35
Skylar Donovan was being haunted by the same dream.
Four nights in a row.
An erotic, half awake, half asleep nightmare from which she awoke in tangled sheets, body slick with sweat, with her hand between her thighs.
Looked like nothing had changed tonight, either.
The minute Skylar closed her eyes, the dream returned. Moonlight lit the mountains. Shadows edged that light. And through the dark came the echo of a man’s voice: a mesmerizing wordless whisper that was the equivalent of a highly charged sexual invitation.
Her dream guy was there again. Hell, it was impossible to tune him out. The remote Colorado cabin she bunked in had no TV for white noise, and she’d left her headphones behind.
He called to her, and she responded to the raw sensuality in his voice. Though his words weren’t clear, his provocative tone left her ready to do something about the effect he had on her, whether he was real or not.
These damn dreams would have topped the charts as the best wet dreams ever...if it were an actual man she lusted for instead of a hallucination. Something her mind had created as a distraction from recent painful events. Everyone knew that fantasy was a notoriously viable way of coping with loss.
Problem was, this nighttime lustfest wouldn’t stop. Neither would the questions she didn’t dare acknowledge out loud.
Who was he?
What was he?
What would this creature’s skin feel like against her? How about his mouth? With a voice so totally seductive, surely the rest of him would be sublime.
Although Skylar knew the difference between dreams and reality, there were no clear-cut definitions here. With her eyes closed, she fell under his spell. His image stuck to her with supernatural glue.
Wide shoulders above a broad muscular chest. Thick torso. Narrow waist and hips. Dark hair worn long. His stance was determined, his face sometimes raised to the star-filled sky. And over everything was an aura of wildness that catapulted things into nightmare territory. Because there wasn’t the slightest chance of mistaking her nocturnal seducer for a normal human being. He was, in fact, anything but normal.
He was a magnetic combination of man and beast with a ridiculous twist on the DNA sequencing of two species that couldn’t share the same physical space in reality. A unique being with its own name.
Werewolf.
Hell. Yes. Werewolf.
With a presence powerful enough to sift through REM.
Of course these were just dreams. She got that. She wasn’t an idiot.
Well, maybe she was. Because...
She was so very hot for the creature that stood on that hilltop and looked like a man at times, though that outline was deceptive. She felt vulnerable when he was around, and slightly out of control. But maybe she was only an eavesdropper, and he waited for someone else. Something else.
Was the moon his mistress? Wasn’t that how things worked for werewolves?
Why, then, was he yanking her chain?
A sudden spike in her heart rate, far beyond the usual range, jolted Skylar’s eyes open. Anxious, she rolled over on the mattress and sat up, sweat trickling between her breasts, heart pounding too damn fast.
Tonight was different somehow. This time the voice had seemed closer and very, very real. It left an echo in the room.
Not dreaming now?
To prove that, Skylar slipped from the bed and padded to the window. She moved the curtain, expecting to catch sight of her velvety tormentor, wondering again why she allowed a figment of her imagination to continue to interrupt what should have been a good night’s sleep.
She saw nothing out there, but God, had she actually expected to?
Resisting the urge to laugh at herself, Skylar rested her forehead on the cool window glass. Probably she had allowed her mind to supercharge some poor nocturnal creature’s cry into something it wasn’t. That’s all those sounds were.
Not a voice.
She wasn’t nuts, just tired, worn out and sleep deprived. She also supposed that these nighttime escapades could be tied to the power of suggestion, caused by the discovery of her dad’s cache of items in the attic. That old trunk and the things she found inside it.
Her dad, it seemed, kept dirty little secrets to himself here in Colorado, so far away from his family. And it had taken coming to this remote cabin to go through his things for Skylar to realize she hadn’t really known David Donovan at all.
One more glance outside, at the night, and she turned back to the bed. Curling up on the mattress with her knees to her chest, she used her usual abundance of common sense to reason things out.
Maybe dreaming about a supernatural lover merely showcased a healthy need to get past the termination of her relationship with Danny, her ex-fiancé. She had left him a couple of months ago, before actually getting to the altar, and everybody needed time to adapt.
It wouldn’t take a professional opinion to point out that the sexy dreams she seemed committed to having could be her mind’s way of filling the void made by that kind of change, especially since it was followed fairly closely by her father’s untimely death...
The father who, as a famous psychiatrist dealing in other peoples’ problems, had, it turned out, sometimes dabbled in his own world of make-believe.
Werewolves were his idea, after all.
Not only had her dad believed those creatures existed, he must have thought they roamed the mountains of Colorado, right outside this cabin’s door—which was likely the reason he often retreated here under the premise of needing alone time.
Beasts, for God’s sake.
Like the one in my dreams.
So maybe fantasies were contagious and could be inherited, and stumbling on her father’s secrets had spawned her own nocturnal reveries.
Skylar pulled the blanket up to her neck. Seconds later, she flipped onto her back, staring at the ceiling of the small rustic bedroom.
“Screw the pity party,” she murmured. Because truthfully one thing, at least, was clear. She felt liberated by the empty spot on her ring finger.
Seeking comfort in the lavender-scented feather pillow, Skylar vowed to stick to her plan: finish
