Every Night Forever (5 page)

“Thank you for the job, but I’ll be fine.  I’ll see you tomorrow at three.”  She put her cell in her purse with shaking fingers and a humiliated blush on her cheeks and started to walk for the door.

A hand closed on her elbow and to her surprise, it was Dante.  “There’s a room in the back with a couch.  You can stay here tonight and we’ll help you find a place tomorrow.  There are a few apartment complexes nearby and we know the owners, so we can give you a reference before your first paycheck.  How does that sound?”

Like heaven, if only because it was nice to actually be worried over.  She couldn’t remember the last time that someone had cared if she had a place to sleep or not.

A part of her wanted to tell him thanks but no thanks, that she’d be fine.  But the rest of her knew that she would wind up with her tail tucked between her legs, looking for a place for the night in Havers.  She’d rather sleep on broken glass.

She looked up into his dark eyes.  “It sounds really nice.  Thank you.”

He smiled.  “Good.  Why don’t you grab your bags or whatever and we’ll get the room ready for you.”

When she returned with her small suitcase, Dante was back in his office and Cairo was working out with another man on a weight bench.  Mason smiled at her.  “I get to give you the tour.  Come on, let’s go put your bag away first.”

Mason, like his brothers, was well over six feet, broad and muscular.  His jet-black hair was shiny and soft looking.  As she followed him through the break room, she took time to enjoy the view.  He had the nice, slim waist of a man who worked out a lot, narrow hips, and, as she could see from his tight jeans, a fantastic ass.  Around his right bicep was a tattoo band, a jagged, broken design, like deconstructed barbed wire.  Her fingers itched to touch it, to trace the muscles in his arms and tickle her fingers across his chest. 
Oh hell
.  She shook the sexy thoughts from her mind as fast as possible.  They’d only lead to problems. 

One old couch sat against the wall of the small room.  There was a TV on a small table but it didn’t look hooked up.  The overhead light was harsh and made the room look worse than it actually was.  One pillow and two blankets were folded neatly on one end of the couch and she put the small suitcase on the other end.

“Okay, so there’s plenty to eat in the fridge.  Help yourself,” he told her as they walked side by side back through the breakroom.  “Gym opens at six, closes at eleven.  Cairo will be in here first thing, I come in about noon, and then Dante comes in about five.  You can use the ladies’ locker room.”  He gestured to a door with the outline of a woman on it.  He showed her the two levels of the gym:  weights, bags, padded mats and a large boxing ring on the first floor; nautilus and treadmills on the second floor, along with an empty studio and a room containing another boxing ring.   At one time, Mason said, they’d had fitness classes, but lost their instructor and hadn’t replaced her.  Although he didn’t say what had happened, exactly, she got the feeling that it was something personal and they had all been affected.  As they walked back downstairs, she wondered if one of them had gotten romantically involved with her and it went south.

They were down in the pool area when Mason interrupted her thoughts.  “Oh hell, I need to call that guy back,” he growled.  “Come back to the front desk with me, I’ll show you the phones.”

“And you won’t hit your head again, right?”

He laughed, and it was a good laugh.  “I’ll try to be more careful.”

She took one of the two desk chairs behind the U-shaped reception desk.  Mason sat down in the other and called the electrician again.

She turned in a slow circle, taking in the gym.  This was her new start.  Her
fresh
start.  She didn’t ever have to go back to the pack and pretend to be okay with being subjugated by Monica or looked down on by the pack members.  The Alyssa who partied the weekends away, who drank until she couldn’t remember whose house she woke up in, was no more.  She hadn’t been real in the first place.

It was quiet, but she wasn’t sure what their weeknights normally were like.  She hadn’t been in a gym before; the whole workout thing never appealed to her.  She was a size ten and she’d always been that no matter what she did.  In high school, she’d tried in vain to diet, but nothing had ever worked for her, and eventually she stopped and accepted her body, curves and all.

Mason said there were twenty trainers on their payroll, contractors who only came in when they had clients.  They made between one hundred and three hundred an hour, and a percentage went to the gym along with the clients’ monthly fees.  It sounded like a very good racket.  They had two trainers full-time to help people with machines, one for the morning shift and one for the evening shift.  In the evening, it was Denny, a man who looked like he was about thirty-five, with closely shaved hair and a bulky body.  Whoever the man was that Cairo was working out with, he was well-muscled but not in the incredibly defined way that Cairo was.  And that name!  Was there a sexier name on the planet?  Well, possibly Dante.  And Mason.

Reminding herself that she was there for work and not play, she squeezed her tingly thighs together and turned away from the awesome spectacle of Cairo as he punched a heavy bag like he wanted to destroy it.

Dante came out of his office and handed her a small stack of papers. “When you get a chance, fill out these for our files.”

“Sure.”

He turned away abruptly, shooting an almost hostile look at Mason, who was very close to her suddenly.  “You’d have to
make
files before those would do any good.”  He peeked over her shoulder, his chair almost touching hers.

“Not much for filing?”

He shook his head.  “I want to go paperless, because his office is like a black hole, but he’s a tactile guy.  It’s not real if he can’t hold it in his hands, you know?”

She nodded, because she knew people like that.  Maybe if it was dead like this during her shift, she could help them get online.

She filled out the paperwork while Mason told her about the gym, himself, and his brothers.  He was funny and sweet, and every time she looked into his dark brown eyes she had to remind herself that he was technically her boss, and she was – what? Oh yeah –
not
getting involved with anyone anytime soon.

Cairo, glistening with sweat and looking too good to be true, walked by the desk and winked a dark brown eye at her before heading to the men’s locker room.  She wondered why he shaved his head, even though she liked it.  He also had a tattoo, but it was a military style — a bald eagle with spread wings and a flag tangled around it, on his left bicep.

About nine, Mason straightened with a yawn.  “I’m ready to put a fork in the night.  How about you?”

“Sure.”  She stood up, smoothing her skirt nervously.

“Dante will stay until eleven, and then he’ll close up and turn on the security system.  So just don’t open any of the outer doors, and you’ll be fine.”  He asked for her phone and programmed in all of their cells and their home number, just in case she needed to call.

After saying goodnight, she walked over to the office.  Dante looked up at her, a pen with the end chewed in his fingers.  “Mason’s leaving, so I’m going to head back to the, uh, room for the night, if that’s okay?”

“Of course.  I didn’t expect you to stick around with him so long tonight.”

“It was nice.  I didn’t exactly have anything to do anyway.”

He stared at her silently.  She would have given just about anything to know what he was thinking.  The lack of conversation settled heavily on her shoulders and she finally broke the silence.

“Good night, Dante.”

“Good night, Alyssa.”

She walked away before she said something stupid, like,
Can I sit on your face?
 Or before she
did
something stupid, like tear off her clothes.  She wasn’t sure she had ever been more attracted to any men before in her life.

Musing on the whole scene, she carried her suitcase to the ladies’ locker room to brush her teeth and wash her face.  Maybe it was because she hadn’t had sex in a few months.  The gym smelled like men.  Not in a bad way, it was just a really wonderful masculine smell that was making her wolf prance around in her head.  She thought it was more than just a lack of sex that was making her libido go nuts, though.  It was probably because they were so nice.  Unlike the pack males, who only cared about sex, and had never seen her as more than a booty call.  They wouldn’t have known if she was homeless and starving, or probably cared, unless the alpha told them to care about it.  It didn’t hurt that the brothers were gorgeous and exactly the sorts of men that got her motor going.  But they were brothers, and that meant choosing one of them over the others, and since they all worked together and she had just started working there, well, she needed to get her head out of her ass and forget about them.

She could do this.  She looked at herself in the mirror, barely recognizing the girl there, even though she liked what she saw.  A twenty-six year-old brunette with her whole life ahead of her.  On her own, without a pack.

With great determination, she put Cairo, Mason, and Dante firmly in the ‘friend’ box in her mind, and reminded her whining wolf that just because they
were
a wolf, didn’t mean they had to be an animal.

Chapter 6

“How did you sleep last night?”  Cairo woke Dante up when he unlocked the doors and turned off the security system at six.  Dante had been uncomfortable leaving Alyssa alone in the gym all night, even though he knew it was perfectly safe.

“Like hell.”  He stood up from his desk chair and stretched, groaning at the crick in his neck.  He’d tried to get comfortable, but it had been a loose definition of the word, leaning back in the chair with his feet propped up on the desk.  He’d have been better off sleeping on the boxing ring floor.  At least that was lightly padded.  But then, he hadn’t wanted her to know that he was there, in case she thought he was trying to get something out of her.

He would bet a large amount of money that the reason she’d left her pack had something to do with her treatment.  From what he understood about most wolf packs, unless the female wolf was a mate to a male, she was more property than person, to be used when urges struck and tossed aside just as easily.  Even though he wanted to deny it, he did think she was special, but he was trying to be the voice of reason for them.  He just didn’t want to rush into things with another woman again, and watch his brothers be hurt.  Mason was already smitten with Alyssa after just a few hours with her.  And Cairo was no better.

“I’m going to head home and grab some sleep.  I’ll be back around lunch to take her out to a few of the apartment complexes.”  He turned off the computer and rummaged in the top drawer of the desk for his keys.

“See ya.”

He grabbed Cairo’s arm as his brother turned away.  “You guys need to back off with Alyssa.  Something happened that made her leave her home pack, and for a female, I don’t think that’s normal.  If you push her too fast, she might spook and take off.”

His eyes narrowed.  “I didn’t do anything to her.”

“I know that.  But I already see your brain working when it comes to her.  I know you’re lonely, Cai, we all are, but rushing forward isn’t going to accomplish anything.  Give her time to get to know us before you do anything stupid.”

He gave him a wry smile.  “I wasn’t planning to do anything stupid; that’s Mason’s job.”

“Just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page, bro.”  He slapped him on the shoulder and headed out.

Unlocking the door to his Challenger, he sat down and took a few deep breaths.  It hadn’t been easy sleeping in the gym with her, and originally he thought it was the uncomfortable bed he’d made for himself.  He realized, though, that it had been the simple fact that she’d been in the building, nearby, and he’d wanted to see her.  Looking out his office door and seeing her sweet face had been a treat.

Growling internally, he headed home.  He was going to have to be the one to keep her at arm’s length so they didn’t rush into anything.  Their mother and fathers were all hyenas.  Maybe thirty years ago it was easier to go into a relationship with multiple partners, if you were talking to a she-hyena who was used to their world.  But hyena females were so few that Dante wasn’t sure he’d ever met one his own age.  Nowadays, you mentioned a three-way to a girl and she hit the road, unless she was so used up she’d done everything and didn’t care.  But a four-way – hell, he hadn’t met a girl yet that could handle that.