rs tangle in her hair. He loved the dark-brown softness. “I would not know. One cannot see oneself.”
He chuckled. Her plane really was backwards. “Wow. So no mirrors on your plane, then. I have no idea how I would survive without a mirror, sweetheart. Wait here.”
He forced himself out of bed. He knew there was a handheld mirror in the dresser, and he brought it back to Kaja, who lay on the bed watching him. He appreciated the look in her eyes. She was watching her lover move. He knew the feeling. Now, he needed to show her how gorgeous she was. He sat down and held the mirror out. “This is you, Kaja.”
She gasped and sat up. Staring into the mirror, she leaned forward. Dante couldn’t help but watch her breasts. They were soft and round, with pretty pink and brown nipples that hardened at the merest whisper. Kaja touched her face as though unsure of the image before her.
“Do you see how beautiful you are, consort?”
A slow smile parted her lips. He felt the air around him, and she was a wolf once more. She nosed the mirror playfully.
“Yes, you’re fucking amazing in this form, too, wife,” he conceded, wondering if he was making a monster. Would he have to fight her for the mirror in the morning? He stopped himself. It wasn’t like he was going to live with her long-term or anything. They were just having fun.
The flap to the tent opened, and Meg walked in.
“Good morning,” she said with her usual exuberance. “I came to take Kaja to breakfast. Holy shit!” She backed up, never moving her eyes off the wolf on the bed. “Dante, stay calm. I have the gun in my backpack. I’m going to back out, and I’ll go get it. You just don’t make any sudden moves, okay?”
Dante laughed and petted his wolf-wife. Kaja’s head cocked as she looked at Meg, curiosity in her eyes. He wondered if Kaja saw her differently in her wolf form. There were a lot of questions he had about his wife. He put a hand on her fur and leaned toward Kaja. “She thinks you want to eat me, love. Actually…” His mind went to all sorts of dirty places. “No, that borders on bestiality. You’re going to have to do that as a human. There are levels even I won’t sink to, love. Though, not many.”
Meg’s eyes went wide. She stopped in her tracks. “Are you trying to tell me that’s Kaja?”
“I’m not trying to tell you anything, Meg,” Dante said with a frown. “I’m trying to enjoy being in bed with my consort, even if she is shedding. I think she’s trying to get rid of her winter coat.” He brushed some stray fur off the bed. He was going to have to tell the housekeeper to upgrade the vacuuming robots if Kaja ran around the penthouse in this form very often.
Meg ignored him. She approached Kaja, who sat up regally. Kaja cocked her head as though asking a question.
“Wow,” Meg said softly. “That’s a werewolf. That is so cool. I can’t begin to describe it.”
“Werewolf?” Dante queried. He’d never heard the term. “I don’t know if I like that. I was going to suggest ‘shanimal.’ You know, ‘she’ because Kaja’s a girl, and ‘animal’ because, well, there she is.”
Both females turned to him. He knew what they were thinking. He knew when someone thought he was a dumb-ass. He shrugged. “Fine, werewolf it is then. But it’s not catchy like ‘shanimal.’ Don’t expect it to seep into our cultural lingo or anything.”
Kaja greeted Meg with a heavy thump of her tail. The wolf’s mouth opened, and her tongue panted out. She appeared to be smiling. It was a sweet expression. Meg’s eyes were filled with wonder. Kaja didn’t need to worry about Meg accepting her. Meg loved the strange creatures of the planes. Vampires, on the other hand, might see her as a lesser being. His people weren’t known for their easy acceptance of the odd and different. Especially in high society.
And that was why his plan would work. So why did his stomach turn at the thought of judgmental eyes on his Kaja?
“You’re an idiot, Dante. Werewolf is what she is. You don’t have werewolves on your plane?” Meg asked, though she never took her eyes off Kaja. Kaja nudged her hand, an invitation to pet. Meg ran her hands down the wolf’s strong back.
Dante wondered if he could get her to do that when Kaja was in human form. It would be way hotter that way. His brain was on sex. “No, we don’t have hot chicks who run around in fur. Well, not if they don’t want to get coated with blood. PETA. They should be arrested for wasting the blood.” He thought for a moment about Meg’s statement. “Is she from the Earth plane?”
Meg’s hazel eyes were staring into Kaja’s blue ones. “No, they’re just a legend where I come from. Though I thought about her a lot last night. When she was talking, before the translator took over, it sounded like she was speaking Swedish or maybe Finnish.”
Dante shook his head. “No idea. Everyone speaks English on my world. You know, language of the conquerors and all.”
Meg’s hands worked over Kaja’s fur. His wife seemed to love it. “How does the whole door thing work? When I left from this plane, I ended up in Fort Worth. The Vampire plane is very similar to the Earth plane. If we found a door from your plane to mine in Dallas, would I just end up in another Dallas?”
Dante laughed at the thought. “No, it’s far stranger than that. While the planes might look similar, they aren’t. Didn’t you notice that the time of day shifted as we went from the Vampire plane to this one? It’s several hours off. And there’s a door in upstate New York that leads right off a cliff into an ocean. Some corporation managed to put in a slide. They sold tickets for a while. Then some plesiosaur ate a couple of kids. You know how it goes.”
“So Kaja is from someplace like Sweden, but not Sweden.”
Dante really didn’t care. All that mattered was that she was here now.
Meg seemed content to continue her intellectual exercise. “Of course, it makes you wonder. Maybe they started out on the Earth plane and fled because humans can be real assholes, you know.”
“Yes,” Dante agreed readily. He arched a single eyebrow. “They can also really interrupt an interesting morning. Tell me something, Meg. Did I interrupt your opportunities for hot sex with your new spouse the morning after your wedding?”
Meg flushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I just thought that since…Cian told us what was going on. I thought you probably wouldn’t be doing that.”
Dante stared at her like she was a crazy person, which was exactly what she sounded like. “You thought I wouldn’t have sex with my consort. I have sex with everything that allows me to, but you thought I wouldn’t fuck my own wife?”