“What? No. I just want to hear more about how you ended up here. With them.” He pointed to her friends.
“It’s a long, boring story.”
“I can’t wait.” And that was actually true, which was weird, because this was probably the longest he’d held a conversation with a woman without getting bored and popping off a dirty joke to shock her.
“Fine, but no trying to get in my pants. It’s not happening.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“And you also have to tell me why you passed them up to buy me a drink.”
“So many rules, woman.”
Willa crossed her arms over her chest, pushing those perky little tits of hers higher.
With a growl, he said, “Because I’m tired of banging shifter groupies, you seem to borderline hate me, and it’s nice to laugh with someone instead of trying for a quickie fuck in the back of my truck.”
Willa jerked back, her soft brown eyes gone round. “Honesty. That’s nice for a change. Fine, Griz, you may purchase me a drink, so long as I buy us the next round.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a strong-ass woman who doesn’t need a man to pay for my shit, and I don’t want to feel like I owe you anything.”
“Fair enough.” He liked that she didn’t need anyone. It would be the perfect friendship since he was infinitely undependable. Holding the crook of his elbow out, he smiled and said, “Pick your poison.”
“Cranberry vodka,” she said, chin held high as she marched clumsily beside him.
“Willa,” one of her friends, the blond with the claws, said when they reached the bar. “I thought you were leaving.”
Hurt slashed across Willa’s face, and she hesitated.
Fury blasted through Matt as he leveled the obnoxious woman with an unamused look. He nodded his chin toward the door. “Why don’t you leave?”
“Whoa, whoa, man,” Clinton said from beside her. “Because we’re having fun.”
“Long island ice tea,” Willa said to the bartender.
“Thata girl,” he said, proud she hadn’t backed down from her friend. He was well-versed in dominance battles, and anyone with any sense could tell Blondie was the ruler of her little human crew. He understood the need for putting less dominant animals in their place. He didn’t, however, see the need for Blondie to send Willa off for no reason. These were supposed to be her friends, after all.
“Oh my goodness, there’s a jukebox!” the brunette cried. She slurped down the rest of her drink and headed for the music maker in the corner, quarter held in the air tightly between her painted pink claws.
Willa introduced him to her friends, Brittney the alpha, Kara, and Gia was the brunette poking buttons on the jukebox.
“Matt the ignoramus,” he said with an empty smile.
Willa snorted and choked on her drink beside him. “Yeah, about that. I was rude and shouldn’t have called you names.”
Gia clomped back to them on unsteady heels with a tipsy smile on her bright red lips. “Creed, dance with me,” she said in a long, drawn out, whiny voice.
These women were usually Matt’s exact type, so why was he turned off by them tonight? His dick had gone hard once, and that’s when he’d watched Willa wave around the handful of condoms and talk about her virgin magical temple.
He laughed out loud. The nerd had got him hard where the Barbies had failed. He was going mad. It was happening now, his descent into insanity. His alpha, Creed, was going to have to put him down sooner than he’d planned. Fuck.
“You okay?” Willa asked, touching his forearm.
Matt jerked back at the burning sensation that blasted through his nerve endings where she’d touched his skin. “Sorry,” he rushed out when he saw the hurt on her face.
The corner of her mouth ticked as her attention drifted back to the drink on the bar top in front of her. “Don’t worry about it. I get that reaction a lot.”
“Bullshit. That was all me. I don’t like being touched.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she jerked her startled brown gaze back to him. “Why?”
Torture, scars, pain, dark madness, hurting everyone… “I don’t know. I just don’t.”
“Well good, because I hate to be touched.” Her eyes danced, and her teasing took the edge off the tension that sat in the air between them. “I’d rather lick a toilet seat in a port-o-potty at a construction site than get a hug.”
“Seriously,” he played along. “I’d rather lay face first in a fire ant mound than cuddle.”
“Ack,” she said, throwing her head back. “Exactly that. Good. Well, Griz, now we know where we each stand. No touching or this friendship is donezo. Deal?”