AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t have an annoyed face.”
“Buddy, you have an annoyed face.”
“Eleanor,” he said.
“Look, there it is again,” she said.
He laughed, and her look of delight made his lion purr happily.
“You have a great laugh, Wes.”
“Thanks, you do too,” he said. “And you’re not obnoxious. You’ll find your mate, Eleanor. One who loves you for who you are.”
“Thanks, but I’m not holding my breath,” Eleanor said with a grin, but he could see the pain lurking just below the surface of it. “Why didn’t you find someone else? Do you have trust issues because of what your ex-fiancée did? If you do, that’s understandable – I know what it’s like to be cheated on, and it sucks hairy monkey balls – but you should know that you’re a total catch. You’ve got a steady job, you’re smart, you have a fantastic body, and you’re good looking.”
His lion purred loudly at the compliments, puffing out his chest and preening like a bird. Wes contained the urge to roll his eyes. He didn’t think he was traumatized by the cheating. It had sucked, and he didn’t ever want to go through that again, but the affair itself wasn’t what stopped him from pursuing a relationship.
At first, it’d been his job. Then the death of Derek and his guilt over the role he’d played in it. The one time he’d stayed the night with a woman, he’d scared the hell out of her by screaming in his sleep. The nightmares about the day Derek died still happened occasionally. And, although the bad dreams were far less frequent, they were no less intense. Sometimes they were bad enough that his lion freaked out and took control, forcing Wes to shift so he could better defend them against an invisible enemy.
“Sorry,” Eleanor said. “I’m prying too much.”
“It’s not the trust issues,” Wes said. “I just…”
“Just what?” she said when he didn’t continue.
“I don’t have a lot of free time for a relationship,” he finally said because he had to say something and confessing that no other woman did it for him since the moment he’d climbed into this car and seen Eleanor’s beautiful face was madness.
“Oh,” she said. He could hear the skepticism in her voice.
He watched as she rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. “Ooh, that was a good one,” she said before cracking her neck again. “Does this gross you out?”
“No, should it?”
“This guy I dated – the one who made me wear a blonde wig while we had sex because he was cheating on me -”
“I remember the story,” Wes said.
“Right. Anyway, he hated it when I cracked my neck. Said it was disgusting and unladylike and that I needed to try harder to be a lady around him. I said I’d try my best to be more ladylike in the future. Then I spent the next five days crop-dusting him every time we were in the same room together.”
Wes roared with laughter. He laughed until his stomach hurt and his eyes watered, and he had to gasp in gulps of air. When his laughter finally tapered off, he could smell Eleanor’s delight and happiness and… lust.
He took a deep breath and a drink of water, trying to ignore the lust that made him want to direct her to pull the car over so he could fuck her in the back seat until she screamed his name.
“I know it was immature, but he deserved it,” Eleanor said.
“He did.” Wes took another drink of water as Eleanor rolled her shoulders again.
“Man, my shoulders and neck are stiff today,” she said. “The hazards of holding a steering wheel ten hours a day.”
Feeling weirdly guilty, he said, “I’m sorry I can’t give you a break from driving.”
“Oh, it’s no problem,” she said. “I love driving. It doesn’t bother me that you can’t drive.”
“I can drive,” he said as his lion grumbled in annoyance. “I just don’t drive.”
“Why not?” she said.
His lion’s good humour and happiness disappeared immediately, and so did Wes’s. “That’s none of your business.”
