Carly turned, sighed resignedly. It was, for Regan, somewhere in the vicinity of an apology. Generally, that had to work for “as good as.”
“Often,” Regan finished after a beat, and then Carly couldn’t help but answer Regan’s smile with a reluctant one of her own.
“Idiot.”
Regan put up her hands, talking as much with them as she did with her mouth. She always did so when she was trying to extract her foot from the latter. “I just … I know I get a little carried away sometimes. I know. But sometimes I think you forget that you no longer have to answer to your overbearing, dorky brothers when it comes to your love life. You know? I know you think you’re too shy, but guys like shy. Shy is cute. Just don’t hide.”
Carly bit back the impulse to voice her opinion that she wasn’t the only one who knew how to hide from things. She knew it would just keep them at loggerheads, and so instead made a concession. “Maybe your kitchen floor idea would do me some good,” she acknowledged, a little appalled to find she was only half-joking when she put Gideon in that picture, “but Regan, cute shyness notwithstanding, you forget. You and I do not attract men in the same league. And Gideon is way out of mine, even if I were looking for some kind of fling. Which I’m not.” I don’t think.
“Hm.” Regan studied her. “The only difference I see is your comfort level in your own skin. You are beautiful, Carly. I have never understood why you can’t see what’s right in the mirror.”
“I looked before I came over here. It was not good.”
“And I wish you would. Because methinks you’re interested in this guy.”
“And methinks you have an overactive imagination,” Carly returned. “He is leaving.”
Regan just grinned and touched a finger to the tip of Carly’s nose. “And it is still snowing. Just do me a favor. Consider, at least consider, the possibilities.”
Carly gave her a knowing look. “You’re thinking about my kitchen floor again, aren’t you?”
“Okay,” Regan conceded, turning Carly by the shoulders and steering her towards the door. “I give up. Do what you will about the mystery man. But just so you know, I’ll be over here doing the Snow Dance in support of your best interests. You could use an adventure.”
Carly turned her head to smirk at her friend as she pulled on her coat and boots. “I should get some sort of talisman to ward you off, then, because I seem to remember your last adventure involved me posting bail…”
Regan was now all but shoving her out the door. “Go!”
“… at some ungodly hour …”
“It wasn’t my idea, which we have discussed …”
“… and weren’t you dressed as a pirate?”
With that, one bare foot was planted firmly against Carly’s backside as she was pushed, unceremoniously, out onto Regan’s snow-covered wrap-around porch. Regan stuck her head out the storm door, however, to have the final word.
“The charges were dropped, you know. It hardly counts.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Carly laughed as she turned away, clutching the overstuffed bag to her chest and praying it didn’t rip. She peered through the blowing snow in the direction of her house, which was hidden in impenetrable whiteness, and felt something unfamiliar shiver through her veins in tiny, icy-hot explosions.
Possibilities, maybe?
“Call me!” Regan yelled to her over the wind. “And seriously, Carly. Next time I’m at your house, we are burning those pajamas!”
Carly gave a wave back over her shoulder and started down the steps. She also made a mental note to hide the pajamas. Possibilities. She turned the word over in her mind as she ducked her head against the wind and waded into the snow. I’m considering, Regan, she thought, but man, if you only knew the half of it.
She would love it. And Carly knew it. Things to think about, she decided as her cheeks tingled from the cold even beneath her scarf. Later. For now, there was only breakfast, Gideon … and possibilities, up to and including the floor of a certain room of her house.
“I am in so much trouble,” she sighed, and headed home.
t t t
Ten minutes later she stood in her doorway, watching Gideon breathe deeply as he clung to her pillow as though it were the only thing anchoring him in her little house, in the storm.
She should wake him. She should probably kick him out, at least out of her bed, and in all likelihood out of her house. And maybe she would … after watching him sleep for just a while longer.
What was wrong with her? It wasn’t as though she’d never seen a hot guy before. And simple attraction, she could deal with. But Gideon … he just slammed into her every time she looked at him—had done so, in fact, from the moment she’d laid eyes on him as a big, gorgeous human. All she could seem to think of was getting closer to him, his heat, his strength.
God, it was all she could do not to try and crawl inside his skin just standing there looking at him, Carly realized with dawning horror. She wanted him on levels that she shouldn’t be thinking about until after months, much less just a few hours, and yet there didn’t seem to be any controlling the bizarre physical and emotional reaction she was having to him. It was not normal. Then again, Carly thought with a frustrated sigh, what about any of this was?
Gideon frowned in his sleep, a small crease appearing between the strong arches of his brows, and made a soft noise in the back of his throat. It tugged at her, made her want to know what was upsetting him so she could fix it, chase it away. Carly bit her lip, taking in his massive form sprawled across her bed, making it look no bigger than a child’s, the way his large, coarse hands cradled her pillow to his chest, his face. I don’t know you, she had told him. And yet she found, to her misery, that it made absolutely no difference.
She had always wanted impossible things; the conquering yet tender hero, the rescue from the tower, the declarations of undying love. The happily ever after. Her dreams had been safe, in a way, because she knew they’d never happen. No swaggering warrior had ever, to her knowledge, come within a mile of her, and that had been okay. She couldn’t ache as badly for someone she’d never seen.
Except that now she’d seen him. And she had a feeling that “ache” could very well be an understatement for her feelings once he went back to whatever life he’d had before he’d come here if she wasn’t very, very careful.
Gideon stirred then, as though he sensed her presence. Carly stepped back, ready to make a run for it, but he didn’t wake. Instead, she watched, wide-eyed, as he nuzzled her pillow. And softly, barely audibly, breathed her name.
“Carly …”
And as she forced herself to leave him there, to close the door and walk away, Carly wondered with a growing terror just exactly what she’d done. She was beginning to suspect that when your fantasy finally showed up at your door, in that one moment, everything changed. Possibly forever. And there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it.
Chapter Seven
SHE’D LET HIM SLEEP.
He must have slept for the better part of the day, Gideon realized, groggy as he noted that the light through the blinds, still gray, was deeper. He raised his head a little, sniffed, and found his senses immediately flooded with some delicious aroma wafting from the kitchen. His stomach growled loudly, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten all day and had likely missed out on whatever confections Carly had returned with that morning. He yawned, stretched, looked casually around.
He was in her bed.
Christ.
Gideon sat up quickly, swung his legs over the side of the bed and scrubbed at the sides of his head, trying to get his brain working so he could come up with an explanation. Or an apology. Or something. Sleeping all day had left him muddled, uncertain. Was she cooking for him? Did that mean she wasn’t angry? Would she simply throw him out when she saw him, or had she decided to poison him?
Gideon stood, stared at the closed door of the bedroom for a moment while he worked himself up, and then opened it to head out into the house and see for himself what he’d done with his carelessness. He was a powerful, supernatural creature, he reminded himself as he moved. He would lead his people one day. He’d never been afraid of much, and he sure as hell wasn’t afraid of a tiny human woman. His intense desire to head back into the bedroom and shut the door was obviously just a natural reaction to his weakened state.
Just before he rounded the corner out of the hallway, he stopped short, hearing voices. It took him a moment to figure out that it was just Carly, checking her machine, but there was a nasty second where he thought perhaps she’d decided to bring in the police after all. And that would be his own damned fault for curling up in her things when he’d been asked not to, like an ill-disciplined pup. God only knew what she was thinking he’d do to her.
He certainly hoped she’d never find out just what he was thinking about doing to her, Gideon thought as pieces of his fevered dreams came rushing back to him. And he had to stop again, just out of her sight, as he fought to calm his immediate physical reaction to just the thought of her.
He’d healed. And unlike any other time he’d had to, instead of dreaming of home and the unbridled joy of running beneath the moon, he’d dreamed of Carly’s creamy skin, of licking the tiny droplets of moisture from her skin as she moved beneath him, the sheen of her pale hair his only moonlight as it fell in a wave behind her arched neck.
He barely knew the woman, he reminded himself. No matter the signs, no matter what she was already doing to him, he did not need a frail human woman, and he did not know her.
Now if only he could find a way to convince himself he didn’t want to.
Seeking distraction, Gideon cocked his head, listening to the multitude of messages that Carly seemed not to even be bothering to listen to as she went through them, erasing them one by one.
“Carlotta, this is your mother. Don’t tell me you’re still sleeping … your father and I were thinking …”