by S. K. Yule
She smiled as the coffee’s aroma became richer as it grew hotter with the brewing.
“Coffee’s on, guys.”
“Oh. You are an angel, Georgia,” Joey lamented.
They al enjoyed a good cup of coffee, but Joey was the addict of the three.
“I don’t know about angel, but I try my best. I’m going to find my room and get unpacked. You two need help with anything?”
“Nope. I think we can manage,” Henry said. “The fire is going, and the only thing left is to assess the food situation. Joey and I wil make a list of what’s needed then you can add anything else you’d like. If luck is with us, there wil be enough staples to get us through until morning because the last grocery store I saw on our way here was at least an hour away.”
“I had a look around in the kitchen. I think we should be fine until morning. We can manage, I’m sure. There are plenty of canned goods stocked in the pantry.” Georgia folowed Lucy down the hal.
If she stretched her arms out from side to side, she could almost touch the wals down the narrow halway. The thumping under her feet told her the wood floors continued on. The first door on the left led to a nice-sized bathroom. While she figured no girl would be al that happy about sharing a bathroom with two men for a week, fortunately for her, Joey and Henry were quite the neat freaks. In fact, they probably picked up after themselves better than she did, not that she was a slob.
There was another door on the left, which she assumed to be Henry and Joey’s room, and a door at the end of the hal, which turned out to be a linen closet, and finaly a door on the right, which led to her bedroom. It smeled clean, and she couldn’t find an ounce of dust on anything she touched. It was surprisingly large, and the bed was huge.
“Looks like you get to sleep with me this week, Lucy.” She patted the dog on the head before releasing the handle from her harness. She gave her the off-duty command to let her know she was free to do as she pleased for the time being.
Lucy usualy slept in a cushy bed on the floor beside Georgia’s ful-size bed at home. Lucy wasn’t huge, but Georgia’s bed wasn’t big enough to accommodate them both comfortably. She was not against Lucy sleeping at the foot of her bed and smiled when she thought about how nice it would be to have a foot warmer this week.
She found a dresser against the wal and unpacked her clothes then felt around for an outlet to plug her cel phone charger into. Although, she didn’t have high hopes of getting a great signal, if any, out in the middle of the sticks.
“Let’s go find Henry and Joey. Shal we, Lucy? I bet you’d like some water too.”
She’d have to ask where they’d put Lucy’s bag of food when they unloaded the car as wel. There were many times Georgia would have loved to give Lucy a treat or people food, but it wasn’t a good idea to give a guide dog treats. Treats were not something a guide dog was ever trained on. A guide dog had to learn to do its job with praise as a reward. True guide dogs loved their jobs. Lucy was always up and eager to go to work in the mornings.
Most people didn’t realize the lengthy training process of a guide dog or the countless dogs that didn’t make it through the training because of simple undesirable behavior traits that might cause the dog to harm its charge. Being aware of the extensive training, Georgia would never intentionaly do anything that might compromise Lucy.
Georgia had laid her walking stick—which conveniently folded up to fit in her bag—on the bed and got it before leaving her room to find her way back to the boys. She was looking forward to spending the week with Henry and Joey. She couldn’t wait for the long nights of reminiscing by the fire. While they were al close, they rarely got to spend an abundance of time al together at once because of conflicting work schedules.
While she didn’t hold down a job, she did some volunteer work at a nearby blind school several days a week. She kept herself busy on the off days by running errands, cleaning, or simply enjoying her time reading or tending to her smal garden of herbs. She felt extremely fortunate because her parents had set a trust fund up for her when she was a baby. By the time she was twenty, she’d lost them both and had found out that she was also the benefactor of quite a large life insurance policy.
She wasn’t by any means filthy rich, but she had the means to live a quaint, comfortable life, which she was grateful for every single day. She’d be able to hold down a job if she had to, but it wasn’t easy for a blind person to find a position. She was definitely fortunate and tried to return that good fortune with her volunteer work.
She smiled when she heard Henry and Joey in the kitchen. They seemed to be rummaging through the cabinets and making a list of staples they’d need for the week. Yes. This was going to be a fun week indeed.
Chapter Three
Kish was relieved when he turned down the winding, hard-packed rock drive that led to his house. It was good to be home. He’d been away from the acres of woods that surrounded his place for far too long. The city was not a good place for a lycan to live. He needed a place he could shift and run when the mood struck. While he’d been restless with Connie, he hadn’t quite realized just how wound up he’d become. The stress of not letting his wolf run for weeks at a time had taken a harder tol on him than he’d alowed himself to admit.
The closer he’d gotten to home, the louder his wolf howled and clawed to get out. Now, guiding the bike down the drive to his house, the wolf was nearly inconsolable. The need to throw his bike down and release the predator for a hard run nearly overpowered him, but he’d always demanded control of when and where he shifted. The key to maintaining a balance with the human and the wolf that lived inside him was accepting them both and never denying the other existed. He’d met many lycans that treated the wolf as if it were a separate part, an intruder. That never worked. He was both man and wolf and no amount of denial would ever change that fact.
He was at peace with whom and what he was. He respected the predator, and the predator respected him. His personality never wavered when in wolf form other than some natural traits, such as dominance, became more pronounced. There were things that were more pronounced in human form as wel, such as approaching situations with more caution. Not that his wolf was reckless, but the predatory nature sometimes outweighed the precautionary nature. Yet he would never do something in one form that he would not do in the other.
He let out a long sigh when the house came into view. Dusk was giving way to darkness and his wolf howled louder for freedom.
“Just a few more minutes. I promise,” he muttered.
He stopped the bike in front of the garage and got off. He pushed it to the door where he entered the code into the keypad. The door slid open with a few loud creaks in protest of not being used in his absence. He’d make sure to oil everything up tomorrow. He parked the bike beside the burgundy truck that sat inside.
“Wel, helo there, girl. Did you miss Daddy?” He ran his hand down the side of the truck. She was a vintage GMC 1971 four-by-four 1500 that he’d lovingly restored several years ago. “I’l take you out tomorrow to blow the cobwebs out.”
After getting his bag from the bike, he hit the button by the door to close up the garage and made his way to the house under the covered walk that connected the two. He keyed in another code at the side door and went inside. He preferred the code locks because he’d lost too many keys after shifting.
After having to break into his own house on more than one occasion, he’d finaly gotten enough. He supposed he could simply have left his doors unlocked when he was out on a run, but he preferred to keep the place secure.
While he wasn’t afraid of intruders, he didn’t want to give any stragglers, or possibly other lycans that happened upon him, an open invitation to his home.
His stomach rumbled loudly, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since early morning.
He dropped the bag by the door after closing it, shrugged out of his leather jacket, and tossed it onto the back of the couch. The house was dark, but he knew every nook
and cranny. Even if he didn’t, his superb eyesight wouldn’t fail him. He opened the fridge and sighed.
“Should have caled Wil to let him know I was coming back this evening,” he grumbled at the empty shelves staring back at him.
Wil was the old man that he’d hired to look after the house when he was away. He would have happily stocked him up on food had he known of his return.
No matter. He had plenty of canned staples. He nudged the fridge door closed and began rummaging through the cabinets. Finaly, he selected a can of sliced potatoes, spam, and peaches.
“Yum.” He grimaced after flipping on the light and fishing the can opener out of a drawer beside the sink. “I’d kil for a steak the size of a car right about now.”
He plopped the potatoes into a frying pan he puled from another cabinet and placed it on the stove before going to work slicing up the spam. In no time, the potatoes were sizzling and he added the imitation ham.
“Doesn’t smel half bad.” He slid the concoction on a plate and picked up the bowl he’d dumped the can of peaches in.
He set it al on the table and got a fork. The first bite proved that it smeled better than it tasted, but it was food, and he was hungry.
“First priority tomorrow is food shopping.” He’d have to drive into town, which was over an hour away, but that gave him a golden opportunity to take his truck out for a good, long run.
“Speaking of running.” He pushed the now-empty plate away and stretched his arms above his head, unknotting the tension between them.
He stood and stripped off his clothes, folded them, placed them on the table then went to the front door, and opened it. He stepped out onto the covered porch and let his wolf come to the surface. Fur sprang through every pore on his skin, and his muscles contorted and changed shape. Within seconds, he was leaping off the porch and into the woods in a ful out run. The forest was pitch-black; not even the moon was out, which told him a storm was coming, that and the fact that he could smel it and feel the heaviness in the air.
Good thing Connie chose today to fuck me over. If she’d waited any longer and he’d started his journey a few hours later, he would have most likely not made it home before the storm. By the way his skin was tingling, it told him it was going to be a bad one. Definitely groceries first thing in the morning. For now he would let the wolf he’d kept suppressed for so long—and al for that bitch, Connie—free. His ears twitched forward and his snout rose toward the sky before a lone howl eerily pierced the thickness of the air.
Kish had run in the woods for hours, and by the time he’d dragged his worn-out ass back to the house, it had been al he could do to stay awake long enough to shower and crawl into bed. He sighed when his head hit the pilow and instantly drifted into sleep . . .
He stood in the trees at the edge of the clearing and watched her. She wasn’t the usual type of woman he’d go for. She was short and had a few extra pounds on her rear and hips, but those extra pounds only made her curves that much more alluring to him. She wasn’t fat by any means. In fact, she was a tiny thing, but he supposed he’d gotten so used to dating the wispy model types that he’d completely forgotten what a real woman looked like.
And she was definitely the definition of a “real woman.” She held her hands out and spun in a slow circle with her face tipped up to the sky and her golden hair cascading down her back. The snow danced and twirled all around her, landed on her skin, then melted into glimmering water droplets. She took his breath away, and without thought, he started to go to her until logic pushed through to the front of his brain.
“Never again.” He’d promised himself he’d never fall for another woman after Connie, never allow himself to be hurt again. And some deep instinct warned him that this little slip of a woman could rip his heart into a million bloody pieces without trying hard at all.
He was no stranger to being hurt by women— women who’d professed to love him, who’d one after another sworn his scars didn’t matter. He’d always recovered, but a void was always left behind. Soon, that void grew, overlapped, and became one huge ball of resentment, doubt, and bitterness. One huge ball of fuck-over-Kish that was lodged next to his heart. He wasn’t a dumb man and was coming to realize that the void didn’t have everything to do with heartbreak. He could admit that some of it had to do with pride.
In fact, as woman after woman ultimately rejected him because of his face, he’d grown to expect nothing less of them, even though he’d try to convince himself the next one was different.
This woman, however, this goddess swaying in the snow as if she were a kid experiencing the fluffy flakes for the first time, was not shallow.
He didn’t know how he knew this, but it was so.
Maybe it was the way she appreciated the snow.
Connie and the others would have shrugged this beautiful act of nature off as if it were a trivial, bothersome thing. Still, he couldn’t risk his heart, his pride yet again.
She giggled and he froze. The sound caressed him with invisible fingers of warmth before sinking into his muscles, his cells, his . . . soul. The blade of fear sliced through him and he took a step back, ready to retreat when she suddenly stopped.
She turned slowly until she was facing him, and his breath lodged in his lungs. Her skin was clear and golden, her face was oval with high cheekbones, full lips, and thick brown lashes that framed the most gorgeous dark green eyes he’d ever seen. Her long, blonde, wavy hair was tucked behind small ears, ears he suddenly had a strong urge to lick and nibble. Her breasts were big for her size, but stood pert and round. His cock stirred, and he barely held back a groan.
What would she say now that she’d seen him?
How would her voice sound? The longing for the answer to those two questions kept him rooted to the spot. He held his breath, waiting for her to say something.
“Who’s there? I can hear you. What do you want?”
Her voice was low, husky . . . sexy as hell. He scowled. The trees didn’t offer enough shading for him to disappear into. She had to see him. Was she playing with him?
“Please. Who’s there?” Her full lips trembled after the words.
She was afraid, and he wanted to go to her and comfort her. He raised his hands and stepped into the clearing to give her a better view of him. “I won’t hurt you. I’m sorry I startled you.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Kish. Kish Frahm.”
She stretched her hands out in front of her, began walking slowly toward him, and that’s when he realized that she was blind. How could something so beautiful be afflicted with blindness? It wasn’t fair. A strange pang throbbed in his chest and he suddenly wanted to hurt something, someone for denying her the gift of sight.
He took another step toward her and guided her hand to his chest. “I’m here.”
“Oh.” She glided her fingers over the expanse of his chest and shoulders. “Oh, my. You are a big one now, aren’t you?”
He smiled, but when she reached for his face, he circled her wrists with his fingers to stop her.
“I’m sorry. I usually ask before I touch someone’s face, but you kind of took me by surprise.” She smiled.
His heart thumped hard. He was sure she could light up the night sky with that radiant smile of hers.
“May I?” She gently tugged against his fingers around her wrists as she tried to lift her hands to his face once again.
He let go of her instantly and took a step back.
“No. I need to go. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
No way in hell was he going to let her run those baby-smooth fingertips over his mangled face.
She’d probably run away in disgust or horror or both.
“I didn’t mean to offend you. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. It’s how I learn how people look.”
He squeezed his eyes shut for an instant and rubbed his palm over his face in response to the look of her that now marred her perfect features.
“It’s okay. I must go. Good-bye, um . . .”
“Georgia. My name is Georgia Reese. It was nice to meet you, Kish.”
He backed slowly into the thick trees, watching her the whole way. He wanted to stay with her, wanted to listen to her talk some more. He wanted to simply watch her. Something inside him screamed as he retreated—“Don’t go. Don’t go,”
the voice chanted. But he had to. He had no business getting involved with another woman so soon, with another woman period.
But she can’t see me. Maybe there’s a chance this could work. “Idiot.” Surely her friends aren’t al blind. What would I do? Keep her locked away from anyone who could see? Anyone who could tel her the hideous monster she was with? But it was a tempting thought. Why couldn’t he until he got her out of his system? Because you’d be a bigger asshole than Connie and al the others combined if you did that to her.
“Good-bye, Georgia Reese,” he whispered as he turned to go home.
Chapter Four
Georgia sat up in bed. She could hear the soft chirping of birds outside, which told her it was early morning. Lucy stretched at her feet, and she reached down and patted the dog on the head.
“What a strange dream I had, Lucy. It seemed so real.” Her wrists stil tingled from the man’s touch.
Kish’s touch.
But that was impossible. It had to be her mind playing tricks on her. She recaled his voice. It had been deep with a tinge of a rasp and hesitation. True that he had initialy startled her, so entranced by the feel of the snow she’d been, but once he’d spoken, she’d felt instant comfort. And he’d been so big.
