Almost as soon as he had the thought, he felt bad for it. He had no idea why that other man was in a chair. It could have been as a result of a mistake, like the one he made, or it could be because of something the man had no control over. He had judged too soon.
He just wanted to go home.
Luckily, Robbie’s van was not overly tall. Transferring from the chair to the passenger seat was no real struggle.
Ulysses sank into the padded seat with a sigh of relief, then noticed his seat had an ass warmer. He eagerly jabbed his finger at the button, and a faint warmth started to filter up from below his rear. His pain eased and continued to become less intense as the heat grew stronger.
Robbie lingered outside the van for another moment or two, talking with the nurse, and then climbed inside the van on the driver’s side. “Here you go,” he said, and set a thick stack of papers down in Ulysses’ lap, followed by a crinkled bag. The bag rattled when moved, giving off that distinctive sound of pills in a bottle. “Nurse Jordan said there’s a ton of information in that packet about how to take care of your various injuries. And you’ve also got a few doses of extra-strength aspirin there in the bottle. He said to follow the directions and to use as necessary. Where do you live?”
Ulysses gave his address, then opened the bag of aspirin while Robbie started driving. It was easier than he would have thought, holding the main part of the bag under his immobilized wrist and ripping with the fingers of his free hand. Opening the pill bottle was a little more difficult, especially since it was a childproof cap. He looked inside the bottle and confirmed his suspicions. “I can buy this stuff at the grocery store.”
“I don’t think you’re going to be headed to the store anytime soon. Do you?” Robbie said this in a playful manner, unperturbed as usual. “But don’t worry. If you run out of that, I can always get you more. Anything you need, Lee.”
Great.
3
It pained Robbie more than he could put into words, to see Ulysses in such a state. The alpha had refused help walking up his driveway, then struggled with his own door for several minutes before managing to make his way inside. Robbie held back, knowing his help would be considered intrusive, and had been on the verge of helping anyway when Ulysses finally managed to get inside. He shut the door without looking back.
Robbie looked at the tie and sighed. He could still go in to work if he wanted to. He had already texted one of his head caregivers and told her he probably wouldn’t be in, but it wasn’t too late to go back on that.
And if Ulysses called him, asked him to help?
This first day home with his new injuries would be the hardest. Robbie wanted to be available, just in case. He wouldn’t put it past Ulysses to do something stupid, putting himself in a situation he couldn’t get out of. The alpha knew no limits.
Feeling a slight ache in the pit of his stomach, Robbie decided it would be best to stop and get a proper breakfast. He would be the first person to admit that eating out a vending machine in the hospital corridor was convenient and cheap, but no amount of cookies and chips could fill a grown wolf’s belly.
Remembering a Starbucks he’d passed on the way here, he set about to driving again. And he remembered other things, things that hadn’t crossed his mind for the longest time.
It was Ulysses’ desire to push the limits that first attracted Robbie to him. They met for the first time four years ago, on the day Robbie turned 21. He had never had a sip of alcohol in his life, choosing to wait until he was properly legal to have a drink in the company of friends. The experience was freeing, though not as special as he thought it would be. However, everyone was having a good time, and he very much enjoyed seeing that.
And there had been this wolf around his age, the only other wolf in the bar on that particular day. Since it was a weekday, there were few other patrons, so the wolf’s scent stood out amidst the tangle of bar odors, musky and pungent.
Locating Ulysses was easy. Loving him was even easier.
He was unique, shorter than most other alphas Robbie had seen. He was slimmer too, though broad of chest and very toned overall. His face was handsome and earnest, making him seem like a man who would always speak his mind without caring what anyone else thought.
His hair had been spiky, dyed a bold, unnatural shade of obsidian, a hairstyle he had kept to this day. His eyebrows were thick and heavy, his beard composed of a layer of attractive stubble. Overall, he gave a sleepy, careless sort of impression.
But his eyes.
His eyes defied the rest of his appearance. Bright hazel, they were sharply predatorial, focused and intelligent. They were bedroom eyes, though not the kind that would lead you to the bed by the hand. They were the kind that would throw you onto the bed, then fall ravenously upon you, ravaging you until you were a quivering mass of satisfaction.
They had never gotten that far themselves, but that didn’t matter. At the time, Robbie felt a stirring of arousal in his groin that gave him no doubt he wanted this alpha to be his.
When there had been a moment to stray away from his friends, Robbie went over to the alpha. The wolf watched him approach, eyelids halfway lowered. He had a glass of whiskey in his hand, idly toying with the glass so ice cubes clinked against the sides.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come over here all night. What took you so damn long?”
Afterwards, Robbie felt terrible about ditching his friends in favor of this strange man he didn’t know. He didn’t see them again until they were ready to leave, some hours later.
Over the course of those several hours, Robbie had convinced himself that this wolf, this sensual man named Ulysses, was meant to be his mate. Their wolves strained towards each other with interest, their souls bonding.
Getting together proved difficult the first few times, as they discovered the other’s schedule. Robbie was in college, and Ulysses seemed to be working no less than five jobs. Once they got all that figured out, things were smooth sailing from then on.
Ulysses attracted attention wherever he went, confronting a world that was never ready for him.
Robbie loved his confidence and his candor for several months. Then he got tired of it. Ulysses was not reliable. He was not stable. He would say one thing and do another. He would cause a scene, and Robbie would feel obligated to clean up after him.
Their dates were not dates, but opportunities for Ulysses to present himself as impressive.
They held out together for a year and then started naturally drifting apart. There were no harsh feelings, just a general sense of apathy, followed by guilty relief when the deed was done.
Ulysses found him boring, unexciting. Pretentious.
Those words hurt, especially since they came out of nowhere, like Ulysses was trying to provoke him to get some sort of reaction, thereby inflating his own sense of importance.
That was always what it was about. Not us. Him.
Robbie sat at a table in the corner of Starbucks, nursing a white chocolate mocha and an egg sandwich. After a couple sips and a bite of the sandwich, he set everything down and just leaned his cheek on his hand, thinking hard.
As far as breakups went, it had been a pretty good one. They mutually agreed to break it off, being at different places in their life.
Robbie had been cultivating degrees in child psychology and early childhood education, general childcare, pursuing a passion that led him to be the owner of two small, but popular daycares. He didn’t like to be thought of as the owner, when he was just as hands-on with the kids as his assistants and caregivers, but it was his name, and his alone, on the business license.
And Ulysses had been…doing whatever he wanted to do.
And Robbie had grown up, become successful. He owned the house he lived in, paid his bills, and took care of his yard in a religious manner.
Ulysses probably rented the house he was in, since the rest of the neighborhood was dotted with trailers and homes bearing For Rent signs in the yard. Not that
there was anything wrong with renting, living within his means, but the rest of Ulysses had not changed a single bit. He would be renting. That house would not be his own, because he liked to move around when he saw fit. He was still getting drunk, still starting fights, and still making mistakes.
Once again, they were back to their old dynamic. Robbie was cleaning up after him.
Robbie abruptly sat up a little straighter.
His sudden movement startled the girl sitting at the next table, as she lifted an iced coffee to her lips. Her fingers loosened, the plastic cup starting to fall right in the direction of her laptop.
Acting on instinct, Robbie reached out and caught the cup before it could spill. He set it down on the table, an appropriate distance from the edge. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. He gave his best smile and was rewarded with one in return, though she didn’t look as if she’d quite caught up on what just happened. “I just thought of something very important.”
The girl nodded, her smile becoming more genuine. He felt better, watching her features relax. “Oh, no problem. I was just really focused.”
The screen on her laptop showed a scattering of words on a text document. Robbie nodded towards it. “What are you writing?”
Small talk always made him feel better.
If he thought the Pensacola sun was bright, he was completely unprepared for the way this girl’s face lit up when he asked her about her writing. He relaxed into the conversation, letting her tell him all about the novel she was composing in her spare time. The way she talked made it clear she had never been asked about this before, and that she had been dying to do so. He was glad to be able to provide this service for her, although he wished he could give her more of his attention. His thoughts were wandering in the back of his mind.
I’m done being a slave to Lee. I helped him more than I should have, and he didn’t even thank me. No more of that. He might not have changed, but I have.
Having successfully convinced himself he was not a pushover, Robbie went about his life and lived happily ever after.
For about a week.
4
Ulysses limped up the sidewalk, a fish against the current. His face was grim, his lips pressed together with determination. Sunlight glittered in his hair, offered glimpses of pale brown at the roots where it was growing out.
Robbie saw him as he drove by and told himself that he was not going to pull over. He was not going to do that. This was not his problem.
And he kept telling himself that as he put on his turn signal and pulled off the main road, coming to a stop parallel with the curb just as Ulysses staggered by.
Rolling the passenger side window down, Robbie leaned over the center console and called, “Hey!”
Ulysses grimaced, then turned in his direction with a scowl.
For what it was worth, he looked much improved since the last time they spoke. He seemed to be having no trouble moving his head around, which suggested his whiplash was entirely gone. He had no visible bruises or scrapes, no bandages on display.
That being said, the absence of minor wounds did not mean he should be walking around like this. He should have been resting, recuperating.
“Following me again?” Ulysses asked, talking more or less in the general direction of the open car window. He didn’t seem to want to bend down, doing the smart thing for once and avoiding the pain.
“Not really,” Robbie said. “I’m on my break. Just thought I’d pick up something for dinner while I was out.”
That was the truth, although he left out the part where he felt compelled to drive to the store in this direction rather than the one nearest to his daycare. He formed many connections with many people, human and wolf alike. If he sensed someone needed assistance in the area, he was going to do everything he could to find them and help them.
It seemed like his soul was still somewhat bonded to Ulysses, bringing them together time after time no matter the fact they no longer had anything to do with each other.
A smaller lie—a lie by omission, though a lie all the same—was that he was on break. He did not take breaks in the same manner known in most other jobs. He did not have a scheduled lunch hour. He took the responsibilities of his day as they came to him, adapting constantly to an ever-changing routine. He bought all his own supplies, did all his own taxes thanks to an accounting class he took during his second year of college. There were meetings to attend, parents to meet, and so on and so forth.
He might occasionally leave one of his buildings to do something, but only because he had to. He always came right back, jumping once more into the fascinating world of childcare.
He didn’t need a break, not from the thing he loved to do.
Ulysses looked decidedly bored, so Robbie quickly picked a different topic. “What are you doing out here? How do you feel?”
“Like shit,” Ulysses said, giving the same answer as the last time he’d been asked. “But if I stayed in my house for another minute, I was going to lose my tan.”
Ulysses didn’t have even the slightest bit of a tan. He was not fair-skinned, either. He seemed to be one of those lucky people who was immune to the whims of the fierce Florida sun, unaffected in any way by the amount of light he received. No burns, no tan.
Robbie smiled at the joke, although he knew deep in his bones this was just an attempt to take attention away from Ulysses’ feelings. The wolf didn’t like to admit that he even had feelings, much less that those feelings might be negative in some way.
Or, horror of horrors, he might feel bad about something he had done.
“So, do you want a ride?”
He saw a rejection forming on the other man’s lips, the definitive sound of a “no” already halfway in the air. Then, Ulysses stopped. His thick eyebrows furrowed, joining together at the middle to form a single attractive caterpillar. He thought hard, then shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yeah. Okay. Sure.”
Robbie’s heart gave an abrupt flutter, like a bird preparing to take flight. He swallowed hard, trying to ground the feeling before he could get carried away. This had nothing to do with him. Ulysses had decided this was a situation he could take advantage of. That was all.
“Get in,” Robbie said, and unlocked the door for Ulysses.
Watching Ulysses get inside the van was only slightly less upsetting than observing him as he staggered up to his own front door. He groaned, his tired joints popping audibly from stress and pressure. He gasped, then slipped a little and seemed as if he was about to fall. Bracing himself, Robbie prepared to catch him and ended up just looking silly and tense when Ulysses managed to right himself at the last moment.
Gripping the dashboard and the door handle, Ulysses slid himself inside the last few inches and came to a rest in the seat. He slammed the door, then jabbed at the seat warmer even though it was a pleasant 70 degrees outside.
“God, I feel old.”
Robbie glanced over at Ulysses, though he kept most of his attention on the road so he could get out of this awkward parking position he’d shoved himself into. “Why is that?”
“Don’t old people have a lot of trouble sitting down?”
“Oh, yes. They aren’t as flexible as they used to be. Most of them, anyway. There are some very limber seniors at the YMCA. I was there yesterday, and there was this one woman in a water aerobics class who could still do a backflip off the diving board.” He was rambling, his mouth getting away from him. That happened often, just because he enjoyed talking, but also because it was his coping mechanism whenever he was nervous about something.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” Ulysses said.
Robbie glanced over at him, not taking his eyes off the road long enough to be able to see what expression his passenger was wearing. It hadn’t sounded like an insult. “Neither have you,” he ventured.
Ulysses grunted in response, then pointed off to the left as they approached a streetlight. “Take a left.”
&
nbsp; Only after he automatically obeyed did Robbie find it in him to ask about this sudden change in course. “I thought I was going to take you home.”
I’m pretty sure there’s no shortcut over this way. It doesn’t make any sense for there to be.
One thing that Pensacola had going for it was that it was one of the less confusing tourist destinations in the world. Many beach locations tended to have tourist-centric areas and then separated avenues for the people who actually lived there. A wrong turn could have an innocent family wandering aimlessly through a tangle of ghettos, desperate to rejoin with a safer, more populated street.
Pensacola was not like that. For one, it had a very low skyline. There were no massive skyscrapers to block a person’s view of their destination, thereby disorienting the senses. In addition, Pensacola mingled city life with tourism in a way not found anywhere else. Every place was easy to access, for temporary and permanent residents alike. Streets led exactly where they seemed to, without abrupt twists and curves.
Shortcuts were not a thing here. Everyone took the direct way or the long way around.
“I didn’t say that,” Ulysses said. He stared straight ahead through the windshield. “I just visited the lot where my bike was towed to.”
“Oh.” Robbie nibbled at his lower lip, wondering whether it would be polite to press the issue.
In the end, his silence seemed to urge Ulysses to keep talking. That wasn’t unusual. Given time and silence, most people will talk. “They were holding it for me to look at. Just in case I wanted it back or something. No way. Fucking thing is completely wrecked.”
“You couldn’t even save some part of it? Nothing at all?” Robbie ached for him. Ulysses had always been so good with his hands, so invested in making machines run properly even if he did bad-mouth the owners of the vehicles for letting their cars and bikes get in such rough shape in the first place. His motorcycle must have meant a lot to him, like a baby.
Taming The Alpha: A Wolf Shifter Mpreg Romance (Savage Love Book 3) Page 5