Page 58 of Diners, Damsels & Wolves

It seemed he’d screwed up in more ways than one last night. Grumbling to himself, he started his car and drove home.

Trudging up the garage stairs, he went through the house to the kitchen.

“Good morning!” Michael sat at the kitchen counter wrapped in a fuzzy pink robe, a mug clutched in his hands. His dark hair stuck up at odd angles.

Tom grunted at him. He’d hoped to have the kitchen to himself to mope in.

“Uh oh,” Michael sang, “late night, or bad night?”

Ignoring him, Tom grabbed an orange juice from the fridge and chugged it.

“Well, you’re clothed and not covered in mud, so I am going to rule out a wild wolf night. Does this by chance have anything to do with the waitress at the diner you have us all babysitting?”

Tom flipped him off.

“Mmm-hmmm.” Michael arched a brow, sipping at his mug.

Throwing the empty bottle out, Tom glanced at the pot of coffee on the counter. “That’d better be decaf,” he growled, unnecessarily picking a fight with Michael. At the moment, he was too pissed at the universe to care about the unfairness of it. “I know you’re new to this, but I was very clear about the negative side effects caffeine and alcohol have on shifters.”

Alcoholism had always run rampant in shifter packs, along with caffeine addiction. He’d tested a wild theory with a few pack members when he first became Alpha. Within a month of them being sober, their tempers evened out and they had impeccable control of their wolf instincts. When he’d made the substance ban pack-wide, infighting between the wolves and domestic disputes had stopped almost entirely. While the pack still grumbled about the prohibition, they’d admitted to seeing and feeling the benefits.

With the link between the substances and shifter behavior identified, he’d sent letters to every shifter Alpha he knew to inform them. He hoped other families could benefit from their example.

“I know,” Michael pouted. “You only have decaf in the pantry. Just because it doesn’t have caffeine, doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the taste.”

Cursing under his breath, Tom pulled a sports drink from the fridge and tromped up to his room. Setting his drink down, he undid the buttons on his shirt. He tried, and failed, not to think about how Clarissa’s nimble fingers pulled at his buttons. The way her hands felt running up his chest. Her delicate skin cool and soft against his with her breath gasping against his neck.

He sniffed his shirt. It smelled like peonies, like her. Cussing, he threw it into his hamper with more force than strictly necessary. Padding into his ensuite, he looked at himself in the mirror.

His hair was sticking up in different directions, and his beard was helplessly mussed. There were faint circles under his eyes and his orbs were bloodshot. But not from exhaustion.

“Fuck!” Yelling, he pulled a hand through his messy hair. With a sharp exhale, he got out his toothbrush and set to tackling his teeth.

How was he going to fix this?

How had he even ruined it?

There had to be something … He was having a hard time believing a woman in her thirties was that embarrassed just from having sex. The way she rushed out the door, not even looking at him … It had to have been something he did. Or something about him that made her embarrassed.

Half-heartedly, he replayed the events of last night in his head. Recalling her breath catching when he’d taken off her dress, the feel of her tender flesh beneath his lips. The way she’d responded to his every movement, his every touch, making her moan and gasp. And how he’d do anything to hear that again. To feel her beneath him, gripping him tighter, buried inside her, her heart hammering in rhythm with his own.

She was everything to him. And now he may never see her again.

Bending over the sink, he smelled it again. Through the mint of his paste, peonies overcame his senses. He groaned. A scent he’d grown to love was now making his stomach churn. But where was it coming from?

Setting his toothbrush down, he sniffed his shoulder. It was him. Spending the night in her room left his skin scent marked.

Turning on the shower, he went back to the main room while the water got warm. He set his wallet and phone on the nightstand next to Dancing with Demons and his notebook and pens reminding him he’d gotten pitiful little information from the book so far. Another kick in the teeth in an already awful morning. He put his jeans, briefs, and socks in the hamper, they’d need to be washed with something strong to get rid of her perfume.

Going back to the shower, he stood under the streaming water until it was scalding hot. When the steam filled the room and his skin turned bright red, he washed. Twice. He didn’t want to risk any of the perfume lingering, even though he knew he would be able to smell traces of it for days.

On autopilot, he dried off, oiled and combed his beard, and ran pomade through his hair, going through the motions without feeling. He didn’t want to think right now, he didn’t want to feel. He wanted to avoid anything that could lead back to Clarissa, which was pretty much everything.

Fully groomed and dressed, he went back downstairs. Michael stood at the stove.

“I didn’t get the chance to tell you, there was a scuffle here last night,” Michael said, his voice flat and lifeless. Tom had the heart to feel guilty for snapping at him, at least for a second.

“Dan?” Tom asked, already knowing the answer. Dan was a stray like Michael who also had nowhere else to go and was living at the mansion. But unlike Michael, who was discovered by the pack after his first shift when he was seventeen, Dan had been found when he was already twenty-six. He’d been utterly alone and unaware of the supernatural underground, left to wrangle his wolf instincts without any guidance. That meant he still acted like a pup and had plenty of time for bad habits to settle in. Some very bad habits they were currently trying to break him of.