For a moment I thought he wouldn’t answer me at all—and my lame werewolf joke didn’t even get me a smile, dammit. Finally he sighed, ran a hand over the lower half of his face, and started to talk.
My eyes got wider as he did, even though perhaps for someone like Dimitri the story wasn’t all that shocking. I hadn’t thought I’d been particularly sheltered, but apparently I’d been wrong. The first pack, he assured me, wouldn’t be a problem. He’d gotten in a fight with the pack enforcers and they’d taken issue with the fact that Dimitri won. “They were after me for a while. But the asshole in charge got himself killed in California a while back,” he added dismissively. “So I doubt they’re going to give a shit about me anymore. Too busy killing each other to try to fill the vacuum.”
Before I could do more than stare and try to process this, he moved on to the second: a pack in Montana. “That one’s more of a ‘I fucked the pack leader’s mate’ kind of issue, and once I mate into a powerful pack he’ll drop it. The third—”
“An ‘I fucked the pack leader’s mate kind of thing’? Are you insane?”
Dimitri stopped and blinked at me. “She was really hot. Anyway, they broke their bond and he mated someone else. No harm, no foul.”
“No harm,” I choked out, and ran my hands through my hair as if that could somehow soothe my aching brain. “No foul. Right. Christ. Dimitri, do you just stir up trouble wherever you go?”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to stir up any trouble for you or in your pack,” he said, picking up on my implied concerns about our deal without missing a beat. How could someone so obviously intelligent also act like such an idiot so often? “I’m not that much of a loose cannon, actually. I just usually don’t care. This time, I do. It’s too much money on the table not to care. Anyway, the third pack’s the only one that could be an issue, because we had some financial dealings that went south. But if they do track me down, paying them off will take care of it. They’re practical guys and not looking for an unnecessary fight. If you want to add an extra twelve grand to the deal, I’ll send them the money before they come calling and get rid of the problem.”
My jaw tensed until my teeth pressed together. I unclenched enough to speak with a conscious effort. “You could always pay them out of the forty thousand you’ll already have to spare.”
“It’s not to spare.” Dimitri didn’t look away, didn’t change expression in the slightest. Uncompromising. “If you want to make sure my past associates don’t show up to embarrass you, that’s how much it’ll cost you. I wasn’t going to bother asking for it, because I’m not all that worried about it. Not now that I’ll have a safe haven and some backup. They won’t want to take on the Castelli pack.”
The extra twelve thousand rankled. I could afford it, but a hundred and twelve thousand dollars, plus that possible stipend…Dimitri couldn’t possibly be worth that.
“Pay them out of what I’m already giving you. Or no deal. I don’t want them showing up and fucking up my plans, and I’m not giving you any more than we already agreed to.”
I stared him down without flinching, even though the set of his shoulders and the faint golden glow illuminating those hard gray irises made me want to duck my head and curl in on myself. Damn it, he wasn’t the only one who could be uncompromising. Compromise shouldn’t always be the job of the not-alpha in the room. I spent enough time living like that already without my fake mate putting me in the same position.
“Fine,” he said at last, a single, clipped syllable without any emotion behind it at all.
“Good.” I nodded and wished I’d left my notepad open so that I could close it briskly in emphasis. That always had the desired effect in meetings at work. “We’re agreed. We’ll need to take you shopping, get you ready to meet my fam—”
He leaned forward, a grim smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “Pretty sure we’ll need to fuck first, yeah? And there’s a bed right there.”
My eyes flicked to the left without my volition. There was indeed a bed. Right there. Ugly bedspread and all. I could not possibly get knotted for the first—and, I promised myself, only—time on something made out of shiny polyester.
A shudder went down my spine. Ugh.
“We get ourselves organized first. Clothes, a few pointers on how to act. Then we mate and I put your name on a bank account with a hundred grand in it. We can do that the same day, so we’re both comfortable with it. And then we break the news to my family. Deal?”
Dimitri considered me for a moment, glanced over at the bed, and grimaced. Well, how fucking flattering. Not that I didn’t agree with him, but still.
“How long is it going to take to ‘get organized’? I need the money.”
“A couple of days, if you’re a quick study.” I was willing to bet he would be. He’d figured out the Hensley’s thing fast enough. Big he might be, but dumb and polite were a stretch.
“Fine. Then we have a deal.” He stuck out his hand across the table.
Gingerly, I reached out and took it. His alpha-hot fingers enveloped mine, long and strong and rough. The heat of him lanced up my arm and lodged somewhere under my sternum, nearly taking my breath away. Unlike every other alpha I’d shaken hands with, he didn’t try to crush my hand or show his strength; he just shook like a normal guy, a firm pressure and then release. When he let me go, his touch lingered, like a brand.
Chapter 4
You’re Stalling
We didn’t have a snappy soundtrack, and Dimitri didn’t demand that any store clerks give me their ties, but otherwise our day out shopping reminded me powerfully ofPretty Woman. Desperate, weirdo rich guy paying for someone way more objectively attractive to pretend to date him: check. Simmering awkwardness between the protagonists: check. Sidelong looks from everyone who helped us in the stores: very much check, because we made a suspicious pair, me dressed in clothes ten times more expensive than the ones I was buying for him with a no-limit credit card, and him glowering at ties like he expected them to leap up and try to strangle him.
We even got pizza despite my objections to the plastic-like cheese and not-organic sauce—although we carried it ourselves to a small, grimy table in the mall food court, rather than having it delivered by a flunky.
We already had a pile of bags around us, and Dimitri had rebelled at the idea of trying on “one more fucking monkey suit” before he got fed.
I paid, obviously. And I’d rather have paid another several hundred dollars for another suit than the five bucks it cost to be fed cardboard with subpar tomato stuff on it.
The ambiance didn’t help. Skylights in the high ceiling let in enough sun, glaring down and reflecting off of all the white plastic tables and beams, to make the huge, echoing food court hot and far too bright for a normal person, let alone someone with my weak, sensitive eyes. Mingled odors of MSG-laden fake-Chinese and reheated greasy burgers made my stomach churn.
