The Snow Leopard's Mate: BBW Snow Leopard Shifter Paranormal Romance (4 page)

He remembered holding Alethia’s hand earlier that night, and noticing the shimmering pink of her fingernails, looking like they were lit from within.
That’s a pretty color
, he’d said without thinking. It had been worlds away from his usual careful look at a woman’s hair and clothes and features to try and figure out what she might like to hear.

He’d said what he genuinely thought, and listened for Alethia’s genuine opinion of it. How long had it been since he’d been that open with anyone?

Alethia seemed to come out of her reverie, and looked away from the expanse of forest outside, fixing those beautiful eyes back on him. “Where did you live before you moved to Ryder’s Lodge?”

“Utah. Right in the mountains. Most amazing sunsets you ever saw out there,” he remembered. “Like the sky was lit on fire.”

“Sounds beautiful.” He could hear the wistfulness in her voice.

This woman needs to get out of Prescott,
he thought. It was a poor and grimy little town with nothing much to recommend it as far as he’d seen, full of people who were dissatisfied with their lives but didn’t have the means to change them.

He wished he really did have a million dollars, so he could sweep Alethia away to somewhere better.

He didn’t, but he could at least say, “Nature’s always beautiful. The forest here is something else. I can hike it for hours every weekend and always see something new.”

By ‘hike,’ he meant ‘shift and run,’ of course, but he couldn’t say that out loud. At least not yet. He wondered if Alethia had already heard of shifters, living in a place where their existence seemed like an open secret.

And if she hadn’t, how she’d react if he told her.

Calm down
, he told himself. Revealing his true nature to someone was not something to be done the first day you met. You never knew how people would react.

“I wish I’d spent more time hiking and being outdoors when I was a kid,” she said. “My brother was always outside, and he went to this local camp where they learned all sorts of things about… Animals and nature and how to be safe in the forest. I don’t know any of that stuff. I’d be afraid to just strike out on my own. You always hear about people getting lost because they didn’t know what they were doing.”

And I don’t have anyone to go with me
, she didn’t say, but he heard it anyway.

“Never too late to learn,” he pointed out. “I could teach you a few things, even, if you wanted.”

She looked over at him, a little smile quirking the corners of her mouth. “That sounds nice, actually. Sure.”

He resisted the stupid urge to thank her for saying yes. “My pleasure.” That was better.

She looked back out the window. “Is this a place where you go hiking?”

“Sometimes. It’s a tough area for hikers because there’s a lot of steep inclines, but sometimes that’s what I’m in the mood for.” And as a snow leopard, he had sharp claws and powerful hindquarters that could scale the steepest slopes, so it wasn’t so much of an issue.

She was quiet for a long moment, and then she said, “My brother, the one I just mentioned...”

“Yeah?” He wasn’t sure where this was going.

“He works for Tanner Logging. Is that who you work for?”

Tanner Logging hired shifters for its crew—as far as Grey knew, exclusively shifters. “That’s the one.”

“There’s one or two things about that company that no one’s supposed to know outside of the workers, but my brother has a big mouth. He told me that everyone who works there is…like him.”

That was clear enough. “What sort of animal is your brother?”

She relaxed. “He’s a bear. His name is Paul.”

Paul. Grey knew Paul Parker, and he didn’t think much of him. The man might have hidden depths, but Grey didn’t think so. It seemed wrong that Alethia had grown up with someone that shallow and small-minded.

Alethia was hesitating. “What about you?” she asked finally.

“I’m a snow leopard.” He wondered what she’d think of that. It wasn’t as common as a bear or a wolf, and some people thought it made him a bit strange. And big cats had a reputation for being standoffish.

But her eyes went wide. “A snow leopard! That’s amazing. I’ve never met a leopard before, let alone a snow leopard— I mean, I’ve only met a few shifters that I know of— Although probably more that I didn’t know, come to think of it— All right, shutting up now.”

He was surprised into a laugh. She made a face at him, wrinkling her nose. It was adorable. “Don’t laugh at me babbling.”

“I wasn’t.” He had been, but he stifled it. “It’s cute.”

A smile took over the scowl. “That’s the first time in a long time someone’s said that me running my mouth was cute.”

“You don’t run your mouth.”

Her eyebrows went up. “You know this already?”

“Not that I’ve seen yet,” he amended. “I think you talk exactly the right amount. And you’re not afraid to be silent, which is the most important part. Especially when you’re talking to me, because I can’t chatter to save my life.”

“Beats a lot of guys,” she said. “I know plenty who can’t shut up about their cars or their hunting license or their fishing poles or how many girls they banged last week. Gets old fast.”

Grey thought about the men he was working with, and chuckled. She wasn’t wrong. “Well, my only car is this old thing, and as long as it’s working I don’t have much to say about it. I only hunt with my claws, not with a gun, and same with fishing. I didn’t bang any girls last week and I’m not ashamed to admit that. So I guess I’m fresh out of conversation.”

“So what do you do with your time, if you’re not bragging about your man hobbies?”

Man hobbies
. He stifled another chuckle.

“Learn the land. Hunt and fish, like I said. I do a little woodworking.” His cabin hadn’t had much when he’d arrived, just a bed and an enormous wooden table in the kitchen with one rickety little chair. He’d fixed the chair up and made a second one, and he’d made one bookcase and was mostly done with a second one. Which reminded him to say, “I read. History mostly.”

“Sounds like a nice, quiet life.”

“Mostly.” Mostly quiet, except for the logging. Mostly nice, except for the logging. And except for how he wouldn’t mind sharing it all with someone. But saying that last part to Alethia would be coming on a little too strong, so he held it back.

Instead, he said, “My life used to be a lot wilder.”

Her eyebrows came down, forming a delicate frown. “Oh?” She sounded cautious.

He nodded. “When I was young, I made a habit of getting into stupid fights and taking dumb risks. Sometimes I’d shift and run around where people might see. Where I grew up in Utah isn’t like here, where so many people know about shifters. Anyone who saw a snow leopard wandering the streets would have called the police about a dangerous wild animal. But I was a dumb kid with dumb friends, so I didn’t care.”

“What changed?” she asked quietly.

Grey stared out the windshield. “One of my friends got killed. Ben. It was just another stupid stunt like a million stupid stunts we’d pulled—jumping across this gorge that was barely narrow enough to make it—and he fell and broke his neck. After that I figured it was time to grow up and stop being an idiot.”

He felt a feather-touch on his arm, and glanced over. She’d rested her hand, soft and smooth with its rose-pink nails, against his bicep.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and the gentle pressure lifted.

He shivered. It was such a small touch, but he felt it all the way through him.

“It was a long time ago. But thanks.” He shook off the memory, and changed the subject. “What about you? What do you do with your time?”

“Oh…” She hesitated, then let the painful topic go. “I work, as much as the diner will let me. I help Molly and Paul around the house. I go out with Denise and…friends.”

Guys,
Grey interpreted.

“But lately I’ve been realizing that some of those friends aren’t very nice to me. I don’t have a very good time when I’m with them.” Her eyelashes were a shadowed sweep, hiding her eyes. “I used to be wild, too. Back when I was nineteen or twenty, I was this big social butterfly. But it got me in trouble sometimes. And it didn’t make me very happy, in the end.”

Grey was silent. She was obviously talking around the fact that she’d had some bad experiences with men, but he didn’t want to drag it out into the open when she was keeping it vague. He
did
want to find those guys and teach them how to treat a woman.

She took a deep breath. “So I’ve been going on a lot of walks lately. Not hikes, because like I said, I don’t want to be an idiot and get myself hurt, but the mountains are beautiful from anywhere in Prescott, so I like to just go out and take a look at them.” She smiled. “Also, I actually do have woman hobbies. I like makeup and nails and shopping for nice clothes I can actually afford.”

“Sometimes I wonder how women do that,” Grey admitted.

“It takes a lot of work to look good on a careful budget.” Alethia was still smiling, but he could tell she was serious underneath it. “You have to pay attention to the sales and shop the thrift stores, and be real good at sewing things up and getting stains out. Molly, my sister-in-law, gets on my case about clothes, but it’s not like I’m a shopaholic. Just because I don’t have a lot of money doesn’t mean I can’t have something nice now and then.”

“Of course not.”
You deserve something nice
.

Against his will, a series of images floated into his head. Alethia waiting at home for him, him bringing her a necklace or perfume as a present… Going out on a walk together and seeing her wearing what he’d bought for her, smelling a scent he’d chosen… Coming home and laying her down and giving her something else…

He shook the thought away. He’d been determined
not
to come on too strong with this woman. For some reason, he was having a hard time remembering that.

So instead of telling her,
I’ll buy you nice things
, he said, “I think you look as nice as any woman I’ve seen,” which was as close as he felt he could reasonably get.

She was quiet for a minute. He wondered if she was blushing, but the car was too dark for him to tell with human eyes.

“Thank you,” she said finally, her voice soft.

He hesitated. But there was something he wanted to make sure she understood. “It seems like the men around here might not treat women that well. I just want you to know that I don’t hold with that kind of behavior. If a man can’t respect a woman, he has no business being near her.”

“That’s good to hear.” The way her mouth curved was distracting him from the road. “Thank you again.”

“No need for thanks,” he said stubbornly. “A man shouldn’t be thanked for behaving like other people are human beings.”

“Thank you for telling me, then.”

The atmosphere in the truck was getting heavy. Grey was glad he was driving, or he might’ve made a rash decision. He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t want everything he’d just said to seem like a line. It wasn’t a line. He believed it. He just wanted to kiss Alethia,
too.

He put his full attention on the road to distract himself. There was a thick silence for a few miles, and then Grey noticed the turnoff coming up. “That’s the road to my cabin up there.” He nodded to it.

“Oh,” said Alethia. “Could we go there?”

He almost got whiplash snapping his head over to look at her. “You want to see it?” he asked cautiously.

She shrugged a little, bringing his attention to her mostly-bare shoulders, which made the eyes naturally wander down. “You’re the best man I’ve ever met in this town, and we’ve only known each other for half an hour. I want to keep getting to know you.”

Did she mean…?

He’d find out what she meant, he told himself firmly, when they got to the cabin. And if he still wasn’t sure then, he’d talk to her like a man who wasn’t afraid to hear a straight
yes
or
no
from a woman he wanted.

“I’d like that,” he said now to Alethia, and took the turnoff that led to his cabin.

The cabin was tucked away and invisible from the main road, but it wasn’t actually that much of a drive from Ryder’s Lodge. So it wasn’t long before he was pulling up to it. Though Alethia was peering confusedly out the window as he stopped; the building was almost invisible to human eyes without any lights on.

“This is it,” Grey told her, and got out of the truck, going around to help her out of the cab.

Which meant his hands on her soft waist, her behind brushing up against him, his face in her cloud of soft, delicately-scented hair.

He set her on the ground, and let go with a great effort. His hands wanted to stay right where they were. Or maybe start moving to the north or south.

Fortunately, his brain was in charge of his actions, so instead he took a step back and said, “This way.”

Alethia peered into the darkness. “I can’t see anything.”

Grey reached for her hand. She curled her small fingers around his immediately, and he led her up to the door, giving her plenty of time to pick her way around loose stones and the occasional tree root. She walked confidently, though, even in her heels.