Cougar's Conquest Read Online Free PDF Page B

till they got to Ft. Lukman. And then…
    Gwynn moved away from his exploratory caresses. “I—I’ve got to leave,” she said.
    “We haven’t had dinner yet,” he reminded her, speaking softly against her lemon-scented hair. “And maybe we could have some more dessert , both before and after.”
    “No,” she said so firmly that it jarred him. “This was—well, you know I enjoyed it. But I have to run.”
    Why? Did she have another guy in her life, one his research hadn’t discovered?
    “After dinner,” he commanded. Then, because she froze, then started to move farther away, he said more softly, “I want to tell you more about Alpha Force. You haven’t said for sure that you’re coming to Ft. Lukman, and I need to convince you.”
    He didn’t like her hesitation. But before he determined what to say next to ensure her cooperation, she said in a tone he couldn’t interpret, “Okay. Dinner. But let’s eat now.”
     
    It wouldn’t be easy to get her family off her back that night, but she’d think of something, Gwynn told herself as she showered in the hotel bathroom before leaving for dinner. She had to, no matter how difficult they made it.
    They couldn’t hurt her any more than they already had. She knew the ugliness she had to expect after disobeying their directives. She could deal with it.
    She showered alone under the softly pelting water that touched parts of her that Brett had so recently stroked…and more. Of course she also remembered the times before when Brett and she had showered together….
    But not now.
    Now, she had to think of what to say when she got home that night. An excuse for being late, something related to her job and teaching and the school. Her family despised that she’d entered into a new career around here, but they hadn’t balked at her contributing her salary toward their comfort.
    Not that she gave all of it to her parents and brother. She had a secret bank account where she saved as much as she could. She’d doubted at first that she would ever get up the nerve to leave here again, and the longer she stayed, the more remote the possibility seemed. But she had a nest egg, just in case.
    And now…
    Now, thanks to Brett, she just might, in fact, get up the nerve to do something positive with her life once more.
    Do something that would make her proud to be a shapeshifter, instead of ashamed and terrified about it.
    And with Brett remaining in her life?
    Was that possible?
    They’d just made love. And so far, since he’d found her, she had seen no reason not to trust him, except for his possibly crazy story about this Alpha Force.
    Well, she’d see about that. Maybe.
    If she dared to break away.
     
    Dinner with Gwynn at the gourmet hotel restaurant was both enjoyable and frustrating.
    She seemed remote now to Brett. Interested in Alpha Force. But she still didn’t commit to visiting Ft. Lukman with him.
    She asked a lot of questions, though. Like how he had found her.
    Hell, why not. He told her.
    Facing her across the table as she nibbled on a serving of fish—her lack of interest in the food making it seem obvious why she’d lost weight—he said quietly, so no people sitting around them in the crowded room could hear, “After I saw you…you know, and you disappeared, I did a lot of online research trying to find you, and also to learn about what I’d seen.”
    He’d found an amazing array of material on shapeshifting, ranging from pseudo-fiction to that which purported to be real but was available only to those with special online skills like his. Aka hacking, though he never admitted to that.
    “Really?” she said, pausing. “I’ve looked, too, but haven’t found much—a good thing, I thought. What did you see?”
    “Well,” he said in an even softer voice, “I learned that real, nonfictional shifters aren’t common, though they’re not extremely rare, either. But those who can control when they shift and who can maintain human