Joe’s truck bumped along the broken-up pavement as he approached the small house.
While he had wanted to spend the rest of his afternoon at the diner, flirting with the pretty waitress, he knew that would get him exactly nowhere. Nowhere with her, and nowhere with his job, and nowhere with Morgan.
But part of him didn’t care if he was wasting his time. There was something about being near that woman that just settled him.
He couldn’t put it into words. Could barely identify the emotions, or the way it made him feel. He just knew there was something, not sure what it was, but his gut just knew there was something. While a good portion of his work relied on his gut instincts, this something he was feeling had nothing to do with the task at hand.
After waisting a few hours at the diner he cashed out his bill and left. He even stayed after her shift ended, so that he could pretend he wasn’t there just for her. It was time to get this taken care of.
He pulled the truck off to the side of the road and cut the engine.
The house didn’t look much different than it had the first time he had checked it out. It sat quiet, isolated, and with no signs of activity.
He grabbed the cookie tin, letting his fingers drum against the side in a rhythmic pattern that gave away the hint of unease he was feeling.
He didn’t like showing up and ringing doorbells without understanding more about the situation in front of him. Yet, he had basically blown it when it came to spending the past forty-eight hours conducting surveillance. That was on him. And Morgan was waiting for a report.
Joe knocked on the door.
The drumming thuds of his knuckles sounded hollow, as if they reverberated through an empty space.
“Damn it,” he bit out.
Maybe this address was just a front, and whoever had submitted that DNA test request only used this address because they knew it was unoccupied.
“Hello,” Joe called out.
He peered through the window next to the door, placing his face close to the cool glass.
There was furniture inside. It didn’t look messy or abandoned, but as if someone had recently been there.
“Hello,” he called out again.
Still no answer.
With purposeful strides, he made his way to the mailbox.
The front flipped open with a creak. He only found a piece of junk mail addressed to Resident. That wasn’t useful.
Still tapping on the tin of cookies, he walked around back.
The patio furniture seemed to have been rearranged. A throw blanket covered the back of one of the chairs.
“Oh, well, crap.”
No one was home. But it appeared as if someone had been here since he had stopped by earlier. How was he going to make contact with this person if, whenever he showed up at their house, they weren’t home?
He hoped that sitting in his truck out front for hours on end didn’t end up scaring whoever lived here away. As he stepped off the porch, he realized he couldn’t just park his skinny ass on her patio furniture and wait.
Or could he?
Would that be intimidating to a woman? Of course it would. Just like sitting out front of her house in an oversized black pickup with tinted windows would. There was nothing about Joe or his current approach to this situation that would not seem potentially aggressive.
He had managed to get everything right in Vegas, which seemed odd, considering it was Vegas and he had a history there.
But the second he got to this little town, he started screwing things up left and right.
He stepped off the little concrete slab patio and looked out at the view. It stretched on and on. And even though there were hills, rock formations, and mountains almost immediately, the view still went up and out into the wilds.
There was no civilization out this woman’s back door. It was intense.
Joe was used to sweeping vistas from his time living with Mission Run. Those had become familiar. But somehow this was different.
The landscape was more stark, more bleak, and yet beautiful in its harshness. The afternoon sun was low, approaching sunset behind him, casting orange and pink hues against the rocks. Colorful in its desolation. Maybe the desert wasn’t so bad.
Maybe the woman who lived at this house was a nature buff and was out there hiking, spending all of her free time under the sky. Maybe she didn’t put value on her shelter when she valued nature more.
Maybe—
“Oh shit.”
Joe caught a glimpse of a sleek black shadow that flowed against the rocks. The movement was low and the coloring too dark to be anything else than a big black cat.
“I know this is the Wild West, but that is the wrong kind of fucking mountain lion,” he said under his breath.
He slowly stepped back until his heels were on the concrete slab of the small house’s porch.
The large black cat blinked its golden eyes at him and continued to stalk forward. It was much closer than he would have liked. He should have been more alert, noticing the predator before it was dangerously close.
The panther was close, and coming closer, and there was nowhere for Joe to run.
With a low growl that Joe felt more than heard, the panther stalked closer.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
He tossed the tin of cookies onto one of the chairs and cast a longing gaze at the large, flapped dog door.
Earlier, it had been obviously clear plastic, with nothing behind it.
This afternoon, it looked as if a metal locking door had been slid into place. Not that he could have fit through it as he was. Even as a wolf, he was potentially too large.
There was only—
No. If he tried to run to his truck on foot, that cat would pounce on him, and he would easily be done for. Without thinking, more from an instinct of self-preservation than any kind of functional thought, Joe toed off his boots and began his shift. In his wolf form, he was far stronger than he had ever been as a man.
And maybe— just maybe— the cat would back off if it had to face down another apex predator.
By the time he had his arms out of his shirt sleeves, the shift was already on him. He rolled forward, coming up on all four paws.
The panther froze at his movement, then crouched low and inched toward him. It watched him shift with steadfast eyes and enlarged pupils.
Its tail, which it had previously held low and still, now snaked back and forth above its back, twitching side to side. It’s ears pricked forward. The cat’s body language had shifted from wary caution to cautious interest.
Joe lowered onto his front paws so that his back arched in a standard play bow. If this cat didn’t mean to eat him, he saw no reason to display aggressive behavior toward it.
He finally caught a hint of its scent on the wind. Something unexpected. It tickled his nose, and for no reason he could identify, he thought of the diner.
He shook his head and let out a soft, low huff of a wuff— not a bark and not a yip, but an acknowledgment of presence and intention, a lack of aggressive intention. Joe wanted to make sure the cat knew he wasn’t here for a fight.
Unexpectedly, the cat pounced forward several yards and mirrored his posture, bowing low in the same play stance. Its tail went up with a hook at the tip.
Joe’s own tail betrayed his relief, and began wagging. This animal was more interested in playing with him than fighting him.
And with it’s proximity, he could tell something else. The panther was female.
What do you do when your imaginary friends start pestering you with images of sexy male strippers and hot were-shifters? You write stories about them. Well, that's what I did! Oh, and then I combine them and toss them in a kilt for good measure!
Hi, my name is Lulu and I write sexy hot contemporary and paranormal romance. Welcome to my website.
Making the Para "Normal" and the Supernatural Extraordinary.