“I could try,” she said as she wiped her eyes, happy he’d at least let her go. Maybe her idea was a thing he’d never thought about. “I could go somewhere every time the moon’s full. You and I don’t run in the same circles. I could even use a different park to train the dogs.”
“You don’t want to do the guard dog thing with me either?” he asked, feeling himself deflate more and more by the minute. The woman couldn’t care for him the way he did for her if she could turn her back on him and the opportunity to make tons of money. Maybe he should just let her go. Maybe someone else would come along who would return his feelings.
“Do you think you could keep things between us just business if I did?” she asked.
He grew angry with her question. So she’d use him to make money but wouldn’t return his affection? He shook his head. “If you’re around me, I’m going to crave you. Do you understand that, Robin? My feelings for you run deeper than any I’ve ever had for anyone. If you’re around me, I will want you. Do you think you could be around me and not want me?”
She didn’t know. But as she looked at him, the gorgeous man he was when he wasn’t a scary-as-hell wolf, she had to be honest with him as well as herself. “I don’t think I can be around you and not want you, Shaw. So I guess the business deal will have to be off too.”
Shaw’s anger cooled as she’d been truthful with him. He knew she wanted him; it was just her fear that got in her way. Maybe he could slow things down a bit, give her a little more time to understand where she belonged and to whom.
“If you promise not to tell a soul about my friends or me then I’ll take you home and leave you alone. If that’s what you really want, Robin.” He died a little inside as her face lit up.
“Yes! God, yes! I won’t tell a soul, I swear that to you, Shaw.” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “You won’t be sorry you let me go. I promise you that.”
Shaw hoped he wouldn’t be sorry. He hoped the space and time between them would have her heart aching as he knew his would be. But he’d give her that. He owed her that much.
Pulling her back, he kissed her with a featherlight kiss. “I won’t tell my pack what you saw. I won’t tell them a thing about what happened or what I told you. If I did that, your life would be in danger. So if you run into any of them, you better not act afraid of them in any way. Tell me you understand me, baby.”
“I understand you. I won’t act afraid, and they’ll never know what I know. Not ever. I promise you that. Can you take me home now?” Shaw could only stare at her beautiful face, trying to memorize everything about it. His heart filled with pain and the wolf inside him howled in anguish.
To the wolf, Shaw was playing a dangerous game that might cost them the only female he’d ever wanted. The wolf and Shaw both knew Robin was born for them. But her fear had to be overcome before Shaw made her theirs.
Her love for him would have to be found, and her fear would have to change. She’d have to fear to live a life without him more than being changed into a creature like him.
“I’ll take you home now. Get dressed.” He got out of bed to put his clothes on and tried his best to ignore how happy she was to be leaving him.
After they’d dressed, he took her to the garage with his cars in it. Taking the keys to the four-wheel drive truck, he helped her climb up in the tall thing. “Wow, you have a lot of cars, Shaw.”
“And they’d be yours too if you weren’t so afraid of becoming like me,” he told her then closed the passenger door.
Robin looked at the cars and thought about what he’d said. She wasn’t about to trade her life for any damn automobiles. When he got inside behind the steering wheel, she had to admit to herself that she hated the look on his face.
Did he really care that deeply for her? Already?
The ache she felt in her heart had her wondering just how much she cared for him. She did feel terrible for making him so sad. “I’m sorry, Shaw. I really am. I wish you could understand. Taking a chance of dying isn’t a thing I’d ever do. And the thought of becoming a wolf is like a nightmare to me.”
He started the truck without saying a word and drove her all the way to her apartment in silence. When he’d parked, he got out and met her in front of the truck. “You don’t have to walk me inside,” she quickly said.
“I want to,” he said as he reached out and took her hand. “I have to hold you for a minute, kiss you goodbye. This isn’t easy for me. Not as easy as it is for you, it seems.”
Robin couldn’t help feeling sorry for the man. He looked worse and worse with each passing moment. So she didn’t argue and let him go inside her apartment with her. At least there she knew if he tried anything people would hear her screams and call the police.
She laughed to herself as she thought the police most likely couldn’t do a thing to a wolf-shifter anyway.
Once inside with the door closed behind them, Shaw took her into his arms, inhaling deeply. He had to take her scent as deep inside him as he possibly could. He needed something in reserves to hold him over until she realized she did have feelings for him. Feelings that would override her fears.
“Each day that passed without me seeing you felt like an eternity. And that was before I made you mine, Robin.” He nuzzled the top of her head, stirring her hair and releasing the honey smell of her shampoo. “Now that I’ve had a taste of your sweet nectar, I don’t know how I’ll make it without you. I want you with me every minute of every day. I want you in my arms each night. I want you in my bed with me where you belong.”
“How can you want me that much in such a short amount of time, Shaw?” she asked him.
He pulled back to look at her. “Look into my eyes and tell me you don’t feel the attachment we made when we made love, Robin.”
She gulped as she looked into his eyes and found herself going back to the night, before he changed and frightened her nearly to death. She’d felt more than she knew possible with him. He’d taken her to a place no one ever had, and she doubted anyone else could.
“I know you think I’m the one for you…” she started to say.
He had to let her know the truth. “You are the only one for me. For us. There is nor will there ever be another.”
“Come on,” she said as she smiled at him, trying to lighten him up. “You can’t know that for certain.”
He kept looking into her green eyes, his favorite color in the world. “Tell me, do you think there is any mere mortal man who can do to you what I did? Do you think any other man can care for you as deeply as I do? Because there is no one, Robin. A wolf mates for life. And shifters are immortal. I’d love you until the end of forever, which is a damn long time. Can any man admit that he’d do the same for you?”
“You love me?” she asked. He’d never told her that before. Not that it made a difference. She just had to know is all.
“I love you, Robin Winters. I adore you. I cherish you. And only I could make you mine for eternity. No human can offer you what I’m offering you, a love that will last forever.” His lips grazed hers, making his insides heat with desire. He needed the woman as much as he needed air to breathe. But he wanted her to give herself to him, rather than either he or his wolf taking her by force.
She felt her heart pounding as he poured his heart out to her. A heart that was massive and filled with more than she had ever realized. “Shaw, I can’t become what you are.”
“Are you afraid of pain? Because I can tell you it’s not as terrible as it seems.” He searched her eyes and saw something in them that told him she might be wavering already.
“Pain, the unknown, a life that never ends.” She looked away, cutting her eyes to one side. “My family would die, and I’d lose them forever, never even get to meet them again in Heaven.” She looked back at him. “My family isn’t like yours. I’d lose them.”
He nodded. “That’s true. But you’d have our children and me. And you’d have us forever.”
A ch
ill ran through her with the thought of children. “About children, Shaw… do your kind have them in litters or what?”
He chuckled. “No, our females have one at a time, in their human forms. Sometimes twins are had, like in humans.”
She found her curiosity kicking up. “Can you have them in a hospital, as normal people do?”
He shook his head. “Can you imagine the stir it would cause when they tested the baby’s blood? Plus, you’d be immortal, childbirth could never kill you. The females have their babies at home. Usually, another female will help if the pregnant female needs that. I think you and I could do it all alone, to be honest. But I wouldn’t be opposed to allowing a female to help you. At least with the first one.”
Robin laughed and shook her head. “This isn’t even a thing we should be talking about. I’m learning far more about a thing I’ll never speak a word about. I can’t do this. I can’t become like you. There are just too many things I’m afraid of.”
“I’ve never been afraid of one thing. Not a single thing, Robin. Not until I found you. Ever since then, I’ve been afraid I’d never make you mine. It seems my fear is coming true so your fear can be avoided.” He let her go and walked away then looked over his shoulder as his hand took the doorknob. “You have my number if you change your mind. If you find you fear losing me more than anything else, I’m only a phone call away. I won’t bother you. But make sure you’re far away and safe by the time the moon is full, Robin, or my wolf will find you, and you won’t get to make a choice.”
He left her then, and she found her body crumbling to the floor. She missed him already.
Chapter 18
The seven-day stretch took its toll on both Robin and Shaw. He’d managed to stay true to his word and stayed away from Robin and hadn’t tried to contact her. Not even once, which Robin found a bit disappointing.
After all that talk he did about loving her and how there’d never be another for him, she assumed he’d be unable to not, at the very minimum, make a phone call to see if she was okay.
Robin wasn’t okay. Not in the least. She’d canceled all her dog training sessions as she could hardly stand to leave the apartment. Depression took her over, and that had never happened to her before.
She called her mother and her sisters often, but even they couldn’t pull her out of her funk. She admitted she’d found a man who she couldn’t stop thinking about, no matter how hard she tried. When they’d asked her what had her wanting to stop seeing this man who sounded absolutely wonderful, she could only make up a lie. She’d told them he was out of her league, being rich and powerful and all that.
Of course, none of them understood that and told her she was being crazy. They each told her the same thing: call the guy and tell him she had a bout of insecurity is all and get back to where they’d been headed before she lost her mind.
Robin needed a night out to get her head cleared and move on with her life. If that would even be possible. But she had to try. She called another young woman who lived in her apartment building and asked her if she wanted to get out and have a few drinks. Luckily, Grace was up for it and out they went a few short hours later.
Saturday nights always had lots of people going out, and the girls found a club that was hopping already, even at the early hour of nine o’clock.
Grace and Robin sat a small table, drinking fruity cocktails and eyeing the selection of men who eyed them back. “He’s cute,” Grace said as she jerked her head to the left. “The guy with the patch covering one eye. You could always use that as a way to start a conversation with him. ‘Hey, what the heck happened to you?’ Or, ‘Are you a pirate who’s very lost?’” They laughed at her joke and clanked their glasses together.
Robin couldn’t believe she was finally laughing. After seven days, her mouth had finally formed a smile and laughter came out of it. It felt good. It felt amazing.
And she even thought about going to talk to the pirate guy, but then a group entered the bar, and five hulking men made their way to a table across the dance floor from where the girls sat. She stopped breathing as she watched them all take seats.
Every one of them wore casual attire, instead of their motorcycle clothes. Every one of them smiled and laughed as they took their seats at a large table. And Shaw never looked her way.
She knew he could smell her. They all could.
So why wasn’t he looking?
“Why are you staring, Robin?” Grace asked her. “You know them or something?”
Robin shook her head. “No.” She put her glass down and got quiet as she looked at the glass and nothing else.
Had Shaw lied to her about how he felt?
It seemed that way. He didn’t even glance her way.
Grace wasn’t sure what had gotten into Robin, and she tried to pull her out of the little funk she’d fallen into. “I heard the couple upstairs from me last night. Boy, they were going at it so hard, I think I climaxed!” She laughed, but Robin didn’t.
“Is that right?” Robin asked, obviously not listening to Grace at all.
But Grace went on anyway, “Yeah. At one point I moaned louder than the woman did.”
“That right?” Robin asked again. Her eyes moved off the glass, and she stared right at Shaw.
Sitting with his left side to her, she knew he could see her if he only turned his head the slightest bit, a thing he didn’t do. The man infuriated her. Everything he’d said had to have been lies.
He didn’t love her. He could live just fine without her. That was completely obvious.
Robin had hardly been able to eat a thing. She’d lost five pounds in the seven days they’d been apart. He looked healthy as a horse.
She shook her head as she thought that he would look healthy, he was immortal after all. But he could look sad. She’d seen that desperate look on his handsome face before.
The wolf-shifter had to have been full of crap when he told her the things he had. She supposed he just wanted to change her to be like him so he could screw her whenever he wanted to. Not make her his forever mate the way he claimed.
And to think she’d thought about doing it. It made her sick to her stomach to know the thought of letting him bite her and living some amazing life with him had crossed her mind, and more than one time at that!
Oh, she’d never let the man or the thought of giving herself to him come anywhere near her mind again. Not after witnessing him being happy as a clam without her.
A waitress brought Shaw and his pack beers and they all toasted to something. Probably to Shaw forgetting about her, Robin thought. She downed her drink and only then did she notice Grace had left her alone at the table.
Looking around, she found Grace talking to the eye-patch guy, and the two were laughing it up. Robin looked at each person she could see, and everyone was lit up, animated, having fun. Everyone but her.
“Can I get you another drink?” a waitress asked as she came up behind her.
Robin didn’t want another drink. She only wanted to leave. But she’d rode with Grace and had no ride home. “Might as well.”
“One more of the same?” the waitress asked.
“I guess,” came her non-enthusiastic reply. “It doesn’t really matter.”
Robin didn’t catch the movements of one of the guys at the table next to hers, as she couldn’t pull her eyes off Shaw. But a man waved at the waitress and mouthed to put Robin’s drink on his tab. The waitress nodded and headed off to fetch the drink.
As hard as Robin eyed Shaw, the man at the next table eyed her, thinking she looked pretty sexy and wondering how he’d sweep her off her feet and into his bed a little later that night.
When the waitress came back with the drink, Robin picked up her purse to pay for it. But the waitress quickly said, “No, it’s paid for already.”
Robin looked at her and asked, “By who?”
The waitress nodded toward the man at the next table. “By him.”
Robin lifted the glass and no
dded then took a drink. She might just have something she could make Shaw jealous with.
This should be fun.
Chapter 19
The man who’d bought Robin’s drink wasted no time coming to her table. “Wanna dance?”
Robin looked the tall man up and down. His dark hair and eyes were attractive, and his muscular build was nice too. He would do to make Shaw jealous. “Sure.” She got up, and the guy put his hand on the small of her back, escorting her to the dance floor where a few other couples danced.
The slow song had him pulling Robin into his arms. “I’m Todd.”
“Robin,” she said, as she leaned in close and put her head on his shoulder.
She felt him stroke her hair. “I like your golden curls, Robin.”
“Thanks,” came her quick reply.
They swayed to the music as Todd went on, “I’ve never seen you here before. Are you new to Loveland?”
“I’ve been here a few months.” She ran her hand across his broad shoulders and found herself wishing it were Shaw she was dancing with and him who was holding her in his warm embrace. This guy didn’t smell as good as Shaw did. His arms didn’t feel right as he held her, the way Shaw’s did.
Shaw had been watching Robin out of the corner of his eye. He’d nearly jumped out of his chair when the man went up to Robin, asking her to dance. He stayed put and waited to see if she’d make the right decision and tell the jerk no.
When she got up instead, Shaw had to take a deep breath to steady himself. Her idea had to be to make him jealous. She’d seen her staring a hole in him since he came in.
“Damn, Shaw,” Brogan said, taking his attention from Robin for a second. “You’re certainly taking your time with this girl.”
Grey added, “You better shit or get off the pot or it looks like another guy is going to snatch your girl up.”
The wolf inside Shaw growled and snapped his teeth as he grew impatient. I want her!
Shaw took a long drink, draining his beer bottle. “I’ll catch you guys later. I gotta go get my girl.”
Daddy Plus One: A Single Dad Secret Baby Billionaire Romance Page 65