Knight-in-Arms - Secrets: (BWWM Interracial Paranormal Shifter Romance Part One) by Athena Dore

“If I told you I had a dark past, that I was dangerous, that I was prone to violent outbursts, would you still want to get to know me?”
     
    His eyes were piercing now. This was a hypothetical question; surely he was just testing her He looked down at the red wine in his glass and swilled it around once.
     
    “Yes”, she said slowly, “they would all be things that happened before I met you. I'd only care about the ‘you’ now...”
     
    He looked up, fixed her again with that penetrating gaze and leaned even closer.
     
    “What if I told you I was still dangerous?”
     
    ~*~
     
    Rochelle was home. She hadn’t been home in three years. She’d spent that time teaching English in Japan. It was weird, but somehow exciting being the first black girl her students had seen; how they wanted to touch her hair and know more about her. She’d got used to her life there –learning how to communicate with people who didn’t speak the same language, the sound of cicadas and crickets in the summer, passengers looking at her curiously on the train, or telling her she was pretty, and even being interviewed on the street by a couple of TV stations - so now, she had mixed feelings about being home. It was nice to have rice and peas again instead of ramen, and find clothes to fit her curvy figure but something had changed. Her town, her street, her house were familiar, but at the same time, alien. Everything had stayed the same but somehow, through her experiences, she was different. It was as though she were a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that had been removed and left in a glass of water and now, returned to the puzzle, she was still sort of the same shape, but had become swollen and waterlogged and didn’t quite fit anymore. Still, it was only temporary – until she found a new job. After that, she’d leave her small hometown, Lower Ferton, for good.
     
    She was alone in the house. Nico was wherever he was doing Nico-like things, Shawna was at university and her parents were at work. Always the nocturnal type, she got up late and checked her e-mails. Nothing; not even a hint in her junk mail of online pharmacies urging her to buy Viagra, or hot babes looking to chat.
     
    Bored, she turned on the radio. It made a soundtrack of dull, monotonous speech as she made brunch. In films, heroines had soft leitmotifs full of oboes and shimmering violins; in real life, her own leitmotif featured the sound of the toaster and the drilling going on next door.
     
    She sighed and turned to her phone to idle away some time. Glenda had put her wedding photos up and she flicked through them, critiquing the choice of outfits, food and décor, like the slightly bitter forever-alone she was – and she did want to emphasise the ‘slightly’ because it wasn’t in her nature to hate. She wasn’t one of those people who despised Valentine’s Day just because she was single, but there were times when she saw couples together and felt a pang over what could be if she found the right man… But anyway, looking at Glenda’s photos – even people who weren’t feeling bitter or ‘slightly’ bitter, or any degree of bitter at all – could see that Veneshia’s pink shoes clashed with her fluorescent yellow dress and that Candice was crying out for attention by dressing in white. Glenda looked nice, though. It was good to see her looking so happy.
     
    Rochelle didn’t mind being eternally single because she knew eternally was only until a prince came to wake her (perhaps on the train after dozing off) with true love’s kiss. However, in these modern times, he’d have to be subtle about it, or he’d probably be charged with sexual harassment.
     
    Finished with Glenda’s wedding photos her eyes wandered to the letters on the table, obviously delivered that morning. They looked ominous and bill-like, so fortunately, they weren’t for her. Some for her dad, two for her mum and one for Shawna. And there was another one – a package – for