5. Branch
An icy lance shoots up my spine when Milly leans away, and it takes everything within me to keep a straight face and not let her notice my agony. I shift on my feet a few times in front of her and clutch at the bed sheet. I”m still hard as a rock, but that”s only because she”s so close I can smell that intoxicating vanilla cupcake smell. I know my stare is hungry when I look at her and wonder if her skin tastes as good as she smells.
But her smell is a cause for concern, albeit a small one. Shifters don”t smell like baked goods. We have feral, earthy smells, and I”ve never known a single one of us with a smell as intoxicatingly sweet as this aroma wafting off Milly”s body.
Could she not be a shifter? Now that I think about it, I know little about Mildred Taylor; there just simply wasn”t enough information about her to look into. I helped the island”s owner research and approve every single soul on this island and the few surrounding it, but when it came to Mildred Taylor, her details were, well, vanilla.
Her shifter type wasn”t listed in her file, and I had thought it was just a clerical error, one that could be easily fixed once she arrived at the island. While humans are welcome here, only someone from an old shifter family could ever dream about living in a place like this. There are only a few families that I know of that are non-shifters and wealthy enough to afford this lifestyle – the Taylor family being one of them – but it seems odd that Millicent Taylor, who is a known hanger-on to the shifter world, would leave her vast fortune to a human daughter.
”I”ll leave you to your shower,” I start slowly, giving her my best smile. ”But before I leave, I”m dying to know your shifter type. You know, just so I don”t accidentally pick you up and take you home with me.”
”Oh, me? Nothing interesting,” she stammers, playing with the strap of that skimpy little bra she”s wearing. As we”ve been standing there, she let the door crack open wider and wider, and I can see her small, pink nipples peeking out at me. They look like two little strawberry candies and I lick my lips while thinking of suckling on them.
”Any kind of shifter is interesting, from the little mice to the big, dumb tiger types,” I tell her. ”You can tell me, rabbits don”t bite. Well, not hard at least.”
”Unlike you at the moment,” she giggles but immediately turns scarlet and looks at her feet, mumbling something to herself about making such a dumb comment.
”Yeah, sorry about that,” I say, backing away a few more steps even though each one feels colder and icier. Even though I feel this insane pull towards her, it doesn”t mean she also feels the same thing, and I have to respect that. If she wants me, all of me, she knows where to find me.
”Sorry again about...well, all this,” she says, gesturing vaguely around the room. ”I hope I didn”t, um, ruin your day.”
How adorable! If only she could understand that this is the best day I”ve had in a long, long time. Work had been crazy leading up to my eventual departure from my family”s company. I really couldn”t care less about the construction of buildings and managing real estate, but my whole family thought I should be. Lucky for me, I had a brother who was more than willing to take over for me. It gave me the chance to use the substantial amount of money to purchase a bungalow on this tiny, out of the way island and never have to think about that line of work ever again.
I still have a sizable nest egg in case this new island life doesn”t work out, but I don”t think I can ever imagine leaving here. Corona Cay is an absolute paradise; besides, Milly is here, and the more I look at her, the more convinced I am that she may be my fated mate. A concept I never put much thought into until now.
”I don”t think someone like you would be capable of ruining my day,” I tell her honestly, taking a deep breath before going out on a limb. ”Maybe we can meet up tomorrow for some coffee?
”Oh, yeah, I”d like that,” she breathes.
”Great, um, I”ll see you then!” I say, turning to make a quick exit in case she changes her mind, but then I find myself turning around at the last moment and whipping off the sheet from around my waist. ”Oh, here”s your bed sheet.”
I toss it behind me on her bed and duck out the door before I can hear her react to my bare ass, and as soon as the door closes, I shift into a rabbit and run back to my own bungalow.
I skid to a stop at the front door and swiftly take on my human form again so I can open the door and go inside. Ducking inside, I find it cool and dark and quiet. Too quiet. I flick the switch on and find Archer asleep on my bed.
”Some kind of security guard you are!” I snap, crossing my arms and staring down at his crotch. The bulge between his legs is pushing aggressively against his black uniform, and I can only imagine what he may have been dreaming of.
”I”m on a break,” he mumbles, sitting up and glaring at me. His stare had always unnerved me, even when we were just kids, and he would keep my older brothers from beating up on me. I personally made sure of his work transfer to ensure he”d also be here with me on the island. Not because I thought I needed protecting, but because he”s one of my best friends in the whole world.
”Archer,” I confide in him, sitting down next to him on the bed. ”Did you sense anything odd about that woman?”
Archer”s body stiffens for a moment before relaxing.
”No,” he grunts.
”I can”t explain it, but there”s something special about her, different from any other shifter I”ve ever met. She smells special,” I say unable to suppress the shudder that travels down my spine and around to my cock. Even briefly thinking about her decadent cupcake smell is making me hard. Archer pretends not to notice as he gets up from the bed and makes his way to the door.
”I”ll look into it,” he says simply before letting himself out. As soon as he leaves, I leap up and rush to the shower. I need to take care of this raging hard-on, and if he had stayed any longer, he would have been treated to a very personal one-man show.
It”s not like we haven”t shared that pleasure before, mostly with other people, but tonight I want to only think about the beautiful and mysterious cupcake living next door and how I would absolutely fuck her if she was here now.