“No, I’ve got a cleaning lady to come in twice a week. I can’t be done with having someone around for so long. I hate the invasion in my life.” He poured some more juice into a glass.
“Do you have to leave the house?” she asked.
“No. My business can be done from anywhere.”
Great, she wouldn’t be alone.
“Don’t you want any sugar?” he asked, pointing to her cereal.
“No. I don’t like sugar on my cereal.” She wasn’t lying either. Sugar made cereal too sweet for her.
He handed her a drink of juice before sitting back. She felt his gaze on her at all times. Clara tried to ignore him, chewing and staring off to her left to look around the garden.
“How did you sleep?” he asked.
Glancing back toward him, she saw he was smiling once again. “Fine.” Did she miss something? His smile seemed to mean something. “Did you?” Her manners were never going to be destroyed even if she did hate him.
Why did she hate him? He’d not done anything to her. All he’d done was take her out of a bad situation. Her family hated her. The pack had been awful to her at every opportunity. None of them liked her in their company. Her life’s meaning had been about avoiding them all at every opportunity.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“What? Why do you want to know?” She lost her appetite and pushed the bowl of cereal away.
“You’ve gone sad, withdrawn even. I want to know what has made you feel that way.”
He leaned forward, staring into her eyes. She hated how he seemed to see everything.
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying. I don’t like liars, Clara. Never lie to me.”
Licking her lips, she clasped her hands together, trying to focus on something other than him. “I was thinking about my family and my pack.”
She dropped her head, not wanting him to see too much.
“Do you miss them?”
“No.” She looked back up at him, knowing he deserved to see her gaze.
“Then why are thinking about them and feeling sad as you do?”
His questions were reasonable, but they felt to invasive to her. Hiding the truth away from him wouldn’t do any good. Nick was a rich man. He got what he wanted by being ruthless.
“I was thinking about how happy they must have been to get me out of their pack.” She smiled. “I wasn’t a good advertisement for pack life at all. None of the men wanted anything to do with me, and the women stayed away from me, afraid my repellent would spread.”
Clara didn’t even realize until now how much their actions had hurt her.
Wiping away the tears that had caught her by surprise, she cursed her wayward emotions. If her mother was close by, she’d be getting a beating before the end of the day.
“They’re gone, and they’re never coming back,” Nick said. “Besides, you should be worried about my attention. I promise you, Clara, when I pop your cherry you’re not getting a moment’s rest from me.”
Chapter Four
“How do you know I’m a virgin?” Clara asked. Her eyes were wide, and Nick smiled. She truly was the most adorable female he’d ever known. She didn’t know her own power, which was mightily refreshing. It was sweet yet unsettling. The pack she’d been part of was awful. The pain in her eyes let him know how badly she’d been treated. Each pack behaved differently, but from what he heard this morning, Clara’s pack was an open group.
At the full moon, the pack mated with one another, fucking until the sun came up. He had heard they were in human form rather than wolf form. Dean was a vessel of knowledge when it came to pack traditions. Females at their proper mating age of eighteen were allowed to mingle with the pack for men to scent them. Clara on her mating day had been left alone. Not one male in the pack had anything to do with her.
Looking beyond her shoulder, he couldn’t stop the anger at their treatment of her. They were fucking awful, and if he ever got chance to cause them pain, he would do it.
“I’ve got my way of knowing everything, baby.”
“Then why did you ask me last night if you knew the answer?”
“I didn’t know the answer last night. I bought a female wolf, not all the details.” He shrugged. Their conversation was the most thrilling company he’d experienced in years. Dean was okay to talk with, but human females didn’t hold a patch on Clara. Her face alone was fascinating to watch. All of her emotions were on display for him to read. For a wolf female she was very naive. No one had taught her the value of keeping her emotions in check. It wasn’t a bother. He’d teach her everything she needed to know and more.