Nathan stops kissing me, but only so he can move his hands upward to massage my shoulders. His fingers find every sore spot, turning me into a moaning pile of goo.
Max laughs. “I thought you’d like each other.”
“You always think I’ll like whomever you select as a heat partner.” I shake a finger at him, but the shaking’s half due to the magic Nathan works on my back. “What’s most important is that you like them enough.”
“I don’t want you to spend the time with someone you don’t like. Heats are too hard to deal with aggravation so many days in close company.” Max grabs my feet and massages the soles. The magic of the dream lets his hands work at the same pace and pressure as Nathan’s. “We both want the other to be happy—isn’t that half of the recipe for love?”
“At least half.”
He suddenly stops, twisting to wrap his fingers around my ankles and giving a short jerk to ensure I’m looking at him. “I love you. Always remember that.”
In a blink, the dream changes again.
Max vanishes, leaving just me and Nathan, behind me as before, chest warm against my back. His legs outside mine, hands resting on my thighs, fingers tracing abstract lines of fire on my skin that the sweet orange-scented bathwater fails to wash away. My head falls back to rest on his shoulder as he presses another line of gentle kisses along my neck.
“I’ll wait to approach Max for a week or two, then I’ll start courting him if you’re willing. It’ll take time, but I’m sure I can convince him that he and I can be friends as packmates. He can keep romancing you—me too, if he wants—because he likesromance. We’ll romance him back, singly and together. All the while, I’ll seduce you until we’re both sated.” Nathan’s lips reach my ear, nose nudging aside my hair to trace the outer rim. “Then we’ll do it again, and again.”
“You’re—” I shake my head, a rush of hope almost immediately drowned in fear and doubt.
“He’s afraid of losing you, but if I go slow and take any objections he offers seriously, eventually, he’ll realize he’s gaining me instead.” His head bows, forehead against my collarbone, his voice almost muffled by my shoulder. “If we’d found the two of you earlier, before the rest of my pack died, the three of us would have courted you. My loves would’ve adored you and Max, both. They are gone, so I can only offer myself.”
Rightness and wrongness flood my body, undoing the warmth of the hot water and ripping the dream apart.
That’s how Max’s heat could have ended, but it didn’t. A vision of what I might have wished happened?
When Max fell asleep after, heat broken and body more in need of rest than anything else, I had fumbled my way to the tub alone.
True, Nathan drew a bath while Max worked the last ounce of his heat on my aching body, but he didn’t join me in the tub in real life. He kept several feet away, not wanting to risk accidentally scent marking me and triggering another surprise bout of possessiveness from Max.
Likewise, Nathan never said anything about courting Max so as to seduce me, although desire had shone in his gaze despite the hours we’d already spent in the heat.
We’d exchanged broken apologies for things that weren’t our fault—weren’t anyone’s fault—and then stared at each other across the distance. Him, leaning against the wall as though he needed it to stand; me, curled in the tub with my arms over my chest.
“It’s better I go before he wakes,” Nathan said after the heavy silence had become painful. “I don’t want this to be the end. See you later?”
“Until then,” I’d replied, knowing it wouldn’t happen.
Max chose potential partners for his heats who only tangentially overlapped with his regular circles: distant acquaintances at best, so the odds were against running into them often, if ever. That way, there was less chance of Max stumbling across a stray reminder of the part of his life he hated most. Only a few heat partners ever came back for a second round.
Occasionally, in the early years, his choices roused hopes that he wouldn’t mind finding someone to be a friend and romantic partner alongside me, someone with whom I could share sexual love as well as romantic—just as Nathan described in the dream—but it never happened. Max always watched me carefully if the topic of our erstwhile partners arose and showed distinct signs of relief when the subject passed.
As I struggle out of the dream into wakefulness, though, it’s other words the dream Nathan spoke that echo again and again: ‘They are gone.’
Common words, all three, with nothing to make them stand out.
They are gone. Nathan had lost the other members of his pack.
Everyone loses more than one loved person sooner or later. The coincidental phrasing meant nothing, just my sleeping mind borrowing inspiration from life.
Nevertheless, I wake sure as can be that Nathan sent me the roses and book.
Even though he hadn’t seen me again, he cared.
Chapter 16
Sharing Secrets
JOHANNA
