Page 11 of Loan Wolf (Green Valley Shifters: Generations #1)

11

GABE

G abe recognized that his teasing had hit a nerve when Clara went quiet and started studiously soaping her arms.

He could feel his wolf tucking his tail between his legs. Make her feel better! Lick her!

“You should get skulls and barbed wire,” Gabe suggested flippantly. “All over your arms and down your legs. Oh, maybe a sexy silhouette on your calves, like mudflaps.”

Clara gave a snort of laughter. “That would go over great! Mudflap calves! So classy!”

Gabe was relieved to see her return to humor. “It should mean something to you, whatever you choose. Something you want to live with forever.”

“Do wolves mean something to you?”

It was a perfectly innocent question; he had them tattooed down half his back. Gabe shrugged, eager to expose his shifter secret but knowing that he didn’t dare. If he told her that he was a shifter and she was his mate, she might throw her whole future away on his word... and he’d never forgive himself for being what kept her in Green Valley when she could have the world.

This was just a fleeting thing, as temporary as the bike loan.

“Wolves are cool,” he said, as casually as he could.

“Not mudflaps cool,” Clara pointed out.

His wolf pouted.

They finished rinsing and then dried off. Clara was distractingly bendy, able to dry off her own back before Gabe could offer to.

“I…should go,” he said gruffly, throwing his towel up over the shower rod. “Green Valley will talk if my truck is here overnight.”

“Green Valley will talk no matter what,” Clara snorted, toweling her hair. Gabe grabbed the end of her towel and pulled her close with it, unable to resist a last kiss. She relinquished the towel altogether and slid her arms up around his neck. “I’ve extended my bike rental to twenty-four hours, can we extend this, too? Patricia won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon.”

Twenty-four hours of Clara? Twenty-four hours to stroke her beautiful body and make her gasp and laugh? Surely it wasn’t any more dangerous than what they’d already done. What was the harm? He could enjoy her a little longer and still leave before dawn.

Gabe kissed her in answer, and threw her towel over the back of a chair so that his arms were free to gather Clara up against him. It felt so good just to hold her. “I’ll stay until morning,” he said. “But I’m not sure you should expect to get a lot of sleep…”

They did actually sleep, tangled comfortably together in the broad bed, and woke to make slow, careful love in the early hours before dawn, and finally shower again. Gabe tucked Clara in after that, looking at the way her eyelashes lay on her cheeks before turning off the bedside light and getting dressed to go.

Stay? his wolf whined unhappily.

Even when she was asleep, her presence was so restful . Gabe felt like a better person, like her goodness rubbed off on him. It made him ache to go, but he knew he had to. Fuck me and forget me.

The crude words from her sweet mouth were the truth.

Except that he’d never be able to forget her. He was ruined for anyone else, ever again. That was his happiness, already slumbering peacefully in the streetlight streaming through the inevitable gaps in the hotel curtains. Gabe lingered as long as he dared, staring down at her beautiful face and resisting the urge to tuck her loose hair behind her ear and risk waking her.

Then he left, latching the door behind him as quietly as he could and creeping down the stairs. The firedoor clanged behind him on the stairwell, and his truck was too old to start silently. Did some of the closed curtains he drove past twitch suspiciously? He didn’t care what Green Valley thought about him, but he didn’t want to tarnish Clara’s reputation. She was only slumming it with him, enjoying a wild night of rebellion that they could both put behind them now.

He was a lone wolf and she was a shining star.

Anything more was impossible.