”
she murmured. “You’ve already damaged
one pair of my pants.”
“I’m sorry,” he growled, kissing her
roughly, backing her into the kitchen. Her
own fingers were trembling now as she
made short work of her clothes and stood
naked against him. He touched her
eagerly, leaving no sensitive spot on her
body untouched, unkissed. When he had
her breathless and needy, he lifted her
onto the kitchen counter.
“Here?” she gasped, surprised as the
cool counter touched her bottom.
“It started here in my dream,” he told
her, covering her mouth as he slowly took
possession of her body. He tore his mouth
away from hers and rested his forehead on
her shoulder so he could watch as he
possessed her body. “Then on the sofa, my
desk, the water closet, the front porch…”
She chuckled. “That was some
dream,” she whispered. She wished that
she had dreams like his.
Moments later, he was shuddering
against her. “Damn,” he cursed. “I guess I
won’t make that dream a reality after all.”
Maralee wrapped him in a tight
embrace. “Dreams aren’t meant to become
reality.”
“I always believed that our dreams
were the deepest reflections of our heart,”
he said.
She drew him closer with her arms
and legs.
“Maralee, I’d like to breathe now,” he
gasped.
“Sorry,” she murmured, slackening her
grasp marginally.
“Are you tired?” he asked. “You
didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“You kept me up half the night,” she
complained, hiding her happy smile by
pressing her face to his shoulder.
“Did you ever go back to sleep after
your nightmare?” he asked, caressing her
thick mane of black hair spilling over her
back and his hands.
“No,” she admitted, “b
ut I’m all right.”
“Why don’t you take a little nap while
I start studying that book of yours?” he
suggested, a note of concern in his deep
voice.
“No!”
He drew away from her and looked
down at her with questioning eyes. She
avoided his gaze.
“I mean…I’d like go back to bed for a
while,” she said, “if you’ll join me. I was
left unsatisfied that time.”
“Well, we can’t have that,” he
murmured, “but I’m starting to see a
pattern here.” He tucked a finger beneath
her chin and lifted her face so he could
look at her. She expected him to question
her reasons for requesting his presence in
bed, but he seemed to want to give in to
her demand. When he claimed her mouth,
his kiss was as hot and passionate as ever.
He drew away from her, breathing
raggedly, his eyes glazed with passion. “I
swear, Maralee, you’re going to drive me
to an early grave.”
“Don’t say things like that,” she
whispered, her heart felt as if it were
being squeezed in a strong fist. “Please.”
“Don’t look so upset,” he urged gently,
touching her cheek. “I didn’t mean it
literally.”
She knew that, but it still bothered her.
“Take me to bed,” she urged, forcing a
playful smile.
His answering crooked grin made her
heart throb. “That’s the smile I’ve
missed.”
Her second smile was genuine.
“Oh, I’m definitely taking you to bed
now,” he growled, scooping her off the
counter.
“Nash!” she protested as he spun on
his heel with her in his arms and carried
her down the hall. She was laughing when
he laid her on the pallet, but her giggles
were soon replaced by sighs of pleasure.
He was gentle and slow for once, giving
her languid pleasure and taking none for
himself. She honestly didn’t mean to fall
asleep.
CHAPTER 37
Nash decided that either Maralee was
utterly exhausted or he was losing his
touch. He hoped it was the former,
because at this point, he thought he’d die if
she rejected his loving. He stared down at
her in the dim light creeping through the
open door to make sure she was actually
asleep. He could only conclude that she
was when his explorative fingers didn’t
even pull a sigh from her slightly parted
lips.
“I guess we’ll finish this later,” he