So now he waited. Like a wolf stalking prey.
Finally, she asked, lowly, “Can you do it now? Change into the wolf?” In the darkness, he couldn’t tell whether she blushed, but he felt it, the subtle warming of her skin. His own flesh heated in response.
Nathan hadn’t tried to deliberately change, not yet. “I feel it. Just beneath the surface. It wants to come out.” Wants you, he added silently. He knew she’d flee at the first open mention of the pull between them.
“Then it shouldn’t be difficult,” she said.
He couldn’t resist. “I’d have to strip.”
He didn’t miss the way she swallowed hard. He wasn’t alone in this desire. Not much comfort, when the woman in question was more closed-off than a vault. Buried beneath ten feet of solid stone. Defended by man-eating dragons and poisonous, carnivorous vines.
“And if you did…undress,” she rasped, “could you then?”
Could he? Reach into himself and channel the beast inside of him? The thought both unnerved and thrilled him. Without telling her so, he let slip a little the bonds he’d lashed around the animal, but then, seeing her watching him carefully, he forced the beast back under control. It growled in frustration.
He toyed with an evasion. Or an outright lie. But the only way past her armor was to show her that he wasn’t without his own vulnerability. “Not now,” he said, “even though I’d be a ferocious animal, something about it, about changing, that’s exposed. Unguarded. Maybe that doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” she said slowly. She seemed to recognize what he had done, how he had opened himself to her as a show of faith. Her gaze fastened to his and he saw the shadows fall away, just a little. “It makes perfect sense.”
Man and beast were one at that moment. They both saw in Astrid Bramfield courage and need, strength and softness. And they both wanted her.
Her eyes widened slightly as she held his gaze. She read in his eyes his intent. Before she could push it away, a responding desire gleamed in her silver smoke eyes. Not just desire of the body, but of the mind and heart as well.
Then she stood and grabbed her bedroll. “Get some sleep,” she said gruffly as she unrolled the blanket. “All the days now will be long.” She didn’t take off her boots or coat, only her hat, which, after she laid down, she used to cover her face.
The drawbridge is up, Nathan thought. A siege it would be, then. But not one of outright force. No matter what the beast demanded. He was still a man and had his own needs. This woman would be his, but she would give him herself by her own desire.
He took the blanket that once belonged to the trapper, then lay on the grass bedding and looked up at the stars. There were legends and stories about the stars, tales he once thought were nothing more than fancies dreamed up to while away long nights. Now he knew differently.
And all around him, the mountains whispered. You are very close. Come, we await you.
Chapter 4
The First of Many
Renewal here, in the mountains and alpine meadows. She had felt it when first arriving in the Rocky Mountains, and she still felt it to this day.
As she and Lesperance rode along the base of one mountain spur, the sky gleamed in a chalcedony of blue and white, and the ground still wore its carpet of green velvet. Autumn would soon arrive, but its season was short, and winter beckoned in traces of frost upon the grass.
Home. This was home to her.
After Michael’s death, Astrid had lost her mooring, herself, swept into a tide of grief that saw no cessation. She’d taken the voyage from Africa back to England, alone, dressed in the widow’s weeds she purchased from an English tailor in Cairo. A black shade of herself, she stood upon the ship’s deck and felt nothing. Not the punishing sun, or the sway of the ship upon the waves. She spoke to no one and could not sleep because Michael was not there. They had been married for five years, and she needed his large, solid presence beside her to guide her into dreams.
In Southampton, her parents met her at the dock. Catullus Graves had been there, too, with Bennett Day, Jane Fleetwood, and nearly a half dozen other Blades. All full of condolences, their sorrow at Michael’s loss sincere. Tears marked Catullus’s and Jane’s faces. And yet Astrid remained numb, even when her mother, her dear, middle-aged, lilac-scented mother, embraced her, whispering, “My poor little Star,” Astrid remained entombed in ice.
She couldn’t go home with them, to their little Staffordshire house. It was in that ivy-covered house that she had met Michael. The walls were saturated with him, her father’s study where he’d gone for education, all the bridle paths and garden gates imbued with his gentle presence. So she remained in Southampton for a year, at the Blades’ headquarters, wandering back and forth along the docks late at night as if anticipating a ship carrying Michael—though she’d had to bury him quickly in Africa. Catullus scolded her for inviting peril. The docks were dangerous, full of rough sailors and unsavory types. She could protect herself, though. Hadn’t she been the one to survive, and not her husband?
One night, she could stand it no longer, and left with one of the ships in the harbor with a satchel bearing few belongings. She had no idea where the ship might be headed, only that it took her away. She wrote letters back, to Catullus and her parents, telling them of her latest whereabouts. NewYork. Chicago. Farther west. Where might she lose herself? To the mountains and wilderness of western Canada, still an embryonic land, where she had land and silence, and the towering, snowcapped mountains stripped her of everything but bare existence with their magnitude.
She never lost her healthy awe of the wild. Complacency killed. Though her heart she kept shuttered, she left herself open to the mountains and found, in their impassivity and beauty, sustenance.
Lesperance, riding beside her, wore an expression of sharp-eyed fascination as he took in the land unfolding around him. He’d been mercifully silent since breakfast. She had been afraid he would pepper her with more questions about her life with the Blades, questions she had no desire to answer. That chapter was done. She would not go back, not even in remembrance.
Yet in his silence, Astrid still sensed him. She told herself it was because she was unused to traveling with another person, but something smaller, wicked and insidious, whispered other reasons why she watched him from the corner of her eye. She kept revisiting their conversation from the night before—the words, the gazes. He saw into her, no matter how much she tried to shield herself from him. But his interest did not feel exploitative, a means to take her apart to suit his own needs. He understood her grief, having experienced his own, but he had a will and strength that she had to admire. Few possessed enough spirit to gain her respect. Even Michael, much as she had loved him, wavered at times. Not Lesperance. He was her equal. In many ways. A frightening prospect.
She told her inner voice to be quiet and leave her in peace. But Astrid had always been a headstrong, rebellious woman. Now was no exception.
They reached the top of a rock ledge and stopped, looking down. Below them shone a small aquamarine lake, its golden sandy banks frilled by aspens. From the farthest bank rose steep-sided mountains, still crowned with snow despite the lateness of the summer season. No artist could do it justice, and to think of capturing the scene on canvas or paper seemed the height of hubris.
“This feels right,” he said. The corners of his eyes creased in pleasure, warming the striking planes of his face, and it was more arresting than the view.
“Don’t forget,” she said, forcing her gaze to the glinting surface of the lake, “this is a hard place. With respect, however, it gives back even more than it takes.” Why had she said so much? She hadn’t intended to.
Holding his horse’s reins, he dismounted smoothly and bent to grip a handful of earth and plants. She watched, curious, as he inhaled deeply,