Make Him Purr: A Paranormal BBW Werepanther Shape Shifter Mail-Order Navy SEAL Romance (6 page)

BOOK: Make Him Purr: A Paranormal BBW Werepanther Shape Shifter Mail-Order Navy SEAL Romance
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“Fine. Public service. You don’t leave my sight until you’re done with it. After you’ve paid your penance, I’ll give this back to you,” he said, pointing at the license.

Sonya found herself nodding along. A little shiver passed along her spine when he said that she’d be with him the whole way. It meant she couldn’t run, but it also meant she could keep looking at this positively unnaturally hunky sheriff. Not a bad tradeoff, if you asked her.

“Cool! And what’s the public service?”

That was the first time she’d seen a truly devilish grin pass over Diesel’s features. It was just the right kind of wolfish and boyish, like the look a guy gets when he’s just thought of the best prank ever.

“I’m sure I can figure out something for you,” he said, sliding the driver’s license into his palm and depositing it in a small safe under his desk.

Fuck. The hell’s he plotting?

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

Diesel

 

Diesel could hear Sonya gritting her teeth from a mile away. He leant against the side of his truck, watching her with an impassive expression plastered on his face, but roaring with laughter on the inside. Sonya kept throwing him dirty looks as she scrubbed the streetside wall of Danni’s Salon, the only hair parlor in Shifter Grove. It had been tagged during a recent bout of trouble with a particularly rowdy bunch of teenagers, and Diesel couldn’t think of a better way of teaching Sonya how to keep things on the straight and narrow than to show her just how much it sucked when her shenanigans caught up with her.

Besides, it wasn’t a bad view. Sonya was wearing a tank top and black jeans that clung to her curves in the most inviting ways. It didn’t take much more than seeing her bend over to take Diesel’s thoughts down all sorts of dirty paths. He had to keep himself from licking over his lips as she knelt down to get a few spots lower on the wall.

“You two sure you don’t want some lemonade or something?” Danni asked, appearing next to Diesel with a worried look on her face.

She was a young human woman who had moved to Shifter Grove a few months ago in an attempt to get away from a string of unfortunate boyfriends. At least that’s what she had told Kacey, Warren’s wife. Warren had relayed the information to Diesel when the new sheriff in town had started creating files on the local inhabitants in an attempt to get to know them better, and to figure out if there was anyone he’d need to keep a closer eye on. Whether it was for their safety or the town’s would remain to be seen.

Diesel figured there was more to Danni than just the desire to leave some shitty boyfriends behind, but whatever it was, it was nothing the town would need to worry about. She projected a slight air of sadness underneath that bubbly and kind exterior that Diesel kept picking up on every time he came across her. Danni’s parlor had just been the right building at the wrong time, and Diesel agreed with Warren and the rest of the founders that stuff like that was on the town as much as it was the single inhabitants – when they could help out, they would.

So it was only natural that when Shifter Grove got its first felon, she’d be the one mopping up all the little nagging issues that Diesel or the others hadn’t managed to get to yet.

“I’d love some!” Sonya called over her shoulder, though Diesel could still see the crease of annoyance that clung to her features.

He chuckled slightly and smirked at the look Sonya gave her.

“I’m fine, thanks Danni. We should be done here any moment now,” he said, sweeping a hand over the pristinely clean wall.

“Looks great! I tried to get that stuff off myself, but I figured nothing short of industrial solvents wouldn’t even make a dent in it,” Danni said, smiling softly.

She had lovely blue eyes and that slightly fluffy figure shifters liked so much. Still, Diesel found his attention straying to Sonya more often than not.

“Just took a bit of elbow grease,” Diesel said as Danni peeled away to get the lemonade for Sonya.

“A little? My ass. I’ve been here for five hours. This is some cruel and unusual punishment, Diesel. Do I look like the kind of woman to be
scrubbing
?” Sonya said with annoyance as she stood up.

She reached her hands out to him, showing him how they were red and sore from sloshing around in water and peeling paint off of surfaces that were none too keen to give it up.

Nothing small about that ass,
Diesel thought to himself, making that grin of his linger.

“You don’t look too bad on your knees, convict. If you’re finishing up here, we can go tackle your next assignment.”

Sonya groaned loudly, kicking her head back and looking to the sky like she was waiting for the hand of a shifter god to strike him down. Diesel glanced up, half-amused. Just a cloudless day with mild bursts of breeze – perfect.

“What now, then? I’ve scrubbed, painted, swept, cleaned, repaired and even fucking filed documents. The hell else do you have for me to do in this godforsaken town?”

 

***

 

“When I said you could come and help out with the gutters, that’s not exactly what I meant,” Rake said, eyeing Sonya’s curvy form trundling about on his roof.

Diesel shrugged good-naturedly. He’d been driving Sonya from one site to another for the past two days, keeping her well at work. He figured one or two more days would do the trick and he could ‘forgive’ her for breaking into his house. Not that he didn’t enjoy her company – she was a sassy little fireball and though being around her was physically difficult because of that attraction his animal had decided to feel for her, he didn’t mind the verbal sparring one bit.

In all honesty, it had taken him the better part of the last two days to work up the gumption to come and talk to Rake. With a sideways glance at Sonya, who was spewing expletives as she scooped muck out of the gutters of Raleigh’s large ranch house, Diesel turned to Rake. He leant one elbow on the truck and gave the man a long look – one that made Rake pull back a bit and raise his hands in front of him.

“Whoa. Whatever you’re glaring at me about, can we settle this over beers? I’d rather you not throw me around like you did Slate. I know I look marvelous, but most of my exercise these days is running after that damn woman of mine when she gets into one of her moods again.”

Rake flexed his arms with a grin that Diesel didn’t return. He had a bone to pick with the dastardly werelion, and he was damn well going to get it settled while Sonya was out of earshot.

“What the hell is up with the SassyDate ad?” he asked simply.

The sun beat down on them, scorching his neck. Diesel watched as Rake’s expression went from playful to serious and back to cheerful. He shrugged and hiked himself up to sit on the tailgate of Diesel’s truck.

“It was Liza’s idea,” Rake said.

Inwardly, Diesel groaned. Of course it was. Leave it to the wives of the cowboys to drum up trouble.

“Why?”

“She thought you could use lightening up. And she figured that since I knew you the best out of everyone in town, she’d send the gangs of women gaggling for your attention to me to filter through and find the perfect candidate. I think they talked it over in their little council of shifter wives and everybody thought it was a great idea to get you hitched and happy, whether you liked it or not. And how’d you find out about the ad anyway?

I’m not even halfway through the list of ladies vying to be your bride. Some killer dames in there, by the way. Apparently that Navy thing really works on them. If I’d known, I would have enlisted right alongside you.” Rake said, tilting his head to the side a bit.

Diesel cocked a thumb at Sonya, who was just tossing her long hair over her shoulder as she scraped some dead leaves out and spilled them on the ground.

“She told me about it. She broke into my house a few nights ago and claimed it was because she wanted to meet me, that she’d seen my name on SassyDate.”

“Shit,” Rake said, chuckling. “I figured we could be real down-low about it, since you’d never visit that app anyway. I wasn’t banking on crazy girls showing up in town.”

“She’s not crazy. Sonya has something going on, but she’s definitely completely sane,” Diesel noted.

His tone got softer as he spoke about her, and he was sure Rake noticed and just glazed it over – like friends did when it looked like the other wasn’t quite ready to spill.

“That offer for beers still stands, you know. I wasn’t on board with the idea at first, but you gotta admit, you’re wound far too tight. What the hell happened, man? I don’t remember you being like this. You used to be a bigger bastard than I was.”

Diesel glanced down, considering the noses of his boots for far longer than he had any business to.

“Yeah, I’ll remember the offer. Just, do me a favor, take the ad down. I don’t think I have the mental fortitude to deal with women who are willing to throw themselves at some random guy like that.”

“You sure it’s that, not the fact that you already found the right woman?” Rake asked, his eyes twinkling with mirth.

Diesel snorted in response but was saved the disgrace of having to reply. Sonya cussed harder than most enlisted men did in the Navy and it made Rake cringe a little next to him. Diesel just chuckled – gotta love a woman with a smart mouth, or a dirty one, depending on the situation.

“You filled this shit up just to annoy me, didn’t you?” Sonya asked, grabbing a handful of twigs and dead leaves and flinging them in the general direction of Diesel’s head.

They fluttered to the ground just a few feet in front of Sonya, dribbling off the edge of the roof. It made her groan in frustration, and damn if it wasn’t the cutest little sound she could make.

“Hey, just because I don’t like heights, doesn’t mean I don’t take pride in the expertly grown mulch that has taken residence in my gutters, burglar!” Rake called back.

“Who’re you calling a burglar?” Sonya huffed, standing up straight and with a grin on her face now.

“If the orange jumpsuit fits,” Diesel offered.

Oh, there was that look again. The one that told him she’d try to kill him in his sleep if she didn’t just get distracted by trying to fuck his brains out before. He was sort of hoping for the second option, as unprofessional as it was.

Rake’s words rung in his ears. He knew he’d changed, but perhaps not how
much
he’d changed. The fact that he was joking at all came almost painfully to him now, though it had been the most natural thing before. If that wasn’t a sign that he should be worried, he wasn’t sure what was.

On the other hand, the simple understanding that he
was
cracking light a bit meant that things were getting better, right? Diesel eyed Sonya, who was locked in banter with Rake, and smiled to himself – maybe the right kind of company was all he really needed? Even if she came in an impossible package, ripe with irritation and haughty comebacks.

He was sort of curious to find out. But how do you go from keeping a woman close to being incarcerated and then moving on to finding out more about her? Diesel was rusty on the romance front, but even he knew that it couldn’t be the smoothest segue.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sonya

 

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost guess you were trying to wine and dine me!”

Sonya leant back in the booth at Sunrise Diner, luxuriating in the feeling of the supple leather embracing her sore muscles. It had been a long day of menial labor and all she could really think about was getting some warm dinner in her belly and curling up on Diesel’s couch. Or, at least, that was what she had been thinking about before Diesel took a sharp turn and changed their regular evening plans.

So far, she’d only seen the town when she needed to do some work somewhere, and the day always ended with takeout boxes, minimum conversation and falling asleep at Diesel’s cottage. She hadn’t minded – doing the work had kept her mind off the fact that she really had no idea what to do with herself now, and though Diesel wasn’t usually a riveting conversationalist, being around him still made her all giggly.

It was a bit silly – even she would admit that.

“I figured we could come to the source this time, instead of scraping at the bottom of takeout boxes,” Diesel said, flipping through the menu even though they’d already ordered.

BOOK: Make Him Purr: A Paranormal BBW Werepanther Shape Shifter Mail-Order Navy SEAL Romance
3.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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