by May Dawson
“There you go,” I told Blake. “Espresso shots. You’ll like it.”
“Is that a promise or an order?”
“However you want to take it.”
He glanced around the shop. It was early on Sunday morning and the indignant granny had just stepped out with her coffee order. The shop was empty except for Julian, who was focused on pulling espresso.
Blake caged me with his arms, leaning against the countertop. I was pinned between the hard counter and his just-as-hard, muscular body. My heart raced again, my body tense…but not with fear. With desire.
He leaned close to me, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. “You’re welcome to try to order me around, Tiger. But if you want to play with me, you have to promise not to run away if you lose a round.”
I stared up into those gorgeous eyes. “I’m not running anywhere, Blake. And in the unlikely scenario… if… I were to lose one, there’s always another round.”
He grinned, a slow smile as he looked at me as if he might lick me, might devour me, and my body ached for him to try.
But all he said was, “Good.”
He straightened from the counter as Julian turned around. The two of us were standing there, more or less innocently, as Julian brought out drinks over.
Blake looked cool and self-possessed, but I noticed he was suddenly hard, his cock pressing against the front of his jeans, and that made my cheeks flush. Even hotter. I tucked my hair behind my ears; those wayward curls were always everywhere. I felt too warm, my breasts heavy. I shouldn’t be so easily aroused by Blake—it didn’t make sense.
I’d barely wanted sex with Brad, and we’d been together for years.
Brad and his sex-sweats.
I was willing to bet that Blake was a lot sexier sweaty. And a lot sexier in bed. And his commanding nature—maybe I could relish that. Not submit, necessarily, but savor the push-and-pull between us.
“Have a happy Sunday,” Julian said cheerfully.
I smiled at him before I licked some of the sprinkle-topped whipped cream off the top of my drink. “You say that like Sunday is a holiday.”
He glanced at Amber, who had just stepped out of the back. “When you’re in love, maybe every day is a holiday.”
Blake laughed. “Maybe, man,” he said, his tone easy-going. He touched the small of my back as I waved goodbye to Amber and he steered me out of the café.
“Why’d you laugh?” I asked as we checked for traffic and then he urged me forward, his hand still on the small of my back, toward the truck across the street. “Julian probably meant that. They’re adorably in love.”
“He probably did,” he agreed. “But love’s not the same for everyone, right? You’re a prickly pain in the ass, Lily. And I’m a—what have you called me before?”
“A prickly pain in the ass, really?”
“It’s not your fault, you’re a cat. And you’ve called me worse, if you recall.”
“Sure,” I said, because I couldn’t deny that, “but you deserved it. And I thought we were starting over.”
“Why?” he asked. “I like where we started from.”
“You like the memory of me kicking your butt when we were kids, when you acted like a jerk?” I demanded, thinking the memory would embarrass him. He’d tried to boss me around when we were little kids. And it had not ended well for him.
Of course, then we’d been the same height. Now he was ten inches taller than me. I wasn’t sure if it was rude of him to grow so tall, or sexy that I felt delicate next to him. All three of them seemed to pick me up so easily.
He looked at me as if, were his hands not full of cups of hot cocoa, he’d kiss me. As if all that shared history, every weird thing about me, about us, just turned him on.
“Yep,” he said. “I sure do.”
21
Blake
Lily grew quieter as we drove into the city. Some of her light seemed to fade by the time she pointed out a parking spot on the side of the street, and my heart ached. I tried to think of something stupid to say, something that would spark her usual sarcasm but not hurt her feelings.
We headed up to her apartment. She tapped on the door. “Brad?”
There was no answer. Her hands shook a little as she fumbled with the keys, and the sight made my heart pound with anger. Had he hurt her?
Archer rested his hand on my shoulder, and I turned my ear into his face so he could whisper, “I think she’s just nervous about seeing him again.”
I nodded, some of my anger abating. Archer wasn’t always good at talking to people, but he was great at reading them.
She led us into her apartment. It was quiet. No Brad. That was good for Brad, bad for me.
Lily put us to work, telling us what was hers to pack up. She seemed to take everything in stride until she stepped out onto the porch. As I packed pots and pans into a box on the kitchen counter, I saw her orange curls bow, then drop out of sight as she knelt on the balcony.
Archer and Dylan were packing up in her bedroom. I glanced down the hall. Dylan was the one who would know what to say. Archer would figure out what was going on. I just wanted to hurt anyone who hurt her.
But unfortunately, that wasn’t always what a woman needed.
I stepped out onto the tiny balcony anyway, determined to learn to be whatever she needed.
I took in the tangled, drying roots, coated in caked soil. There were a dozen copper pots, still filled with dirt, filling most of the balcony. The plants must have been ripped out of them.
Lily looked up at me, sadness etched across her face, and I knew what The Brad had done.
I wanted to rip his head off his roots. They might just be plants, but they had obviously meant something to Lily.
I wanted to promise to buy her new plants, but I didn’t know if that would make her feel better either. There wasn’t some obvious way I could fix this. She thought I was bossy, but when I saw someone I cared about hurting and I knew how to fix it, this restlessness washed over me, like I had to fix it then or I’d explode.
But I didn’t know now.
So I knelt next to her. She glanced at me in surprise as I settled onto my knees, sitting back on my feet, so close that my shoulder almost—but not quite—brushed hers.
“How can I help?” I asked.
“We could pot them now and try to save them,” she said, running her fingertips over the cracked roots. “I don’t know if they’ll come back.”
“Maybe they’re hearty,” I suggested. “I bet they’re survivors.”
Just like she was.
Her lips twisted. “Let’s hope so.”
The sadness in her face tore at my heart. But I helped her re-pot all the plants.
Once the guys and I had wrestled what furniture was hers—the mission-style couch and her desk—and stacked boxes into the bed of the trunk, we nestled the re-potted plants carefully in the back, out of the reach of the wind, where they wouldn’t tip. It took us a while to get everything secure.
Then we went back up for one last look around to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. To say goodbye, I imagined, to a place where she’d lived. I wondered if she would want us there with her. I wondered if she’d even be able to ask us for what she wanted. She seemed to struggle with that.
Even though the three of us would give her the world, if we could.
And when we got up to the apartment, there was Brad.
22
Lily
I stared at Brad for a few long seconds.
The guys stopped behind me.
Brad stared at me, raking his hand through his hair. Then: “I don’t know what to say to you.”
“You don’t have to say anything, Brad,” I said, heading past him into the apartment. “You wanted me to move out. There. You won. I’m moving out.”
“I didn’t want any of this, Lily.” He followed me into the apartment, then glanced over at the guys, who had moved into the doorway.
I didn’t always notice
how big and intimidating those three men were. Archer was average height for a man, Dylan tall, and Blake genuinely enormous, but each of them was built. More than anything, they generated an aura. Blake radiated protectiveness and when he looked at Brad, I could’ve sworn he was holding back a snarl. Archer stared at Brad with his arms crossed and his eyebrow raised.
Dylan didn’t bother to glower; he had his usual friendly look fixed on his face, a bit bored, and yet… Dylan was kind but uncompromisingly loyal, and he would always fight for the people he loved. He was a Golden Retriever, through and through.
“Moving crew?” Brad asked, his voice snide.
“Friends,” I corrected.
I could’ve sworn I saw Dylan smile.
“Great,” Brad said. “Well, I’d like to talk to you alone, Lily.”
“What about?” I asked, glancing at the guys—specifically, at Blake—to warn them to butt out.
“The way you left,” Brad said carefully.
I’d bet he meant the way I’d shifted. My mouth went dry. Shifter rule number one: we weren’t supposed to shift in front of humans.
I felt embarrassed when I imagined the guys reacting to such a childish, immature mistake. I’d just been so upset that morning, on the verge of tears, overwhelmed by everything that happened that terrible day…but that was no excuse.
“Just a minute,” I said. “In the…” No, not in the bedroom. I couldn’t be with Brad in that bedroom again. “Out on the balcony, I guess.”
My little sun spot, shielded by plants. He’d stolen that from me. Now I’d always know that was who he was—the kind of man who would rip out plants just to hurt me.
I wish I’d known that on our first date. Nope, that one’s a plant-ripper. Dud. Move on to next. Hope for an app that will help you find true shifter love.
I stepped out onto the balcony, and Brad squeezed out there with me. The two of us were standing too close together for my taste. For a long time, his body had been comforting and familiar: the scent of his cologne, his short, lean frame, the neat way he gelled his hair. He’d been the mashed potatoes of love, I guess. Comfort food.
Maybe I was comfort food to him too, and one day, he realized there was a whole buffet of more interesting flavors.
He didn’t move to close the sliding door, just stood there staring at me, so I had to reach behind him to close it.
“What is it, Brad?” I prompted as I retreated to my side of the balcony, as far away as I could get.
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking down at the crumbs of soil left behind from the roots. He licked his lips before he said, “Sorry about all that, Lily.”
All that. The girl in the closet? However long he’d been sleeping with her before I found them? The way he’d destroyed my stuff?
I nodded. “Is that all you wanted to say?”
“No.” He frowned, shaking his head. “I also… okay, two things. I’ll start with the easy one.”
He jerked his jaw toward the guys, who I could see wandering around through the glass doors.
“Who are they?”
“Friends. From Silver Springs.”
He frowned at me, more deeply. “How come you never invited me to Silver Springs?”
“Oh, I did. How come you never wanted to go?” I demanded. “And how come you’re asking now? Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“No,” he said, crossing his arms. He met my gaze evenly. “What the hell are you, Lily?”
There it was. The question I had been dreading.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’m human just like you, Brad.”
He snorted a laugh at that. “Just an FYI, Lily, but no one says ‘I’m human just like you’ unless they’re secretly a monster or an alien. It sure sounds like you don’t know how to human.”
I felt on a regular basis as if I didn’t know how to human, but I thought maybe I’d feel that way even if I weren’t a cat shifter.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I said, spreading my hands. “If that’s it, I’m taking my stuff and I’m going home.”
“Wait,” he said, and there was a pleading edge in his voice. “I need to know what I saw. One minute we were talking, and the next there was this big cat racing around the room. And you were gone. I thought maybe I was going crazy.”
Gee, that would be a pity.
I shrugged. “Maybe you were. That’s crazy, Brad. There was definitely no tiger in our apartment.”
He looked at me as if I were the crazy one after all. He’d given me that face plenty of times when we were dating.
“Not a tiger,” he corrected. “A big cat. A big orange cat.”
I gave him that you’re-an-idiot look right back. “That’s what we call a tiger.”
“No,” he said. “It was just domestic cat sized. Like a big ginger tabby. Mean attitude.” He shook his head. “Trashed half our apartment. It was batting stuff off every surface, hissing at me, I had to run out of here because it clawed up my shirt and I swear it went for my eyes—”
He broke off. He’d gone a bit pale at the memory.
I couldn’t process what he was saying. He’d been attacked by a big orange…house cat?
I was a house cat?
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said hotly.
“I know it doesn’t,” he said. “But what happened? Where did you go? Or were you—were you—?”
His eyes had gone a bit wild. He couldn’t get the question out.
If he believed there had been a cat in our apartment, at least I could explain that away more easily than a tiger. “I don’t know what happened, but the cat must have snuck in when I opened the door, or I don’t know, come in from the balcony. You know how cats are! They’re crazy!”
I reached past him to wrench the door open, eager to get back to Silver Springs before he asked any more questions.
He grabbed my arm. “Lily, wait! I can’t make sense of what I saw!”
I wrenched away from him. The guys strode toward us.
Blake was in the lead—of course he was—and his upper lip pulled away from his teeth as if he were about to growl.
I had to get them all out of here before Brad realized there was something really wrong with us.
No, not wrong. Different. We were just different.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, grabbing Blake’s forearm and hustling him toward the door. His big body leaned toward Brad’s, resisting me for a second as if he were dying for a fight, but then he let me tow him along.
I glanced over my shoulder at Brad’s face, which I couldn’t read, as we headed out of the apartment.
As the door slammed behind us, I said, “I never should have left Silver Springs.”
I didn’t just mean today.
23
Archer
“What happened?” Blake asked into the silence of the car.
I turned to look out the window. I was keenly aware of Lily’s body next to mine, the tension in her slender frame, and I had a feeling that if she wanted to talk about her conversation with Brad, she already would be. She was quiet for a reason.
Lily glanced at him innocently in the rearview mirror, their eyes connecting. “When?”
Blake sighed under his breath, and Lily’s chin rose in response.
The two of them together were painful to watch. Neither of them was likely to win any awards for communication, and combined they were so much worse.
Dylan, in the passenger seat, cut his eyes at Blake, warning him off.
Blake ignored him. Blake always did.
“What did you and Gelhead talk about on the balcony?” Blake forged on. “Surrounded by the ghosts of your dead plants?”
Lily flashed him a look, her gaze narrowing. “You helped me re-pot them. I thought you said they might not be dead yet.”
Blake shrugged. “What kind of a petulant loser takes his anger out on innocent plants?”
She rolled he
r eyes. “He’s a jerk. And he’s in the past.”
I glanced over at her, at the stubborn curve of her chin and the sweet slope of her nose and the little freckles that dotted her cheeks. I wished it were that easy. She might leave Brad in the past, but I didn’t think she’d leave every mean thing he’d ever said to her.
“What did you mean when you said you never should’ve left Silver Springs?” Blake pressed on.
Dylan slapped his hand over his face and muttered through his palm, “Come on, Blake.”
It was as if Dylan couldn’t stand to watch.
“I meant,” she said hotly, and then seemed to lose power. She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about my problems with you, Blake.”
Hurt etched itself across his face instantly.
I glanced between the two of them, trying to figure out how to help them.
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Because you just wade in to fix them! Pushing everyone around like a herding dog!”
His jaw set. “That’s not fair.”
His voice had gone hard, and Lily visibly bristled at his tone.
Her lips parted, the look on her pretty face sour, and I knew her next words would be tart. She and Blake would just go on hurting each other because they didn’t know how to communicate. It would be even worse because the four of us were crowded into the cab together, so they had an audience for their fumbling.
“What do you think the Disney princesses would do with Brad?” I asked abruptly.
Lily threw me a dark look. “Don’t make fun of me right now. I’m not in the mood.”
“I’m not!” I said. “The princesses are role models for a lot of little girls. And frankly, I don’t think they get enough respect.”
Lily side-eyed me, but I could tell she was curious. Lily always loved the princesses—I was pretty sure she knew the words to every Disney song.
Dylan twisted in his seat to look back at me, a bit stunned.
“I think,” I went on slowly, trying to come up with something as I went, “that a certain princess would have hit him with a frying pan. So frankly, I think your restraint was remarkable.”