“Where is it? Where’s the dinghy?” Victor asked Captain Burns while keeping me shielded from the fire with his body.“Here, in this compartment.” Captain Burns opened a hidden storage compartment and struggled to pull out what looked like two duffel bags.He placed them on the deck, and Victor helped pull the uninflated lifeboats from the bags.While they did that, I stuffed our bottles of flavored water and the snacks into my mini backpack. I was terrified, but doing something helped calm me a little.What happened? How did the boat catch on fire and spread so quickly?“Take this one to the platform off the stern and pull the cord to inflate it,” Captain Burns instructed. “They are two-person dinghies. You and the girl get in that one. I’ll be right behind you in the other.”I hesitated, afraid to step through the wall of thick black smoke to follow Victor.“Hurry and get off the boat with your boyfriend, miss!” Captain Burns shouted over the now roaring sound of the blaze. “I just f
I silently prayed to the Goddess as we lay motionless, hoping the shark would swim away and leave us alone.My prayers seemed to be answered when we saw the fin moving away from our lifeboat. But we stayed silent and still for hours as we waited for dawn.“Do you think it’s gone?” I whispered while trying to ignore that my legs were cramping and I desperately needed a bathroom.“Yes, but let’s stay still until daylight to make sure there aren't any more of them,” he whispered back. “I read that sharks like to feed at night.”Victor kissed my forehead, and I began to doze. I was having a strange dream about drifting on the clouds when something slammed into the dinghy.My eyes flew open, and I screamed as Victor fought to sit up. We were doomed. There was no way the shark didn’t know we were in the lifeboat.“No, no, no,” I sobbed. “Go away and leave us alone.”Victor began to laugh. “It’s okay, Daisy. That wasn’t a shark. We landed on a beach!”I sat up and looked around in the thin m
At first, I was too frightened to speak. Yes, I was scared for myself, but Victor was still asleep. If he woke up and saw a man painting a gun at me, he would try to disarm the man and maybe get shot.“Who are you, and why are you in my house?” the man demanded.“We …we …were on a …ya …yacht that blew up and …and the …life …lifeboat dra …drifted here,” I stammered. After everything that happened, this, being held at gunpoint, was too much.The man lowered the rifle slightly. He appeared to be about as old as Alex and was dressed in old jeans and a T-shirt. He would seem normal if he wasn’t aiming a gun at me.“You were on a yacht that blew up, huh?” he sneered. “What’s your name, girl?”“Duh …Daisy,” I replied. “Please don’t shoot us. We came into your house because we were hungry, tired, and dirty. A shark almost ate us!” I began to cry, and Victor stirred behind me.“Put the gun down, Arthur,” a woman said as she entered the house with her arms full of shopping bags. She was the sam
Victor pulled me into his arms as we stood in the darkness while the hurricane raged around us.Another loud crash against the roof made me gasp. My heart raced, and panic began to flash through my body. But then I felt the warm glow of the moonstones against my chest, and calm began to fill me.“We’ll be okay in this room,” Arthur yelled over the storm. “It was built to withstand any storm, and then the rest of the house was built around it.”“It wouldn’t be so bad if the lights were on,” Cathy shouted. “Why didn’t the generator kick on when the solar power failed?”“The wind must have taken out the lines to the house,” Arthur answered. “It’ll be okay, honey. Let’s settle in and wait for the storm to pass.”That’s all we could do was wait to see what would happen and keep each other’s spirits up.Even though the room was sturdily built, the walls seemed to move slightly with every powerful gust of wind that slammed into the house. And occasionally, a louder crash would make us jump.
I blinked the water from my eyes and realized the shadow was a wolf …a black wolf. It must have jumped onto my balcony and entered through the glass door.“Please be Victor,” I mumbled. With my luck lately, a burglar had caught me in the shower. But I was too tired to be afraid. I’d dealt with worse than a burglar in the last few days.I wrapped the towel around my body and flung the shower door open. In the exact second, the wolf shifted human, and my magnificently masculine fiancé stood before me in all his naked glory.“I missed you too much to leave you and go home alone,” he apologized. “I'm wiped out and just want to hold you while we sleep.”“But what if somebody comes into my room?” I asked. Jennifer would be shocked to find Victor in my bed.“You could lock the door,” he suggested.My eyes roamed over Victor’s muscular form. He was breathtaking. Every muscle was defined as if it were sculpted from granite.His wide shoulders and broad chest tapered into lean, narrow hips. His
Since Alex was driving himself again, I borrowed Joe and the limo to pick up Amy and go to William’s last football game.“Wow, we’re traveling in style today,” Amy commented as she climbed into the back of the car with me. “It must be nice to be an Alpha.”Knowing what Amy would discover later this evening, I ignored the remark and hoped she would take the news well that she was at least half Alpha.She settled into the seat and stared at me. “You look different. I expected you to look a bit rough after surviving a boat explosion and a hurricane, but you’re glowing!”I held up my left hand and showed her my engagement ring.“You and Victor are engaged for real!” she gushed. “Congratulations!” She looked me over again. “You did it, didn’t you? You had sex with him.”I blushed. “Yes, I did, and it was fantastic.”Amy buckled her seatbelt. “I knew you looked different. Did it hurt? How did he propose? You gotta tell me everything.”I began answering her questions. “It hurt at first, but
“Daisy, did you know about this,” Amy asked.“Only for a few days,” I admitted.“And you didn’t tell me right away?” Amy started to cry. “The first thing I would’ve done was call you if I found out something like this about you.”“Amy, it wasn’t my place to tell you,” I insisted. “After your dad told me, he said he would tell you himself.”“Why did he tell you?” she asked.I knew Amy wasn’t really mad at me. The news had been a big surprise for her. She was slowly processing and dealing with a new identity.But I would have to tell her about the party. She wasn’t going to be happy until she knew every detail.“I’m planning a surprise birthday party for you,” I said. “I called your dad from the beach to make sure he didn’t have other plans for your birthday, and he told me he wanted to be alone with you that night and why.”Amy wiped away a few tears with the back of her hand. “But still, you should’ve told me right away.”“Amy, I made her promise not to tell you,” Mr. Gray said sternl
“You look lovely, Miss Gray,” Jennifer said as she fastened a jeweled ornament in Amy’s blonde hair.“Thanks,” Amy said. “But I’m getting crazy nervous. Everybody is going to be watching the birthday girl.”“Relax, sweetie,” I said and pulled her in front of the mirror. “Let them stare. You look beautiful!”Amy’s hair was arranged in an updo with loose pieces framing her pretty face. And Jennifer had accentuated Amy’s delicate beauty perfectly with makeup in an ivory, pink, and gold color palette.She was wearing a ball gown that was one of Gisele’s latest designs. Made of delicate pink silk, it had spaghetti straps and a full princess skirt. The edges of the bodice and the hem were trimmed with gold thread and pearls.“Yeah, I look okay,” Amy sighed. “But I know I’m going to forget the dance steps and make a fool of myself. Justin’s family will love having another reason to criticize me.”“Stop worrying. Victor gave you a refresher course,” I reminded her. “You know all the dances. Y