Flamingo Fugitive (Supernatural Bounty Hunters 5) by E A Price

more than a sultry hint of suggestion.
    “No she fucking won’t!” snarled Cady.  With that she slapped Stone around the face, and he didn’t even try to stop her.  He could see how it looked; he didn’t blame her.
    Cady sneered at the innocent looking lioness and stomped away muttering something about perverts.  Stone felt his muscles rippling as fury howled through his rhino.  He wasn’t terrifically angry about not getting laid that night – there’d be other nights, there’d be other women .   But it was the triumphant and amused look on Caitlyn’s face that enraged him.  It was the fact that she was here – at his apartment; the fact that she felt the need to insult the she-wolf and not to mention getting him slapped in the face.  She-wolves could pack a damn good slap into their palms!
    He stepped away from her, less he do something unforgivable and shift into a rampaging rhino.  He wasn’t prone to lose his temper.  He was an alpha male, but he wasn’t violent on a whim.  When you happened to be stronger than just about everyone around you, you had to be in control.  But this woman made him want to lose it.
    Stone breathed in and out, grunting and flaring his nostrils slightly.  When he could face it, he looked at Caitlyn, who had a simpering, eyelash fluttering expression on her face.
    “Caitlyn,” he growled.
    To his shock, Caitlyn slapped him as well.  He was so surprised that he didn’t even see it coming.  It was so unexpected .  He was faster than Caitlyn, but slapping him was so… crazy .
    “I’m very disappointed in you!” she wailed and then ran away, sobbing.
    Stone and his rhino gaped at her open mouthed and continued to stare at the empty corridor in confusion until Mrs. Lewinsky nudged him aside with her walker.  She was an insomniac sloth shifter and walked all over the building at night.
    “Evening Mr. Stone,” she said in a croaky yet cheerful voice.
    “Uhhh…”
    “Saw your two ladies running out of here,” she chuckled.
    “Yeah…”  He was aware that he must have looked and sounded like a slack-jawed idiot.
    “I’d watch out for that lioness if I were you,” she called out over her shoulder as she shuffled away.  “Cut her in half, and you’d find the words crazy beans through and through.”  She cackled as she left him standing in the hallway.
    Yeah, he was also starting to come to that conclusion.  He rubbed his twice-slapped cheek and vaguely thought about the fact that he ought to start worrying.  But then his pockets crinkled, and he remembered that he had over two hundred dollars in singles in there.  The night hadn’t exactly ended on the high he was hoping for, but he’d caught his skip and made a nice little wad of money.  It was nice to know that if he ever was hard up for cash that he could turn to stripping or even exotic dancing.  He’d worry about Caitlyn tomorrow.
    *
    The lion shifter tried to smile kindly, but Francine just gave him a helpless look in return.  Her flamingo huffed sadly and considered whether she would get the lead in the prison production of Oklahoma.
    Detective Wyatt Leeman was trying to be benevolent.  He had the least dangerous perp in front of him he had ever met since he was forced to arrest the seventy-three-year-old panda shifter for bank robbery.  That was all a misunderstanding – she just had a candy bar in her pocket and didn’t speak much English.
    Francine Sweeting had been arrested for destruction of property and attempted murder.  But none of this seemed to have sunk in yet.  The moment the cops found her frowning, at the destruction she had wrought on the Porsche, she admitted it was her.  She admitted to stabbing Michael St. Fontaine and breaking the window of the Porsche.  The fact that she did those things surprised her more than it did them.
    Wyatt cleared his throat and closed her file.  “You’ll go before a judge in the morning, and you can enter your plea.”
    Francine