This, absurdly, touched Gemma. “A shot of good whiskey sounds wonderful, but,” she added with disappointment, “I can’t creep about the place in my nightgown.”
“As you like,” Astrid shrugged, then left the room.
Gemma stood next to the bed for several minutes, heart thudding, mind awhirl. The men’s voices across the hall had gone silent.
She drew a breath, summoning courage.
Before she could stop herself, she padded across the hall and opened the door to the other room. She stepped inside and shut the door behind her. A mirthless smile touched her lips. She was forever stepping on the wrong side of doors, into situations she should probably avoid. But then, if she did avoid those situations, her life would be indescribably dull.
And dull certainly did not describe the scene before her.
Catullus, dressed only in his trousers and an open shirt, rose up from the bed at her entrance. His hand reached for a nearby pistol, but stilled when he saw she was the unannounced visitor. Gemma’s eyes moved from his shocked face to the sculptural planes of his chest, satiny skin lightly dusted with dark hair. She would have followed the causeway of ridged, defined muscles down from his chest to his flat abdomen, and lower, but the sound of claws scraping on wood snared her attention.
Gemma froze when she beheld the room’s other occupant.
Less than five feet from where she stood. Staring at her with topaz eyes as it uncurled from the floor to standing. A huge silver-and-black wolf.
“Wolf,” she said absurdly.
And that’s what it was. Not a large dog that had somehow wandered into the room. But a massive wolf looking right at her. She didn’t have a lot of experience with wolves, had only seen a few at a distance when she’d been in Canada, but even someone of her limited experience knew that this wolf radiated power and deadly potential.
What in God’s name was it doing in Catullus and Lesperance’s room? And where was Lesperance, anyway? Downstairs, having a quick tryst in the taproom with Astrid before retiring to separate beds?
Not that any of this mattered. There was a damned wolf in the room.
She backed to the door. Her eyes never left the animal. She rasped to Catullus, “Move slowly. Just edge toward me and we can make an escape.”
Catullus sighed. He was irritatingly calm about the presence of an enormous wild animal in his room. “Not necessary.”
Her eyes flew to his. “But there’s a—”
Before she could finish this thought, the wolf trotted forward and gave her motionless hand a friendly lick. Its tail wagged, briefly, then looked up at her with what she could have sworn was humor in its golden eyes.
Gemma managed to break the gaze to see a pile of men’s clothing folded neatly in the corner. Sober, respectable clothing that an attorney might wear.
Understanding came with the loss of her breath. “Lesperance?”
The wolf gave a soft woof. It moved back and sat on its haunches.
Gemma’s eyes shot to Catullus, watching her with a kind of resigned amusement. Oddly, all she could muster was annoyance, not amazement that there were humans who could turn into animals. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Never seemed an appropriate time,” he said. “’The Heirs are about to unleash a mythic power on an unsuspecting world, and we have to stop it, and, incidentally, Nathan Lesperance can change his form into a wolf, a hawk, and a bear.’”
“A hawk and a bear, too?” This aggravated her further. “What about you?” she demanded of Catullus. “Can you turn into a turkey or an anteater?”
His lips quirked. “No—I’m just a man.”
She was, in truth, all too aware of the fact that he was a man. And she was in her nightgown. In his bedroom.
Which prompted him to ask, “What are you doing here, Gemma?”
Yes. Right. “Astrid’s miserable.” She addressed this to Lesperance. “Right now she’s downstairs trying to drink herself into a good night’s sleep without you.”
Lesperance made a low whine of distress, getting to his feet. Or was it getting to his paws? She really had no idea.
“You need to be with her,” Gemma continued. “The two of you are …” She searched for the most fitting word.
“Bonded.”
Lesperance rumbled his agreement. And Gemma realized she was having a conversation with a wolf. She doubted she could ever write such an outlandish scene.
She held the door open. When she’d left her room, she hadn’t shut the door behind her, so now the empty room waited across the hall. “Go to her.”
Making no noise of protest, Lesperance trotted out of the room and into the other. He even winked at her before nosing the door closed, as if they were two collaborators in Astrid’s waiting surprise. Gemma shut the door of Catullus’s room.
And now they were alone together. They both knew it with the powerful awareness of the rising moon, tidal.
“I think they would have survived a night apart,” Catullus said dryly.
“But not well. I’ve never seen two people so connected.” Which awed her, knowing that such love could truly exist in this world. “And,” she added, willing herself not to blush, “I … heard them.”
“Heard them?”
“On the ship. At night, when I would be …” “Eavesdropping.”
There really was no way to dispute that, since it had quickly become clear that Astrid and Lesperance weren’t discussing strategy or secret plans in their cabin. “Yes. They’re a very … passionate … couple.” Very passionate, and Gemma had the singed ears to prove it. The sounds the two of them made would arouse a glacier.
Catullus lost the war against blushing, his own face turning a deep, burnished henna. “Ah,” he said.
Without the distraction of a wolf in the room, Gemma allowed herself to look her fill of a partially dressed Catullus Graves. His crisp white shirt was undone and untucked, leaving a swath of bare skin from his neck to his stomach. A lone candle upon the nightstand illuminated the room, so his exposed flesh became a tantalizing play of gold and mahogany, planes and valleys of distinct muscle that revealed him to be not just a man of the mind, but also of the body.
No coat, jacket, or waistcoat hid the way his fine shirt clung to the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his arms. And his trousers, of course, fit him beautifully, the expensive drape of wool delineating the lengthy muscles of his legs. His feet, large and long, were bare. This, more than even the bare flesh of his torso, struck Gemma as unbearably arousing, strong yet vulnerable, and she swallowed past a lump of heat that had suddenly formed in her throat.
Likewise, his gaze traveled over her, from the tips of her own bare toes, up along the expanse of threadbare cotton nightgown—lingering, it had to be noted, on her breasts—to her hair spilling over her shoulders, and then her mouth, her eyes. A thorough perusal, not a bit analytical. If anything, Catullus’s gaze held the same haunted look of yearning she had seen before. Yearning, and desire.
He forced his eyes away from her, and his voice, when he spoke, was a growl. “It’s not right for you to be here.”
Which wasn’t a rejection, exactly. But he didn’t exactly cross the span of the room separating them and enfold her in his arms either. His kiss still resonated through her, many hours