even know that. But I gave you that truth. I trusted you with it. You can return that trust, or you can go. Choose.”
His face softened a little, and his eyes darkened with something that made her stomach do a little flip. “You’re hot when you’re all assertive like this.”
She would not be distracted. “Well?” she pushed.
Sighing, he strolled farther into the apartment and sank into her living room sofa. “The father of a human I had a one-night stand with offered me money to mate with her.”
Mila blinked, almost rocking back on her heels. “Wow. So what, she wants herself a shifter mate like we’re accessories?”
“Turns out she thinks she has an inner wolf.” Dominic told her about Rosemary’s beliefs and gave her a rundown of the offer that Emmet Pierson had made him. Dominic hadn’t wanted to talk about it, but now that the words were tumbling out of him, he felt a little better for it. “Naturally, I said no to his bribe. Rosemary turned up at my territory a few days later. I was clear that I wasn’t her true mate, wouldn’t be forming any bond with her, and that she had no inner animal.”
“All of which she needed to hear.”
“Yeah. And that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t; she tried to commit suicide.” Dominic still couldn’t quite wrap his head around that. “Her father blames me, so he chatted a pile of shit to a journalist who posted an article about it online. Emmet exaggerated the whole thing to make it sound like I had bonded with her and then thrown her away because her animal hadn’t surfaced.”
“Bastard.” Mila settled on an armchair. “I can understand that he’s hurting, but he has no damn right to blame you. Sounds to me like she’s not in touch with reality. He fed her fantasies by giving them credibility—something he no doubt realizes now. He’s pointing the blame at someone else because he can’t stand the weight of it.”
Dominic nodded, flexing his fingers. “He threatened to cause problems for us the day we met at the restaurant, although he wasn’t specific about what those problems would be.”
“You feel guilty, don’t you?”
“I don’t hold myself responsible for what she did, but I can’t help feeling bad about how hard I was on her. Maybe I should have just allowed her to have her fantasies about being part shifter so that she could at least live with whatever comfort that brought her.”
“I doubt that it would have helped her in the long run.”
“If I’d bothered to look beneath the surface, I would have seen that she isn’t stable. But I didn’t bother. Never do.”
Mila waved a dismissive hand. “Plenty of guys sleep with women they don’t know. It doesn’t make you a shitty person.” She cocked her head. “Have you ever been in a relationship?”
A smile softened his mouth. “What, you’re wondering if maybe a girl once broke my heart, and I’m determined to avoid feeling that pain again? No. Nothing like that. There are a few reasons why I’ve avoided relationships. Mostly, I just don’t think it’s fair to start a relationship with someone unless you can be sure that you’ll be what they need.”
Mila pursed her lips. “I get it. While coming to terms with the fact that I’d never have my true mate, I stuck to shallow flings because I just wasn’t in an emotional place where I had anything to give. I’d have had no right to ask for a commitment from anyone.”
“And now you are in a place where you have something to give?”
“I think so.” She exhaled a heavy breath. “I’d say we should go sit out on the balcony and relax—it’s a real pretty view. But Vinnie’s paranoid that there could be a sniper waiting on a rooftop somewhere, pointing a rifle at my apartment.”
Dominic frowned, tensing. “Could they shoot through the glass?”
She shook her head. “All the windows and balcony doors in the building are bulletproof. Vinnie’s into illegal shit, remember? He wanted to be sure that no one in his pride paid for that.”
As something occurred to him, Dominic asked, “There’s no way that the person who put the bounty on your head did it to get at Vinnie?”
“It seems more likely to me that they’re trying to flush out Alex. Besides, Vinnie has a lot of contacts. If someone in his circle put a hit out on me, he’d have heard about it.” Pushing off the