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I had to remember that this was not going to help me to find a “mate.” Dating wasn’t really on my radar, even now that the age difference between me and those I met at work and school didn’t matter as much. I had no time, and the few times I did go out with a guy always felt so awkward and not worth the effort. Maybe I was just one of those people who wouldn’t have relationships. I had a professor like that who was very happy never having had any kind of partner. Of course, she did have a really solid friend circle.
Okay, this was nothing to do with relationships, even if it was a dating app. I wanted to meet someone who I could interview and maybe steer my future studies in a slightly different direction.
Just as the app showed as installed and I started the questionnaire, I had several customers in a row, one of whom was lost and wanted help getting back to the highway. GPS was usually the best idea, but this older gentleman had one of those not-so-smart phones and barely felt comfortable using it for texting.
“I feel like the world is passing me by, girlie,” he said after thanking me for writing down the directions for him. “Like a fish out of water.”
“I get it, sir.” I added a candy bar to the piece of paper and handed them over. “I hope this makes your night a little sweeter.”
As he left, clutching his handwritten instructions and already unwrapping the chocolate bar, my phone beeped and I looked down at it. A light flashed next to the question I had been about to answer, and I settled in to tell the app and presumably anyone they matched to me more about myself than I even knew was possible. Lots of things about my life in general and preferences in a partner. I didn’t feel like I was coming off too well and wondered how I could live such a boring all-work-and-no-play existence.
The sex questions were particularly hard, since I had no experience to go on, but I did my best then sat back to wait and see what would happen.
Chapter Five
Koa
“Koa, Orion, we need some help in the large ballroom.” Amy, the director of the resort walked over to us and tapped me on the arm. Her head came up not far past my waist, so even my arm must’ve been a reach for her.
“What do you need?” Orion asked. He’d only had one cup of coffee that morning after staying up late, working on his latest piece. Orion was a mean one with anything less than two cups.
“We need all of the furniture cleared out. There’s going to be a meditation class in there in an hour.”
I sighed. “Sure, Amy.”
Of course. More labor for the strong guys. We moved all the tables and chairs into storage with minimal grumbling. The ballroom overlooked the mountains and the trailhead—the one we used to wait at every morning for the guests who wanted to explore. I missed it, but work was work, and this physical labor helped our beasts to work off some of the extra energy.
We should’ve spoken up. Said we wanted to go back to our former positions, but the truth was, our pay never changed, and most of the guests who took the tours were busier taking pictures and videos than being present and enjoying the outdoors.
Still, I missed it.
“There’s wood to split and storage to fill,” Orion said once we closed the doors to the ballroom and turned off the lights. We made our way through the back entrance and to the wood-splitting area where I took on the rest of the logs I’d stacked up the day before.
Once we were done, we had to put the wood in storage. It was already halfway through the day, and I was glad for it. My real life was at home, in my kitchen and in my reading chair. Those were the things that mattered to me.
That and finding a mate.
If that was even possible for a shifter like me.
“Get the wheelbarrows, Orion.”
He came back with one and then the other. Once they were full, we rolled them to the woodshed.
The scent of lust and passion hit me before I heard a noise or saw the scene in the corner of the shed. Only with my shifter sight could I have seen the man and woman, a boy younger than myself, entangled in the corner. His hand was underneath her skirt. Hers were splayed along his naked back. His sweatshirt with the resort logo was discarded onto a pile of firewood.
“Oh, um, sorry,” the female said, pulling down her skirt. It took the male a few seconds longer to catch up to the realization that they’d been caught.
They both giggled while Orion and I turned our backs on them, giving them a moment to get themselves together.
We weren’t surprised. Not in the least. The staff told all kinds of tales about catching couples, and sometimes groups, partaking in sex in all parts of the place. In the hot tubs. In the gondolas. In the staff closets. In the bathrooms. There wasn’t a surface in this place untouched by couples in the thralls of heat.
Gods, I was jealous of them.
It was stupid to miss something I’d never experienced but here I was, wanting and wishing I had a female who belonged to me, one I could push against a wall and ravish.
Instead, I was stacking fucking firewood.
The couple moved past us and out into the snow, holding hands, their gazes locked on each other.
