Dawson Bride (Wolf Brides Book 3) by T. S. Joyce Read Free Book Online

more than it ought. At least when I was bearded, she paid more attention to my eyes.
    “How can I get used to them if you hide them from me?”
    She felt so warm and alive up against me. I’d give her anything in my power if she asked me like this. “Okay.”
    I wanted to kiss her so badly. Her lips, fuller on the bottom and a soft pink, called to me like some siren song out at sea. And her standing here, lookin’ up like I wasn’t a monster and asking for pieces of me? Did she know I’d do anything for her? Did she even know the potent power she wielded over me?
    She pulled away and apologized. For what, I didn’t know. I didn’t care about anything but the broken moment and the space between us. How could just a few feet feel like a canyon?
    She took the pins from her hair until soft, pale tresses tumbled down her back, and then she washed her face. I tried not to watch, but I was a servant to the wants of my wolf. It had been years since I was human this long and my body revolted against it. I’d been sore for days and my blood hummed with the need to change but my wolf would get his body back soon enough. I had one more night as a human to protect her. He took over the responsibility tomorrow.
    I lay on a blanket spread over the floor and turned away from Lucianna. As she lay in the bed above me, unable as I to find sleep, she said, “I’m scared about being alone on the boat.”
    Her hand brushed my arm and automatically I reached for it and pulled it to rest across my rib cage. I pressed it in place with my arm and sighed. “If I thought there was any risk, I’d never leave you. You have to trust me on this. I promise you’ll be safe. When we get to Boston, I’ll buy you a pretty dress and we’ll eat a fine meal at a proper house.”
    “What house?”
    I smiled at the tattered forest green wallpaper that hung from the wall in front of me. She asked more questions than anyone I’d met but maybe that was because I wasn’t used to talking to humans anymore. “My parents live in Boston. I want them to meet you.”
    She didn’t respond and after a while, her breathing deepened to the sound of sleep. Ma and Da worried over me an ocean away. A mother never stopped worrying over her boys and in six weeks, I’d be able to put mine at ease.
    Physically, I was all right. I was alive. Ma would be happy to see me no matter how much of an animal I’d become.
    ****
    Lucianna
    I woke with a start as a rumbling growl echoed through my bones. The remnants of a dream of the foggy night shuddered through my consciousness. All I could remember were the blazing, icy eyes. Gable was crouched on the balls of his feet in front of me. I shouldn’t have been able to see him except candle light crept under the door and lit up his silhouette.
    “What’s wrong?” I breathed.
    “Trouble.” His voice sounded strange. Deeper. More fearsome somehow.
    Shadows in the candle light under the door moved and the sound of boot prints slowly moved away. His bare shoulders glowed in the half moonlight of the window and I reached out before I could help myself. The tensed muscles under my hands relaxed and he placed a warm, strong hand over mine.
    “Go back to sleep,” he said without turning. “I’ll keep watch.”
    “Not likely.” I sat up. There was no possible way I’d be going back to sleep anytime soon.
    “Fine, we can use the time to change your bandages then.”
    If he was trying to scare me back to sleep it wasn’t working. “Fine. They’re dirty anyway.”
    He turned with a look on his face that said he hadn’t in a hundred years expected me to okay him cleaning my injuries, but there it was, hanging in the air between us. I was too tired and too hurt and too stripped down to the barest parts of my heart to worry. Recklessly, I threw his words back at him. “I’m your woman, right? Who cares?”
    He wore the ratty cotton pants of his peasant’s costume and nothing more, and as he stood to his full height, my