It was that sort of easy relationship she wanted. Tara didn’t look like she would be sitting around terrified someone was making fun of her cellulite. Tara seemed deeply secure in her relationship, and Marcy looked perfectly happy to have just had some amazing sex.
“I hear you’re getting all the little subs in trouble, love.”
God, he was so damn sexy. Wolf stood in the entryway to the locker room wearing a perfectly respectable pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a light leather jacket that he somehow turned into something ultra sexy. His broad shoulders filled the entryway, but she was caught on his male-model-worthy smile. She sighed.
And so did Tara and Marcy.
Tara leaned over and gave her a hug. “I’m going to change before I really get in trouble. I’m into Darin for double digits with a crop already. If he catches me mooning over the new Dom, he just might attach a TENS unit to my pink parts.”
“God, and you’re running from that?” Marcy asked, giving Shelley a little wink before she followed her friend.
“I’m glad to see you’re getting along with the other subs.”
He looked so self-satisfied that Shelley had to wonder just what he’d overheard. “They were sympathizing with me because my Dom is so sadly unattractive.”
His grin grew. “Is that right? Poor Shelley. Well, I’m the lucky one because all anyone can talk about is just how hot my sub is.”
How did he do that? One minute she was vowing to never be naked again and the next she was perfectly willing to throw off her clothes as long as he took her.
“Come on, sweetheart, I’m going to take you home.”
The evening was ending already? “I thought we were going to have a drink?”
“Fet wear only in the bar. I thought we could stop somewhere vanilla. If we stay here, we’ll have to talk to other people, and I would like to focus on you. And then I can get you drunk enough that you don’t fight me when I tell you I’m sleeping on your couch tonight.”
He was what? “Wolf, why would you sleep on my couch?”
“Because you got mugged and you might have nightmares?”
The truth hit her with all the subtlety of a runaway train. “You think it was a setup. You think he knew who I was. Why would he steal my laptop? Oh, god, he was looking for information.”
It was happening again.
“Hey.” Wolf reached out and grabbed her hand. “I’m just being paranoid. As a man who used to fight some of the worst human beings and terrorists in the world, you have to just understand that I sometimes see the glass as half empty and maybe there’s a bomb at the bottom of it.”
But what if he was right? It had always been there in the back of her mind. The press had reviled her for months. It didn’t matter that she’d been cleared. She’d been the one who had unwittingly placed the cameras that had caught the blackmail material Bryce had used on her clients. For months, she’d received nasty phone calls and e-mails calling her every bad name in the world. After a year, it had quieted down, and she’d hoped it was over.
What if it wasn’t over? Her son-of-a-bitch husband was never going to let her go. He still had a hold on her, even from beyond the grave. She was going to have to give up another man she cared about.
She shook her head. “No. You should stay here. You shouldn’t get involved in this.”
Wolf took a step forward, his lips curving into a little snarl. “What did you say?”
“She said you should leave her alone, Wolf. She obviously wants to be assaulted.” Leo was suddenly beside him, the Meyer brothers taking up all the available space.
She found herself pressed against the wall. “I’m just trying to protect him.”
Leo snorted a little and slapped his brother on the back. “This two hundred and twenty pounds of pure Navy SEAL?”
“He isn’t a SEAL anymore,” Shelley pointed out. He could be out of practice.
“Once a SEAL, always a SEAL, love.” Wolf’s tight smile seemed predatory.
And Leo’s matched him. “So you think you’re going to be able to handle this better than Wolf?”
He was willfully misunderstanding her. “I think Wolf shouldn’t have to handle this.”
“I disagree, and I damn sure think he disagrees. I watched him bring you to orgasm not half an hour ago. You had your legs spread wide for him, and you gave him everything he asked for. He owes you his protection.”
“He doesn’t owe me anything,” Shelley insisted. The last thing she wanted to do was to bring Wolf into her nightmare. It wasn’t fair. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and he could get seriously hurt if he got involved. She couldn’t live with Wolf getting hurt any more than she’d been able to handle the thought of Bryce hurting Leo.
“Then you were using me?” Wolf asked, his eyes stony.
“I told you,” Leo said to his brother in his first sign of sibling solidarity. Naturally it was against her. “She did the same thing to me. When she no longer needed me, she told me to get out of her life. At least she gave you some sort of excuse. She just told me to leave.”
He hadn’t been willing to discuss this for almost a year and a half, but he brought it up now? Frustration threatened to overtake Shelley. “I had a reason. God, Leo, I tried to explain that to you. I didn’t want Bryce to hurt you.”
Leo’s eyes rolled. “Yes, Bryce Hughes, who I outweigh by forty pounds of muscle. Bryce Hughes, who ran away from a bar fight. Yes, he was going to take me out. Bullshit. It’s a ridiculous argument, and it won’t fly.”
“He had guns, Leo. I found them that day.” She could remember how terrified she’d been when she’d opened the drawer to Bryce’s desk and found his gun. All she’d been able to think about was Leo taking one of those shiny bullets.
“Yes, dear, because no SEAL ever had to deal with guns.” Sarcasm dripped from Leo’s voice.
Wolf pulled at the side of his jacket, and sure enough, there was a gun in a shoulder holster. “Shelley, I have a permit to carry concealed. Julian made sure of it before he hired me. Besides being one of his resident Doms, I’m also considered a trained bodyguard. Finn has worked some controversial cases in the last few years and a rich man’s wife is always a target.”
She turned to Leo. She’d never imagined that he would be walking around Dallas with a gun. “And you?”
Leo stood, his legs apart in a stance she was sure had once terrorized new recruits. “I don’t carry in The Club, but when I escort Dani or Finn or even Julian himself somewhere, I carry. And, sweetheart, that day you dumped me, I had two SIG Sauers and a sniper rifle in my truck. I also do some training work with Dallas SWAT.”
Wolf turned to his brother. “Are you seriously telling me that you don’t have a weapon on you?”
“Well, I don’t have a gun on me right this second.”
“And if I checked your boot?”
“You might get your hand sliced up,” Leo admitted.
Shelley stared for a moment. The world seemed to have tilted slightly. “You have a knife?”
Leo tapped his boot against the floor. “More than one, if you have to know. And I had more than one on me the day you dumped my ass. It was only my remarkable patience that kept me from killing your asshole husband the night before in a bar fight. I thought you might have been angry.”
Had she made a terrible mistake? Was she making one by trying to protect Wolf?
“I’m going to make this easy on you, sweetheart,” Wolf said. He crossed his arms over his chest in a show of mulish stubbornness. “You don’t get a choice in this. I am going to take you home. I am going to stay on your couch. And I am going to bring you back here tomorrow. If you want to safe word me, go on. I won’t be your Dom anymore, but until I’m certain that you’re safe, you won’t be able to get rid of me unless you call the cops and have my ass hauled to jail.”