SWNOVELS Chapter 11: Alone!
Dax had spent the weekend drawing up sketches of the mated pair of wolves Kane wanted, after calling him they set up a meeting for Friday so he could see what she had so far. It saddened her that even in the animal kingdom, they had someone, and she never would. Like the lone wolf she was destined to be alone forever. It also seemed to be the theme for the week, she had customers asking for things that involved pairs or couples, a sculpture of a couple walking, a pair of his and hers paper weights, a portrait of a husband and wife, a sketch of hands being held. Working on the sculpture of the couple walking, it was starting to weigh down on her, she had to walk away from it. She would pick it back up again later, but right now she needed to breathe, she felt like she was suffocating. She had sent Georgie home at 5 and no one ever really came into the warehouse at this time, though she was technically still open, she took the opportunity to step outside the side door.
After 20 minutes she regained her perspective and stepped back inside, she was walking back to the sculpture, when she stopped dead in her tracks. Kane was standing there with his back to her, staring at one of her other sculptures, as if sensing her presence he turned around and smiled.
“I thought we were meeting on Friday?” She internally cringed at how defensive that sounded, but not much she could do about it now.
“We are, but I had a few ideas on the picture I wanted” He was rethinking just showing up now, she seemed a little moody.
“Ok” she bit the inside of her cheek, and hesitated before she moved over to a drafting table and pulled out a book that had the details of his art piece in. “What are your ideas?” He moved beside her, and started explaining his ideas to her as she wrote them down. She was trying to envision what he wanted, but she wasn’t sure she was getting it, unless she had a picture in front of her, it was just words on a piece of paper. Both of them were getting frustrated at this.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t working” she said “I can’t see it”
“It’s probably my fault I’m not explaining it right” he rubbed the back of his neck and released a sigh. She felt bad, it wasn’t his fault, it was hers, she wasn’t in the mind set for this.
He moved back to the sculpture he was looking at before, it was glass with dark blue across the top funneling into lighter blue at the bottom, the more he looked at it the more he scowled at it. He didn’t like the way it made him feel, the dark blue crushing down the light blue fading it out, it was lonely and sad. She watched him look at the sculpture, she opened her mouth to say something but closed it again and watched him a little bit longer.
“Scowling at it isn’t going to change the way you feel about it,” she said at last.
“What?” His eyes snapped to hers.
“What do you feel?” She asked “Looking at that piece”
“Lonely” he hesitated saying it, but he didn’t want to lie to her. She nodded her head, almost like she was expecting him to say that.
“Alone!” She moved closer to him and the piece.
“What?” He looked at her, she gave a half laugh and ran her hand over the piece.
“The name of the piece is Alone. Everyone at some point wants to be alone, the problem is when you hear the word you associate it with being lonely, therefore you feel alone, when what you really want is the calmness and the peace that comes with being alone, the quiet.” She picked the piece up and turned it over. “So change the way you look at it” when she stepped back and he saw it, a sense of peace washed over him, seeing his features soften as he admired the piece in a new way.
“Nobody wants to feel alone” he looked at her, and he saw a wave of sadness hit her.
“Is that what you feel? Alone?” He asked, he wanted to understand the hurt and pain he saw in her eyes. She cast her eyes to the floor for a long minute but when she looked back up at him, though she had a smile on her face, it didn’t mask the sadness in her eyes.
“Who says I’m alone? I have demons to keep me company” she waved her hand around the warehouse “And because of them….I will never be alone” the look she gave him, said she was done discussing that topic. He would let it slide….for now.
“It was part of a set, I had an art show a few months back, and the other piece sold. The art dealer sold them separately. I told him it was a set and they needed to stay together, but he either forgot or got greedy.” She moved away from it. “Hope for the first, but most likely the later, art dealers are thieves, anything they can do to get more money out of people, including breaking up a set they will. Probably charged a pretty penny for it too. If they would have bought it from me, it would have cost them $200” he almost choked, it cost him $2000 for the one, and he had no idea it was a set.
“What was the other one?” He asked, already knowing.
“It was red, fading into orange then into yellow. Flipped one way it’ll evoke anger, flipped the other way, well I’ll let whoever bought it figure that one out” she smiled over her shoulder at him, he smiled back. He bought it because it portrayed the same anger he was feeling that day. Anger that he couldn’t find his mate that night, angry because he lost her scent in the crowd of people at the show. Angry because she was right there, she touched him and he still didn’t see her. When he saw the piece it portrayed exactly what he was feeling, rolling anger, like lava coming off of him. Now he’s curious as to what will happen if he flips it over.
He followed her back to the drafting table, and took a seat in the chair she offered. She was going over what she wrote, but still couldn’t see the picture.
“I was at that art show, you weren’t there” he looked at her and a sheepish grin crossed her face.
“I was there, I….was..just..put..in..a..time out” she hesitantly said and picked up her pen.
“You were put in a time out? Why? What did you do?” This he had to hear.
“Found out that people who hold the purse strings really don’t like to be insulted. They like to do the insulting, but when it’s reciprocated they seem to have a problem with that.” She kept her face straight.
“Now you have to tell me what you did,” he pushed.
“Insinuated that a potential customer’s overpriced education that he was still in debt for was no better than the one I received for late charges from the public library” that didn’t seem so bad he thought “And then I called him an idiot” and there it was.
“The art dealer put me in a back room and told me to stay there and decide if I could behave myself and if I couldn’t then I should go home” she added.
“What did you do?” She pressed her lips together and looked at him.
“I decided I couldn’t behave myself”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” He asked, her cheeks reddened and he smiled more.
“Ok I didn’t want to behave myself and proceeded to tell another customer that she wouldn’t know art if it jumped up and bit her professionally nipped and tucked ass, and then went home.” He couldn’t help laughing, her straight face through the whole explanation didn’t help matters. She broke out laughing as well. Looking one more time at what she wrote, before she scribbled it out.
“Can you hand me that book please?” She asked, pointing to a rough bound book that looks like it has seen better days.
“Are you sure? I might break it” he hesitantly touched it.
“Don’t judge, it was the first sketchbook I ever made. As you can see I got better” she said, motioning to the other ones. He handed it to her and his fingers brushed her hand, sparks shot through his body.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling his hand away. She just nodded her head, but couldn’t help but stare at her hand as the tingles that danced across the skin began to fade.
“Um….tell me again what your ideas were, and I’ll see if I can draw them” she flipped through the book until she found a clean page and grabbed one of her pencils. Once again he explained in as much detail his ideas and she drew them out, he would correct her when she went too far with one, or not far enough. When all was said and done, he was standing behind her, looking at exactly what he wanted. It was rough, but it was there.
“Maybe make them closer together, so her head overlaps his neck” he said, she redrew the female wolf closer to the male, her head was raised at his neck.
“That’s it!” He leaned closer and when she looked up at him, their faces were inches apart. His eyes lingered on her perfect lips, lips that were created just for him right there for the taking, he just wanted to feel her lips on his one more time, just taste them again, but he couldn’t, not until she asked him to. Then her tongue darted out over her bottom lip….
The world stopped the second she looked in his eyes, she wanted him to kiss her, wanted him to put her out of her misery. He was right there, she just had to lean forward, he was looking at her lips, he wanted to kiss her too. The butterflies in her stomach were in a flutter and she could feel the flush spreading across her cheeks. No, stay strong, look away! But she didn’t want to, she didn’t want to look away, she didn’t want to pretend the tingles dancing on her skin were nothing. She licked her bottom lip and she saw his eyes darken and a low sensual rumble came from him. Her lips parted in a slight gasp and her eyes widened at the sound, his lips grazed hers, but before they could be claimed, her phone rang, breaking the moment. He moved away quickly to pull himself together, while she fumbled with her phone. She answered immediately, forgetting to check the caller ID.
“Hello?” She said breathlessly into the phone
“Mrs. Morganson, so nice to hear from you” he could hear the regret in her voice for picking up the phone, and he had to stifle a chuckle when he saw her mouth the word fuck and stomp her foot. She turned and saw him grinning at her and she just glared at him, causing him to grin wider.
“Actually, Mrs. Morganson, I am with a high profile customer right now, and he’s very demanding” she had no idea how demanding he could be.
“Unfortunately this commission is going to keep me very busy for the next foreseeable future, and it will be impossible to know when I have the time available to make any….plans” Now that’s a lie! Ky was snickering at how easy his mate lied to this woman.
“Ok, you take care as well. Sorry to disappoint you Mrs. Morganson”
“I’m sure I’ll get over it,” she said after she hung up the phone.
“What a liar you are, little mouse?” Kane said chuckling
“Hey, if she wanted you to date Donny I wouldn’t make fun of you for lying” she scrunched her nose up. He nodded at this.
“There would be a problem if she wanted me to date Donny” he said
“Oh yeah! And what would that be?” She asked laughing, he crossed the warehouse to stand in front of her
“My interest lies with someone else” he let his fingers skim across her cheekbone as he tucked a few stray strands of hair behind her ear that he freed from its hiding spot. Her eyes widened and she was about to say something
“I didn’t touch you” and she closed her mouth looking up at him swallowing hard. No he didn’t touch her, but the shocks that danced across her skin didn’t seem to care.
“I’ll see you on Friday” he said,
“Fri...Friday” she stuttered out,
“At 5”
“Yup” she nodded, not really trusting herself to say anything else. He smiled down at her one more time, before he moved away to leave. Flustered looked sexy on her, he thought. She watched him walk away, he looked over his shoulder once at her before he walked out the door. She released the breath she was holding when the door closed behind him. HOLY FUCK!