“Go on. I’m in no hurry.” Caleb smiled to ease her nerves, then wondered what good it did. Calla only clutched the white cloth tighter—her skin drained of blood to the point that her hands practically disappeared. “Uh,” he rejoined, “do you need help?”
“No,” she answered quickly and put distance between them. Using the towel, she swiped at the barber chair and flecks of dark hair flew briefly into his vision before fading. “Sit. This will be a few minutes.”
“Actually, I’d like a shampoo first, if that’s okay. I’ve been feeling a bit scruffy since I left New York—”“
“Why are you here, Caleb?”
“Huh?
Calla reached for the broom near her station and stabbed the straw needles against the floor. “You come in here as though nothing ever happened all those years ago…it’s like you’re expecting to pick up where we left off.” She shook her head, gaze fixed on the hair and dust she swept into a pile. “I don’t even get a formal hello, or a ‘how you’re doing’? Did you think enough time had passed that I’d forgotten?”
“No.” Caleb’s voice took on an annoyed tone he hadn’t intended, and he spoke quickly when Calla’s head shot upward with an arched brow. “What I meant to say,” he added, “was that I’d hoped you’d realize how difficult it was for me to come here. Despite what went down, you’ve remained friendly with my family, especially Trisha. I appreciate that.”
Calla shrugged. “Trisha didn’t dump me.”
“You think I took pleasure in that? I went home and cried my eyes out that night,” Caleb said. “We were kids, and I thought I was above panther law and could marry whomever I wanted. When, my uncle put the kibosh on that, I had no choice.” Years later, Caleb recalled with vivid memory the violent tussle that ensued as he and his uncle, Sheila’s husband—both in cat form—fought over his obligatory mating.
“I didn’t know this.” Calla stopped sweeping. “You were actually going to defy your pack and your traditions for me?”
Caleb jammed his hands in his jeans, glancing nervously around the salon. “For you, partly. Mainly for me. If you and I hadn’t worked out, I figured I at least had asserted myself enough to have the freedom to choose my own wife.”
“I wonder if Trisha will fight.” Calla nodded. “She doesn’t seem too happy about this party, despite wanting to look nice for it.”
“If I could get Trisha out of this I would, but trust me: Sheila’s ten times worse than my late uncle.” He laughed, and to his relief Calla responded in kind. He felt the tension between them dissolve a little, enough to allow Calla to take his hand when he offered it.
“How are you doing?” he asked as they shook.
“I am not unwell.”
He rolled his eyes. “You never were one for giving a straight answer.”
“Yeah, well, I suppose the last few years have left me crooked in parts.”
Caleb wondered if that remark had anything to do with what he saw at her house the night before, when Maya came slinking up to her in nothing but a smile. His attention quickly shifted, though, when Calla grabbed a dustpan and bent over to finish cleaning her station. This afforded him a nice view of Calla’s lovely, rounded behind.
“Are you serious about getting a cut?” she asked. “Because your hair looks fine.”
“How about just a shave then? I meant to get all metrosexual in New York, but never found the time for it.”
Calla laughed again. “Sure thing.” She gestured to the sinks. “Pick one. I’ll be right over.”
Two minutes later, while Caleb tried to get comfortable in the shampooing chair, Calla brought over her shaving supplies and a long vinyl bib to cover him. “Hang on,” she said, and reached for the cabinet over his head. Caleb noticed the shape of her breasts against her blouse, and how they dipped low when she retrieved a towel.
He imagined her sans clothing now, leaning down further so he could take a sweet nipple into his mouth and suck until she moaned. The mere thought left him squirming to mentally tamp down an erection while she readied for the shave.
“Can I ask you something, Caleb?”
“Shoot,” he said, then suddenly felt uncomfortable. Once upon a time, he imagined she had been angry enough to do just that.
She fastened the neck of the cloth and arranged it so it covered him completely. The cloth came down to his knees. “What you were saying about pack mentality, where mating is concerned, I’d read that panthers—actual panthers—are pretty much loners. They’re not like lions or tigers that would have a pride. You know what I mean?”
“I do, and you want to know why it’s different with panther shifters.”
“I guess you just answered my question. It’s because you all aren’t true panthers.”
Caleb bent his head forward to let Calla place the towel on the lip of the sink. The cushion greatly reduced the pain shooting down his back. “There really isn’t a pat answer to that question, and some of us have wanted to know for a while, too. What I can tell you, though, is that as far back as we have recorded our existence, panther shifters did survive without the benefit of group support. The theory is we’d spent so much time looking for others of our kind, that our elders figured keeping to a pack mentality was the only way to preserve our race.”
“That makes sense.” Calla ran water in another sink to prepare the suds. She opened a fresh bar of shaving soap, and the scent of bay rum teased Caleb’s senses. “Caleb, I have to confess something.”
He swallowed hard. “You are going to go all Sweeney Todd on me, aren’t you?”
“If you mean, will I torture you by singing Broadway tunes while I shave you, perhaps.” She smirked. “Give me some credit, now. If I killed you, Trisha and Sheila would know where to look first.”
“And take you to dinner afterward,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
Calla wet a washcloth, which she then positioned over Caleb’s mouth and throat. “Hold onto that, while I get the shaving cream ready,” she said. “Perfect timing, too, because now you can listen to what I have to say without interrupting.”
Caleb frowned, and Calla laughed at the picture he presented. Seeing her this happy, and in his presence to boot, warmed him and quickened his pulse.
“You know,” she said, taking a chair, “not long after we split, I used to sit at home and wish I had some kind of panther shifter DNA so I could break up your wedding.”
If you only knew. Hell, if only he knew as well. The ugliness and years of awkward silence could have been prevented. Of course, that discovery would have served to hurt another innocent who had fewer choices than he.
“Then Teresa and her family came to Bliss, of course, and all that anger went away. I think what I hated most about breaking up with you was that I could not stay mad at the situation. Just my luck that you left me for the sweetest girl in New Jersey, too,” Calla said. “I watched my mother fix her hair for the Indian Summer Ball—never met anybody so poised and polite.”
Caleb saw Calla pull out—of all things—a potato peeler from the shaving mug. She must have noticed his confused expression, because she then interjected with, “This was how Mom did it, and she got few complaints. Why mess with a good thing?”
He nodded under the washcloth and Calla commenced scraping thin shards of soap into the shaving mug. “Anyway, Teresa seemed lonely. A bit scared, too, I think. She didn’t have any friends and she was going to marry some stranger…when her mother suggested to mine that the two of us hang out I wanted to bolt from the salon. I suspect Mom believed I’d have gotten over you eventually, and pressed me to take Teresa out to a movie.”
Caleb remained silent, yet ached to speak. He hadn’t known any of this.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t ditch her on the side of the road or anything like that. I suppose I went along with the ‘play date’ to scope her out.” Calla shook her head, staring into the mug. “I wanted to discover that she was the biggest bitch on the planet, so I could live the next several
years with the comfort that you’d end up miserable after making me feel that way.”
“I’m sorry, Calla.” Caleb reached to remove the washcloth but Calla gently swatted away his hand.
“Keep it there. The lather works better when your face is wet.”
“My face is fine, Calla. I never wanted you to be miserable. I’ll apologize every day if that’s what it takes.”
She ran the mug under the sink’s spigot, then picked up the horsehair shaving brush from her lap. The wooden handle knocked rapidly against the ceramic as she ground the bristles into the later. “Caleb, I’m fine now. My Mom and friends told me I’d live, and I have. It’s not like I spent all this time being bitter, either, because you and Teresa turned out happy.”
Caleb’s heart fluttered at that. Much as he had resisted the marriage initially, he also succumbed to the lovely she-panther’s charms, cherishing her until the very end.
“We haven’t palled around since, but it never meant I wanted to hit you with my car every time I saw you,” Calla was saying.
“Thank you, for that,” Caleb said, catching that arched brow again. “I’m sorry if I in some way prevented you and Teresa from becoming better friends.”
“That was more me, I guess.” Calla sighed. “She had invited me to the reception, since I wasn’t a shifter and not permitted to attend your super secret mating ceremony.” She screwed her face into a silly grin as she said this.
Caleb laughed. “It’s not as prurient as you’re thinking.”
Her smile quickly fell. “I hope she wasn’t disappointed when I didn’t show, but then I figured she was too busy to have noticed.
I would have noticed. Hell’s bells, if only the panther shifters allowed for polygamy…
“Well, I know she came into the salon more than once, so thank you for not burning her hair off.”
Calla removed the washcloth and glared at him. “Now come on, I’m not that evil. Although, I admit have occasionally fantasized of burning something else off.” She winked to set him at ease.
“Maybe I should have taken this shave to Gillette,” he mused, his voice low.
“Caleb, I’m teasing,” she scolded. Then, more quietly, “Teresa never knew about us, did she?”
He waited for Calla to finish slathering his upper lip and chin with the warm, pungent cream before answering. “If she did, I never told her. I never got the impression that she knew anything.”
Calla looked as though she wanted to say more. He wondered if she imagined an alternate track in the course of their lives—if he and Teresa turned out unhappy, and his wife jealous of his past relationship with the salon owner. He hadn’t lied about Teresa—after an awkward and brief courtship, he came to love his mate, yet still thought fondly of Calla. Despite living happily as a married man, though, jealousy tended to grip his heart whenever he spotted Calla with another man. In the past, he chalked it up to being concerned for a friend.
Seeing her with Maya last night had roused that familiar, unwelcome feeling. Yet, for his tendency to act protective toward Calla, he didn’t want to know why the woman remained single. Best not to lift the scab from another old wound, he decided.
He tried not to move around too much as Calla coated his throat with the thick, white cream. “Okay, Santa,” she said teasingly, “let’s make you look more respectable.” The blade she’d chosen, thankfully, didn’t resemble the Reaper’s scythe, but it appeared nonetheless lethal. Caleb fixed his gaze on Calla’s eyes as she worked, hoping to find more warmth than mischief. To her credit, her face offered nothing more than serious concentration on her work.
He should be so cool when dealing with a tense situation.
Minutes dragged on with only the sound of metal scraping against skin to irritate his super-tuned panther hearing. The average human might detect something faint, like a distant Velcro strip ripped from its base, but to Caleb it sounded much louder. The only thing that threatened to surpass that was Calla’s heart as it beat harder and faster. The heady scent of bay rum had clearly touched her, too, as he noticed her expression softening with each turn of the blade.
She worked in a steady rhythm—shaving one patch, rinsing in the nearby low spigot stream, then wiping the blade clean on the washcloth draped over her knee. Here she only spoke when she needed him to tilt his head one way or the other, and by the time she reached the far side of his face she had to raise up a bit to better shave under his right ear.
Her breasts drooped perilously close to his face, so close he could peer past the first undone button of her blouse to glimpse the lush curve of one mound. A quiet sigh escaped him as he thought of burying his face deep into the soft valley while his hands roamed free to cup her flesh and pinch her nipples into pebbled, inviting peaks. So what if he still had sticky lather on his face? He’d rub it gently into her own skin as he tested the smoothness of Calla’s shave.
He stilled, sensing Calla’s brewing arousal. Had he felt the hand holding the blade tremble? No stinging sensation followed, which meant she had the good sense not to continue.
“I think we’re just about done here.”
Calla’s voice sounded even shakier. Soon the scent of her arousal overpowered that of the bay rum soap. “Let me just get a warm towel to finish you off—”
Caleb waited only for Calla to set aside all of the shaving items. Once unencumbered, she made to rise from her seat but Caleb pulled her quickly onto his lap as he sat up straight. “Don’t worry about it,” he whispered, leaning close to inhale the sweet blood pounding in her temples. Her entire body thrummed with want and she nearly vibrated into him, coaxing his cock to life from within its tight denim restraints.
She gasped, surprised by the move, but didn’t resist. Instead she offered him a numb stare. “Y-you need something on your face,” she said, her voice breaking, “to keep from irritating…”
Right now the only thing irritating Caleb was the ache in his groin. His panther strength took charge and lifted Calla’s lithe frame with ease until she straddled him in the chair. “I need you,” he said, nearly growling. He watched her eyes widen and mist over, and all of a sudden they were both eighteen years old again—aware only of each other and oblivious to any forces that sought to tear them apart.
“Caleb,” she began, but he refused to let any hesitations tamp down the emotions charging through him. He took her parted lips in searing kiss that instantly melted away any apprehensions stiffening her body. As their tongues mated with growing hunger she leaned heavily into him and slid her arms under his to clasp his back. Caleb had little trouble familiarizing himself again with her—she hadn’t changed much since they first got together. He supposed having a genius beautician as a mother prepared her well for graceful, slow aging.
All those places where they fit perfectly—his hand on the small of her back, her thighs pressed against his pelvis—kept them locked in a passionate embrace that erased any attention Caleb kept to time. Minutes, hours could have passed and he wouldn’t have cared. Let them miss the damned Indian Summer Ball, and the next one, too. He refused to leave this spot.
The only thing that could make it better, though…
He broke free from the kiss and nuzzled under chin, nipping at her throat as his free hand played with her buttons. “You expecting anybody else today?” The question came out between pants.
“Uh-uh.” Calla took in a deep breath and swiveled her hips into him. The heat radiating from her jeans—from her sweet pussy—further taunted him. One more thrust and he’d come right there.
Like hell would it happen while still clothed.
One by one her blouse buttons popped free and Caleb dipped his hand to peel down one lacy cup of her bra. Immediately he zeroed in for a taste, licking the rosy brown skin to a fine pucker before pursing his lips over the hard bud. He tugged on it until she cried out, then licked away the sting. “Let me have you,” he pleaded. “I want to taste so much more, but this…can’t wait.”
* * * *
As Caleb spoke, his hand found her denim-covered pussy and stroked it hard. Even with the rough, thick material buffering his touch, the sensation set Calla’s lust ablaze. She thrust into his hand, wanting more of that incredible feeling.
This, she had failed to achieve last night on her own. With little concern that a walk-in seeking a cut and/or curl might discover her humping a customer at the back sinks, Calla longed to discard her blouse entirely and let Caleb lave more attention on her breasts. She wanted him inside her, too, filling her to satisfaction with his thick, throbbing cock. She supposed she had desired that all along in some capacity—either as a husband or a friend with benefits. It amazed her how quickly any animosity between them faded once their bodies connected. It seemed almost as if…
Calla gasped when Caleb’s other hand slipped under the waistband of her jeans and teased the G-string against the cleft of her ass. As if we were meant to be, she thought of this easy reintroduction to their passion. Memories of the few lovers she’d entertained between then and now appeared transparent and underwhelming in her mind. Straddled on Caleb’s lap, aching and wet and close to orgasm, she found a comfort she savored.
The realization electrified and frightened her. With Teresa gone, did this leave Caleb free to love on his own terms? Dare she risk handing over her heart again only for some panther elder to appear out of nowhere with another eligible shifter bachelorette?
An urgent throbbing grazed her pussy. She didn’t need to cup the bulge between Caleb’s thighs to know he was hard and ready for her. After gazing into his eyes as his heat and arousal enveloped her, she decided to live this moment and enjoy the hell out of it. Why deny her passions and stumble home tonight to an empty bed and an unfulfilling session with a battery-operated cock? If she had a future with Caleb, fine, but she was more interested in the present.
She kissed him again, nearly devouring him. “Pants. Off,” she said after breaking away.
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