Ulrich stared straight at Luc, one alpha wolf challenging another.
Luc shook his head. “You know you don’t. What time?”
“I’ll see you here at ten. Her flight’s due in at SFO just after eleven.”
Chapter 2
The hand cupping Tia’s breast was warm and rough, both palm and fingertips callused. Her nipple rose to a painful, unbelievably sensitive peak, pinched between a blunt thumb and forefinger. Her vagina actually pulsed with each beat of her heart as a moist tongue followed a line from her breastbone to her navel, then dipped inside and swirled. She shivered, caught in that sensual state between sleep and wakefulness, her arousal growing with each gentle caress.
Lapping slowly, surely, the long, slick, and very mobile tongue now swept the crease of her buttocks then delved between her sensitive labia and licked deeply into her pussy. She caught back a cry as the fiery trail swept upward, barely teasing at her clit before sliding once more across her lower belly.
Spreading her legs even wider, slipping lower in her seat, she raised one eyelid to get a better view of her lover.
Time stood still—painfully, irrevocably still.
A wolf stared back at her, amber eyes glowing, tongue still lapping slowly at her belly, his ivory canines curved like sharpened sabers. He looked up and slowly licked his muzzle, wrapping that long, rough tongue almost all the way around.
The scream caught in her throat.
A soothing voice clicked into Tia’s consciousness and shattered the image crouched between her knees.
“We’ve started our descent into San Francisco International Airport and are currently flying at 27,500 feet. If you’re on the left side of the plane you should be able to look out your window and see Half Dome in Yosemite, sticking up like a…”
Tia gasped. Her lungs pumped like a bellows and her skin flushed from hot to cold. She blinked rapidly, noted that the older man next to her still snored, blissfully asleep. Quickly scooting back in her seat, Tia sat upright and smoothed her wrinkled denim skirt. Her breath escaped in a long sigh. For extra measure, she fastened her seat belt, pulled it firmly across her middle, and prayed the moisture between her legs hadn’t soaked through the denim.
Damn the dreams. Until last week, she hadn’t had any this explicit in almost three months. Why now? Tia glanced once more at the man sleeping next to her and flushed, her skin once again going hot and cold all over. What if he’d awakened? What if someone had seen her, sprawled out, legs spread wide, lips parted, and breasts heaving?
She cupped her forehead in the palm of her hand and shuddered. Damn, this had better be the right choice, this move back to San Francisco. Somehow she needed to understand the dreams, the explicit, sensual dreams that had finally broken the link between her and Shannon, Tia’s dearest friend in the world.
Her friend and her lover. She’d been with Shannon for ten years, ever since they were teenagers heading off to boarding school together, their hormones in high gear and their need for one another overwhelming. It had been so good then, so perfect, both emotionally and physically.
Tia sighed. She missed the intensity of their teenage affair, the forbidden nature of love with another female, the heart-stopping, lung-bursting climaxes they’d managed to wring out of one another. So good at first. So fulfilling, for a time, at least; then slowly, surely, Tia had acknowledged something important was missing.
So had Shannon. The last five years their relationship had merely been a safety net for both of them. A safety net held together by friendship and, only rarely, sexual love.
Even Shannon admitted to occasional sex with a man, something Tia enjoyed as well, but it had never been enough. Not with one man, not even with multiple partners. The sense of something else, something more powerful, more sensual, lured her out of every relationship, away from any commitment.
Away from Shannon.
The dreams hadn’t helped. Explicit, arousing, forbidden dreams. Always the wolf, amber eyes glowing, teeth sharp and glistening, the rough, mobile tongue lapping, licking…Tia blinked away the image and scrubbed at her wrists and forearms. Why, when she remembered the dreams, did her skin crawl? She hated it, the itchy, agitating sense of something just beneath the surface. Sometimes she wondered if she were losing her mind, descending into some unexplainable madness.
The plane jerked a bit as it descended. The FASTEN SEAT BELT sign blinked overhead. An attendant leaned close, awakened the man sleeping next to Tia, and asked him to fasten his belt. She smiled at Tia and moved on to the next sleeping passenger.
Tia shook off the strange sensations, and her thoughts returned to Shannon. If her father had only known how close the girls were when they’d asked to go away to boarding school together, he might have forbidden it. Obviously, he didn’t have a clue. In fact, the poor man had been so relieved when Tia left, it was almost embarrassing.
It couldn’t have been easy for him, raising a daughter without her mother there for guidance. Coping with hormones and emotions completely foreign to him, not to mention the issues that occasionally arose because of her biracial status. Maybe Tia and Shannon wouldn’t have become lovers if they’d had mothers, but Shannon’s mom had died of cancer when Shannon was only five. That shared loss had drawn the girls together.
Tia’s mother had been murdered. To this day she didn’t know all the details, only that her father had never even talked of remarrying. He’d loved her mother beyond all women.
He’d loved Tia as if she were a princess, put her on a pedestal. More like a perch, she thought, locked securely in a gilded cage. Rationally, she knew he’d wanted to protect her, but he’d merely driven Tia away.
What would it be like now, to live in the same city, to see her father whenever she wanted, to finally learn more about his life? She’d have a chance, maybe, to learn the details of her mother’s murder. More important, she’d have the freedom her adult status now gave her to search for answers.
Tia sighed. She wished she remembered her mother more clearly, but the image she carried of Camille’s smile was the face in the snapshots, the pictures both Tia and her father treasured.
Ulrich had always had presence, as far as Tia was concerned. She wondered how he did now that he was partially retired. From his letters and calls and their infrequent visits, Tia knew he was still active and involved, busy with his detective agency. He’d always had a lot of friends.
Lucien Stone’s image popped into Tia’s mind. Luc. She hadn’t seen him since the summer before she and Shannon went off to Briarwood, but he and her father had always been close. He was probably married by now with a couple of kids, but he’d filled her fantasies for years. When Shannon made love to her, it was Luc’s mouth tasting, licking, driving her over the edge. When Shannon had used a vibrator or dildo between Tia’s legs, Tia had been filled by Luc.
She stared out the window, watching the multicolored squares in San Francisco Bay as they glided down over the salt beds, and tried to picture Lucien Stone with ten years added to his stern yet boyish good looks.
By the time the plane landed and Tia unbuckled her seat belt, she had an image in her mind of a potbellied, middle-age man with thinning hair.
When she reached for her carry-on luggage in the overhead rack, Tia added bad teeth and an earring.
