Shifters on Fire: A BBW Shifter Romance Boxed Set (6 page)

Can’t Quit Lion

Lynn Red

Chapter One

Sheena didn’t know what the hell had happened.

She opened her eyes, blinking at the sun coming through her east-facing bedroom window, and wished, for a second, that she hadn’t had that eighth whiskey. It wouldn’t take long for the lion healing to kick in, and after that she’d be fine, but those first few minutes were bad enough to make her re-think her entire series of life decisions that led to that point.

“Karaoke,” she grunted, rolling over on an elbow and frowning at the light pooling on her face. “Why does it always have to be karaoke night that does this?”

She sat up, stared at the window and blinked a few times, trying her best to ward off the headache she knew was coming, and wasn’t going to be kind. A quick glance at the clock revealed exactly what she feared the most: it was 7:14 AM and in ten...nine...eight...

Sheena grunted as she heaved her body over in a lump and swung out an arm to intercept the her 1980s clock radio before it could turn on and give her nerves a wild jolt of NPR.

“Why do I do this?” she asked her empty room. With a glance around, she saw her clothes in a heap, but beside her artfully torn jeans and the sparkly shirt she’d worn out the night before, there was something stranger than the strangest fiction: someone
else’s
clothes. That’s when it hit her: the smell of frying bacon, deep, rich, black coffee, and... it was coming nearer?

“Oh,” she said with a grin that was almost sheepish but not quite, “right. I guess sometimes things
do
work out. Hey there,” she could hear the smile on her lips in the way she spoke. “Who is this gorgeous hunk of man in front of me?”

The man with the long, olive-skinned body smiled. Both of his cheekbones were high, and perfectly framed his flaming green eyes. “What on earth did I do to deserve
you
?” she asked the man, who really shouldn’t have been a mystery, but who definitely was.

“The question,” he asked in a deliciously accented voice that was halfway between British and Spanish, “is what I did to deserve
you
?”

“Oh my God,” Sheena said, rolling over in her blankets and grinning. “It finally happened it—”

He stepped closer and placed the tray with the bacon, the eggs, coffee and orange juice on the dressing bench on the end of her bed and climbed toward her. His naked body glistening in the early morning sun, he was all visible for Sheena to drink in, and drink she did. From head to toe, she let her eyes unashamedly slide over this beautiful hunk of man. He kissed her hard enough to force her head back into the mound of pillows upon which she slept.

Taking her hands in his, the beautiful stranger stroked his chest with her fingertips and let them fall down his body all the way to the tuft of hair just above his—

“Hello, this is the BBC World Report bringing you the quarter-past world news. In Libya, the—”

“Son of a bitch,” Sheena cursed. “Son of a damn bitch.”

The rest of it, aside from the hot guy cooking the breakfast, was all too real. The headache throbbed, the sun came through the blinds and as she stared at the tree outside her window, it became very clear to Sheena that the eight whiskies she dreamed about drinking the night before was actually more like twelve.

She rolled out of bed, and unceremoniously hit the floor with a
thump
as her knees struck hardwood. She cursed again and got up to her feet before wavering slightly and stepping backward just enough for the backs of her knees to hit the mattress and then fell back into the bed.

Somehow, with agility that belied both her hung-over state and her general clumsiness, Sheena managed to hit the switch on her radio with her foot. The guy from the BBC fell silent, and before she knew it, the nightmare of being awake melted back into obscurity. For a few blessed moments, she tossed and turned, alternatively dreaming of the mysterious stranger who cooked her breakfast and then the breakfast itself.

She couldn’t decide which one sounded better—a morning of sensual sex, or a morning where she didn’t have to go to Hardee’s for an egg and ham biscuit before humping her way into the photo shop for another long day of developing semi-embarrassing snapshots of people who thought they were being far more naughty than they were and silk-screening terrible t-shirts. And then, more or less out of nowhere, she
did
decide what was the part she wanted the most.

Once again, she fell out of bed, only this time instead of her knees hitting they floor they hit the side of her nightstand which also upset a small glass with something
very
alcoholic smelling, which landed atop her head. Blowing out a puff of air, Sheena got to her feet, made sure there wasn’t anything else around that could cause her to fall over again, or anything she could step on, spill or upset in any other way, and strolled to the door of her room.

Her house wasn’t cramped, but it also wasn’t large. From her bedroom she could see the front door, and as the sun streamed through the blinds behind, her highlighting her completely naked body, she heard someone knock at the front door. She strained to see who it could be; after all, it was half-past seven at the latest, so who the hell would be at her front door?

Sheena bent over at the waist, trying to see if she could divine who it was, but then a second later there wasn’t any point. “Sheena?” the person—a man with a raspy, older voice—banged again. “You in there? It’s almost noon and I need to take lunch!”

“Son of a
god
damn bitch,” Sheena swore. “I really could’ve used that breakfast.”

~~*~~

“Yes sir, I can help you with that,” Sheena said into the telephone as she twirled her pen around her fingers. The way the Bic moved was the same way an overqualified street magician who couldn’t get a job twirled a coin back and forth, up and down his knuckles. She watched the blue pen cap, which was only partly chewed up, as it went back and forth one last time. “Yes sir, we do whatever you want.”

The man on the other end of the line rattled something off at her which she hardly understood. In fact, most of the call had been barely audible. But she wasn’t about to try and clarify things. If this was like most of her other orders, she’d just pretend to pay attention, then make some random t-shirt, and the person would be so excited about having their kid’s picture on their chest, or a snapshot of their mangy cat on their armpit, that they wouldn’t say anything. Something about this order struck her funny though.

“And you can really make that?” the guy asked. “I mean, I’ve called four other places and they told me to take a hike.”

“Yeah I’ll make anything,” Sheena said. That was the first time she noticed that the guy had a pretty nice, gravelly, growly, sort of voice. She wasn’t the sort to get all excited over, well, over much of anything really, but for some reason this got her to pause. “Wait, what was it you asked for?” She pretended to shuffle some papers. “I think I must’ve gotten your order mixed up with another one.”

“Really?” he laughed. “In the last four minutes of me and you talking about the  sexy t-shirt I want made, you got my order mixed up with someone else’s? You must be really busy.”

Unbelievably, the growl in the guy’s voice struck her again and took a hold of her deep in the pit of her stomach, and maybe a little lower, too. Something about the way his voice rumbled in her ears was just too much for her to take. “Yeah,” she said, very obviously distracted, though she’d never admit by what. “Yeah, people keep coming, uh, coming in and out. And I can’t really keep my brain on one thing very well. So, what was it you wanted?” Sheena, trying with all her might to keep both her nerves and her not-safe-for-work desires in check, took a long, hard sip from her coffee.

“A t-shirt with a picture of a she-wolf peeing in the bushes.”

Never in the world has the word ‘spray’ been more appropriate. With a three-second fountain that would have made both Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin proud, she launched everything she’d taken into her mouth.

“I really hope I made you spit out whatever you were drinking,” Mr. Growly said. “Because I’ve been waiting for
years
to use that joke. You remember the old Saturday Night Live skit, right? With Patrick Stewart?”

Sheena had to take a second to get her breath back, and also to wipe the screen of her computer free of skinny vanilla latte. It took some doing, but she managed. After about eight seconds of wiping, she realized she’d been laughing the whole time, horrifyingly, right out loud, and right into the phone.

“Did you just go crazy?” he asked. “I mean, I know I’m witty and charming, but I don’t think I’ve ever driven anyone insane. Well, except for one of my ex-girlfriends, but that’s another story altogether.”

When she didn’t respond for a second, captain growls kept going. “I didn’t, did I? I really don’t need to call the mental hospital again.”

Sheena snorted another laugh and tried her best to compose herself before she tried to bother speaking again. “Uh,” she finally said, “no, I don’t think I need any Baker Acting. But I’ll tell you this, I don’t know the last time anyone made me laugh that hard. This has gotta be some kind of practical joke, right? I mean, one of my many, many friends put you up to it, right?”

Truth was, that wasn’t the truth at all. The only one of Sheena’s friends who could have possibly put someone up to crank calling her about a naughty t-shirt was Becky, but she’d been out of town on a work assignment for the past two weeks. And there weren’t any many, many friends. Really, Sheena more or less kept to herself except on karaoke nights when she went out with a handful of buddies from work, from her old high school, and a few others they’d picked up along the way. She was, sadly, as alone as she’d ever been.

The guys answer was just a soft laugh. Somehow the laughing rumbled in her belly even more than his speaking voice did. There was something she couldn’t put her finger on, but there was definitely something about this guy she liked, even if she’d forgotten to write down his damn name.

“Your goddamn name!” she said without realizing she was still talking on the phone. “Shit, I just said that out loud, didn’t I?”

He just chuckled some more. “Listen,” he said, “no one put me up to this. I really do need a joke shirt, but I just kind of liked the way your voice sounded on the line, so I acted like a jackass. But look, I don’t normally do this.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, clicking her teeth. “And I guess you’re about to tell me you don’t actually want a shirt with a picture of a woman urinating?”

He paused for a second. “I, uh... actually I sort of do. Like I said, joke. Also it’s for a bachelor party. But also I want something else to go along with it.”

Sheena had dutifully collected a pile of order papers, and was about to scribble out something that would distract her boss enough to let her actually make a shirt with a woman taking a piss in a bush. “Yeah okay,” she said, “go ahead. I might have to work a miracle to get your dumb ass shirt made, but I’ll do it.”

“The other thing I want is your phone number,” he said. “And before you can ask me if I’m joking, I’m not. I’ve never had anyone make me laugh the way you just did. And I’ll tell you this, too—on a day like this, a good laugh is the one thing I needed more than anything in the world.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked, slightly skeptically, but so taken aback she hadn’t yet been able to arm her normal cynicism torpedoes. “And what happened that made you need a laugh so bad?”

There was a long pause, long enough that Sheena thought maybe he hung up, but then he finally said something. “Number first,” he whispered. “It was bad. Real bad.”

“Check this out,” Sheena said. “I just got one of those call-back numbers. It’s awesome. If you send a text to 552154 and have it say ‘callback’ it’ll put my number in your contacts.”

“Are you serious?” he asked with a little chuckle. “I thought those things were just for scams and porno ads. You know, those ones where they tell you to put your social security number in for a chance to easily cheat on your mate?” He threw his voice, sounding very much like a classic used-car salesman, or maybe one of those sleazy lawyers who are really impressed with their own commercials.

“I’m not a porno ad,” Sheena said flatly. When he laughed, she felt another trill of excitement deep in her chest. As odd as it might sound, people who
got
her sense of humor were very few and far between and so when she found one, she tended to latch on.

Still, she didn’t know the guy’s name yet! She didn’t know if he was single or just some kind of multi-mating scumbag who wanted to put her name on a fraternity plaque.

“You’re funny,” he said a moment later. “Fine, I’ll send my number to your little service. Are you sure you can’t just tell me how to get ahold of you?”

For a moment, she almost wanted to just splatter out her phone number, her address, and whatever else he wanted. His getting her joke, his making fun of those porno ads that she’d never admit to having recognized, but absolutely having recognized,
and that voice
just gave her a squiggle deep down inside.

“Nope,” she said with a smirk on her face that came through in her voice. “That’d be way too easy, wouldn’t it?”