Flushing, Justin had taken the rake from her and hurried upstairs. It had been his brilliant idea to strew the petals around, he would clean it up. Determined as he’d been to clean up the mess himself, he’d also been extremely relieved to not run into Holly as he did. He’d heard rustling from her bathroom and known she was in there, so had worked at top speed to remove the petals before she came out. He’d just gathered the last of them and stepped out of the room when he’d heard the bathroom door open.
Justin knew he should have taken the failure of his first two attempts at wooing her as a sign, and given up there and then. Instead he’d plowed determinedly forward with the second part of the plans he’d made that day while she was out with the others. The minute they’d left, he’d called in an order for the flowers that had filled her room, paying the exorbitant fee for express delivery. He’d then called a local gourmet restaurant to order the meal for their picnic. After cleaning up the mess in her room, he’d rushed out to the garage to fetch the picnic basket and blanket. He’d found both of them earlier and stowed them out there so that she wouldn’t see them until he was ready. When he’d come back in the house, Dante had mentioned that Holly had just gone out to take a jog up the beach, and Justin had thought it a sign that this attempt at wooing her would definitely work. He wouldn’t have to find an excuse to get her down to the beach and surprise her with the picnic, she was already there. He would set the scene and she would come back from her jog, see what he’d done, and blush with pleasure and embrace him.
“Yeah, right,” Justin muttered to himself on a sigh. He followed that up with shaking his head with bewilderment. Why were his efforts going so wrong? Hell, he had harassed the other men horribly about their stumbling about while trying to claim their own life mates, and here was he, with actual inside information about what she liked and didn’t like and everything he did backfired on him.
Groaning, he scrubbed his fingers through his hair and then massaged his temples miserably. Justin wanted to give up. He wanted to just pack his bag, head to the airport and fly back to Canada. But he couldn’t. First off, Lucian had ordered him to train her. But more important, she was his life mate . . . and unless he wanted to spend the next several centuries or even millennia alone, he had to make this work. He had to convince her that they were life mates . . . the old--fashioned way.
Damn, it would be so much easier if he could just take her to bed. One round of life mate sex and she would forget she even had a husband. Unfortunately, that was not allowed. It would be considered undue influence if he deliberately seduced her knowing how the nanos would send them up in flame. So if he wanted to avoid the pain, and keep his position as an Enforcer, sex was out.
But what about dream sex?
Justin blinked as that question ran through his mind. The fabled dream sex that life mates were supposed to enjoy even if they were unacknowledged life mates. Let them sleep in the same vicinity and they experienced apparently incredibly realistic sex dreams about, or perhaps with, each other. He wasn’t sure which it was since he’d never experienced them.
And why was that? He suddenly wondered with concern. They should be experiencing sex dreams if they truly were life mates. Biting his lip, he considered the matter briefly, then headed out of his room in search of Gia.
He checked the living room first, but while Dante and Tomasso were there watching television, there was no sign of Gia so he continued on to the kitchen. Much to his relief the woman was there and alone. She was seated at the table with a nearly empty bag of blood at her mouth and a book open on the table.
Justin eased into the room, allowing the kitchen door to close behind him, then moved to stand by the table, waiting patiently as Gia finished feeding. It only took a moment.
“Holly went to bed,” Gia announced after tearing the now empty blood bag from her fangs. “Her hours are all screwed up after the last -couple of days and she said she was more tired than hungry.”
“Oh,” Justin nodded, but then asked with concern, “She didn’t eat?”
“No. But she did have blood. Three bags,” Gia assured him, and then smiled and added, “She brought her teeth out on her own and went to it like a pro.”
“Good, good,” he murmured, and glanced to the fridge, considering having some of the chicken and salad he’d packed in their picnic. But he wasn’t really hungry at the moment, which was unusual. Justin was always hungry.
“What’s going on in that little head of yours?” Gia asked suddenly, drawing his gaze back to her to see that she was staring at his head with a concentration that told him she was reading his thoughts. After a moment, she arched an eyebrow. “Dream sex?”
Justin sagged and then pulled out the chair across from hers and sat down before blurting, “I haven’t had any dream sex with Holly. That’s something that happens with life mates, but it hasn’t happened with us. Maybe she’s not my life mate. Maybe this has all been a terrible mistake. Maybe I turned the wrong woman. We—-”