On the Prowl by Desiree Holt Page A

inside this woman and keep it there forever. As blonde as she was, he had a feeling when she shifted it was into leopard form. That was okay. He and Max had a lot of friends who had crossed breeds to mate.
    “Nice to meet you.” He smiled. “Can I buy you a drink?”
    “Don’t be too impressed,” Aisha told her. “He gets them for free from Max.”
    “It’s the thought that counts,” Kendall told her in a low, musical voice. She looked at Seth. “Thanks. That would be nice.”
    Seth wedged himself in between Kendall’s stool and the one next to her. “What’s your pleasure?”
    “Vodka martini on the rocks, please.”
    “I’ve never seen you in here before,” he commented while he waited for Max to fill their orders.
    “I don’t usually go out during the week,” she told him. “But Aisha’s been telling me about this place for ages. Tonight both of us had to work late and it just seemed like a good idea to stop by here on the way home.”
    Seth spotted a small table in the corner being vacated. “Let’s move over there”—he stared down his brother and sister-in-law—“where we can get acquainted in some form of privacy.”
    “Um, sure. I guess.”
    She sounded tentative, but she still slid off the bar stool and let him guide her through the swaying mass of bodies on the dance floor. He wanted to grab the table before someone else could claim it.
    “The atmosphere in here usually doesn’t lend itself too well to conversation,” he told her, leaning close to speak directly into her ear as the thumping music reverberated in the room.
    Her perfume invaded his senses, a slightly exotic flavour, like the blooming flowers of the jungle. His cock flexed slightly and his hormones went wild. Seth hoped he could control himself enough not to frighten her away. If he hadn’t promised Max he’d stay until closing, he’d find a way to whisk her out of there.
    “Aisha told me this is how she met Max.”
    Seth nodded. “She came in here for a long time before Max finally found the nerve to…be with her.”
    Kendall laughed. “Are you referring to the night my friend got stinking drunk and Max kindly took her home?”
    “Oh. So you know the story.”
    Kendall nodded. “Aisha and I have worked together for a long time. We’ve gotten to be pretty tight.”
    Seth cocked an eyebrow. “Yet you’ve never come in here before.”
    “And you know that because you spend all your free time here?” she teased.
    “Not really. But I’d know if you had because Max would have mentioned anything to do with Aisha’s friends.”
    The waitress wriggled her way through the crowd, balancing a tray over her head, then deposited their drinks in front of them. Seth watched as Kendall lifted her glass with slender fingers and took a sip of the drink with her full, sensuous lips. For an instant Seth imagined those lips around his cock and the arrow of heat that shot through him nearly fried his balls. Hastily he took a swallow of his club soda to cool himself off.
    “No alcohol for you, Detective? I didn’t think you were on duty right now.”
    He set his glass down. “Not technically. But I’m hanging out at The Litter Box after I get off to help Max out with a situation.”
    Her face sobered instantly. “Aisha told me about the leopard shifter who’s been preying on the single women here.” Sadness filled her eyes. “I hate that it’s one of my breed who’s doing it.”
    Seth automatically reached out and closed one hand over hers. “We all feel that way when one of our kind goes rogue. But Max and I are convinced it’s a genetically flawed shifter, perhaps the result of the mating of two different species.”
    A delicate shudder raced over Kendall’s curvy body. “I read a story about what he does to them. God…those poor women.”
    “You need to be very careful, Kendall.” He hadn’t moved his hand and was very aware that she hadn’t withdrawn hers from his touch. He cleared his throat. “So.