With Everything I Am (3 page)

Sonia waved the Lanigans away and then turned to her house.

The picket fence surrounding her property and the porch that ran two sides of the house and had a white railing were dripping with greenery, clear lights sparkling in their bows, white poinsettias affixed to the points of the drapes. Two little white sleighs filled with white poinsettias and lined with twinkling lights sat at angles pointing in at the top of the stairs. Single candles shown in every window on all sides. More greenery, lights and poinsettias were draped around the faux widow’s walk on the roof. A tall, wide, fabulous real fir tree, dressed to perfection and lit with an abundance of glimmering lights, stood in the window.

She sighed at the sight, as she did every day from the minute it was decorated. Always returning home, turning the lights on then walking back out to get her mail so she could witness it and let the season shine down on her.

With regret, she reentered her house, took off her hat and gloves and carefully placed them tidily in the chest by the door. She hung her scarf on the hooks at the other side of her entryway with her coat.

She walked into her house, shuffling the post (mainly catalogues) in her fingers.

The inside of her house was decorated in a way that Gregor and Yuri approved but she’d done it only so they’d be quiet about it.

It wasn’t comfortable, countrified, farmhouse splendor.

Once you stepped through the wide entryway, the whole of the downstairs was one room, the walls torn down to make it open plan. Left and right were seating areas, fireplaces on each side, their mantels festooned with Christmas cheer. The back left was a dining room with another fireplace, ditto the Christmas festooning. The kitchen was behind the right area. No festooning in the kitchen but she did have Christmas kitchen towels and pot holders and red and green plastic ended pancake turners (which she never used as she didn’t eat pancakes) sticking out of her utensil crock. The red one had a turner the shape of a bell and the green one had a turner the shape of a snowman.

The walls all around were painted in coordinating tranquil light colors of seafoam (left seating area), green (right seating area) and blue (dining room and kitchen). The kitchen was state-of-the-art. The furniture was sleek, modern and, most especially, expensive and elegant. The minimal décor was carefully chosen to augment the furniture and paint.

It looked almost like her store Clear but with subtle hints of color.

Sonia loved Clear.

She detested her décor.

But she detested Gregor and Yuri complaining even more so she’d given in, which was once in enumerable times in her life that she’d done so since Gregor had become her guardian after her mother and father died.

She went to the kitchen and threw the mail on the counter. Without taking off her high-heeled boots, she poached a piece of fish, boiled some brown rice and steamed some vegetables.

She ate it standing up at her counter, thinking it tasted of nothing.

Bland and well, just
bland
.

Sonia loved food. Too much. In her teens, she’d started to put on weight, Gregor had noticed and commented, often.

This was a problem. Considering, even as active as she was as a child, she’d always been slightly plump. And even as careful as she was now, and she was obsessively careful with diet
and
exercise, she was curvy and nothing she did shifted a centimeter off her bottom or her breasts, no matter what it was. And Sonia had tried everything.

Therefore, for Gregor and her own peace of mind (because Gregor could shatter it, something he did with great regularity) she was careful with her food and, once she became an adult, her drink.

She stood at her counter eating and flipping through catalogues, carefully folding down corners if she saw something she wanted to buy for Christmas for a friend, a neighbor or one of her shop girls. Next year, of course, as her Christmas shopping was well since done and wrapped for this year.

Once she was done eating, she tidied everything away and went to her office upstairs to check her e-mail and her Facebook page. She didn’t change her status. She never did. She had few friends on Facebook because she had few friends
at all.
This was because she knew was weird, not because people didn’t like her.

Then, as it was Friday and the cleaning lady came on Fridays and the house seemed fresh and lovely (and because she always did it on Fridays), she drew herself a bath.

Fridays meant facial, manicure and pedicure.

Every Friday.

Without fail.

Unless, of course, she had an appointment at a spa to have this done on a Saturday, which she also did, once a month.

This was because Sonia didn’t have friends who she went out to drinks with (very often) and Sonia didn’t date (anymore).

To get close to anyone, spend more than a small amount of time with them, meant they’d notice her gifts.

No matter how careful she could be, she’d always slip up. Friends or boyfriends had noticed in the past and it had been uncomfortable (to say the least).

So, Sonia Arlington spent most of her time alone.

Considering she was social, very social, this meant that Sonia Arlington spent most of her time
lonesome
.

As the bath was filling, she took off her clothes and put them away. She rubbed an exfoliating mask on her face and shaved her legs.

As her mostly-white, very clean bathroom filled with the fragrance of lavender coming from the salts in the bath, Sonia carefully body brushed every inch of her skin, even her back, with a handled brush. She settled in the bath and went through her extensive regime of different face masks, shampooing and deep conditioning her hair as she relaxed.

After, she alighted from the bath, toweled off briskly and donned her robe. Then she gave herself a manicure and pedicure.

All of this was done with practiced ease and precision.

When finished, she went to her medicine cabinet and pulled out the injection.

She had an extremely rare blood disorder inherited from her father. Every night of her life (and Gregor had done it until she was eleven when he patiently taught her how to do it herself), she took the injection.

She hated them but as her father told her, again, many a time, she could die without them.

She’d once, as a rebellion during her early teens, stopped taking them. This she hid from Gregor. He would have been livid if he’d known. He was very careful with her injections and was just as adamant as her father that she take them every day without fail.

When she didn’t, it was a mistake.

Two days after she stopped, while she was in bed asleep, she woke having the strange, terrifying sensation she was coming out of her skin.

Seriously.

As if, at any second, her tingling skin would split and she’d boil straight out of it, her blood felt that hot. She could feel it, every last cell of blood,
boiling
through her veins.

She’d crawled to the bathroom, so immense was the pain, to give herself the injection and, like now, as the needle pierced the flesh of her right buttock, she felt the injection
invade
.

There was no other way to put it. Just like the boiling of blood cells she’d felt that awful night, the injection
invaded
. Searing through her system, down to the ends of her toes, up, around and down to her fingertips, up through her scalp and out, even to the ends of her hair.

But this sensation only lasted minutes. Unlike that night where she’d fought it for hours before giving in.

As usual, when the burn ended, she clutched the basin, took deep breaths and gave her system several long moments to settle. The she disposed of the needle in a small sharps container and walked to her bedroom.

Gregor nor Yuri, although he’d very, very (very) much like to, had ever seen her bedroom.

This was because it was not sleek, modern and elegant.

It
was
comfortable, countrified, farmhouse splendor.

Mismatched, homey furniture. A colorful wedding ring quilt on the bed. Scalloped shams on the pillows. Vibrantly colored braided rugs. A poofy dust ruffle and even poofier shades in the dormer windows which had even
poofier
pads on the seats.

Her bedroom was beautiful and she adored it, more than Clear, more even than Christmas.

Because it reminded her of home.

Not the elegant townhome she shared with her socialite mother and United States Senator father in DC when her father was at work. Or their gracious, rambling home in that very city.

Their real home.

The cabin in the mountains.

She glanced around her room and saw, amongst her plethora of toss pillows in the middle of the bed, her wolf. Like her Christmas lights did, every night, all year long, the sight of her wolf made her smile.

Her father had it made for her and given it to her the first Christmas she could remember.

She was two.

And she slept with it every night since she was two.

It was a stuffed animal the exact replica of
her
wolf, the one who had, very unfortunately, died the same night as her parents.

She’d known it was
her
wolf the minute she’d seen him (she
did
have a stuffed animal to prove this fact).

And she’d loved him with an inexplicable and unfathomable depth from the moment her eyes fell upon him.

Even though he’d died, he’d never left her, not once, not in all these years.

She knew this because he came to her in her dreams.

She turned her head and saw in the corner
her
Christmas tree. It was smaller and not perfectly decorated. The multi-colored lights were wonky because she put them on. The decorations didn’t match because they came from her mother and father’s belongings of which she had practically nothing. This was because Gregor had sold them, given them away or tossed them out with a thoroughness that was astonishing. Therefore, she truly had nothing but those decorations. They were the decorations her parents bought during their marriage, were given by friends or had taken from their childhood homes. They were the decorations that hung on the tree in their beloved cabin, long since destroyed in a forest fire (yet another precious thing Sonia had lost).

Over the years, because she figured her parents would want her to do so, Sonia had added sweet but mismatched decorations that she’d found and fallen in love with. All of which were far from perfect but definitely perfect on her tree.

It was
this
tree she sat beside alone every Christmas morning and opened the presents friends and neighbors had given her.

This was her
real
tree.

She turned on the lights of the tree and the one by her bed. She carefully moisturized her face (so as not to destroy her manicure) and lay on the covers (so as not to destroy her pedicure) and read until her nails were dry and she was sleepy.

She then, as she did every night without fail, rubbed lotion into her feet then a different lotion on her hands and finally almond oil into her cuticles.

She turned out the bedside light. Her gaze went to her little Christmas tree and again, this time with a deep contentment, Sonia sighed.

This was her absolute, most favorite time of year.

Because every night, from the day after Thanksgiving until the day after New Years, she’d sleep in a room bathed in Christmas lights.

And she’d remember a time, long ago, when she was loved.

* * * * *

She opened her eyes and saw her “puppy” standing by her bed.

In her dreams since the night her parents died, she’d see him standing beside her bed, staring at her with his intelligent tawny eyes. But she knew in her heart he was there to look after her, to keep her company, to keep her safe, to protect her.

Not every night (regrettably) but most nights after her parents died.

Over the years these nights came fewer then fewer, until now he only came a few times a year.

But always, one of those times was around Christmas.

“Hello puppy,” she whispered in her dream.

He sat, so huge was her puppy and he appeared somehow regal.

She grinned at him.

He watched her.

“Is my handsome wolf coming tonight?” she asked.

Her “handsome wolf” had started coming later, years later, when she was in her late teens.

He was an entirely different kind of dream.

She hated to admit it because she loved her puppy, but she liked those dreams even
better
.

Her puppy growled.

Sonia blinked, slowly, dreamily.

When her eyes opened, her handsome wolf was there, she felt him.

The covers slid down her body, she turned, looked up and saw him.

God, he was handsome.

And he was
huge
.

His naked body slid in bed beside her, mostly on her, and she took his warmth and his immense weight gladly.

She looked in his clear, blue eyes.

“Hi,” she breathed.

He smiled.

God, he had a great smile.

Her arm wrapped around him as her other hand went up, as it always did, to touch his beautiful face. Her fingertips in his thick hair, her thumb glided along his dark eyebrow then down, over this sharp cheekbone then down, along his full bottom lip.

She watched, fascinated (no matter how many times she saw it) as the tawny spikes shot out of his pupils and the normal sky blue color of his irises was forced out and the warm, glittering, deliciously hungry tiger’s eye took over.

She lifted her head from the pillow and placed her mouth against his. “Where have you been, my handsome wolf?”

His tongue glided along her lower lip.

Sonia shivered and opened her legs so his hips could fall through.

This was, mostly, an invitation.

It was also so she could wrap him lovingly, protectively in her limbs.

She heard him growl as she felt it against her mouth.

She shivered again.

Then, his deep voice rough with approval, he said, “Always in heat, my little one.”

“Only for you,” she whispered, her breath catching, her heart racing, her skin warming.