To that end, I whipped up a batch of triple-chocolate cupcakes, decorating the domed tops with artful curls of yet more chocolate along with a thin drizzle of raspberry syrup. Those were immediate crowd pleasers, so I branched out into another confection...this time concocting a chocolate croissant intended to gratify the supposed fiancé I’d meet for the first time in human form tonight.
After that, business picked up to the point where I no longer had time for baking. Instead, I busied myself changing customers’ minds about what they thought they wanted. First, I tempted an elderly professor into choosing the brownies over the muffin he thought would please his health-conscious wife, then I actually managed to bring a smile to a scowling student’s lips as she nibbled around the edges of a tartlet filled with rich, sweet blueberry jam.
And yet, every time I nudged my phone to life and drew human eyes to my brother’s image, a sublime lack of awareness remained on my customer’s faces. Meanwhile, with every moment that passed, Chief Greenbriar’s deadline hung heavier upon my slender shoulders.
Had Derek just been teasing me with his frequent mentions of this tree-lined campus? Or perhaps my brother had been trying to impress by referring to an institution that possessed sufficient name recognition for its prestige to carry over into the werewolf world.
By four hours into my shift, I was hovering on the edge of quitting the job I’d only just begun. Because I was tying up half of every day in a coffee shop when I could have been out pounding the pavement and sniffing for any sign of my brother’s scent throughout the city. Perhaps it was time to be honest and admit that I’d applied for this position not because of Derek’s dropped hints but instead due to a selfish urge to surround myself with baked goods during my first solo adventure away from my home pack.
Before I could tease apart my own ulterior motives, though, breath caught in my throat. The brownie-eating professor had slipped out the door while I pondered further options, and in the process a tendril of outside air blew inside in the older man’s wake. The hint of aroma flooding my workspace shouldn’t have been out of place on a college campus...yet, it still froze me in place just as thoroughly as the scent trail of an elk had done the night before.
The air was filled with the tang of dusty old books. Scintillating sandalwood. And heart-pounding adventure.
Forcing reluctant muscles to flex while slowing my breathing with an effort, I lifted my chin to take in the scene beyond the window...and my gaze instantly locked with dark orbs as familiar as my own. Sebastien—my Uber driver—was peering through the plate-glass and directly into my soul.
Chapter 11
For fifteen interminable seconds, my body rebelled against explicit instructions to stay calm, cool, and collected. My chest heaved, my cheeks reddened, and I panted like a sprinter stuck at mile five of a marathon as I attempted to wrap my mind around the vision outside my shop. Had Sebastien really been this handsome when I ran into him the previous night?
Struggling to breathe against the vise-like pressure in my chest, I found myself tracing the human’s outline with hungry eyes. Sunlight glinted against jet-black hair and the lines of Sebastien’s jaw were so sharp that my hand rose without permission in an effort to stroke his stubbled chin. The human’s chest was as broad as any werewolf’s, his stance calm and confident. But it was his eyes that snagged my attention and drew me in further yet.
There were mysteries hidden within those dark depths. A flicker of pain, a hint of regret. Mostly, though, the newcomer’s face told me what I desperately wanted to hear—that Sebastien considered me every bit as enticing as I found him.
The muffled tinkle of the bell above the door broke through my reverie, then hard-soled shoes rang out across intervening tiles. “Is it too late to snag a coffee?” Sebastien asked, gaze rising to the clock above my head before his eyes pierced mine once more.
The cafe was supposed to close in five minutes, but I busied my hands filling a cup anyway. Better working than reaching out and pulling this human close enough to sniff the tantalizing aroma emanating from the crook of his neck....
“Were you delivering somebody to campus this afternoon?” I asked, interrupting thoughts that I couldn’t afford to have flow any further. Glancing over one shoulder, I was proud of the fact that my voice remained steady despite my heart continuing to beat a staccato in my chest.
Unfortunately, I was paying more attention to Sebastien’s anticipated answer than to the hot liquid nearing the top of the cup. Because just as an expression I didn’t entirely understand wafted across Sebastien’s chiseled countenance, coffee overflowed across my fingers, stinging tender flesh.
“Ow!” I exclaimed, barely managing to take four steps to the sink before the cup slipped and spilled across the stainless-steel expanse. So much for coffee.
Then Sebastien was there beside me. The fabric of his sports coat brushed against my arm and his scent enfolded me as the male reached across my body to turn on the cold-water tap. Before I knew what was happening, warm fingers were nudging my wound beneath the soothing flow, human contact doing more than icy water to dull my pain.
I could have stood like that for hours, soaking up Sebastien’s intoxicating aroma like the scent of a baking cake. But the coffee hadn’t been quite hot enough to truly burn. And if I let this go on for much longer, my wolf was going to take the lead and do something we’d later regret.
We won’t regret anything, my inner animal murmured even as I slipped out from beneath Sebastien’s arm and took two long steps back.
“Thanks,” I said to my human companion, ignoring the complaints of my inner wolf. “I really appreciate the help. But health-department regulations require all customers to remain on the other side of the counter....”
My words flew fast and furious, building a wall between us. And, in response, my companion raised one dark brow quizzically before proceeding to obey. Footsteps against tile, the whoosh of moving air, then my companion was safely back in the seating area from which he’d come.
“Better?” he asked, elbows leaning against the scratched counter.
And I nodded...even though my affirmative was a total lie.
THIS TIME AROUND, I was more careful as I filled a cup with steaming liquid. And Sebastien followed my lead, retreating to surface pleasantries as I finished up my work.
“The Uber thing is just a side gig,” my customer said, returning to my original question at long last. And as he spoke, he pulled out a credit card and a rectangle of card stock to exchange for his cup of joe.
“Sebastien Carter, Professor of Psychology,” the business card read, along with a phone number and email address.
Huh. Now that was interesting. What college professor willingly chose to spend his evenings shuttling random strangers from point A to point B? And what perspicacious werewolf would have missed the fact that her driver’s sports car was far too fancy to be used for ten-dollar taxi fares?
Kicking my ailing brain back into gear, I leapt to conclusions I should have drawn hours ago. “You’re a student of human nature,” I guessed. “You signed up with Uber so you could observe people in their element.”
“Guilty as charged,” Sebastien answered, eyes crinkling up at the corners as his face broke out into a breathtaking smile. Yet again, I found my chest tightening as I struggled to inhale.
In an effort to regain proper focus, I bent down to examine the nearly empty display of pastries, trying to decide which selection would suit my current customer the best. Last night, Sebastien had chosen the chocolate...a decadent and seductive move hinting at enigmatic depths beneath his apparently clean-cut persona.
But the choices at the time had been severely limited and the current cocoa-related option—triple chocolate chunk—was a whole ‘nother ball game of complexities. Would Sebastien prefer one of the milk-chocolate oatmeal cookies I’d stirred up after realizing that most of my customers were searching for fiber along with their jolt of sweet? Or perhaps....
�
�That one.”
Ah, so he was a decider. I liked that in a customer. No hovering indecisively above the most tasty choice while calculating future impact to heart and liver. No wishy-washy meanderings down the candy aisle, tasting each treat with hungry eyes before allowing a single morsel to touch his lips. No, Sebastien saw what he wanted...and he took it.
What would it feel like if the thing he wanted had been me?
Shivering, I raised my eyes from the display case and found Sebastien squatting with his head on the exact same level as my own. A thick sheet of glass and several feet of air separated us, but I could almost feel the professor’s pointer finger trailing across my lips, around one ear, then down along the side of my jaw. For the first time in my life, in fact, I experienced a sensation more enticing than the first taste of 70% chocolate...and Sebastien hadn’t even touched his finger to my bare skin.
“The triple-chocolate cupcake,” my customer elaborated when I remained frozen and tongue-tied. “I like...the curls.”
Tendrils of my own hair had escaped from its health-department-approved bun while I worked, and now a wisp brushed against my face in counterpoint to Sebastien’s statement. The cheek in question heated up yet again and I knew my blush would be bright red and obvious—embarrassing when faced with nothing more than a little innocent flirting.
Turning away to hide my reaction, I managed to grab the most elaborately decorated cupcake...and the one to which my customer’s finger had seemed unerringly drawn. “It isn’t too froufrou?” I murmured, my voice catching on the final word.
“I’m a connoisseur of beauty,” Sebastien said softly as the first hint of fur—a response to his presence—broke out along my spine.
And then my companion reached forward to accept the chocolate treat, our fingers brushing as paper-coated pastry transferred from hand to hand. Only as sparks of profound awareness ran from fingertips all the way down my spine did I realize that I’d meant to put the pastry in a box with a couple of napkins, to follow the health-code rules to the letter.
Yet another violation—I was seriously flubbing my job as barista today. And yet, I found that I didn’t care about the lapse one bit.
My wolf didn’t mind the oversight either. Instead, she pressed against the inside of my skin, hunting for a way to come out and join in the fun. Shhh, not now, I told my inner animal. But I pressed my lips closely together rather than continuing our banter, afraid of what my companion would see if I opened my mouth to speak.
After all, fur came first, but the next symptom of an incipient shift was generally fangs. Not quite what this innocent human was expecting to have delivered along with his cupcake.
Sebastien, darn him, seemed entirely unaffected by the same skin-on-skin contact that had sent me reeling. “I don’t just study human nature in the wild, you know,” he continued, carefully peeling back the paper from each dark-chocolate ridge of the treat in his hand. The professor paused as a segment of pastry caught on the lining, and after backing off the pressure he tried again from a different angle. This time the wrapper came away clean.
“Hmm?” I answered, not hearing a single word Sebastien had to say. Because I’d gotten lost in another flight of fancy, this time wondering what it would feel like to have that same attention applied to the buttons of my shirt, the zipper of my pants, the skin along the side of my neck....
“The business card,” my companion reminded me, gesturing toward the pale rectangle that lay abandoned atop the nearby counter. “I’m running experiments this summer on campus. They’re easy and fun. Each session takes about an hour and pays ten bucks plus a candy bar. It’s the candy that draws the students in.”
He smiled again, a devastating widening of lush lips that sent my stomach plummeting down toward the sticky floor. That expression on Sebastien’s face should be outlawed. It was definitely contrary to the purpose of the health code—keeping me alive long enough to finish out my shift.
“I hope you’ll come by and give it a try,” the professor continued. “Maybe tomorrow?”
I think I might have nodded, although I can’t be entirely certain. Instead, I watched as the pastry I’d baked with my own two hands rose toward Sebastien’s lips. The experience was a close second cousin to being kissed, especially when warm breath flung the scent of chocolate and coffee out of Sebastien’s mouth and toward my flaring nostrils....
Then the bell above the door rang yet again and the moment was broken. Letting the uneaten cupcake drift down to his side, Sebastien swiveled around and watched with raised eyebrows as two very angry werewolves pushed their way through the open door.
Chapter 12
“What do you think you’re doing?” the fox-scented shifter demanded. I recognized him immediately, not from any glimpse of a face that I might have caught in the dark alley the night before, but because he looked precisely the way he smelled. In human form, the male was tall and lanky, his angular countenance made even more rat-like by its squinty-eyed expression of distaste. Harmony’s potential rapist was definitely the last person I’d hoped to see that day.
But before I could usher the male out of my shop, a second voice rang out across the room. “Roger,” this one warned.
The second werewolf to speak was more appealing...especially once the alpha’s son reached up to place a steadying hand atop his underling’s shoulder. Like his companion, I recognized Aaron by scent, and I was vaguely aware that I should have been spending this time assessing my supposed fiancé as mate material. Instead, I found myself more interested in the way the heir apparent’s touch so effectively reduced the angry energy of his companion down to a dull roar. Apparently Aaron shared alpha capabilities with his powerful father.
The pack leader’s son also possessed the familial ability to exude geniality on command. Stepping forward, he offered a hand to Sebastien while producing a one-body-friendly smile. “Aaron Greenbriar, a friend of Ember’s.”
“Sebastien Carter, ditto.”
I was warmed by Sebastien’s claimed friendship. But then I winced as the cupcake—which had been juggled from hand to hand in preparation for the human-style greeting—slipped out of the professor’s grip. He grabbed for the falling pastry, barely missed its descent, then watched in dismay as the offering landed icing down on the scuffed and dirty floor.
Sweaty skin, hot kisses, and other entirely imaginary aspects of the preceding moments instantly dissipated into grime and disillusionment. And Sebastien evidently shared my chagrin because he released a stream of syllables that I suspected was invective in...maybe Swahili?
I wanted to bask in this evidence that my attraction hadn’t been entirely one-sided. But Aaron’s shoulders were tense and rat-faced Roger’s laugh seemed intended to start a fight that no human could ever win. So I palmed both my phone and Sebastien’s card as surreptitiously as possible, then glanced at the clock to support my upcoming lie.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “But I’ve gotta shut things down. The door locks automatically fifteen minutes after closing and I definitely don’t want to spend the night sleeping on icing-covered floors. So I’m afraid I can’t sell you another cupcake today....”
Never mind that there were three similar chocolate confections remaining in the case along with several other types of dessert, all of which would be good for nothing but the dumpster come morning. I’d be handing out leftovers to all and sundry after work...but I couldn’t afford to let Sebastien spend one more moment in the danger zone. “See you later,” I continued, my eyes adding: Why won’t you go already?
And Sebastien moved...but he didn’t obey. Instead, sidestepping two burly werewolves, the professor stepped closer to the counter until the two of us stood nose to nose, surroundings hidden by the proximity of the other’s face. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he offered far too quietly for Aaron and Roger to hear...
...Well, too quietly for them to hear if they’d been human.
Unfortunately, the two bystanders weren’t precisely human and
they picked up the professor’s words far too well. “Should we put the chairs up on the tables?” Aaron suggested loudly, as if he’d been helping close cafes all his life. Playing along, Roger added: “Where’s the broom?”
Tuning out my pesky chaperones, I scooted one hand a fraction of a centimeter further across the cool glass countertop. I wasn’t accustomed to human mating rituals, wasn’t accustomed to the impulse to gauge every move carefully so I’d both capture Sebastien’s attention while also allowing myself to save face when and if my interest wasn’t reciprocated.
Only, Sebastien didn’t ignore my advancing fingers. Instead, his larger hand slipped beneath mine, our joined appendages rising as a unit until his lips could brush butterfly-soft kisses across my sensitive skin. Behind his back someone—I thought it was Roger—began to growl just barely low enough to elude the professor’s ears.
I was playing with fire and I knew it. Still, Sebastien’s kiss curled the corners of my mouth up into a smile while my other hand fingered the corners of the business card now buried deep within my front pants pocket. “Tomorrow,” I agreed.
Then, before either Aaron or Roger could chase down the human rapidly retreating across the tile floor, I shot out orders with my best alpha oomph to back them up. “The broom is in the closet behind your back, Roger. And, yes, Aaron, we’ll be out of here twice as quickly if you put up the chairs.”
WHEN SEBASTIEN WAS present, the air had been so full of testosterone that I might as well have possessed two jealous fake-fiancés rather than just one. But the instant the human turned the corner and disappeared from sight, the act—and the broom handle Roger had been holding awkwardly in his arms—clattered to the floor.
Shifter Origins (Series-Starter Shifter Variety Packs Book 1) Page 40