Page 126 of Dancing for the Minotaur

Put with the savings she already had in the bank, it was enough to live on comfortably for quite a while if she was careful. Enough to pay for the rest of her schooling and enough that she could finish her accounting degree and complete whatever additional requirements she needed to become a CPA without dancing at The Doll House ever again.

She ought to have been thrilled…instead, Terra felt like someone had hollowed out her chest.

Taurex had done exactly what he had promised himself he would do from the beginning—at least, she assumed he had. He had made certain she was secure, then removed himself from her life because he thought that was what she wanted.

No pressure…no strings…no demand that she come back. Just a hundred thousand dollars and a note telling her to have a good life.

Terra dropped her head into her hands.

“What did I do?” she asked herself.

The question slipped out before she could stop it. For two weeks she had replayed that night again and again, and every time the memory changed slightly. Not because the facts changed but because the panic had begun to fade enough for her to look at them clearly.

Taurex had told her she was his fated mate and had said they were meant to belong together. He had also told her a Bond would let them hear one another’s thoughts which had seemed really scary and invasive at the time.

But what had he actually done to hurt or scare her?

Nothing.

He had backed away every time she asked him to. He had never touched her without permission. Even when she had kissed him in bed, he had been the one to say they should be careful because she was upset.

When the pleasure-bloom reaction forced them into intimacy, he had repeatedly asked for consent. Then, when she rejected him, he had left. And when she panicked and begged him not to hurt her, he had looked heartbroken, not angry.

And now, instead of using her job or her financial dependence to pressure her into coming back, he had given her enough money to make certain she would never have to depend on him again.

Terra closed her eyes. Maybe she really had made a terrible mistake. Maybe she had taken every awful thing Jackson and Orlov and what countless strip-club customers had taught her about men and projected it onto a male who had never once behaved like any of them.

The thought made her feel sick.

She stood alone in Taurex’s empty penthouse, surrounded by the office she had helped him organize, and suddenly missed the big Monstrum with such intensity that it was difficult to breathe.

She missed the way his ears twitched when he was confused…missed his deep laugh…missed watching him hold absurdly tiny Earth objects in his enormous hands and missed his ridiculous hatred of filing cabinets. She missed the way he called her “lovely one.”

But most of all, she missed the way he looked at her and treated her. He hadn’t treated her like Bunny the stripper or like the woman Jackson had decided wasn’t worth wanting anymore.

Taurex treated her like she mattered…and she had pushed him away in a moment of panic she couldn’t take back. Because he was never going to want her again—not after how she’d acted.

Terra pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes, trying to hold back the tears that prickled behind her closed lids. Why had she done it? Why had she let fear and her past bad experiences with men blind her to who Taurex really was? To what⁠—

Her cell phone trilled, cutting off her train of thought. The sound was so sudden in the silent penthouse that she jumped.

Terra looked at the screen and saw it was her mom. Quickly, she wiped her face and answered.

“Hey, Mom. What’s up?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Terra?”

Something in Lucy’s voice made her straighten.

“What’s wrong?” she asked at once.

“The kids aren’t home yet.”

Terra frowned.

“What do you mean? Did their busses not come?”

“No, the buses came through already. Cody’s bus and Lisa’s bus both came, but neither one stopped.”