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“I know that now,” I said as visions of Luke riding my dick flashed before me, “and I didn’t really believe it then either, but hey, what did I know? He was the first gay werewolf I’d met.” I hesitated before saying, “He was hot and I was horny, so we made out for a while and jerked each other off.”

Luke’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything.

“So that’s why you don’t date werewolves?” Dylan asked, his brow creasing.

“No,” I said. “I like to top, but it’s not a deal-breaker for me. It was the next date that had me swearing off shifters.”

“Wait, you went on a third date with the same guy? Because he sounds like a dick,” Luke said. There was a definite note of jealousy there, which shouldn’t have been as encouraging as it was.

I stared at the back of my hands. “Nobody said I was a fast learner.”

Luke snorted. I glanced up at him and caught the barest whisper of a smile, and some of the tension in my gut uncoiled. “The third date was a disaster. It started with him being pissy because I hadn’t put out the time before.”

“But you said you got each other off,” Luke said.

I shrugged. “Didn’t count, apparently. Anyway, he felt the need to lecture me on how his species was superior and how if I expected him to keep seeing me, I’d need to stick to these rules.”

“What were the rules?” Dylan asked, his tone skeptical.

“It was real chest-beating macho bullshit.” I pulled a face as I recalled Kevin’s list of demands and ticked them off on my fingers. “Dating a werewolf meant submitting to them. I should remember that I was his now—which was news to me, by the way. I shouldn’t so much as look at another man, even to say hello. I had to agree to him tracking my location. I should always be available when he called, and if I was meeting anyone new, he needed to check them out. But it was the last one that took me out. He said, and I quote, ‘Call me Alpha.’” I pitched my voice low in imitation of Kevin and let out a long breath. “And that’s why I don’t date shifters.”

I’d never talked about those dates with anyone, and now that I was repeating Kevin’s rules out loud, I could hear how insane they sounded.

Luke and Dylan were both staring at me open-mouthed. They exchanged a look, and it was Dylan who broke the silence. “You think it was⁠—”

Luke raised his eyebrows. “Gotta be.”

Dylan nodded slowly. “I mean, who else?”

And then, impossibly, Luke snorted out a laugh. Dylan’s face twisted into a grin and he started laughing too, and soon the pair of them were cackling so hard they’d fallen over sideways on the couch. Luke had honest-to-god tears streaming down his face.

I stared at them. I had no clue what was going on, and yeah, they were laughing at me, but I had the feeling it wasn’t just me. “What’s funny?”

Dylan made a sound like a dying whale, and he had to take a couple of deep breaths and blow them out slowly before he managed to put together a sentence. And when he did, it was the last thing I expected to hear.

“Tell me, was this guy’s name… Kevin?”

CHAPTER 13

LUKE

I could see Hunter’s record-scratch moment happening in real time. “How—how did you know?” he asked, eyes wide as saucers.

Suddenly, all the puzzle pieces clicked into place for me. Hunter’s refusal to date shifters made perfect sense.

Because of course it was fucking Kevin. That guy was the worst.

“Everyone knows Kevin. And nobody who knows him dates him—not more than once, anyway.”

Hunter’s brow was still creased in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

Dylan had finally stopped laughing enough to speak. “Kevin’s a class-A dick. Metaphorically speaking, I mean. I haven’t seen his actual dick, obviously. But everyone who’s met him knows he’s an overbearing, opinionated dick who thinks he’s something special. A real FIGJAM.”

“A what?” Hunter asked.

“Fuck, I’m Good, Just Ask Me,” I said as relief bubbled up in my chest, leaving me lightheaded. Hunter wasn’t a speciesist after all. He was just protecting himself—and who could blame him, when his one and only experience with a shifter had been fucking Kevin? “He asked me out once, and he was shocked when I turned him down. But everybody knows not to date Kevin.”

Hunter looked between us, and his expression morphed from confusion to understanding. “So the rules he was talking about…”