With Everything I Am (16 page)

Or, she should say, he kicked his family out just a little while ago.

While she was hugging Regan good-bye, she heard Callum, who had walked with the men down the path to the SUV, speaking to his cousin.

“I see you do that again, Ry, it won’t make me happy.”

Ryon’s voice was good-humored when he replied, “Relax, Cal.”

“I’ll relax knowing I’m never again going to stand in my kitchen watching my cousin mark my mate,” Callum returned.

The good humor left his tone when Ryon retorted, “I said relax.”

“She’s your queen,” Callum clipped.

“She’s also Sonia,” Ryon bit back. “Don’t fucking forget that, brother.”

Callum had no retort then again, she was just his queen to him.

Sonia didn’t let on she was hearing anything and anyway, she didn’t know what marking meant. She reckoned it was the temple thing but she could swear Regan heard them too. Though she couldn’t, the men were muttering under their breath and definitely not close. She could swear this because Regan’s mouth got a motherly tightness which she tried to hide when she smiled her final good-bye.

Callum and Sonia barely got back through the front door before he dragged her to the bathroom to give her the injection.

So
that
was why he threw his family out. Not because he was desperate to be alone with his mate after she’d accepted him.

Well, she figured he wouldn’t want his destined by the oracles queen dying of a rare blood disorder. What would his people think?

She got under the covers and told herself she didn’t feel delicious anticipation that Callum was soon to be coming out bare-chested (when she did feel it).

He came into the room moments later and she watched in what she told herself wasn’t avid fascination (when it was) as he went directly to the mantel to unplug the Christmas lights.

“Don’t!” she blurted and he turned to her in question. “I like to sleep with them on. Can you sleep with them on?” she finished.

“I’ve slept in rain and snow and mud,” he told her. “I can sleep with Christmas lights on.”

Why on earth was he sleeping in rain and snow and mud?

She wanted to know but she didn’t ask.

She didn’t ask because he came directly to bed and, unlike the two nights before where he kept his distance, he curled right into her. Spooning her body with his arm around her waist, his face went into her neck.

Her body grew stiff.

Good goodness, he wanted to have sex. Mate with her so in the eyes of his people she’d be his queen and then he could stop “dicking around” up here with her.

Holy cow.

“Relax, honey,” he said into her neck, pulling her closer.

She did not
think
so.

“I’m really tired,” she told him.

“Then sleep,” he said back.

Did he think he could have sex with her while she was sleeping?

Oh good goodness!

“Actually,” she said quickly, “I thought maybe we could talk.”

This seemed to be perfectly all right with him because he pulled his face out of her neck, rested his head on the pillow and cuddled her closer.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

Oh no. Now what had she done?

“Um…” she started.

He chuckled into the back of her hair and then said softly, “Baby doll, you’ve had another tough day. Thwarted escape, coming to terms with your destiny, meeting the in-laws, emotional breakdowns. I’m not going to come onto you after a day like that.”

Well, that was a relief. It was even nice.

And, actually, sweet.

Luckily, he spoke, pulling her thoughts away from him being sweet. “Why do you want the Christmas lights on?”

“I like sleeping with them on,” she told him.

“Yes, I guessed that. You had them on in your bedroom at your house too. I’m asking why?”

She shrugged, willing to talk but she’d never be willing to let him in and replied, “I just like Christmas.”

He was silent a moment and then he sighed.

“We’ll let that go for now.”

At last, something to be thankful for. Callum, at least, was going to let her keep her own thoughts to herself.

For now.

“I’ll try something else,” he said.

She expressed her thanks to the cosmos too soon.

Callum went on, “You want to tell me why your entire house is clinical and pristine and not anywhere someone would want to spend time but your bedroom is the opposite?”

“My house is lovely,” she retorted.

“It is,” he agreed. “In a clinical, pristine, not anywhere someone would want to spend time kind of way.”

Her body got stiff again. “Callum.”

“But you’re bedroom,” he broke in. “
That’s
a place you want to stay awhile.”

She felt her pulse quicken on the thought that Callum thought her bedroom was somewhere he wanted to stay awhile.

However, he probably wanted to do it in someone else’s company.

She decided to let him in just a little bit in order to get this over with.

“Gregor can be…” she tried to find the word, “daunting and he has a lot of opinions that he doesn’t mind sharing.”

“What’s that got to do with your house?”

“He didn’t like me buying that house so, to shut him up, I decorated it in a way he’d like,” she answered. “But my bedroom is
mine
. It’s my private space, a space where I can be who I’m meant to be.”

His arm curled tighter around her belly and she felt his face in her hair.

“You can be who you’re meant to be everywhere, honey. Just do it. Who gives a fuck about Gregor’s opinion?”

“I do. He raised me. I owe him,” she replied.

Callum’s face came out of her hair and he said firmly, “You don’t owe that man dick.”

“I know you don’t like him,” she whispered, finding it bizarre in the extreme he knew so much about her and that their lives had been intermingled for so long and in different ways, none of which she knew about. “Your Mom told me your Dad didn’t get along with him. But, for all this time, he was all I had. And he wasn’t great at it, but I knew he tried hard and he took care of me. You might not like him, Callum, but he means something to me, he took care of me and he did the best he could.”

There was silence then she felt his face burrow back into her hair and he thankfully let it go.

“Your bedroom reminds me of this cabin when I first bought it,” he told her.

“I’m not surprised.” She was still whispering. “I always thought of this place as home. I guess, with my bedroom, I was trying to recreate a little bit of home.”

He pulled her ever deeper into his body but lifted his head to nuzzle her with his temple.

When he stopped, he muttered in her ear, “You’re home now.” Then he kissed her neck softly which made a happy shiver run from her neck, down her spine.

She was far from home, she knew.

She’d never be home again, she knew that too.

But, as ever, this was as good as it was going to get.

On that thought, she relaxed into him. He read her mood, stopped talking and, shortly after, with the Christmas lights twinkling, she fell asleep in Callum’s arms.

Chapter Eight

Wolf

Sonia heard a strange noise like claws clicking on wood floors and her eyes opened.

She was in the cabin, the green, red and white Christmas lights twinkling from the mantel in front of her casting a cheerful glow to the dark room.

Her puppy was wandering across the room. He stopped and shook his massive body as if shaking off wet or cold. Then he started to lean back on his powerfully muscled haunches as if preparing to sit.

Or leap.

But he didn’t when she whispered, “Puppy.”

His body stopped its movement, he came alert and his massive head swung to face her.

This
was
a dream, she knew.

Her father told her that wounded or sick animals often disappeared in order to die with dignity.

Her puppy had been filled with dignity.

And she’d known, the moment he looked in her eyes that night, if he didn’t have to, he’d never leave her.

But he’d been bleeding.

So when Gregor gently shook her awake that Christmas morning after her parents died and she found her puppy gone, she knew he’d stolen away in order to die.

Even if he hadn’t, that was over thirty years ago. He’d been a full grown wolf then. He couldn’t have survived thirty years.

Therefore, this was definitely a dream.

Sleepily, her arm fell toward him and she whispered, “Come here, handsome.”

More than half asleep, her eyelids slowly lowered but she felt the thick, soft fur of his muzzle glide almost lovingly along her fingertips. It was cold and damp, as if he’d just come in from a run in the snow.

“My puppy,” she sighed drowsily and moved her fingers over his muzzle to his head in a loving caress.

Eyes still closed, she finished her stroke before she tucked her hand under her cheek.

“I wish you’d bring me my handsome wolf. I miss him,” she murmured as slumber started to invade.

She
did
wish that. Her dream Callum loved her,
her
. He didn’t simply feel a duty to his queen and if she couldn’t have him in the real world, she’d take what she could get in her dreams.

She felt the bed depress on either side of her just as she smelled an attractive, musky scent the likes of which she’d never smelled. She fought the permeating sleep and her eyes fluttered open.

Callum was there, not King Callum, her handsome wolf. He was leaned over, hands in the bed on either side of her. She knew this Callum was hers because his beautiful face in the twinkling lights showed a mixture of tenderness and desire, a look he’d given her many times before.

“There you are,” she whispered, her hand drifting to his sinewy forearm, finding his skin cold under her light touch.

“Sonia,” he murmured.

Still closer to asleep than awake, she shifted the covers off her body and invited, “Let’s get you warm.”

Her eyes drifted closed again as he hesitated then she felt him move into the bed. She fell to her back as he put a knee to her opposite side, shifted over her body and settled mostly along her length, flicking the covers back over them when he was done.

She turned into him, wrapping her arms around him and hooking her thigh over his hip.

“You’re so cold,” she muttered, snuggling into his body which was so cool it felt almost moist.

“Sonia.”

She nuzzled closer, seduced at the same time calmed by that beautiful aroma and she muttered a drowsy, “Mm?”

His arms slid around her as he said, “Baby doll, I’m not your dream.”

Sonia didn’t answer because that was silly.

This
was
her dream. Even if it was in the cabin, it started with her puppy visiting her, always.

She burrowed deeper into his big body.

“Honey,” he called as she drifted back to sleep. “I want to make sure you know we’re not in one of your dreams.”

“Yes we are,” she told him. Sleep overcoming her, she finished on a whispered sigh, “My puppy always brings you to me.”

She was nearly asleep so didn’t register his body tightening.

One of her hands drifted up his back to rest between his shoulder blades. The other glided down to rest on his tight behind.

“I’m glad I’m still going to have my dreams,” she muttered as she pulled his hard hips to hers just as she fitted her soft ones to his.

She was skating on the edge of dreamland when she felt his body shaking and his deep voice filled with amusement murmuring, “I’m glad too.”

She slipped over the edge into sleep.

* * * * *

Sonia woke up in Callum’s arms, hers around him, her thigh hooked on his hip.

Taking in her position, the soft bed, the cocoon of warmth they made, his hard frame, her entire body melted.

“Morning, little one.”

Her head slowly tipped back and she looked into his sky blue eyes.

He was very awake and, for some reason, smiling at her.

“Morning,” she mumbled, immediately lost in the clear blue of his smiling eyes.

Then her gaze drifted down and she got lost in the beauty of his smiling lips framed by his dark, thick whiskers.

Those lips moved. “This isn’t a dream, baby doll.”
  

The residue of sleep vaporized, reality intruded and her eyes snapped back to his.

“I know that,” she lied.

“You didn’t last night,” he replied.

Sonia stared. Then the events of the night before came to her.

Holy cow!

“Um…” she began, her thoughts awhirl but she stopped speaking when he rolled into her, mostly on top of her, his thigh now between hers and her thoughts focused on one thing. “Callum –” she started to protest.

He cut her off, saying casually but with a smile in his voice, “I’m curious about these dreams.”

Her eyes went wide before she could control her reaction and the smile in his voice hit his lips.

“You see, twice you thought you were in one and twice, when you thought you were, you came onto me,” he informed her.

Oh good goodness.

She decided instantly that she didn’t want to dream of him anymore. Never again. It was too confusing and it was going to get her into trouble.

She tried to slide away.

He rolled over her so he was now
totally
on top of her but he put his forearms into the bed beside her to take off some of his considerable weight.

Even so, he was close, his body covering hers. She could feel the hair on his chest grazing her nightgown.

Her breath started getting heavy as the realization dawned that maybe her dreams weren’t going to get her into trouble.

They might already have.

To her mortification, he went on as if he was musing, “The first time you came on strong.” His face came close but veered to her side. He didn’t rub his temple along hers. Instead, he brushed her earlobe with his nose. “And I liked it a lot,” he murmured in her ear.

“Callum –” she began.

He interrupted her again, his head lifting, the tawny spikes slowly invading the blue of his eyes. “The second time, you were sleepy and sweet.” His mouth descended and, against her lips, he declared, “I liked that too.” Sonia watched close up as his eyes turned fully golden. “A lot,” he finished.