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Chapter Fifteen
Charlie
The unending stream of memories that came while I slept turned into a nightmare when I woke up and had to face the very man who I knew had ravaged me in my dreams. Worse was the fact that I knew that he knew. Levi had full awareness of what had transpired between the two of us. It was Kane and Johnny who didn’t. Even if I was only reliving memories as I slept under the same roof as these men, Levi was there, fully conscious, to make those dream memories with me in the first place, and it was obvious that he remembered every detail. What guy wouldn’t?
I wasn’t a shy person, but it was hard not to blush when I met him in the library for our first research session.
“You didn’t call me into your dreams last night.” He cut right to the chase. “That suggests you have some control.”
“I wish I did.” I laughed. A short, awkward sound that got trapped in my throat. “Truly, I’d scrub my brain of all the memories.” If only to avoid the pain of embarrassment right there, right now.
Levi frowned like I’d wounded him. “Memories?”
He was killing me. I didn’t want to have to spell it out and yet, the look on his face was compelling me to.
“Yeah, as in, things that we did before…together…in my dreams.” Could this get any worse? “It’s like now that I know it’s you, my brain is set to torture me while I’m sleeping, reminding me of what we’ve done together.” The word vomit just kept on coming.
“From what I remember, you seemed to enjoy my company.” He turned his back on me, shuffling papers and moving books from one side of the table he was behind to the other.
So, he was the sensitive one, and I’d hit a nerve. Wonderful. Our trysts meant more to him, especially if he believed it was part of some grand prophecy where we were destined mates or something. I might have had different goals than he did, but I wasn’t an asshole. He deserved an explanation, no matter how uncomfortable it made me.
“I thought it was a fantasy, all of it.” I lifted my hand as if to touch his arm but hesitated and ended up picking up a book instead. “It’s weird to have my brain remind me of everything that has happened and to have a new perspective of it all. I didn’t know female werewolves could do that…pull males into their unconscious mind. I didn’t know I was actually doing things…with you. It seems smarmy, like I didn’t have your consent.”
“Nothing happened that I didn’t want to happen, and I could have stopped what I wasn’t comfortable with.” Levi looked up, his eyes narrowed. “Only a few females can do what you’ve done.” He nodded to the book in my hand. “That has some legacy accounts in it, documentation from over two hundred years ago, about elite female warriors who could communicate with each other as well as male counterparts during battle.”
“Not in their dreams, I gather?” I opened the book and skimmed the tight scrawl of ancient handwriting, grateful that he seemed to be moving on from the awkward zone.
“I haven’t found any documentation that describes what you can do, no. But I have a theory about why you are able to beckon us while you’re asleep.” His mood shifted, and his eyes lost their scrutinizing squint. “Here… Check this out.” He moved to the other side of the room, which I was only just noticing was huge, and grabbed a handful of papers.
The library was straight out of a book-lover’s wet dream. There was dark wood paneling for days, with a coffered twenty-foot ceiling and shelves that spanned wall to wall with an upper level that was only accessible by a rolling ladder. The books were all shapes and sizes, with varying degrees of antiqueness. I was not a book sniffer and rarely spent time reading, but I could appreciate that the library would be a haven for anyone who enjoyed losing themselves in literature.
I swept another look, noticing the life-size art depicting wolves, of course, and forest scenes, predictable, the sculptures set in recessed nooks featuring ancient, notable alphas—none of them women—and realized that there was a lot to get lost in here.
Levi cleared his throat, yanking me back to him. I assumed he wanted me to come where he was, so I shoved aside my hesitation of getting too close and sucked up my awkwardness as I moved to the table he was leaning over. He was in all-business mode, very clearly a geek when it came to research and discovery. I could practically feel his excitement as he shuffled through the papers then started spreading them out. I could also smell his unique scent, and it titillated as much as it mortified me to notice that my body got all goosebumpy and my stomach did a G-force nosedive then a flip. His scent was the embodiment of Vancouver—pine, sea salt, a bit of clove, maybe even some cinnamon. I had an urge to lick the tight cords of muscle along his neck to see if he tasted like he smelled, but instead, I cleared my throat and focused on what he was doing with his hands…which, it turned out, were another sexual trigger.
Those fingers—long, blunted but with clean nails and a smattering of hair—had been knuckle deep inside me at times.
Probing. Pumping. Making me scream.
I pulled my shirt away from my neck, hoping to get some relief from the heat storm traveling up and down my torso.
Levi flicked his dark, shaggy hair out of his eyes, and I had to resist the compulsion to thread my fingers through it and tug it back for him.
Ugh. What is with these guys and their overall hotness?
I settled on the materials he was shifting around and hoped like hell nothing on them made me pant like the depraved wolf that I was.
Luckily, he was seemingly oblivious to my ridiculous urges and was busy laying down prints that depicted werewolves in various states of transition.
“These look old.” Yes, comment on the pictures and get your head out of the gutter. I scanned the first two pictures and saw a series that told a story.
“The originals hang in a vault that’s protected by a group of ancients in Italy. These prints are hard to find, and some are missing.” He pointed to the corners. “They’re numbered. I think we can get the gist of the story still, though.”
I leaned closer to see the light markings that Levi was pointing to. One through three depicted battles with both male and female warriors fighting alongside one another—comrades and allies against some unshown enemy in the distance. It was shocking to see equality within the packs, no gender division at all, unlike now.
“This is where things get interesting.” Levi slid another two prints under my nose. They were numbered six and seven. “That beast looks a lot like you in that form.”
I picked the print up to get a better look and had to admit that he was right. The werebeast depicted had my stature, my grotesquely deformed limbs, fangs that hugged the chin and eyes that held rage and murder. It wasn’t exactly a flattering resemblance, and I couldn’t help but shudder.
