ONLY IN MY DREAMS by Dana Marie Bell

Delayed gratification has its place. This wouldn’t be it.

Halle Pumas, Book 5

Gabriel Anderson has accepted a unique position in the shifter world. He’s about to become a Hunter, one of the few trained and sanctioned to hunt down the rare rogue shifter dangerous to humans and shifters alike. There’s one catch: until his training is complete, he must hold off on marking his mate. No problem…after all, she probably couldn’t handle the sexual demands he dreams of making on her.

Her mate’s apparent desertion devastates Sarah. And his friendship with another woman threatens the bond they should be sharing and building. Maybe flirting with another man will make him sit up and take notice—and finally win Gabe’s heart. It works. Almost too well.

One touch of another man’s hand on Sarah’s tempting body brings every ounce of Gabe’s possessiveness roaring to the surface. He wastes no time making his erotic dreams of dominating her a reality—whether she’s ready for it or not.

If she’s not, the only place he’ll ever have her is in his dreams…

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Once upon a time Gabriel Anderson, Sheriff of Halle, Pennsylvania, Marshall’s Second to the Halle Puma Pride, and mate to Sarah Parker, was given a wonderful opportunity to serve the shifter community even more than he already did. He was asked to fill the shoes of a deceased Hunter, one of the few shifters sanctioned to hunt down rogues. But the training required would take him away from his newly found mate for six months. So rather than have them both tortured by memories of being together and then apart he accepts the advice of his trainer and slips away in the dead of night, leaving her without marking her.

 

Six months later, he’s come to regret that…

 

Only In My Dreams came about when I asked myself a simple question: What happens when you do the wrong thing for the right reason? Let’s face it, we’ve all done something that, at the time, we thought was the right thing to do, and for very good reasons. For instance, I told a friend that some of our mutual friends were fighting about her. I thought I was doing the “Good Samaritan”, hey-you-should-know-about-this thing by letting her know what was being said behind her back. She was upset, and I understood why. I remember I kept telling her that, because she was the center of the storm she had the right to know what was going on and, if no one else would tell her then I would. I hoped she understood I was trying to be the best friend I knew how to be.

Instead I got angry letters from both her and her fiancé telling me and several other people that we sucked and they never wanted to talk to us again. Apparently she’d been a lot more upset than I thought just knowing people were fighting about her and blamed us all equally, them for fighting and me for telling her about it. I hadn’t even been part of the original fight, yet because I did what I thought was the right thing to do I lost two friends. And that wasn’t the first time my “helping” lost me people I cared about, even though I meant well. Over the years I’ve managed to let it go, since people do eventually outgrow “young” and… okay, usually you don’t outgrow “stupid”, so I’ll say “naïve” instead. I did what I thought was right, though I know now that it was wrong. I should have stayed out of it, let it run its course. Instead most of those people never spoke to each other again. (Although, frankly? Most of them were headed that way anyway.) But, like Gabe, I was punished for doing the wrong thing for the right reason: trying to help a friend.

That’s where things get tricky for poor Gabe. He does everything he can to ease the unavoidable separation between himself and Sarah, but instead tangles things up so badly he almost loses her. And make no mistake, Sarah is strong enough to walk away from her mate and never look back. It will take a lot of fast talking and a lot of loving for Gabe to win back Sarah’s trust. Is he an idiot for doing what he did? Possibly, but he acted on the advice of someone he thought knew more than he did about the subject, and who hasn’t done that? Who hasn’t acted on “expert” advice and, hindsight being what it is, looked back and gone, “D’oh! What the hell was I thinking? Or drinking, for that matter?”

Gabe will win his girl. But what Sarah and Gabe have to go through to get to their happy ending will leave them both shaken to the core and more tightly bound together than any other shifter couple I’ve written. And this time it will be the right thing to do.

P.S.: Only In My Dreams  is the last Halle Puma book. It was always meant to be the last Puma book. Now, before you start hunting me down, chaining me to my desk and refusing me chocolate until I comply with your demands, I AM starting a new shifter series. The Halle Shifters will be full length and will have more Weres than you can shake a stick at. Lions and Tigers and Bears and Foxes and Coyotes and…um, yes. Pumas. Pumas will definitely be there. In Halle. Where they belong. *cough* 

Maybe it’s the right thing to do to end the novellas and take the stories to full length, and maybe it’s the wrong thing, but I have to run with it, because I’m doing it for the right reasons. The biggest request I get from all of you is to make the stories longer and for me, that’s the best reason of all.

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Many thanks to Dana Marie for being our guest today! Leave a comment for the chance to win a download off her backlist. You can find out more about Dana Marie and her books at her website here.

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