Page 95 of Dream Weaver

Naked, too.

My eyes drifted down, and it was all I could do to jerk them back up. But, heck. That was a mighty fine man there, and he’d just been a bear. I could be excused for ogling a bit.

I handed him his shirt as casually as I could.

“Thanks.” His voice was low and growly. A sign of emotion or an aftereffect of his shift?

I nodded quietly. Keeping hold of his shirt during the storm had been a challenge, but there was no way I was going to let the wind rip it away. Not a shirt that had belonged to his brother.

“Sure,” I murmured as he pulled it over his head. A damn shame, because I’d been enjoying the view.

He grimaced at the remnants of his jeans, then gave up on them and tugged on his boots. Then he looked down at himself and sighed.

“Great.”

It did make for an unusual sight — a grown man wearing nothing but boots and a flannel shirt that barely covered his rear, let alone his, er…front.

“I don’t know,” I tried a joke. “It’s kind of cute.”

“Cute?” he protested.

“Adorable, even.”

“Exactly the look I was going for,” he grumbled, swinging into the driver’s seat.

Did I peek at the prime vista that afforded? Yes, I did. How could I resist?

He turned on the engine, then the wipers. That sort of backfired, though, because the wiper fluid turned the thick layer of dust into orange sludge.

“Great,” Cooper griped as the mud swished back and forth, back and forth.

A few more squirts cleared the glass — mostly — and we started cruising toward town.

“Didn’t you say Liselle wasn’t all that powerful?” he asked after the first dusty mile.

“I did. And she’s not.”

“Then what was that?” He jerked a thumb behind us, more an indication of time than place.

I mulled it over. “Three possibilities. One, I was wrong, and she’s more powerful than I thought.”

Cooper’s eyes flashed. “Let’s hope not.”

“Two,” I continued, “she wasn’t that powerful, but now she is.”

“How?”

I tossed my shoulders in a frustrated shrug. “By siphoning power from the vortexes, maybe.”

“With the stolen ax?”

“Maybe.” My frown deepened, because we hadn’t only found ax marks. There’d been ashes too. “Or with fire, or both.” Then I cursed.

Cooper swung his head around, and it was such an echo of the same move in bear form that my mind went blank. The guy behind the wheel of the vehicle could turn into a bear. Make that, the guy I’d slept with.

The thought terrified as much as it thrilled.

Then my brain got back into gear, and I picked up where I’d left off.

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