by Ann Gimpel
Yeah. Could have, but didn’t.
He dragged a hand down his face. He was a competent navigator. Was the rest of his life a wasteland? Worse, had he designed it to make absolutely certain nothing got in the way of his love affair with boats and the sea?
Juan winced at the truth in his thoughts. Most of the old-time seafarers and explorers had wives back in Europe. Wives who accepted being alone for months and years at a time. The world had changed—a lot.
He’d made choices as a much younger man. Ones that had fit for him then.
He placed the pen in its usual place, lay back down in his bunk, and pulled a blanket over himself. Was the main reason he wanted to pursue Aura because she was here, on his ship? Because he liked her, and she was convenient? Those two variables—proximity and a level of attraction that lent sparks to lovemaking—had been key elements in his earlier choices of partners.
He didn’t have to search for an answer. Aura was different. She made him feel things no other woman had. Before, he hadn’t cared if a prospect turned him down. When it happened, he’d moved on to the next likely candidate. Not this time. He’d never wasted as much as ten seconds considering any of the other Shifters. Or any of the human women who’d emerged from hiding once Ushuaia was clear of Vampires. Many of them had been young and attractive, but they didn’t call to his soul like Aura.
“Now all you have to do is convince her.” His bond animal was back.
“How do you do that?” Juan sputtered. “Shit! You sneak around like a bloody ghost.”
“Over time, you’ll come to trust I’ll be here when you need me.”
Juan felt like snarling at his bondmate. He’d asked it a question and received a sanctimonious speech.
“Time to focus on action, not shortcomings—yours or mine.”
“Damn it!” Juan made a fist and brought it down on his mattress. “I was never one of those kids who wanted an imaginary friend, let alone an external manifestation of my conscience.”
“I am not imaginary.”
“Poor choice of words.”
“I’ll overlook it. This time. Are you going to get up and go talk with her, or not?”
Juan didn’t realize it was exactly what he was considering until the cat shaped his jumbled emotions into words. He was on his feet again before he could talk himself out of a middle-of-the-night trek down to Deck Three. He still had his trousers and socks on, and he pulled the shirt that still smelled like Aura over his head. From long habit, he started to stuff his feet into his boots, but they’d only get in the way.
Way of what?
I’m going to her room to talk with her. Talk. Nothing else.
He donned a pair of scuffed slippers. His cock began to thicken again, almost as if it felt the need to remind him of its existence. He told it to stand down. He needed a clear head. Input from his unruly appendage would only cloud matters. Juan slid out the door. The tang of sex floated in the corridor. Not surprising since Viktor and Ketha’s cabin sat catty-corner across the hall from his.
Juan smiled. He’d never taken Viktor for the marrying type, either, but he seemed deliriously satisfied with Ketha. Juan was happy for his old friend. The addition of a wife had altered things between them, though, and Juan missed the deep, wide-ranging conversations they used to have. He hurried down stairwells, not giving much thought to where he was going. He knew Arkady inside and out. Sometimes he even stalked through its branching corridors in his dreams.
All too soon, he stood a few feet from Aura’s door. What if she were asleep? Probably better not to waken her. His smile faded. What the fuck had he been thinking? It was pushing one in the morning. He sorted out a slender thread of magic and urged it through the door to determine if she was still up. If he’d been smart about things, he could have done the same thing from farther away. Maybe not as far as his cabin, but surely from the end of the corridor—
Her door fell open; light streamed into the dark corridor. Blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders to waist level in sleep-tousled curls, but her green eyes were very much awake. The same robe she’d worn earlier was tightly belted about her waist, and her feet were bare. Her expression broke his heart. Tight, guarded, but laced with heat.
She wanted him, but she didn’t trust him.
Apologies for disturbing her rushed to the fore, right along with assurances he’d die before doing anything to hurt her. Rather than voicing any of them, he surged forward and wrapped his arms around her. Right before he crushed his mouth over hers. For glorious moments, she returned his embrace, and a combination of muscle, sinew, and curves pressed the length of his body. Every dream he’d ever had came true at the same time, bombarding him with sensation. She felt right nestled in the curve of his arms, like she’d been born to be there. Her nipples hardened where they pressed against his chest, and she threw her arms around him, nails digging into his back.
He bit and sucked her lips, and she opened her mouth to his tongue. His cock roared back to life, pressing into her belly. He slid his hands down the curvature of her spine until he cupped her high, tight ass in his fingers and pulled her against his erection. Sharp, sweet, and urgent, desire swept everything else from his mind. His breathing quickened, and his heart hammered against his chest.
She inhaled his tongue, sparring with it as she straddled one of his legs. The heat from her core seared his thigh, and he pressed upward to make better contact with her sensitive flesh. As quickly as she’d thrown herself into his offered embrace, Aura pulled away, moving a few steps back. Spots of color splotched both cheeks, and she was breathing fast.
“Sorry.” She glanced away. “I, er we, shouldn’t have done that.”
Juan stared stupidly at the space between their bodies. A space she’d occupied seconds before. He grappled with a tongue that didn’t want to cooperate enough to form words. “I only wanted to talk.”
She grinned crookedly. “Yeah. Exactly what it looked like from my end when you grabbed me.”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “You grabbed back.”
“So I did.” She angled her gaze over one shoulder at her bed. It was as disheveled as his, as if sleep had eluded her as well.
Juan spread his arms in invitation. “Feel like a nightcap? I make a mean Irish coffee.”
After a slight hesitation, she bent to slide on a pair of tattered sheepskin slippers and then laced her fingers with his. “Sure. If it’s heavy on whiskey and light on caffeine.”
He walked by her side, fingers still entwined, one floor up to the bar. She perched on one of the upholstered couches beneath the windows while he mixed drinks. Lots of sugar. Lots of powdered cream. Lots of whiskey and a splash of instant coffee with water to hold it all together.
Juan made his way to a chair opposite where she sat, afraid if he settled next to her, the temptation to touch her would be overwhelming. He’d already established once he got his hands on her body, he was a lost soul.
“Mmmm, this is good.” She took another appreciative sip.
Juan sampled his drink. “One day, we’ll run out of everything, so we may as well enjoy it while it lasts.”
She met his gaze over the rim of her mug. “That’s kind of a metaphor for life.”
He hadn’t meant for it to be, but it was as good a lead-in as he was likely to get. He swallowed hard. Time for truth. “My plan—as much of one as I had—was I wanted to talk with you. Honest up, as it were.”
Aura opened her mouth, but he shook his head. “Let me get through what I have to say. Most of what you believe about me is true. The sea has always been my first love. I avoided entanglements that would have challenged how I chose to live my life. How it played out in reality was I had a series of flings with women who never asked for anything beyond my body or my company at dinner.”
His face grew warm, and he took another slug of the whiskey-laced coffee. “Doesn’t exactly make me a man-whore, but I wasn’t far from it, either. Viktor and I, we were the original close-knit
dudes. We had our ships and each other and women to warm our beds from time to time. I’d be lying if I told you I longed for more. At the time, I didn’t. I had everything I needed to make me happy.”
“What changed?” She focused soft, liquid eyes on his face, and he felt her magic probe his mind.
He sent a pointed glance her way. “What didn’t? I almost died in a shipwreck when the Cataclysm hit. I blamed myself for the forty-odd passengers and crew we lost. So did Vik, but before we got too far down the road where we argued about who’d fucked up worse, him or me, Raphael shanghaied us.”
“Kind of a game-changer,” she murmured and drained her mug, setting it on a nearby table.
“Ya think?” Juan shook his head. “I don’t have to describe those years in Ushuaia. You lived them right along with me, but they were probably worse for me.”
“Because you’d been turned into something you hated?”
“Exactly. And I couldn’t complain. Couldn’t let anyone know how being a Vampire undermined my will to live and made me yearn for a way out.” He inhaled sharply. “One of the downsides to Vampirism is anything shy of beheading—or silver bullets—won’t do you in. If I’d known ingesting silver powder and iron would do it, I’d have hunted some down. I came within an angstrom of asking Vik to end me, but I didn’t want to put him in that position.”
“Would he have done it?”
“I believe so. But we’d have gotten into an argument because he didn’t ask first. See, I knew how much he hated being a Vampire. I played my cards much closer to the chest. For one thing, I didn’t have Vik’s cozy relationship with Raphael, so I was certain I wouldn’t have Vik’s latitude with the old bastard.”
“What did Viktor do to ingratiate himself with Raphael?” Aura walked to the bar to mix herself another mug. “Want me to freshen yours up?” she asked.
“Nah. Just bring the whiskey back with you. To answer your question about Vik. He did nothing. I have no idea why Raph glommed onto him beyond maybe his quiet competence. Most of the men Raphael turned were a collection of losers, thugs, and fools.”
Juan waited until Aura had returned to her spot on the couch. “I didn’t plan to talk about Vampires, except in passing. What I wanted to tell you is you’re different. I don’t view you the same way I looked at...” He stumbled over how to word things.
Aura placed the Irish whiskey on a table and picked up the slack. “The other women you took to bed?” she suggested, a sly glint in her eye.
“Uh, yeah. Them. It’s a shitty thing to admit, but none of those trysts ever meant anything to me.”
“What about the women?” Aura’s steady gaze never left his face.
“I was someone to pass the time with. Women are a wise lot. They knew they’d lose in a head-to-head contest with the sea. And maybe it was a self-sorting process at the front end.”
“Do you mean they didn’t want lasting emotional commitments, either?”
He nodded, not feeling very good about himself. He’d been honest with his partners. Never offered more than he had to give, but his self-indulgent shallowness made him cringe. It wasn’t the man he wanted to be.
He set his drink down and moved to sit next to her. “I haven’t painted a very pretty picture, but I’m not the same man anymore.” He angled his body so he could cup the side of her face in one hand. “You haven’t been far from my thoughts from the day I first laid eyes on you. I’d like to give what I feel for you a chance to develop.”
She leaned into his touch. “That was a pretty big speech.”
“For a fellow who barely finished secondary school before he ran off to sea?”
“I didn’t mean it the way it came out.” She closed her teeth over her lower lip. “Do you want to know what my cat told me?” Without waiting for him to answer, she forged ahead. “It told me that while I was lost in books and dreams, you were gathering a practical knowledge set I lack.”
Quiet pleasure filled Juan, radiating outward from his belly. “Your cat likes me.”
Aura nodded. “Indeed, it does.”
“Good, because mine likes you too. It told me you were the only mate for me.”
Aura smiled softly. It transformed her lovely face into something so beautiful, his heart cracked open. “Beyond my cat liking you,” she went on, “I do too. I fought against it because I saw all the things you just told me. In the life I left, you would have been labeled a commitment-phobe.”
She ran her tongue over her lips and looked away. “The hard truth is, I was too. Not for the same reasons, but the end result was the same. The odd student warmed my bed, but I was very selective and only picked men who wouldn’t give me any trouble when I told them we were done.”
Surprise rocked him. “None of you ever mentioned husbands or boyfriends,” he spoke slowly, thinking about the dozen Shifter women, “but I figured it was because you kept your personal lives to yourselves.”
“We never mentioned them,” Aura said, “because none of us were connected on more than a superficial level with anyone. Shifters marry other Shifters. Think of the problems hooking up with a human. They’d never keep your secret, no matter how good their intentions were. Once humans found out about us, we’d have been as screwed as the Vamps were, with their retreat to a shadowy existence. Doing things our way, we got the best of both worlds. Normal lives plus our animals to run with and Shifter magic to deploy when we needed something extra.”
“No wonder Raphael was so fucking cheerful,” Juan muttered through clenched teeth.
“Yeah. He could finally be out in the open again,” Aura agreed. Leaning toward Juan, she kissed him quick and hard, letting go before he could gather her close. “I want to get to know you better, but I have a caveat.”
“Anything.”
“We do this the old-fashioned way. Spend time with one another. Keep sharing our histories. Work together as a couple. Once we’re very sure we’ve got the stuff to go the distance, then we can make love.”
He chuckled. “If I design a bundling board down the center of a bunk, can we sleep in the same bed?”
She tossed her head back and laughed. “Oh hell, no. I’d be over the board in a trice. You saw how weak I was back in my cabin.”
Happiness and hope speared him. Aura was going to give them a chance. He drew her to her feet and held her against him before letting go. “You won’t be sorry. I promise.”
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe you will be. I’m not a very good sailor, and we’ll be back in open water tomorrow.”
He took the whiskey bottle back to the bar and slid it into a slot where wooden framing meant it wouldn’t fall on the floor and shatter when the water grew rough. “Want me to walk you to your cabin?”
She slid her fingers beneath his elbow and picked up her mug with her other hand. “That would be lovely. Then you should get some sleep.”
“You too.”
He didn’t want to sleep. He felt light and buoyant, as if even flight weren’t beyond him. He kissed her lightly at her door and ran up three decks. Rather than going into his cabin, he entered the glassed-in bridge and stared out into the velvet of an Antarctic night. Constellations formed patterns in the blackness.
Daide sat at the helm, keeping watch, and he nodded at Juan. “Is everything all right?”
“More than all right, amigo.”
Juan walked slowly to his cabin. He reached inward and found his cat, quiet and watchful. “Aren’t you going to say I told you so?”
“Why would I? Go to sleep. I’ll watch over you.”
Moved beyond words by his bondmate’s offer, Juan lay on his bunk and pulled the blanket over himself. He’d been a loner all his life, but he wasn’t anymore. His choices from here on in would be dictated by what was best for everyone, not only for him. He vowed to meet the challenge with grace and honor.
No matter how hard it was, he’d make it work. Aura was worth it. So was the cat he was just getting to know.
Chapter Fifteen:
Warnings
Aura flexed her fingers and glanced up from pages of closely spaced script. They’d been at sea for the last three days. The water had been rough, but nothing like their transit of the Scotia Sea. After a few queasy hours the first morning, a combination of magic and maybe the pills Karin passed out had done the trick. The nausea departed, and once it was gone, it hadn’t bothered her again. Juan reassured her he’d seen the same thing happen many times, but she hadn’t believed him until another day had passed.
She closed her teeth over her lower lip. Wanting not to be a total loss as a sailing partner might have been a driving force too. The sea was Juan’s life. It would be a major disappointment for him if she couldn’t tolerate living aboard a ship. Or spent all her time curled up in her bunk, trying not to puke.
She read through the last couple of pages, making annotations in a few places. She’d been remiss not writing down her account of how they’d fought the Cataclysm earlier. Because of her history background, she’d been a natural to end up with the task of tracking prophecies for her Shifter pack. The fourth unfinished prophecy had played itself out while they fought the Cataclysm, but if no one memorialized what happened, it would remain unfinished in the Shifter archives.
Back in her old life, she’d have committed the pages to electronic format and added them to a master scroll carefully maintained by generations of Shifters. The scroll resided in an underground vault on the grounds of a mansion east of Portland, Oregon. She recalled the arguments that had flown back and forth across the Atlantic when she’d first suggested moving it so she’d have better access.
It only made sense to keep the scroll in the UK if the Shifter in charge of preserving it lived there. She’d finally won, but bitter feelings still lingered. Or they had. Who knew if anyone remained alive to contest the location of their living history?
Or if she’d ever return to add her account of the fourth prophecy to their archives.
