Chapter Two
Dalton
“Uh-huh.” Steve didn’t even look up from his phone as he pretended to listen to my explanation of what I do for a living.
“So then we chop up puppies and bake them in cookies for the homeless shelter.”
“Cool.” Steve’s thumb paused briefly, and he finally looked up. “Feeding the homeless is nice.”
Blowing out a deep breath, I pushed back from the table. “Yeah, well, it’s getting late so I’m gonna head home.” This wasn’t even the worst date I’d been on since signing up with Truly Yours matchmaking service, but it was the most annoying. Steve had barely put his phone down through the entire meal and obviously wasn’t listening to a word I said.
“Wait, you’re leaving?” Steve shook his head as if trying to clear out the most recent updates of every cyberfriend he’d been tracking over the past hour. “Why? Don’t you want to go to my place?”
I wanted to take the high road. I wanted to pretend the date had been fine and the problem was with me and not him. But I couldn’t. I was done with being a bigger man. I was done with acting like self-centered assholes were worth spending time with if it meant getting my dick wet. And I was definitely done with Truly Yours. I didn’t need to find a true mate anyway. I was doing just fine on my own. If I wanted to, I could walk into any bar in town and leave with a hot alpha or sweet omega. I didn’t need this shit. “No, I don’t want to go to your place. What would I do there? Watch you comment on what your buddies ate for breakfast? No, if I wanted to talk to a fucking wall all night, I would have stayed home. Thanks, but no thanks. Have a nice life.”
Steve looked shocked at the outburst but didn’t say another word to stop me as I stormed out of the restaurant.
***
It was just after nine when I walked into High Tide. The bar was owned by a snow leopard shifter but frequented by a good mix of both humans and shifters. Of course, the humans didn’t know shifters even existed, but the shifters were very aware of every human in the room. I usually stopped in for a drink after work, and I greeted many of the regulars with a nod as I passed them.
“Look what the cat dragged in…” Ivan was the owner and head bartender of the small pub. His thick Russian accent was usually comforting, but tonight, it was just grating. Everything was grating.
“Hey, Ivan. Can I just get a glass of scotch?”
“Scotch?” Ivan shook his head in mock disapproval. “You don’t drink scotch. You like two beers and a Coke chaser. What has you looking to drown your sorrow?”
I dropped heavily onto the stool in the center of the bar and hung my head. “Just need to sit quietly and not think for a while. Can we make that happen?”
Ivan slid a tumbler of scotch in front of me and silently raised his hands up in surrender.
With an appreciative smile, I toasted the air in front of my Russian friend and threw back a gulp of the amber liquid. Within a few minutes, I finished the glass and was waving Ivan back for a refill. I hated getting drunk, but I hated being depressed even more. And as I walked around in the cool Seattle air on my way home from the restaurant, a depressing thought consumed my entire being.
I was going to be alone for the rest of my life.
When I was staring at the top of Steve’s head while the asshole did god-knows-what on his phone, the prospect of being alone wasn’t so bad. It seemed like a great alternative to being ignored or used by some idiot with thumb calluses. But once I was alone and wandering the streets, I realized how badly I did want to find someone. That’s how I ended up at High Tide. Not because I knew I’d find Mr. Right there. But because I knew I could easily find a Mr. Right Now after a few glasses of the good stuff. And Ivan only served the good stuff.
“I’ve seen you here before.” A soft whisper against my ear pulled my attention away from the Post-it on the bar’s phone I’d been staring at for too long. I tried to turn to the whisperer, but warm fingers held my cheek in place. “But you’ve never looked like you needed company before. Maybe I can take your mind off your troubles for a little while.”
Shit. A prostitute. And human, no less.
There were a few who made the rounds in the bar on the weekends, but I was usually gone before they showed up. Without much thought, I was about to knock the man’s hand away from my face when something stopped me. My mind pushed through the fog already forming and reminded me of my purpose for coming in tonight. Instead of being annoyed, I slowly smiled. “How much?”
“Two hundred.” The twink took a step back and allowed me to get a good look at him. “Three if you want to go bare.”
Shifters weren’t susceptible to human diseases so I had no issue with fucking this stranger raw, but I wasn’t about to pay extra for it. “Not necessary.”
The man shrugged and tried to hide the disappointment on his face. “Whatever you want, tiger.”
Lion, actually, I thought with a smirk. Mountain lions were the most prevalent shifters in the Pacific Northwest, but this human didn’t know about that and never would. “Where can we go?”
“My place is just a few blocks away.”
With a simple nod, I pulled a few bills out of my wallet and dropped them on the counter before finishing off my second drink. “Lead the way, kid.”
***
I’d heard the term walk of shame but didn’t know what it meant until I left the man’s apartment with my tail between my legs. Never had I been so humiliated as when I had to fake an orgasm just to get the guy off me. I appreciated the kid’s enthusiasm, but after an hour of changing positions and using dirty talk to move things along, it was just pathetic.
I’d never been unable to climax in the past and was scared shitless about what it could mean. Was I officially too old to get off? I didn’t usually have trouble jacking off, but it’d been a few weeks since I’d even bothered trying. And though my alpha genes made my cock bigger and thicker than most humans, I still had to be aroused in order to complete the deed.
The guy I knew only as “kid” didn’t seem to notice that my stiffy was more like a semi as he forced it up his ass. It did feel good to be cocooned inside the stranger’s tight channel, but I couldn’t get into it. I was hard enough to fuck but not aroused enough to come.
Maybe it really was the beginning of the end for me. Maybe searching for a mate was just a last-ditch effort to find someone I could spend the rest of my life with. And since that was obviously not going to happen, my body was shutting off the sex drive. Hopefully, blue balls weren’t an actual thing. If so, I’d find out soon enough.