The question was so unexpected that the first image that came to Joey’s mind brought swift heat to her face. Even though the reality had far outstripped her early, unwilling fantasies of making love with Luke, she was not quite prepared to share them. Not yet. It was a great relief when she realized it was the other, more recent, and far more bizarre illusions to which he referred.
“You’re probably going to find this rather funny, Luke. But I guess it’s not so strange when you admitted you have wolves for friends.”
Luke was silent. Joey knew that the silence had meaning, as all his moments of stillness did. “It started,” she continued slowly, “after the bear attacked. It was a wolf that saved me.” She narrowed her eyes as if that would make the internal vision clearer. “That part was real, I think. Something drove the bear away. But for some reason I couldn’t find you.” The thought arrested her, and she twisted again to look up at Luke. “You were there I know you were—I felt you.” She shook her head in confusion. “What happened, Luke?”
His body shifted under hers. “Tell me what you saw, what you dreamed, Joey. Then I’ll tell you.” There was more behind his words than Joey could grasp, but she had grown used to his obscure comments. Even when they drove her to distraction.
“Well—this is the part that will make you laugh.” Ducking her head in embarrassment, Joey watched his face from under her lashes “I thought I saw the wolf change. Turn into you, in fact.”
The words came out in jest, but Luke did not seem to find the humor in them. His eyes had that lost, far-off expression, and his jaw was still tight with tension. Joey faltered “Luke?”
“Go on,” he said in a husky whisper.
Joey let out her breath in a long, shuddering release. “After that, it becomes very strange. You—after you had changed from the wolf—picked me up. Mostly I remember the pain, that I couldn’t breathe, but I know you were there. I heard you talking to me—that’s one thing that came through when nothing else did. Your voice.” Warmth radiated through her, and she closed her eyes.”Your voice kept me going. I don’t remember the words, but I knew you wouldn’t let me go.”
His arms tightened gently. “Never.”
“Mainly I remember the pain, but there was one point where I heard howling—wolves howling—and after that when I looked for you.” Frowning in concentration, Joey wriggled her fingers so that they interlaced with Luke’s, as if his hand held special significance. “I knew it was you, but you’d become a wolf again. I wasn’t afraid—for some reason the fact that you were a wolf didn’t matter. I think I slept after that, and eventually I heard other voices and knew help had come.”
There was a pause in which the only sound was Luke’s deep breathing and her own, almost in tandem. She tightened her grip on Luke’s hand and rubbed it against her cheek. “You were there the whole time, Luke. I think if it weren’t for you…” The words that wanted to come then frightened her. Before she might have taken refuge in anger, or behind walls that she had constructed out of fear and pain and loss. Those walls had crumbled in the cave with Luke, reduced to rubble so fine there could be no hope of rebuilding.
“So what do you think?” she said at last. “Do you suppose I’ve tapped into some primal symbolism here?” She disentangled her hand from his and separated his fingers to examine them one by one. “I don’t suppose it’s very flattering to be thought of as a wolf, considering the double meaning, even in a dream, but…
“It was no dream.”
It was not the words but the absolute conviction in them that struck her dumb. Then she laughed, even though she knew it was the wrong response—wrong because Luke was in deadly earnest. She felt it in every line of his body that contracted all at once into hard knots beneath her.
Somehow, without her awareness or cooperation, she found herself lying on sheets warmed to fever heat and Luke half a room away. She blinked and shook her head, disoriented and vaguely angry. Her hands plucked at the blankets as if to find in them the comfort that Luke had so suddenly withdrawn.