Page 9 of What A Croc
To the left were three doors, two of which were closed. The middle door was open and I could see it was a bathroom, leaving me to assume the other rooms were likely bedrooms. It was a nice home, exuding warmth, and Robert’s scent clung faintly to the room, making all my senses tingle.
There were framed photos neatly lined up on the fireplace mantle, and my body naturally gravitated towards them, wanting to get a glimpse into my mate’s life. Anything that would tell me more about the man.
I smiled when I saw most of them were of Wyatt’s daughter, Julianna. One was of a proudly smiling Robert,holding the child when she was what appeared to be just a few months old. Robert was a bit plumper in the photo, his face a little rounder, but it didn’t detract from his gorgeous features.
Picking one of the frames up, I peered at it. It was of a much, much younger Robert. He looked to be in his early twenties, holding a chubby cheeked, grinning baby that had to be Wyatt. My Goddess the man had been beautiful in the prime of his youth. But I much preferred the version of him he was today. Gray hairs and laugh lines, exuding a gentle confidence he was lacking in the photo.
The soft padding of footsteps had my head glancing up guiltily from my nosiness, and I gently set the photo back in its place. Robert stood there in soft looking gray sweatpants and a slightly oversized white t-shirt. His feet were bare, his hair mussed from his run, or pulling on his clothes hastily.
Either way, I liked it. All of it. The bare feet, the mussed hair, the shirt that clung to his slightly rounded belly and softness in all the right places. And those gray sweatpants that left absolutely nothing of his omega cock to the imagination.
My mouth watered at the sight. Not just from the slim outline of his cock that I could see, but from just the sight ofhim. The warm spices of his scent drifted to me, barely there in the space between us, just enough to tease my nostrils with their allure.
Robert shifted from one bare foot to the other, his hands fluttering like he wasn’t sure what to do with them, before he wrapped them around his waist tightly. “Do you want to sit down? Something to drink? I need…something. Coffee.”
Truthfully, the man probably needed something way stronger than coffee; I know I did.
“Coffee would be great,” I told him softly, “but don’t go to any trouble.”
He shrugged, moving gracefully over to the kitchen area. “It’s a K-cup, no trouble. I literally just push a button.”
He pulled two cups over to the coffee machine and busied himself with getting the brew going.
“Where’s Aiden?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at me. He sat the freshly brewed cup of steaming coffee in front of me on the counter that served as an additional eating area. “Cream or sugar? I have some flavored creamers if you want them.”
“Black for me, thanks,” I took a sip of the coffee, letting the warmth and richness settle my nerves. “Aiden is with Brendan and Ryan. They offered to watch him so I could get some shifting time in.”
He nodded, then poured a generous amount of some kind of creamer into his mug, before pushing the button on the machine. It whirled noisily while he returned the creamer to the fridge. Finally, he finished fiddling withthings that didn’t need fiddled with and leaned up against the counter with his mug in hand.
Taking a seat at one of the barstools, I figured we both needed the small distance between us.
“You don’t take him to shift with you?”
Taking another sip of the rich brew, I smiled against the rim of the stoneware mug before answering. If Robert wanted to play the avoidance game, I could play all day. I had already shot off a quick text to Brendan and told him I was dealing with a personal issue and asked if they minded watching Aiden a bit longer. His reply had been quick and assured me I was fine to take all the time I needed. While chiding me that I hadn’t been in town long enough to have personal issues and I’d better plan spilling all the details when I got there.
“Aiden isn’t a shifter,” I told him softly, “at least as far as we can determine. Levi, my–” well, fuck. What did I call Levi? In any other circumstance, I would refer to him as my mate. But Levi was gone, and Robert wasn’t just anyone. He wasn’t someone who had known Levi, known us as a couple. He wasn’t a stranger on the street, who I would never see again, and didn’t have to follow up with an explanation that Levi was dead.
Robert was my fated mate, and that meant something, even if we had yet to figure out exactly what.
Taking a breath, I said, “Levi was my mate. He was human, and it looks like Aiden likely is a fully humanalpha. No crocodile in him. Of course, he could be a late bloomer, but I don’t think so.” Shifters had an underlying scent about them that humans lacked, one that had been missing from Aiden since birth.
Robert nodded, “I thought he might be. Fully human, I mean.”
Setting my cup down on the bar, I ran a finger over the rim. “I’m sorry for scaring you earlier.”
He swallowed hard, and my eyes locked on the pulse fluttering in his neck. He blinked his light brown eyes at me, his pupils dilating the slightest bit. Just enough to tell me that he was just as affected by my presence as I was of his. “Do you do that often? Attack people in your shifted form? Because I gotta tell you, it won’t go over well in Sweet Alps.”
Shaking my head, I assured him that wasn’t my normal behavior. “I don’t. I think your scent just affected my croc and, well…” I trailed off, sure I didn’t need to finish the sentence.
“Can’t say I’ve ever had my scent affect anyone like that before.” He blushed, a pretty pink darkening his cheekbones above his barely there stubble. “But you know, this…we…us...we’re not going to work. It’s just not going to happen. Fate missed the mark this time.”
Pursing my lips together tightly, I stubbornly raised my chin a notch. “So, that’s it, then? Just like that, it’s a no? Not even gonna give us a chance, huh? Can I ask why?”
Robert gaped at me with wide, astonished eyes, before a strangled sound, somewhere between a gasp, laugh, and a snort escaped his lips. His very kissable looking lips. Waving a hand between us, he stated, “We would never work. Fate got it seriously wrong. Maybe it was just…I don’t know, static electricity or something. We just shocked each other, that’s all. Nothing more.”
“You know good and well what it was,” I growled roughly.
He seemed to fold a little into himself, becoming smaller before my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We will obviously never work. I think it best if we both just…”
