Make Him Purr: A Paranormal BBW Werepanther Shape Shifter Mail-Order Navy SEAL Romance (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Diesel

“Jesus Christ, man! Go easy on him, you’ll break his neck!” Trey called just as Slate was slammed down on his back like a sack of potatoes.

“I’m fine,” the large tiger shifter hissed, scrambling back up and curling his hands into fists.

“Could have fooled me,” Warren drawled mildly, leaning against a sturdy tree trunk with his arms crossed over his chest.

Diesel took the moment to wipe sweat off his forehead. He’d discarded the shirt he’d been wearing to that particular outdoorsy meeting long ago. It was now lying in a heap along with his wide-brimmed black cowboy hat, his boots and his badge. The golden badge read ‘Sheriff’ over a stylized logo featuring a full moon and a large feline, slinking in the night, and ‘Shifter Grove’ written below it.

He’d been assured that Rake’s wife Liza had thought long and hard about what would be the best design for the badge of the newest and only lawman in Shifter Grove, and that the final version was understated yet classy. Diesel honestly couldn’t really tell – more than a decade of slugging through deserts and jungles in full battle gear had made him rather poor at establishing whether something was ‘classy’ or ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’.

What he did know, thought, was how to disarm a man in fifty-two different ways, and how to break his spine in at least twenty-three ways.

Diesel leant back slightly, his brown, almost black eyes intently on Slate. The tiger shifter wore a grin on his face, though Diesel was sure he was hurting like hell from the five times Diesel had pinned him down on his back over the course of the last few minutes. When Slate came at him again, Diesel grabbed his arm with practiced ease, stepped out of the way and spun Slate around so fast that the man didn’t know what hit him.

Diesel’s elbow connected with Slate’s chest, knocking him back. Slate’s fist slammed into Diesel’s ribs, but it was too little too late. With another sweeping move that came to him as easy as breathing, Diesel wiped Slate’s legs out from under him and planted him down on the ground like Slate was taking a lesson in physics and wanted to know what gravity felt like.

The peanut gallery groaned in unison, though Diesel didn’t miss the chortle that Deacon was trying to hide under a cough. Without a second thought, Diesel bent lower and grabbed Slate under the arm to help him get up. Falling down and getting up came with every practice session. One needed to learn how to get hurt as hell before he learned how to bring the hurt to others.

The tiger shifter was panting, his face beaming with amusement. Slate thrust his hand into Diesel’s palm and shook it heartily, slapping him on the shoulder. The faintest of smirks brushed over Diesel’s features. It was nice to be surrounded by shifters who weren’t out to cut his throat or carpet bomb his squad’s camp. Especially if said shifters weren’t the type to keep a grudge when a friendly wrestling match turned into a rather one-sided, painful-to-watch display of physical dominance.

“I haven’t got beaten up this hard since my father figured out it was me going around deflowering all the nice tiger girls. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I’m going to sleep a whole lot sounder knowing we’ve got this guy keeping the peace,” Slate said with a chuckle while picking up his shirt.

Slate had asked to see some of those Navy moves he’d always heard about, and Diesel had been kind enough to demonstrate – though he made a mental note not to have as many onlookers next time. Wouldn’t do to let the whole town know that he could beat just about every man in town if need be.

“Just as long as it ain’t me getting into trouble with you, I’m fine with all of this,” Tyler noted with a grin, his hands shoved into his pockets.

“The hell did you find this guy from, Rake? No offense, Diesel. We just don’t get a lot of ex-SEALs looking to settle down and make a nice life for themselves in the middle of nowhere, Idaho,” Deacon asked, still smiling from the brutal show they’d been treated to.

Diesel shrugged mildly, standing at rest. He caught himself doing it when Rake gave him a quick look.

Fuck. At least pretend to be normal.

Diesel relaxed his body, though it was almost physically impossible to do so with the adrenaline still pounding through his veins and filling every fiber of his being. Battle was part of who he was, and it hadn’t entirely sunk in that he would now have to find something to take its place – sooner rather than later. It felt good sparring with someone again, though Slate was hardly a match for him when they were in their human forms.

He might not take so kindly to finding out that the result wouldn’t be much different if we shifted,
Diesel thought lightly, trying to ignore how damn uncomfortable it was to try and emulate the way the rest of the civilians were standing.

That slight lean of the spine, that lazy way a heel dug into the grass, fingers hooked in the loops of one’s jeans… Not for Diesel. But it was going to have to become real familiar, real fast.

“Oh, you know how it is. They find us,” Rake said noncommittally.

Diesel appreciated that. He wasn’t the kind of guy to share his life story with everyone. Especially not now, when the most recent event had even thrown him for a loop.

Rake had been a friend for a long time, a good friend. When he’d invited Diesel to join the Shifter Grove extended family, Diesel had found himself hemming and hawing, but eventually agreed to it. It didn’t hurt that the crowd at Shifter Grove included some of the only people he didn’t immediately freak out with his presence.

At 6’6’’, he stood taller than most of the other shifters. Years of heavy training, always staying at his peak, had molded his strong frame into the perfect killing machine. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him and not a bit of muscle without purpose. He was big and solid like a wall, yet moved with the speed of a cheetah and had the killer instincts of any wolf he’d ever met. It was amazing what military training could do to a black panther, and what a black panther could, in turn, do for the military – that is, until the military didn’t want him any longer.

“I was looking for new challenges,” Diesel said, letting his southern, Texas drawl come out in full force.

He was among cowboys, after all. No need to try and clean up his speech. There wasn’t a general in sight for hundreds of miles who could fault him for sounding like a hick (which he was, and damn proud of it!).

“And you figured dealing with petty thieves and bears hanging from power lines would be just the kind of challenge to jump into right after the Navy? Man, you’re making me worry about our little town. I thought we had things all nice and calm here,” Tyler said with a grin, rousing a round of laughter.

Diesel shrugged mildly, keeping the thin smile on his lips. They were standing in a field near the south entrance to Shifter Grove, under the shade of some trees. Rake had invited him to really meet the rest of the founders (and the founder-adjacent, counting Slate), though he’d already been sworn in as sheriff two days ago after a city council meeting.

Diesel didn’t mind the opportunity to meet the supposed good guys of Shifter Grove. Even if he wasn’t expecting to make fast friends, he’d at least have to get to know what all of these men were about – for their protection as well as the town’s.

The process of being picked as the sheriff had been a pretty easy one. He’d only had to show up in his full parade uniform, his chest weighed down with medals and commendations from his countless tours (and another just as many stowed away in a box under his bed from secret missions that he didn’t quite want to be seen parading around), and that had been that.

Diesel knew he cut a nice form in his dress blues, but apparently being an ex-SEAL, and looking like he did, was enough to convince the men and women to trust him. Add in a warm, supportive speech from Rake, and they had things cooking nicely.

“It’s because most of the guys want to be you and most of the women want to fuck you,” Rake had commented dryly after the city council meeting.

Diesel didn’t know anything about that, but he wasn’t going to argue with a local about why things were going his way – not yet, anyway.

“I hear you guys have been having some issues with arsonists lately. And though I’m sure Rake can handle lions well enough, stuff like that shouldn’t be permitted at a place like this. So I think I’ll find plenty for myself to do. And if I don’t – well, wouldn’t that be just as good?” Diesel offered.

“My thoughts exactly,” Warren Sawtooth said warmly. “We’ll just need to get you a wife, and soon enough, you won’t even be able to imagine living anywhere else.”

Diesel smirked, shoving his feet into his boots and clipping the badge to his belt. He didn’t notice the conspiratory look that went between Rake and Warren at that point, and it was probably for the best. After all, wasn’t moving across the country, patching up his rather sudden and unhappy (though honorable) discharge from the military and settling into a new house enough for one panther to deal with for one week?

A woman. Right. Exactly what I need. I can drive her insane in two hours and she can practice her throwing arm by tossing cutlery at my head,
Diesel mused, pulling his dark green shirt back on his chiseled body.

But of course, Shifter Grove tended to know what was best for a shifter better than he himself might have. And Diesel was going to learn that the hard way, fast.

CHAPTER THREE

Sonya

“’Go to Shifter Grove’, you said. ‘No one will find you there’, you said. ‘It’ll be great’, you said. Idiot.”

Sonya grumbled heartily as she shimmied open the window looking onto the back porch of a cozy wooden cabin. It looked to be freshly built and currently uninhabited from what Sonya could tell from scoping it out for the better part of the day. It was well into the night now, and she was dead tired from the long day. Throwing caution to the wind seemed like the only thing she could do if her goal was to not sleep in a tree that night.

It wouldn’t have been the first time to cling to a branch in the name of getting some shut-eye, but Sonya got the feeling that she might be a bit too conspicuous that way.

The window gave in easily enough, clicking open as Sonya undid the latch with the small kit of precision tools she always had on her – tricks of the trade. She grinned to herself and pushed the window up and open.

With a quick look over her shoulder, determining that she was indeed completely alone and that there was nothing but the soothing, calm forest surrounding her, Sonya grabbed her heavy duffel bag and tossed it into the house. She slipped in right after it and slid the window shut again, quiet as a ghost.

Her eyes were already adjusted to the darkness, so the moonlight flowing into the building through the large windows was quite enough for her. It was one of those annoyingly large, yellow moons that the dragons liked to call gold moons and the wolves liked howling to. For Sonya, it just meant that the night wouldn’t hide her quite as well as she would have liked.

She picked up the duffel and carried it away from the window, letting it drop on the dark red couch in the middle of the room. It was still wrapped in plastic – whoever was going to live here had pretty Spartan tastes.

Sonya wandered the house quietly, mindful to keep her steps light as air. It came naturally to her. She snuck around like she was nothing more than a shadow hanging onto the edge of one’s vision, always just out of sight, just out of mind, but never too far away. She stuck out her tongue a little as she pulled open a door that led into a small kitchen and quickly concluded that there wasn’t a scrap of food in the entire house.

Either abandoned or not yet moved into. Whatever the case, it’ll do,
she thought, visibly relaxing.

Though her step was still soft – a trait she couldn’t turn on and off – she stopped flinching at every crackle of a tree branch or whisper of wind coming from outside. Sonya padded back into the living room and glanced at the staircase leading to the second floor of the spacious but understated home. She considered going up just to check it out, but the weariness in her bones got the best of her.

Without further ado, she plopped down on the couch and placed her duffel under her head as a pillow. The plastic creaked and protested under her, but the soft plushness of the material soothed her weary body enough that she didn’t even mind. She fished her phone out from her pocket and ignored the rumbling in her tummy.

For about the tenth time that day, she brought up a particular ad that had caught her eye on SassyDate. She pursed her lips slightly, looking at the perfect, carefully carved features of the man in the photo. It was a Navy dress photo, the man in the picture wearing a no-nonsense expression and looking like the picture of freedom. She could almost imagine him standing on a high mountain, his chest bare and a bald eagle on his shoulder as he planted the US flag. It was ridiculous, but she couldn’t look at a man who wore an expression of such utter commitment and not think that he was some military nutbag.