“Sorry,” she called. Oh! She tripped over the corner of the hallway rug and lurched forward, her hand slamming onto the door of her room. Whoa, that was close. Good hotel room door for catching her. She inserted the keycard, unlocked it, and let herself in.
There was a moment when she felt quite alone after she clicked on the light and stood in the empty room. It was two in the morning, but she wasn’t really tired. Her head was loud with that one-word insult and with the memory of Kannon’s lips moving against hers. Her mind was a tornado.
She unpacked her luggage and toiletries, all the while formulating a plan.
Social media stalk Kannon. Or was it spelled Canon? Cannon? She didn’t have a last name. She would search them both. Oh! Or she could search the shifter database. It was online and thorough. Shifters had to register and fill out information about themselves, their families, their lineage, their animals, their Prides or Crews, who their mate was… Oh, God, what if he had a mate? And now that she thought about the shifter registration, it was kind of messed up. Why should anyone be required to give personal information for the world to judge like that?
Sleep some and not have her weird recurring nightmare about being stuck on a bouncy castle, spilling a bottomless glass of red wine all over her white shirt and pants as her big-ass teets slapped her in the face because she hadn’t worn a bra to bouncy-castle day. Her dreams were stupid.
Try to find Kannon in the morning to return his suitcase and stare at his muscles and bat her eyelashes and silently hope he lost his mind and snarly-smooched her again.
Not respond to Dayton the Womanizing Bride Leaver
Crop out all the creepy animal eyes in her kiss-picture, put a cool image filter on it, and get it printed out like a psychopath so she could carry it around in her wallet and remember the one time a mother-freaking lion shifter kissed her on a dark road in the middle of the night. Her life had peeked, and she needed photo proof.
Meet up with Drea at noon tomorrow for mimosas at some place called the Swampy Frog Saloon.
Mental checklist finalized, she brushed her teeth and slipped into her most hideous oversize, threadbare T-shirt, made an extravagant nest of pillows, and proceeded to look up the shifter registration site.
As a teenager, she’d gone through a shifter phase when she’d been super curious about them, and she would peruse the site when she couldn’t sleep. It was like a bedtime story, reading about all these fantastical beast-people that she couldn’t actually believe existed because she’d never seen one in real life. They were like unicorns.
It had been so long since she’d searched the website, she had to click a few links before she found the official government run registration site.
Okay, so she had a first name to work with. And that he was part of a Pride, not a Crew. A lion Pride. Feeling detectivey AF, she poked in the information she had in the search section, and it came up with a response right away.
Kannon Haid Killian, age thirty-five, height six-foot-one. No registered mate—
Katy dislodged one of her pillows with a whoop and fist pump. Clearing her throat, she looked at the phone again but then dropped it on her face, squawked in shock and pain, rubbed the bridge of her throbbing nose, located the phone that had bounced onto the bed upside down, and then began to read again.
War lion for the New Tarian Pride, Alpha is Ronin Alder, no set ranking, parents: deceased, one surviving sister and a brother-in-law. Police record: public endangerment, Changing in public, killing but not eating an entire stock of champion rabbits, six bar fights, and public indecency. Works at Cosmo’s Garage on Lange Street in Telluride, Colorado.
Next was a family tree and lineage outline. Holy goodness, these registrations were really thorough. She felt kind of bad reading this. She skimmed to the bottom of the report.
Notes from the registered shifter: “Fuck you, you fucking fuck. You are a fecal-filled twaffle cone with toe-flavored ice cream and toot sprinkles on top. Get a life and actually read something interesting. I did your mom. Hate Always, Kannon.”
Her giggle echoed through the room. Okay then.
She took a screen shot of his work address and snuggled down under the covers better, sighed, and gave a happy smile.
She, Katy Craigson, had a crush on a man who had actually typed out the word combination toot sprinkles.
Chapter Six
“Give it to Kannon. He’s the best at stripped bolts.”
Kannon paused on removing the skid plate of a pickup truck and stood, the drill falling to his side. “You do it, Dillon,” he said to his co-worker. That lazy asshole always gave him the shit jobs. “Just get the bolt extractor. I’m busy on this one.”
Dillon pushed his sunglasses up onto his forehead and hooked his hands on his hips. “I don’t have that super human shifter strength, freak. You can get the stripped bolts off like they’re nothing.”
“Look, I don’t care who does it,” the customer said, frowning deeply at Dillon. “My kid drank too much last night and tried to change a flat himself and stripped them all. I’m missing work to clean this up. Just let me know what I owe you for the new tire, and let’s get on with it.”
“You’re gonna need new sockets, too,” Kannon called, narrowing his eyes at the massacred flat tire. If he ever had a son who brought his truck back in this condition, Kannon would kick his ass.
“Great, just rack up the bill!” the customer yelled, his face going red. He stomped into the door that led to the waiting area, and Dillon arched his eyebrows at Kannon like he was the one in the wrong.
First off, he didn’t fuckin’ strip the lug nuts, and second off, this was a ridiculously fair garage. They didn’t even screw old ladies who knew nothing about cars into buying services they didn’t need. Kannon made sure of it. Head mechanic had its perks. He got to secretly be the super hero that fifty percent of the clients yelled at all day and no one appreciated.
Good thing he had thick skin. The knowledge that he could turn lion and kill all these entitled pricks was a bonus, too.
“Hot chick, ten o’clock,” Dillon called. “Dark hair, fantastic tits, curves for days, long legs. Oh, Lord, she just almost tripped on nothing…”
Wait a minute. Kannon put the drill on the counter and started to make his way around the car.
“Driving a minivan so she’s definitely a mom. Doesn’t have a wedding ring. I bet she’s looking for a new step-daddy for her little—”
“You can shut up now, Dill-hole,” Kannon growled, shoving him in the shoulder hard as he passed.
“Ow!” Dillon complained.
Weiner.
Sure enough, Human Katy was walking across the parking lot right for them, bouncing with every step. She was sashaying her hips. Amused, he leaned against the open garage door frame and arched an eyebrow. “Are youuuu okay?”
“Oh, hi, fancy meeting you here,” she called. She was getting clumsier with her walking.
“Is your leg asleep?” he asked.
Human Katy sighed and her shoulders sagged as she started walking normal toward him. “No. I was trying to do that sexy strut like the hot girls on TV do, but I’m not very coordinated.”
He chuckled. Whoa. He was pretty sure that was the first laugh he’d had all day. He wasn’t about to admit how good it was to see her because she was human and off limits, so instead he asked, “You here to hand-deliver the suitcase I forgot?”
“Yep! I stalked you on the shifter website. Did you know it gives your work address and your Pride’s address?” she said, coming to a stop in front of him. “That’s kind of messed up.”
“Welcome to the life of a shifter.”
She beamed up at him with a megawatt smile, her eyes looking even brighter in the daylight with her mussed black bangs framing her face. Her hair was in those beach waves girls spent too much time to achieve, and she smelled like hairspray. Not gross hair spray, though. This one had some floral and mango scent. Tolerable.
He would’ve helped her escape her silent smiling and staring but, truth be told, he enjoyed seeing her awkwardly dig her way out of everything. So he just stood there smiling back.
Human Katy stopped blinking and made her eyes really big, so what the hell? He did the same.
“We’re having a staring contest,” she whispered. “No blinking.”
“What does the winner get?”
“What do you want?”
“So you admit I’m already gonna win?”
“No. Just…theoretically, what would you want to win?”
“A blow job in the back parking lot and a package of un-shucked peanuts. I like to leave the shells in the bed of Dillon’s truck and pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about when he rages.”
“I like it. Who is Dillon?”
Okay, his eyes were starting to dry out from this game, but he kept them open as he twitched his head behind him. “Co-worker. He’s a normie and obnoxious about ninety-five percent of the time, but sometimes he takes a nap on his break, and then he’s okay.”
Human Katy let off this tinkling laugh that did something funny to his heartbeat. “Okay to the peanuts, no to the blow job. I’m a very moral girl. Plus, I got called a whore yesterday, and I’m trying to shed my questionable reputation.”
A snarl rattled up his throat before he could stop it. Carefully he asked, “And who called you a whore?”
“Your new best friend.”
“Mmmm,” he said in a purr as he imagined all the ways he was going to slowly kill that prick, Dayton. “You aren’t a whore, but if I were you, do you know what I would do?”
She was prying her eyeballs open with her fingers now. “Advise me, oh strong one.”
“Go take a hot picture and post it. Own it. Look confident as fuck in it. Take the power away from that idiot’s insult. Now you go. What do you want if you win?”
“Tacos.”
Oh, crap, he blinked from his laughter. Touché.
“I won, I won, I shot the BB guuuun,” she sang.