Page 13 of Claimed By the Werewolf Boss

Chapter te n

Cheyenne

T he rest of our day is a blur of tourism, aching feet, and an amount of introspection I wasn’t planning on when I accepted my invitation to this wedding.

The gelato guy gives me a plastic bag to put my souvenirs in while Valentino takes me on a trek to find his favourite leather goods guy.

He seems to know everyone as we’re walking around.

Shop owners wave or nod when they make eye contact with him.

The manager of the handbag store nearly refused to let him pay for a new backpack for me.

I didn’t even try to pay after I saw the price tag.

Valentino’s his own man with his own fancy money.

If he wants to spend it on me, I’m happy to let him .

“How do you know who everyone is?” I ask as we’re leaving the store.

Valentino leads me down another winding alleyway, his finger wrapped tightly around mine. “I used to spend summers here when I was a kid. My parents wanted to make sure I was properly Italian.”

“Versus what?”

“Versus being a guy who can’t speak a lick of the language, doesn’t know there’s more to our food culture than Sunday sauce, doesn’t know his family history.”

The way he says family history catches in my thoughts.

He’s clearly got something going on deeper than what he’s shared with me so far.

I guess the question is whether or not I’m okay with that.

He looked ready to beat my attempted mugger to a pulp earlier.

If I hadn’t said anything, I’m sure we’d be in a fucking jail cell right now for manslaughter, or whatever the Italian equivalent is.

There wasn’t an ounce of care in his body about hurting someone who’d tried to rob me.

Valentino would have killed that guy if I hadn’t reminded him of the crowd.

The way I could feel his anger, his fury and disdain somehow palpable between us made me want him to do that too. I wanted Valentino to hurt that man irreparably for trying to steal my bag.

And it turned me on. My pussy soaked my panties so fast I was barely holding it together while we ate our gelato.

What does that say about me? I’ve always been able to draw the line between fantasy and reality.

My parents, for as shit as they were, drilled into me what was good and bad behaviour in their eyes.

It caused me to repress a lot of shit, but I know the way I felt shouldn’t be right.

It shouldn’t matter why he was doing it, Valentino has shown me he has a violent side.

I should be running for the hills. Instead, I wanted to crawl into his lap and ride him into the sunset.

No one has ever fought for me, especially physically.

Junelle is accepting and supportive, but I would never ask for anything more.

I wouldn’t have ever asked anyone to do what Valentino did for me, but I keep replaying the scene in my head.

The way my bag began to slide off my back, my phone in one hand and two ice creams in my other while I tried to find Valentino.

The rough tug, the shocked reaction of throwing our ice cream, the frozen response when the guy raised his fist at me.

Then the clap of knuckles meeting cheek.

He stood over that total stranger, fire in his eyes, and I think that’s the moment I will tell people I knew Valentino was the guy for me .

Years from now, when people ask me how I knew I’d found the one, it will be this moment. My man was ready to commit murder in broad daylight for me.

And I only stopped him because of the crowd.