Wanted By The Billionaire Wolf (Heroes of Shifter Creek 4) by Clara Moore

Wanted by the Billionaire Wolf
     
    Chapter 1: Dark
     
    “I can feel it, this wild inside of me. It thrashes and howls and growls, until all I can do, is scream just to cover the sounds. If I had known that the solution to my darkness was so simple, I would have done a lot of things differently in my life. I would have acted sooner. The best way to keep my wild at bay is to embrace it. And if that makes me too dark for this world, so be it.”
    Tears were streaming down Sharee’s face. Of all the things she would have ever expected him to say, that really wasn’t it. He wasn’t supposed to give up and in. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. She felt heartbroken and more than a little betrayed…which she was sure was exactly the effect he had been shooting for.
    Damn him , she thought furiously. Damn him to hell and back.
    “What are you doing?”
    Sharee jumped. She hastily wiped the tears off her face and pushed the chair back, the little wheels rolling her away from the screen she was not supposed to be looking at. On the page, the word “END” still taunted her with its final, Arial Bold characters.
    She looked up and was not surprised to find the shadow of an amused grin on Tristan’s handsome features. She was not supposed to look at his work until he asked her to, but they both knew she could never resist the temptation to peek. He hardly pretended to be annoyed by it anymore. Besides, he knew she didn’t do it out of an impulse to pry; it was just that she couldn’t help herself. Sharee lived for good stories, and Tristan’s words were just too beautiful to pass up.
    They were not the only beautiful thing about him, either. By then, the two of them had reached a high enough level of intimacy that he didn’t even bother to cover up when he got out of the shower in the morning—and Sharee would never dream of asking him. Presently, he stood across the desk in the studio with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. Sharee knew that if she looked, she would see the lines of his hipbones disappear past the fluffy white waistband of the towel. She knew that if she let her gaze run along the impressive length of his figure, she would be treated to lean, strong muscles and smooth skin.
    But Sharee didn’t look and didn’t let her gaze run, because Tristan was not her boyfriend. Tristan happened to be her boss, and despite the intimacy that inevitably came with assisting a genius author practically 24/7, Sharee still prided herself in her professionalism. She only allowed herself to fantasize about him within the privacy of her own apartment. 
    So, even then, she forced herself to ignore his nakedness and just meet his eyes—dark blue like a stormy sea, and sharp as a razor blade. Sharee swallowed past her suddenly dry mouth. Sometimes professionalism was really hard to keep a hold on.
    Focus, goddamnit, she reprimanded herself sternly.
    “Sorry,” she offered, although they both knew she really wasn’t sorry at all. “You said you might finish it during the night, I had to check.”
    Tristan grinned openly this time. “Sure you did, darlin’.”
    Sharee shivered. He had begun calling her “darling” the very first day she had started to work for him, over two years back, and he had not stopped since. The word rolled off his tongue like sin.
    “What did you think?” he asked as he took a seat on the bright red armchair.
    Sharee really wished he would go put on some clothes; it was hard to keep track of a conversation with him lounging about half naked.
    “I thought it was very dark,” she said honestly. “Maybe a little too much.”
    Tristan arched a dark eyebrow. “Too dark?”
    Sharee hesitated. Tristan was generally good with constructive criticism, but even after two years, she was still mindful of not crossing the line.
    “Go on, darlin’,” he said. “You know I can take it.”
    She knew. She took a deep breath and resolved to get all of her thoughts out. “Tristan, this is