Make Him Purr: A Paranormal BBW Werepanther Shape Shifter Mail-Order Navy SEAL Romance

by Anya Nowlan

  “It’s because most of the guys want to be you and most of the women want to fuck you,” Rake had commented dryly after the city council meeting.

  Diesel didn’t know anything about that, but he wasn’t going to argue with a local about why things were going his way – not yet, anyway.

  “I hear you guys have been having some issues with arsonists lately. And though I’m sure Rake can handle lions well enough, stuff like that shouldn’t be permitted at a place like this. So I think I’ll find plenty for myself to do. And if I don’t – well, wouldn’t that be just as good?” Diesel offered.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Warren Sawtooth said warmly. “We’ll just need to get you a wife, and soon enough, you won’t even be able to imagine living anywhere else.”

  Diesel smirked, shoving his feet into his boots and clipping the badge to his belt. He didn’t notice the conspiratory look that went between Rake and Warren at that point, and it was probably for the best. After all, wasn’t moving across the country, patching up his rather sudden and unhappy (though honorable) discharge from the military and settling into a new house enough for one panther to deal with for one week?

  A woman. Right. Exactly what I need. I can drive her insane in two hours and she can practice her throwing arm by tossing cutlery at my head, Diesel mused, pulling his dark green shirt back on his chiseled body.

  But of course, Shifter Grove tended to know what was best for a shifter better than he himself might have. And Diesel was going to learn that the hard way, fast.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sonya

  “’Go to Shifter Grove’, you said. ‘No one will find you there’, you said. ‘It’ll be great’, you said. Idiot.”

  Sonya grumbled heartily as she shimmied open the window looking onto the back porch of a cozy wooden cabin. It looked to be freshly built and currently uninhabited from what Sonya could tell from scoping it out for the better part of the day. It was well into the night now, and she was dead tired from the long day. Throwing caution to the wind seemed like the only thing she could do if her goal was to not sleep in a tree that night.

  It wouldn’t have been the first time to cling to a branch in the name of getting some shut-eye, but Sonya got the feeling that she might be a bit too conspicuous that way.

  The window gave in easily enough, clicking open as Sonya undid the latch with the small kit of precision tools she always had on her – tricks of the trade. She grinned to herself and pushed the window up and open.

  With a quick look over her shoulder, determining that she was indeed completely alone and that there was nothing but the soothing, calm forest surrounding her, Sonya grabbed her heavy duffel bag and tossed it into the house. She slipped in right after it and slid the window shut again, quiet as a ghost.

  Her eyes were already adjusted to the darkness, so the moonlight flowing into the building through the large windows was quite enough for her. It was one of those annoyingly large, yellow moons that the dragons liked to call gold moons and the wolves liked howling to. For Sonya, it just meant that the night wouldn’t hide her quite as well as she would have liked.

  She picked up the duffel and carried it away from the window, letting it drop on the dark red couch in the middle of the room. It was still wrapped in plastic – whoever was going to live here had pretty Spartan tastes.

  Sonya wandered the house quietly, mindful to keep her steps light as air. It came naturally to her. She snuck around like she was nothing more than a shadow hanging onto the edge of one’s vision, always just out of sight, just out of mind, but never too far away. She stuck out her tongue a little as she pulled open a door that led into a small kitchen and quickly concluded that there wasn’t a scrap of food in the entire house.

  Either abandoned or not yet moved into. Whatever the case, it’ll do, she thought, visibly relaxing.

  Though her step was still soft – a trait she couldn’t turn on and off – she stopped flinching at every crackle of a tree branch or whisper of wind coming from outside. Sonya padded back into the living room and glanced at the staircase leading to the second floor of the spacious but understated home. She considered going up just to check it out, but the weariness in her bones got the best of her.

  Without further ado, she plopped down on the couch and placed her duffel under her head as a pillow. The plastic creaked and protested under her, but the soft plushness of the material soothed her weary body enough that she didn’t even mind. She fished her phone out from her pocket and ignored the rumbling in her tummy.

  For about the tenth time that day, she brought up a particular ad that had caught her eye on SassyDate. She pursed her lips slightly, looking at the perfect, carefully carved features of the man in the photo. It was a Navy dress photo, the man in the picture wearing a no-nonsense expression and looking like the picture of freedom. She could almost imagine him standing on a high mountain, his chest bare and a bald eagle on his shoulder as he planted the US flag. It was ridiculous, but she couldn’t look at a man who wore an expression of such utter commitment and not think that he was some military nutbag.

  And yet, here she was.

  That’s not why you came to Shifter Grove, Sonya tried to convince herself feebly as her finger moved on its own volition, scrolling down to the ad.

  “Are you a no-nonsense kind of woman looking for a no-nonsense kind of man? Then Lieutenant Commander Diesel Wake is the man for you.

  A former Navy SEAL and a black panther shifter, Lieutenant Commander Wake has relocated to Shifter Grove with the express interest of starting a new life. For this, he needs the perfect mate. You could be the perfect mate if you don’t have the habit of asking too many questions, getting into too much trouble or expecting your man to tell the difference between pink and paisley (it’s all just purple anyway). If interested, please contact Rake Whiteplains and we can see if you’re the kind of woman Diesel, and Shifter Grove, needs.”

  Sonya chuckled to herself again as she re-read the ad. She got the feeling that Lieutenant Commander Wake wasn’t going to like the fact that someone was trying to get him hitched, and she was half-hoping she’d be there when the wrongdoer got apprehended and thoroughly schooled by the sexy as sin shifter.

  And that was what he was – sexy and hot as hell. She didn’t even need to see him out of his dress blues to be able to imagine what his body would look like, all taut and brimming with strength. Yum. She’d seen the type before. In fact, Blade had been one – the emphasis being on ‘had been’.

  Sonya had met Blade when he’d just got discharged. Back then the man had been a taste of pure perfection. It didn’t take long for the slobbish tiger to succumb to a life of simple vices, though, taking most of that sexiness out of the picture real fast. What hadn’t waned, though, was how dangerous he was. It didn’t take long for Sonya to find out why the impressive tiger got kicked out of the army.

  Remembering that she was, in fact, running from a pissed off soldier-turned-drug-dealer was enough to kill all those happy, fluttering butterflies in Sonya’s stomach. She dropped the phone on her chest and inhaled dramatically. Her long dark hair framed her face, licking at her mocha skin. She hadn’t come for the Lieutenant Commander, though she’d seriously considered it – hiding behind the wide back of a military man would have made her feel a whole lot safer than she currently did, but some problems couldn’t just be wished away.

  The ad had made her look up Shifter Grove. There weren’t a whole lot of places like it. Usually, shifter towns were strictly for one species only, and having a town that welcomed humans and shifters alike, even if they weren’t someone’s mate, was almost unheard of. Sonya knew of a few places where more than one species lived together, but it was mostly for safety rather than function – for example, many of the herbivore species tended to huddle together, as if expecting the wolves and big cats to start hunting them again – though it did sound like fun.

  Sonya shook her head. She was clearly trying to distract herself from the fact that s
he was in some deep shit – and doing a damn fine job at it. But that wouldn’t, of course, make any of those issues go away.

  She’d been a foster kid growing up. Leaving a young panther without a firm hand to guide her through life had easily led to the inevitable – she’d found that she was very good at getting around undetected, and that snatching things that didn’t belong to her was easier than working for them. So, for most of her teens and early twenties, she’d spent her time as a capable, clever cat burglar – pun intended.

  It was only when she met Blade that she felt she could stop. The burly tiger provided for her in every way possible. In retrospect, Sonya figured it was that which kept her with him and not that she loved him dearly – Blade was a hard man to love (and she knew he wasn’t her fated, but it hardly seemed to matter), but he kept her safe. She’d known for a long time that he was a dangerous man and that the things he did weren’t okay. But he’d never turn that immense strength against her, right?

  Wrong.

  Sonya didn’t deny that she had a big, sassy mouth that she really liked running. In fact, she’d thought she’d been the one to blame the first time he’d hit her – that she’d asked for it. The second time, though, she knew it wasn’t her anymore, and that it wasn’t just her mouth. He enjoyed it, enjoyed seeing her scream and cry for him to stop. And after the third time… Well, now she was in Shifter Grove, and Blade Morden was not happy.

  Sonya tucked one hand into her pocket and fingered the small velvet bag there. She felt the weight of it in her hand, knowing that there was a small, gold tiger figurine with emerald eyes and ruby talons hidden within the bag. A small smile spread on her lips. Sure, it had been somewhat childish to steal it from Blade, but it was his one and only beloved possession.

  For a man who owned just about every piece of tech, every high-end car, every villa and imaginable amenity, he sure was attached to the little gold figure. She’d often wondered what it was about that statue that made him keep it in his bedroom, tucked away in locked boxes and in places only he and Sonya knew of, but she’d known that she had to get it. It was the only way she could hurt him back, at least a little.

  Her theory was that he’d huff and he’d puff and he’d calm the hell down after she made it out of his house with the statue, but she’d been wrong. Blade had called on a full-scale cat-hunt for her, and as far as Sonya was concerned, there wasn’t a safe place in California for her. So, she’d needed a place to run to.

  Middle of nowhere Idaho, riddled with filthy-yummy shifters? Sounded like the perfect place to be, right?

  Sonya felt her eyelids drooping, exhaustion wanting to claim her weary body. She hadn’t slept in more than 36 hours. Figuring it best to scope out the town before walking straight into it, she’d hopped off the one and only bus coming within thirty miles of Shifter Grove and walked the rest of the way through the woods. Then, she’d spent the majority of the day observing the tiny little town from a distance.

  From what she could tell, it was an almost ridiculously happy place. She could count a higher percentage of women with young on the single street running through the town in the first hour of watching than she could while standing next to a preschool in Los Angeles. And they all seemed to be practically beaming. It sort of made her skin crawl, as long as she ignored the little pang of regret in the pit of her stomach.

  She’d just have to forget that she’d hoped to make a family with her big tiger beau one day. Before she figured out he was an abusive asshole and she was better off dating a baseball bat than him. At least when the baseball bat got a hit in, it would score – Blade just liked pummeling her when he was frustrated at the world.

  Sonya had just drifted into the very first seconds of sleep when the lock on the front door clicked and the door slammed open suddenly.

  So maybe the house wasn’t entirely abandoned.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Diesel

  Diesel wasn’t exactly a homemaker, but even the big bad panther had some expectations for any house he lived in. Not least of which was the fact that if he locked the front door, he wouldn’t find anyone busting in regardless.

  He could smell her from a mile away. That sweet, intoxicating smell of a black panther at just the right age – at her sexiest and most capable. He’d brushed it off as he trudged through the forest towards his secluded home – expertly crafted by the Warfang brothers – thinking that it was just some local he hadn’t met yet (but was dying to get to know). Imagine his surprise when instead of the scent growing weaker, it seemed to grow stronger and stronger the closer he got to his home.

  When he stood in front of the house, eyeing the door leading into the cottage, he already knew she was there. Military training kicked in and he crossed the last few feet soundlessly – surprising for a man as big as he was. He was little more than a breath of air as he covered the porch and came to a stop in front of the door.

  His animal growled inside of him, ready to pounce, ready to fight. That was what he missed the most – the feeling of purpose, of always living on the edge of danger. Diesel had to muster all his self-control to stop himself from shifting and just crashing in through one of the windows. Wouldn’t do him any good to go smashing his house already, especially if the only ‘danger’ within was a female black panther.

  If anything, he was intrigued.

  With a sharp inhale, he unlocked the door and opened it in one smooth move. The house was dark, but he could easily make out the sleeping form of the woman on his freshly bought couch. When the door hit the wall, she scrambled awake, and like a flash of light, was already rolling over the back of the couch, ready to duck out before he could even look at her properly.

  She was fast, yes, but he was faster.

  Diesel pounced after her and managed to grab her by the elbow before she could take more than two steps. He slung her back, the woman toppling over the armrest of the sofa with a little yelp that made him want to gather her up and cradle her to his chest immediately.

  Her scent assaulted him full-force now, and as much as anything could ever make Diesel Wake weak in the knees, it did. It was just the right combination of sass and sweet – strawberries and the way the forest smells at sunrise, when the dew is still on the leaves. Diesel’s heart beat twice as fast as it would have if he’d been staring down someone’s gun barrel in a nameless desert.

  More reaction than anything else, he was on top of her as soon as her back hit the soft pillows. He towered over her with one hand on the backrest and the other right by her face. She looked as surprised as he did.

  He stared into those gorgeous hazel eyes, lit with dark shadows in the blackness of the night, and something inside of him creaked to life. It had been a long time since he’d even really felt physical desire for someone, but just looking into her eyes made him want to rip her clothes off and let her know how fucking sexy he thought she was.

  Which, of course, was completely inappropriate, and even if the man knew better, the panther was all game for a quick romp. He’d have to make a mental note about having a chat with his animal side about proper manners and conduct around a lady – even if said lady had just busted into his house like an unwanted nuisance.

  His gaze skimmed her maddening plump lips, parted just a little in surprise. They were immensely kissable, and he could think of nothing better than doing just that. He imagined they’d taste just as sugary as she smelled, and he’d love to see that mouth do all sorts of things.

  “Get the fuck off of me!” the woman roared, pushing her hands to his broad chest and shoving into it with both palms.

  Maybe that was the slight exception to the things he wouldn’t mind seeing her mouth do. Though, theoretically, if Diesel was to think back to the hardcore soldier chicks that he’d sometimes shared a sleeping bag with during missions, a woman with a foul mouth could be all sorts of fun.

  He didn’t budge an inch when she pounded at his chest, but he couldn’t suppress the mild smirk that spread over his lips at h
er spirited attempt. He almost leant closer out of spite and the need to be closer to that sexy little body, but he managed to remind himself that he was dealing with a burglar, not just a woman that would make any shifter’s blood pump faster.

  “No,” he said simply, wiping that smirk off his face, lest she think he was mocking her – she seemed to be the kind to take offense at that.

  “Why the hell not?” she hissed, her brows furrowing.

  “Well, first of all, you’re trespassing. Not just trespassing, but I know I had the doors locked, so I can only assume you’re a burglar. And you have the good luck of breaking into the home of the local sheriff, so even if I wanted to, I couldn’t just play nice with you.”

  It was probably the longest string of words he’d managed since leaving the Navy, save for that one night when he got drunk with Rake and spilled all his woes in one go. He caught the way her breath hitched a little and her teeth grazed over her lower lip as he wouldn’t get off of her, making him want to mirror the motion with his own teeth on her plush lips. His cock stirred, and it took all his military training to tell himself to cool it.

  “I was just looking for a place to sleep,” she said, and for a moment, he almost believed her.

  But there was something going on in those big, soulful hazel eyes of hers that told him things weren’t just as simple as she made them out to be. Without further ado, he put one hand on her hip and flipped her over before she could do more than gasp in protest. Keeping her in place with his knee on her thighs, he fished out the handcuffs hanging from his belt and slapped them around her wrists with expert precision.

  “Oh my god, you psycho! Take those things off of me right now!” she growled, her animal just under the surface.

  He knew that sound. That was the voice a woman made when she was just inches from ripping someone’s face off. In Diesel’s past, it had been more of a literal than a figurative thing, having worked with a number of shifter women in his special ops squad. Right now, though, he just grinned inwardly, pulling the feisty woman back up and into a seated position.