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“Just for a drink and some dancing?” He threw her another one of those knee-liquefying grins, but she just refocused her gaze slightly above his eyes so she wouldn’t feel the full brunt of it. “I know this awesome club in Greenwich. Good food, strong drinks, awesome music… I promise I’d have you home by midnight, Cinderella.”
“Okay, well…” She drew in a deep breath, her frustration slowly chipping away at his gorgeous features. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t do clubs, and I really don’t have time to date.”
“Just one night?”
She darted around him when he tried to cut off her escape to the front door. Alarm bells started firing immediately in her head, reaching a zenith when he grabbed her arm and actually pushed her back into the plexiglass window beside the door. Alani yelped, her whole body stiffening and head ducking down as if to avoid a blow. His grip weakened instantly, leaving her arm and lifting her face up by the tip of her chin.
“Alani, I need you,” he whispered. If she hadn’t been so terrified, maybe she would have found the moment hot—exciting, even. But all she wanted to do was knee him in the groin and slam her fist, keys poking out between each finger, into his cheek.
“You don’t need me,” she spat, her voice filled with surprising strength. His face wore a mask of hurt well, but she figured it had to be an act. He’d just… Well, not assaulted her, but he’d manhandled her, pressured her… This guy was nuts. “You don’t know me.” She shoved at his chest, and much to her continued surprise, he actually staggered back a few feet. “And don’t you ever lay your hands on me again, you understand? Or I’m calling the police.”
For a moment, he looked genuinely broken as he retreated into the shadows. Satisfied, Alani shoved her key in the lock and pushed through the first security door, then ran to the second. At the sound of it slamming shut, she looked back and saw Ivo headed for the street, hands in his pockets and shoulders slumped forward.
Adrenaline continued to surge through her body, and with trembling hands and unsteady legs, she made her way to the elevators and pressed the up button, knowing she wouldn’t feel better until she talked to her daughters. Sometimes only their sweet little voices could calm her, and tonight felt like it was going to be one of those times.
***
“You are literally the biggest fuck-up on the planet.” If Ivo were at home, he’d probably slam his head against the wall. Instead, he stood on the curb and glared at his reflection in the bus shelter’s window, wondering what the hell had just happened.
He really had tried since he last saw his fated mate to be respectful. During the day when he knew the gallery was open, Ivo trod softly around his apartment, even left it if that meant Alani could have peace and quiet while she worked. He wanted to respect her wishes—and respect her working time.
While he’d been tempted multiple times to just go downstairs and say hello, to strike up a normal conversation so she wouldn’t forever remember him as the loud asshole above her studio, he hadn’t. Artists had a reputation for being fickle and temperamental, especially when they were creating. Ivo hadn’t wanted to intrude on that.
So he’d asked Tanith a few quick things about her and then decided to meet her at her apartment tonight to ask her out. He had gone in expecting her to shoot him down. Hell, he’d mentally prepared for rejection. Ivo had a whole speech plotted out for when she told him she didn’t want to date him because, with the way his life had been, he just assumed the worst.
But all that went out the window when she actually said it—when she practically recoiled away from him. She was his fated mate. Every second in her presence was dizzying. He felt both light as air and heavy as lead. All he wanted was to bury his face in the crux of her neck and breathe her in, but he couldn’t. And didn’t. But he’d fucked it all up anyway, letting his desperation get the better of him.
Why couldn’t he play it cool? All things considered, he was a half-decent looking guy. Girls at bars always seemed eager for his attention. If he could be suave and cultured too, Alani would probably be hanging off his arm right about now. But she wasn’t. He’d frightened her. He’d acted like a fucking ass and sent her running.
He deserved to be alone. His mouth was disconnected from his brain on a good day—but in Alani’s presence, it was on overdrive, just verbal diarrhea-ing everywhere as his befuddled brain tried to keep up. All he wanted was to take her somewhere nice. Quiet. Intimate. Talk to her. Get to know the woman he’d been born to worship.
Yet his fucking mouth had invited her to a club. And not a great club either. Just run-of-the-mill average. Alani’s beauty was better than that. Nothing here in Angel Fire was good enough for her, especially not Ivo.
But he didn’t have it in him to be angry anymore. Not on his own, anyway. Hands shoved deep in his pockets, Ivo walked back to his apartment, ignoring the pang of regret that shot through him just looking at the art gallery at the base of the building, and hopped into his pickup. The roar of the engine revitalized him somewhat, but not as much as he wanted—or needed.
He sped out of Angel Fire in a fury, headed for a dive bar on the far end of the mountain range. Before he had thought it was just a sketchy hangout for truckers. No one ever recommended it to tourists. But he’d recently discovered it was the main hangout for ram shifters.
Ivo had been tracking their scents for days—finding out where they were most prominent and thus trying to figure out their territory range. They must have been new to town if the bear clan didn’t know about them, and it gave Ivo a secret thrill that he had more knowledge about the comings and goings of his town than Miguel Ruiz did.
With a baseball cap tucked firmly on his head, he made his way into the dive. The floors were sticky, and the two TVs were both a bit fuzzy, but the place was packed with shifters. He could feel their energy the second he put his hand on the door, and once he stepped inside, the raunchy conversations went from a clap of thunder to the creak of a cricket.
Nodding at the few men who made eye contact with him by the front door, he shouldered his way through the crowd to the bar. By the time he got there, a beer sat waiting for him, the bartender telling him it was courtesy of the guys in the corner booth by the bathroom.
Ivo frowned, wrapping his fingers around the cool glass bottle with some hesitation. When he looked to the guys—a rough crowd of six—they toasted him. So Ivo returned the favor and made his way over.
“Pull up a chair, black bear,” one of them ordered with a grin. “You put up a hell of a fight the other day. You earned it.”
Ivo blinked as his mind went through a somewhat hazy recollection of the human faces staring back at him. Were these the rams from the clearing on the mountain? Hard to tell—they’d been bloodied up pretty bad when they shifted out of their ram forms, their naked backs to him as they retreated into the forest.
But their scents were familiar.
“Appreciate it,” he grunted back, dragging an abandoned chair over and sitting at the head of the table. “The name’s Ivo.”
“Vince,” the nearest one said, extending his hand. “Any man or beast who can hold his own against all of us is welcome at the table.”
Some of Ivo’s misery and fury lifted at the thought, though as they all clinked glasses and bottles together, Ivo didn’t feel all that much better. He would have preferred to be having a drink with Alani right about now—but the rams would have to do for tonight.
At least they actually wanted to be around him. It was a refreshing change.
