by Josie Walker
Text copyright ©2016 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Three Cats, LLC. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Grayslake: More than Mated remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Three Cats, LLC, or their affiliates or licensors.
For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds
She didn’t notice Parker until they collided, hard.
His arms shot out to steady her and that was when she arrived at a very shocking conclusion.
“You’re naked!”
“Like what you see?” he asked arrogantly. She wanted to throw his cocky words right back in his face, but the problem was that as far as her eyes were concerned he had every right to be proud of his body.
His hands dipped lower until they were gripping the generous globes of her ass and she waited for him to say something insulting about her oversized derriere. But apparently he could find no fault with her rear end, because the next words out of his mouth were a compliment. “I certainly like what I see,” he murmured silkily.
When he spoke he dipped his mouth down low, hovering just over her ear. Then without warning his tongue slipped out and caressed the bottom lobe. Her ears had always been so sensitive that she couldn’t hold back the soft sighs of pleasure that escaped past her lips.
His hands rose higher and encircled her waist. Deep down she knew she should pull away from his grasp, slap at him, scream angrily, or do whatever it took to make him stop. But her brain had departed from her body and couldn’t think of a single compelling reason as to why she should make him stop… not when his touch felt so good.
CONTENTS
TEASER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
SNEAK PEEK
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PAWS & Surrender
By Josie Walker
Kindle Worlds Books by Josie Walker:
Shapeshifter Love Series:
Panther’s Mate
Panther’s Mark
Leopard’s Claim
Bear Allegiance Series:
PAWS & Surrender
CLAW & Relent
For more books by Josie Walker visit her author page at:
http://www.amazon.com/Josie-Walker/e/B01AH1XZVM
What readers are saying about Josie Walker
”Super Exciting Shifter Romance” This story is so suspenseful, intense, sweet, touching, and scorching hot!. This story is a stunning addition to the Southern shifters Series!
Roxie’s Romance Reviews
After enjoying Panther’s Mate I couldn’t wait for the Panthers Mark, which exceeded my expectations. You write beautifully, I had a hard time putting the book down. Now to see a part III to the story with Allie. I can’t wait.
Stephanie Jenkins
You had me hooked the first page. This book is amazing. I love the couple and the way their romance developed. I love the conflict and struggle presented. I can’t wait to read the second book.
Author S. Raven Storm
CHAPTER ONE
It was the ungodly hour of 4:30 AM when Michelle Delacourt’s alarm went off. She groaned in protest, as she did every day, wishing she could hit the snooze button and sleep in. But she was thirty-one, which meant she was a grownup and this was the real world, so that snooze time just wasn’t gonna happen. She liked to tell herself that she was suffering now so that she could have a comfortable future. This meant she was going to have a major meltdown someday if her future wasn’t as comfortable and secure as she was planning on.
As she showered and dressed for work she tried to psyche herself up for the rest of the day. Feeling energized was infinitely preferable to being all stressed out, which she’d discovered through extensive trial and error was the only other option. She applied a minimal layer of makeup, just enough to make her blue eyes pop and keep her lips from drying out. There was no point adding any foundation, because she would have just sweat it all off by lunch time anyway.
Michelle had long black hair, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her because she always wore it tucked up in a bun so that it wouldn’t get in her way. As always she struggled to wiggle into the tailored black pants that were part of her required uniform at the diner where she worked. Not for the first time in her life she bemoaned the cruel hand of fate that had landed her with such an exaggerated pear shape of a body.
Her disproportionate lower half made finding pants pretty much impossible. She’d split more seams over the years than she’d ever have admitted to. Lately she’d even been considering learning how to sew so that she could make something to her exact measurement, but that would have required some spare time, which was a luxury she simply didn’t have. The problem was that she had a lovely little waist, but relatively speaking her hips, thighs, and rear end were about four sizes too big.
She tugged the zipper up, groaning at her reflection in the mirror. From the knees down the pants looked horribly baggy, like someone’s tragically uncool attempt to recreate bellbottoms. The fabric bulged and strained past her generous curves, and then gaped awkwardly when it should have tapered in at her waist because her tummy was too small. She completed her unflattering ensemble with the equally hideous hunter green uniform shirt. Not only did her work shirt make her look like she weighed an extra fifty pounds, it also made her sweat like crazy due to the cheap polyester fiber blend.
Thanks to the stupid “plastic” shirt she had taken to stashing deodorant everywhere from her purse to her locker at both of the places where she worked. She refused to smell like B.O. If she wore cotton she was fine, but lately it seemed as though she was always wearing a uniform.
On impulse she tucked a small jersey knit dress into her backpack and made sure to include the shirt she’d need to wear at her second job. She worked the evening shift at the dry cleaners, which was pretty much her only chance to study for school. In an attempt to cater to working professionals they stayed open until ten at night.
She tiptoed through the main living area area so that she wouldn’t disturb her room mate Grace. She decided to skip breakfast, not because she was dieting, she’d given up on that in her teen years. She’d learned the hard way that it didn’t matter what she ate... her butt wasn’t getting smaller… PERIOD. No, the reason she was passing up the most important meal of the day and sneaking soundlessly out the front door was a little more complicated.
It was also a smidge unethical. She didn’t want to wake up Grace, because she needed to make it to work before her roommate did so that she could swipe Grace’s paycheck. She wasn’t going to take it all, just eno
ugh to cover Grace’s half of the rent, which was due the following day. She loved her friend, well she at least was loyal to her which was about as close as she allowed herself to get to anyone.
They’d grown up together in the foster care system, so it wasn’t as if she could even blame her friend for her destructive tendencies. For better or worse they were foster sisters. They’d experienced some pretty messed up stuff when they were younger, the type of stuff that haunts you for the rest of your life. She understood why her friend so often turned to drugs for comfort, and she tried to be understanding about it most of the time and turn a blind eye. But today was different and she couldn’t afford to let Grace out of her half of the rent again, not this month anyway.
The reason Michelle worked two crappy dead end jobs and never slept was so that she could put herself through school. She was training to be a nurse so that she’d be guaranteed a steady and comfortable income for the rest of her adult life. Grace may have been her best friend, actually she was her ONLY friend, but that didn’t change the fact that she was a drug addict, or that she could barely hold down a job. The only reason Grace was still employed at the diner was because Michelle covered for her all the time.
Most months she just took on extra shifts so that she could cover the full rental amount on her own. But if she did that tomorrow she wouldn’t be able to make her next tuition payment, and then she’d get dropped from her classes. She felt weighted down as she willed the bus to come faster. There was never room for her on the stupid bench and her feet were killing her already, probably because she was always on them. She was already exhausted and her day was just beginning.
Her Jiminy Cricket conscience was piling on the guilt, but she just ignored it. She was determined to do whatever was necessary in order to keep a roof over her head and pay her tuition. She knew what it was like to be homeless, and she never wanted to experience that again.
It took her two buses and a fifteen minute walk to reach work, but at least she wasn’t late today. Public transportation could be a little unpredictable and her boss was less than forgiving when it came to employees who weren’t punctual.
She stashed her bag in her locker and tied on her apron. Said apron was the only redeeming factor in her entire uniform, because it helped to at least give her some semblance of a waist. She clocked in and moved her time card to the holding space on the wall. It was an old fashioned punch clock because the owners were too cheap to swap out for a computer system. So long as the checks didn’t bounce Michelle didn’t care how they chose to handle their billing.
Darting a quick glance over her shoulder she slipped into the office. She was relieved to see that her boss wasn’t in there, because it would make snagging Grace’s check that much easier. There was a large manilla envelope propped up on the edge of the desk with all the paychecks in it. Fort Knox it was not.
She quickly thumbed through the checks but didn’t see Grace’s in the stack. What’s more, hers was also missing. Frantically she scurried back to the kitchen prep area. Her boss Rex was feeding carrots into a large food processor. The noise was unbearable and certainly far too loud to speak over, so she had to wait until he was finished before she could talk.
“My check wasn’t in the envelope!” she blurted out hurriedly. She didn’t bother with any social niceties or polite greetings, choosing instead to get straight to the point.
Rex spared her a passing glance before he moved on to prepping the heads of cabbage. “Grace was waiting by the door for me when I got here to start prepping. She said you wanted her to deposit both of your checks for the rent. You pick up hers all the time, so I figured it was fine.”
Any further attempts at conversation were obliterated when he began to feed cabbage wedges through the machine. Michelle entered into a place of panic and shock as she saw all of her hopes and dreams begin to crumble around her. How had her day taken such an unexpectedly awful turn? Things were shaping up worse than she could ever have imagined. If she didn’t track down Grace before she blew all their money she’d get dropped from her classes, and something far worse would happen, she’d be evicted.
They were already two months behind thanks to Grace’s drug addiction. She felt like she was going to hyperventilate or possibly even pass out, but she couldn’t afford to do either of those things because Rex was giving her the evil eye that said “Get to work before I fire your big butt already.” Moving about like an automaton she began to turn over chairs and set out condiments. The other waitresses wouldn’t arrive until closer to opening so she was on her own for now. She snuck into the break room as soon as she could without arousing suspicion, praying Rex wouldn’t catch her as she shot off a frantic text message to Grace:
Please bring back the checks. We will be homeless!!! I can’t do that again. Do you remember how bad it was? This is wrong and you know it.
But Grace never replied. By the time her shift was over Michelle was residing in the land of “worst case scenarios.” As she stood waiting for the bus that would drop her off at the college she wondered if she was wasting her time showing up for class today. Without both paychecks she couldn’t afford the tuition let alone the necessary textbooks and supplies. She called Grace a dozen times over the course of the day, but the line always sent her directly to the voicemail.
“She turned the phone off,” Michelle snarled. “Un-freaking-believable.”
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CHAPTER TWO
Straight after school she’d had to hustle in order to arrive in time for her shift at the dry cleaners. She was so stressed out about the money that she felt like she was going to burst out of her skin or something equally disgusting. By the time the clock struck ten o’clock Michelle was no longer just panicking, now she was a seething, boiling, mass of rage.
She was so worked up that not even changing into the comfortable stretch knit dress made her feel better, although she tugged it on anyway. Her foster sister had effectively crapped all over her attempts to make a better life for herself, and now her feeble sense of security was shot to hell as well. All day she’d wanted to drop everything and hunt her down, but it was stunts like that that got you fired.
“I’m gonna drag your butt to rehab!” she threatened the empty air. When logic reminded her that she couldn’t afford a fancy health clinic she came up with a new threat. “I’m gonna lock you in a room until you puke all the drugs out of your system and stop being such an idiot,” she tried next.
A man walking up to wait for the bus gave her a weird look but he didn’t say anything about the fact that she was talking to herself. One of the cardinal rules of using public transportation was NOT to engage with the crazies. The fact that she was carrying on a solo conversation like a lunatic was not lost on her. It was times like these when she really wished that she had a car. There wouldn’t be anyone to gawk at her for yammering on like a psychopath. There would also have been the added bonus of having somewhere to sleep tomorrow when her grumpy landlord kicked her big butt to the curb.
Her battery was getting low thanks to the excessive use, so she kept her phone tucked in her backpack as she stalked the less than savory streets of downtown Chicago. These were the parts of town that anyone in their right mind would know to avoid after dark. Too bad that she didn’t have the luxury of sanity at the moment. She knew for a fact that people bought drugs in this neighborhood. Now she just needed to find Grace before she blew all of their money. The fact that she was probably already too late wasn’t about to stop her from trying. The song wasn’t over until the fat lady sang.
; The temperature had dipped down to the point where she was shivering and wishing that she hadn’t stripped out of her hideous albeit warm work pants. She heard shouting as she turned the corner. Feeling uneasy, she pulled off her backpack and started digging around for her canister of mace. She couldn’t believe she’d been too scatterbrained to remember to unearth it earlier. She should have had her self-defense spray in hand before she even disembarked from the bus, this was just that type of neighborhood.
As she was digging through her bag she realized that she’d forgotten to file one of the claims tickets from the dry cleaners when it slipped out of her pants pockets. She had no idea how it had wound up there, but given how birdbrained she’d been all day it wasn’t really all that surprising. At this rate she was going to be lucky if she didn’t lose both of her jobs in addition to her apartment and her chance at a college degree. She planned to make a quick stop by the dry cleaners to file the receipt properly before the angry customer could show up and complain, but first she needed to find Grace.
She clutched the mace tightly and was about to close up her bag when a gust of wind sent the claims receipt sailing around the corner. She lurched desperately to grab it, rounding the corner just in time to witness a nightmarish sight. Two men were down on their knees in front of at least half a dozen others. They looked like gang members, although she didn’t recognize their colors. A man who she could only presume was their leader was pacing back and forth in front of them, yelling about something.
Whatever his exact words were she couldn’t have said, but she was pretty darn sure that she’d just stumbled upon a drug deal gone wrong. She was planning on backing silently away, because this was the type of crap that got innocent bystanders killed, but suddenly the leader let loose an animalistic snarl. His flesh quivered as fur shot through his pores. She could hear the bones snapping even from a block away as the man’s body reformed into a new shape that she could only describe as a tiger.