She shouldn’t have been shocked to find him waiting outside near the back alley, but she was. Her wolf's senses picked him up the moment she walked out the back door. After the events of the night before, she was more alert to her surroundings.
The stench of the alley couldn’t completely hide the musky scent of the man, and she was sure she could hear a heart beating not too far away.
Mia stalled for time by slowly locking the bar’s back door and double checking it. Then she had no choice but to walk out of the dark alley. And of course, her senses had not lied. Asher was right there, leaning against his red and white Ducati bike barely an arm’s length away from the alley’s opening.
She stopped walking and glared at him. “You have trouble hearing or you’re just trying to piss me off?” she asked in a clipped tone.
The smile on Asher’s face didn’t falter. “I was thinking more along the lines of charming you, by showing you how persistent I can be and just how much of a gentleman I am.”
“It’s not working.”
“Really?”
“Really,” she said in an even colder tone.
Asher’s shoulder lifted in a small shrug. “I guess I will have to review my approach. How about you tell me what I am doing wrong while I give you a ride back to your apartment?”
Mia was definitely shocked. Had the man really just stuck around to give her a ride back to her apartment? Was this all about his concern for her safety again? She shook her head. This man didn’t know her and he had no idea what she was. If he did, he would have realized she didn’t need his help or concern for her safety. She could handle herself better than he could. And last night should have made that painfully clear. Yet, there he was again, waiting for her.
She looked at him up and down like she was sizing him up. He really was a handsome human. After leaving the bar, he had discarded his leather jacket and unbuttoned the shirt he had on. It was a warm night, so it was perfectly normal. Although she wished he hadn’t. She hadn’t needed to have a more mouthwatering sight of his chest. It had been fine imagining the muscles under his clothes without seeing them. Now she saw them and she realized her imagination needed some work. She hadn’t done him justice. Or maybe she had been trying to save herself from the effect his body had on hers.
His chest and abs were firm, not a trace of fat on them. Asher was obviously a man who took great measures to have a good body, but it didn’t look like he was obsessed about it. Then there was something she never would have imagined. He didn’t look like the type. Something about the man screamed an expensive education and suits. Even if both days she had seen him, he wore faded jeans and a leather jacket. The only thing about him that looked expensive was his bike. But she could almost sense it. This wasn’t his everyday life. She could picture him in an office giving orders.
That was why the sight of ink on his chest was even more strange. She couldn’t see it fully or clearly, but she would be damned if she was going to make any sort of effort to get a better view. Just the fact that she had noticed it and her attention was captured was bad enough.
Her wolf became antsy inside of her, clearly not getting the message her more reasonable human brain was trying desperately to transmit. Suddenly, she was noticing too many things about Asher Deavan. His scent floated more strongly above all the foul smells that usually surrounded the bar. He wasn’t aroused. That was a relief. She didn’t think she would have tolerated that wave of pheromones right in that moment.
Mia realized, though, that she had to get away from him, and fast. “I don’t need a ride.”
Asher didn’t miss a beat. “I didn’t say you needed one. I was just offering, as a gentleman.”
“Well, I am not interested in your offer.” She started to make her way past him. Asher’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm. She gave his hand a look like it was covered in sewer waste. “Remove your hand or lose it.”
He blinked and immediately removed his hand, then stepped back and raised his hands in a placating manner. “Easy.”
She didn’t respond; she continued walking and he let her go. For a moment he considered following her behind from a distance, just to make sure she got home ok. It was the middle of the night, for God’s sake. His gut told him that would be a terrible idea, though. A sigh of exasperation escaped his lips. He had no idea why he was getting so worked up about this woman, but clearly, it was beginning to affect his better judgment. Maybe it was time to get back to his life. After all, this had only been a time away from his life to reflect and come to terms with what had happened. It was not time to start something new, no matter how tempting it looked. But damn, it was tempting.
“There he is!” A deep voice bellowed from the doorway, the sound cutting across the quiet office space like a roar. “I was beginning to think we should send out a search party for you, man. Where the hell have you been? Did you get lost on the road or something?” Asher smiled and looked up from the pile of documents on his desk. “I was wondering how long it would take you to find me once you heard I was back.” He made a show to glance at his wristwatch with an intense look. “Exactly six hours and twenty-nine minutes. Not bad.” “Don’t forget to count the seconds too,” Dave retorted as he lowered his body into one of the brown leather chairs opposite Asher’s desk without waiting to be invited. Asher snorted. “Of course, how could I forget the seconds?” Dave gave him a big grin, extremely pleased with himself. He lifted his leg over the other and tapped his fingers on his raised knee. “So, how was the adventure?” He actually sounde
“Do you need any help with those?” Rick called out from the doorway. Mia lifted her head over the stacked boxes that were blocking her view of the door. Apart from the question, there was nothing in his demeanor that suggested he was even remotely interested in helping her lift heavy boxes from the back storage room to the front of the bar. She was certain it was one of those offers people made just to be kind, but don’t really expect to take them up on it. He was probably expecting her to say ‘no, it’s fine, I got it.’ He was about to be in for a shock. Mia gave him a broad smile. “Really? Gee… thanks.” And just as she had suspected, Rick hesitated at the door, his eyes widening. “Oh. Right... sure.” She stifled a laugh and carried two heavy boxes over to him. It was really nothing she couldn’t handle on her own, but he had offered. Who was she to pass up the offer? Rick grimaced once she released the boxe
There was a routine to Mia’s days. The Red eyes bar took up exactly nine mentally gruelling hours out of her days from four in the afternoon to one in the morning. She usually had a full eight hours of sleep from two to ten, unless she went for a run in her wolf form to release stress or just to stretch her muscles. The hours between ten and four were filled with mundane activities like laundry, cleaning, listening to music, and cooking. If she had still been in the pack lands, her days would have been extremely different. Her thoughts wandered to her days in the pack while she prepared some steak for herself. She was hungry enough to consider shifting into her wolf and eating the meat raw straight from the floor. Her wolf was in full agreement with that idea, but Mia held back. She was living in a human town. In a tiny apartment, in a building with three other apartments. She had to refrain from giving into such impulses. She could never be too safe.
In less than twenty-four hours, Asher was back on the jet, flying back to the city. The trip had been shorter than he could have imagined. His pilot tried not to show his shock at being woken up in the middle of the night and told to fly back so fast, but Asher knew the man was probably wondering what on earth was going on. Asher hadn’t even had the energy to fake an emergency to explain the abrupt change in plans. His mind was too disturbed to think straight. He was wondering what was happening. He had left the Red eyes bar feeling as though all the light in his life had gone off. It was as though a cold hand had gripped his insides and twisted until there was no more blood flowing in him. There was no bounce in his step. It wasn’t the first rejection of his life, but it certainly felt like the worst. For some reason, a reason he couldn’t even begin to explain, Mia’s rejection hurt more than the one he had received just months before. Asher fr
The bar was full. The usual patrons in various stages of intoxication occupied every available table and space. Mia assessed this in a split second. Calculating the probabilities and chances of escape. Small, seemingly insignificant, and very crucial facts aligned themselves in her head. One, the packed small bar would buy her some time. And second, the entire place smelled of alcohol and like a poorly ventilated sweaty room. But she knew if she could catch his scent, it wouldn’t take him long to catch hers. In conclusion, her chances were not good at all. Connor stood at the door. His muscular build and tall height put him well above the majority of people in the bar. He hadn’t yet looked her way. His wandering, studying eyes had his face turned towards a small table of noisy drunks in the back, but Mia knew it was him. Not only from his scent, but she could never forget that face. The head enforcer of Blue creek pack was one of those people a
Was it wrong that he hated her as much as he desired her? Asher wondered. His thoughts floated in and out of his head as his heart pounded at the rhythm of his feet on the treadmill. When he thought about it, he actually hated Mia for the desire she had awoken in him. A desire so strong and consuming, it made him crave her more than his next breath. He had never known such a desire in his life; it pulsed in his blood with energy. Never knew it was possible to want someone so much, someone who didn’t even want him and had made it painfully clear on more than one occasion. He replayed their last encounter several times in his head. “... there could never be anything between us. So, you should go back to wherever you had disappeared to...” her words repeated themselves in his mind. And each time they hurt, just as they had the first time, he heard them from her lips. Lips he wanted to taste. Lips he imagined wrapped around other parts of his anato
While Asher had been back in the city, he had thought his mind had exaggerated the state of the building Mia lived in. But now Asher realized his mind had sugar-coated it. His mind had tried to make it less horrifying. The sight of the dilapidated two-storey building in front of him made him shudder involuntarily. To make matters worse, unlike the first time he had seen it, there was no security light in front of the building. That gave the entire place an eerie look. Forget horror movies and ghosts, Asher thought. He was almost expecting a cannibal serial killer to jump out of the shadows and send him into the afterlife in a heartbeat. It still failed to make sense to him how any sane person would live in such a place. He understood financial constraints and hard decisions, but where did self preservation and survival instinct feature in this equation? He remembered something he had learned in school about Maslow’s hierarchy of n
He waited for her to let go of her control; she was halfway there, but then her sanity came back to her. How could she let go when letting go meant so much more than he thought? He didn’t have the barest idea what being intimate with her would result in. Unlike humans, werewolves bonded with their partners on a far deeper level than he would be able to understand. And she couldn’t exactly explain it either. She couldn’t exactly start an explanation about mating bonds just like that and definitely not while she was naked, lying beneath him. He couldn’t claim her or bite her, but she still knew sex with Asher Deavan wouldn’t be just a roll in the hay. An act that could be dusted off the next morning and forgotten. She shouldn’t let it happen. Asher kept a close eye on her. When he saw that she continued to hold back, lost in her own troubled thoughts, he brushed his lips against her skin in a light kiss. His warm breath fanned over her skin. He f