“Would you like to sit in the dining room?”

“No.”

I pressed my lips together and pulled the barstools out. “Here. We’ll have coffee at the bar.”

“Not feelin’ it.”

I whirled around and clenched my fists. Suddenly, Wheeler’s brooding expression ebbed away, replaced with a look of satisfaction.

I had yet to see Wheeler in anything but sleeveless shirts that showed off his ink. Occasionally he’d put on a tight T-shirt, but I didn’t think he owned a single garment with buttons or cuffs. Aside from the tattoos, the one thing that swiftly caught my attention was his sparkling brown eyes. They were the color of caramel or sweet tea—just as pale and beautiful as you could imagine the color brown to be. They seemed out of place against the dark contours of his serious expression. Wheeler’s hair was brown, disheveled, and longer on top than on the sides. While he was a genetic copy of his brother, Ben, everything about Wheeler stood out.

Especially sitting in my apartment.

His eyes danced with amusement. “You don’t like people sitting in your chair, do you?”

“What makes you say that?”

Wheeler was about six feet tall, and he stretched out his long legs until his feet reached the edge of my coffee table. Then he put one heel on it, crossed his ankles, wiggled his toes beneath his white socks, and watched me for a reaction.

I tried to smother it, I really did. But seeing my glass table teeter under the weight of his legs sent me flying into the room. “Let’s be adults about this, shall we? You can either sit in your car for the next twelve hours, listening to repeats of Lady Gaga on the radio, or you can show some civility and I’ll let you stay inside and watch television.”

His eyes flicked over to the TV and back to mine.

“I’ll get your coffee, Wheeler. Please try not to spill it.”

“You shouldn’t talk to a man like he’s a child,” he said in a smoky voice.

I peered over the bar while filling our mugs. “And you shouldn’t speak to a woman like she’s a servant,” I muttered under my breath.

“What was that?” he yelled.

I strolled into the living room and knocked his feet off my table with a nudge of my leg. I set the cup on a coaster and then took a seat on the couch.

Wheeler leaned forward on his elbows, glaring at the cup. “So why do you strip for money?”

I wasn’t offended by his candor. I preferred a man who spoke his mind. My mama had once told me that a woman should measure a man’s worth by how well he could carry a conversation, and the best kind of foreplay was verbal.

“Your packs can pool money together, but I’m a loner. It’s not as if I can simply go to college and get a great job at an insurance company; that’s the human world. If I were a Vampire, I’d have no problem getting a job as a bodyguard. But as it stands, I’m a Shifter. A female Shifter. That means that unlike you, no one is going to hire me as a bounty hunter. Tell me what I’m left with as a single woman to make a substantial income?”