Every Night Forever by R.E. Butler Page B

nestled against him, warm and wiggling to get further under the covers.  He liked this dream.  It felt very real to him.  Her soft skin that he’d longed to touch these past three weeks, the scent of her that was like sun-heated honey, and the way that her smaller body fit perfectly against his.
     
    And then the dream didn’t feel so much like a dream, but like reality, as he heard a decidedly female yawn.  He went very still, not wanting to freak her out or wake her up.  Several minutes passed and she moved against him, where she’d apparently rolled over into his chest after she shifted back to her human form.  He’d been so exhausted that it hadn’t even woken him up.
     
    With a gasp of awareness, she bolted upright and looked around in alarm.  Her eyes landed on him and he smiled.  “It’s okay, you’re here, in our home.”
     
    She looked at him like he was speaking another language.  And then she looked down at herself and he couldn’t help but follow her eyes with his own.  The blanket was pooled in her lap and her beautiful breasts were fully on display.
     
    Her arms crossed slowly in front of her chest, cutting off his view, and she met his eyes.  “Is Dante okay?”
     
    “Yeah, of course.  Do you want me to go get him?”
     
    She nodded and he slid off the bed.  Still in jeans, which hid the erection from his waking dream, he opened the bedroom door and went out to find his brother.  It was early evening, and he followed the sound of quiet talking to the kitchen.  Dante and Cairo were making dinner.
     
    “She’s up, and asking for you, D.”
     
    He dropped the spoon full of spaghetti sauce in surprise and it clattered on the white tile floor.  Muttering a curse, he scooped it up and dropped it into the sink, reaching for the roll of paper towels.
     
    “She still injured?”  Cairo asked, stirring the pot with a new spoon.
     
    “She didn’t say.  She just woke up and then asked for him.”  He didn’t want to feel slighted, but he kind of did.
     
    Dante called from upstairs about fifteen minutes later and asked them to bring up dinner.  They snatched the steaks they’d cooked for her out of the oven where they’d been keeping warm, and carried them upstairs.
     
    She wasn’t thrilled when they said she had to stay at their home for her own safety.  She seemed to want to fight but she didn’t want to get close enough to confront them.  Eventually she got up and locked herself in the bathroom and refused to talk to them.
     
    Dante told them later, as they ate their own dinner at the kitchen table, that she’d thrown herself at him — then, just as abruptly, she’d pulled away like she’d made the biggest mistake of her life.
     
    “I felt the same way in the locker room.  It was like the most incredible kiss I’d ever had, and then she just turned a switch or something in her brain and that fucking blank look was in her eyes.”
     
    “Why is she acting like this?”  Mason asked.  It wasn’t enough that she smelled good enough to eat – literally – and that she had all of them wrapped around her fingers without even trying, but the fact that she was actively pushing them away when they had glimpses of her attraction to them was baffling.
     
    “I don’t know, but I’m getting damn tired of it.”  Dante ran his hands through his hair in frustration.  “I was planning to talk to her last night.  That was fucked six ways from Sunday.”
     
    They spent a long time sitting at the table talking about their problem after they were done eating.  The sun had set, and the full moon had risen in the sky.  They hadn’t come up with any ideas as they hovered near the sink while Cairo did the dishes.  And suddenly it hadn’t mattered.  A lovely gray wolf trotted through the kitchen and scratched at the back door.  They couldn’t let her go out alone, so he and Dante stripped immediately and shifted, and Cairo opened the door for them before