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

previous summer. They’d started flirting in January, and fucking in March. I asked him if they ever did it in my house, and he said no, but I could tell he was lying. The thought of my sacred space being violated like that made me feel ill.
    I didn’t love him, not by then. But that didn’t make the break-up any easier. My pride was shattered, my ego ruined by the knowledge that this man had chosen someone else over me. I spent weeks home alone, trying to reconstruct what was left of my self-esteem-sitting in front of the mirror, brushing out my shoulder-length blonde hair, slicking bright lipsticks across my small mouth and posing this way and that. I could see that I was objectively attractive, but that didn’t take any of the sting out of not being desired any more.
    So there I was, dropped straight back on to the single pile at thirty-three. I threw myself into work, spending longer days at the office so I could fill my time with something and not dwell over my action plan of finding someone new. I knew what I wanted, and it wasn’t a relationship. It was a fuck. A hard, fast, fuck. I wanted to prove to Mike that I was over him and that I could do better than him, and I wanted to do it with someone hotter than him.
    I pondered over my predicament while I sat in my office, sipping from a mug of coffee and looking over the to-do list for the week.  I heard a noise outside the glass of the office walls, and glanced up- and a pair of bright blue eyes looked straight back into mine. My heart flipped in my chest, and something clicked in my brain. I think I might have found the guy who was going to introduce me back to the world of dirty sex.
    I had known Patrick Young for three years now, ever since I was on the board that hired him straight out of college. He was smart, funny, and would occasionally linger in my office a little too long to chat or share a joke or talk over whatever manuscript he’d been flicking through that morning. And sure, I had certainly noticed that he was damned cute. He was short, around my height, with dark stubble and mess of black hair, the kind of hipster intellectual look that I would have thrown myself at in college. And now that I was single again, there was no reason for me not to relive a few of my college fantasies, no?
    I gestured for him to come in, and he opened the door and plunked himself down in the chair opposite mine.
    “So, what can I do for you today, Patrick?” I grinned, looking up at him as I ran one hand through my blown-out hair (hey, when you pay for your hair to look this good, you want people to notice).
    “Not much, I was just wondering if you’d received my notes on the Franklin book. I sent them down a few days ago and I hadn’t heard anything back, so…” He shuffled in his seat, no doubt aware that the intensity of my look meant exactly what he thought it did.
    “Yeah, I’ve got them right here,” I replied, rustling in my desk drawer. “I’ve just been organizing the launch party for Grace Vickers’ second release, and I want to make sure it’s perfect.”
    He pulled a face at me teasingly. “You? Wanting perfection? I never would have guessed.”
    I laughed. He was so easy to be around, and even now I was fighting my brain’s urge to fantasize about what his stubble would feel like between my thighs. “Whatever. I’ve just been in a lot recently, and the thought of going to an actual, bonafide social event sounds like the break I’ve been looking for.”
    “Oh? So what lucky man’s going as your date?” Patrick had known about the divorce from the start, but this was one of the first times he’d addressed the issue of my continuing singledom out loud. Good to know he was thinking about it.
    I cocked my head at him and leant back from the table, crossing my legs as I did so that my bare knee poked out underneath my smart skirt. “Don’t have one, yet. Got any nice, eligible young men for me to meet?”
    Patrick paused, as if distracted