Page 34 of Virgin for Next Door Wolf Daddy
They ran for a while and were tired by the time they got back to the truck. They rode in a comfortable silence back to the house. She noted that her porch was clean and the mat and pots were put back exactly as they had been.
“I’m going to take a quick shower and start dinner,” she said.
“I’ll run next door and shower. I’ll be back in about half an hour so you can let me in. Make sure to lock your door.”
She nodded. Talia almost offered to let him have a key to her house so he didn’t have to wait, but she decided that would imply way too much way too soon.
After dinner, he said, “Tell me about Darius.”
“I’m a little embarrassed,” she said. “We met during my senior year of undergrad school. When I met him, he was very sweet and charming. He always had all the right things to say and was the perfect gentleman. Darius opened the car door for me and even carried my books to one of my classes.”
She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “That lasted for a couple of months. Then, he started asking questions about who came into the restaurant I was working at or who I talked to when I went out with my friends. It wasn’t all the time at first, but then, it was a constant occurrence. I told him it was unacceptable and broke it off with him.”
“But that didn’t last.”
Talia shook her head regretfully. “No. He started hanging around, like a friend, and was back to the nice self he was when we met. I should have realized that it was all part of a nasty cycle. Heaven knows that I read about it enough in my psychology class.”
“It’s hard to see these things when it’s close to home.”
“True enough,” she replied. “Gradually, we started hanging out more, although it was never a formal relationship as it was before. He started being controlling again. Darius showed up at work and would sit at the back table, ordering just enough to keep management from kicking him out. Then, he would ask me why I talked to a certain man for so long and what we talked about. Once again, I told him we couldn’t have a relationship and he backed off.”
“Let me guess. It started all over again after a while,” Sebastian said.
“Yes and no. I kept him at a distance, but he would join groups of people I was hanging out with. He would show up at the clubs I went to and came over to the apartment a few times. I kept him at arms-length, but he seemed to think we were an item. That’s when, right before I came here, I told him that we were over. There was no more us. I wanted to make it perfectly clear that we had absolutely no relationship.”
“Which went over well.”
“Yeah. He has no idea how to take ‘no’ for an answer.”
Just like someone else I know, she thought.
Then, she continued. “I didn’t even bother responding to his last text. I’m hoping that if I ghost him, then he’ll figure it out.”
“Hopefully,” Sebastian said doubtfully.
“So, what about you? Any great loves in your life?”
“Not really. I dated a woman named Alice for a while. The problem was that we wanted different things out of life. She wanted the excitement of the big city. The last I heard, she had a government job in Denver. I’m happy here. It’s where my family and my pack are,” Sebastian said. “I’ve seen enough of the world to know there is no place like home.”
“Just like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz,” Talia teased.
“Exactly like that, only I don’t have any red shoes.” He grinned and continued his story. “I wasn’t heartbroken in the least when she left. There hadn’t been a spark like there is…” He stopped himself before he finished the sentence and grinned.
Talia would have given her eye teeth, as the elders used to say, to hear him finish that sentence.
Instead, he leaned over and kissed her. Heat immediately exploded inside of her. He touched the side of her face and said, huskily, “Tomorrow’s a long day. I’d better be going.”
She walked him to the door, and he brushed a kiss across her lips and walked onto the porch, waiting to hear her engage the locks. Talia locked the door and leaned up against it, wishing she could have spent the night wrapped in his arms. Instead, she set the alarm and went to bed with her book, feeling deflated.
14
Sebastian
Sebastian could have kicked himself in the butt as he walked back to his house. He almost said something that he couldn’t take back. The spark was absolutely there and was nothing like he had ever felt before, but he didn’t want to admit it to Talia yet. He was relatively certain that she thought the same thing, however, he always kept his feelings close to his vest. He knew that he was being a stupid, stubborn ass. However, those were traits he possessed his entire life. He also knew that he needed to get over those traits.
“Maybe I could take a class in that,” he muttered. “Kind of like anger management classes, but for stubborn people.”
He grinned and shook his head at the thought.
