Find a spot already, he wanted to say. Patience, he warned himself. He’d said he could do this, and he had every intention of doing it for her and for the pack.
She got settled, and he was about to drift off when she sat up, stood, circled, and settled again. This was going to be a really long night. He thought his king-size bed was big enough for the two of them, but when she finally went to sleep, she still kept moving around, restless, kicking him with her big wolf paws, whimpering and woofing while she had wolf dreams. So much for getting a good night’s sleep.
She was so restless that at some point during the night, he finally pulled her against his body. She looked up at him with sad eyes, and his heart went out to her. Then she rested her head against his chest, and sometime in between sleeping and fully waking, he found her sleeping on top of the covers between his legs, her head resting on his crotch. He smiled down at her. At that point, he wanted to get up and start the day, but he didn’t want to disturb her. After a few minutes he finally drifted off to sleep again, and when he woke, she was gone.
*
When Debbie had awoken after one of her many nightmares of being a wolf, she found herself asleep against Allan, her head resting on his warm crotch! She was all curled up in a ball, and she had quickly moved off him, realizing that not only had she slept with him as a wolf, but she was now sleeping with him as a human, and naked!
Not that she hadn’t been that way with him before, but now he was a wolf, so that made a hell of a lot of a difference.
Well, she was too, but that wasn’t her fault!
She was confused, angry still—who wouldn’t be?—and having a horrible time dealing with this. She’d had to go to the bathroom as a wolf, but there was no way in hell she was going to go outside and squat in the snow. Besides, she knew he’d have to put a collar and leash on her, and she really wasn’t going there. She had no plans to run off. Not now that she’d become this…this half animal, half human. She knew she couldn’t handle it on her own. That she wouldn’t be safe. And ultimately none of his people would be either.
As much as she didn’t like what she’d become, she wouldn’t jeopardize all of their safety. Not in that way. Maybe by accident. If she had to go outside as a wolf and if he even could manage getting a collar and leash on her, she would yank the leash right out of his hands and do her thing in privacy, then return to let him know she had no intention of running off.
So she was much relieved when she woke to find herself back to her normal self…if sleeping naked with Allan with her head on his crotch could be called normal.
Trying to take her mind off what she’d become and needing to get on with her life—that was in total shambles now—she made coffee and was going to fix breakfast when she heard Allan stirring in the bedroom. Normally, she wouldn’t have been able to hear movement on the mattress or the sheets rustling slightly that far from where she was in the kitchen. She guessed with a wolf’s enhanced hearing she heard sounds she couldn’t as a human. It was both wonderful and irritating. Hearing stuff she’d never heard before—the gentle wind brushing against leaves, snow falling off overladen branches, Allan’s waking—was something she had to get used to because right now it was unnerving. She kept stopping to listen, to distinguish what she was hearing.
If someone tried to sneak up behind her, she could see how hearing them as an early warning would come in handy. As it was now, she kept thinking the sounds were closer, on top of her, not in the distance. She couldn’t even imagine going to a movie now. They were loud enough already. What would it sound like to a wolf’s sensitive hearing? Most likely deafening.
And smell. Ohmigod. She couldn’t believe she could smell the sausages before she even started to cook them. The eggs and cheese, the same way. And Allan, spicy, warm, and sexy, wolf and human. Those were good smells. The bad odors would take some getting used to. Dead stuff? Even humans could smell dead things, if they were big enough and decomposing. But she imagined being able to smell dead plants and animals that were farther off, smaller, less pungent.
Still, she could see where that could help her in her police work too. She was a glass half-full kind of person, so she always tried to see the good in things. Tried was the key word.
She growled under her breath as she thought of Allan confining her to the bathroom with no way to open the door and bite him for it. The howling did wonders though. She just had to learn how to use her newfound curse to her advantage.