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

know where she was going when she’d get up in the middle of the night to sneak to the bathroom.
    She was pretty sure he wouldn’t mistake her lustful moans for anything other than what they were, and she wasn’t ready to deal with the looks she’d get from him. Not yet, anyway.
    Diesel chewed on a big bite of meat, and Sonya could clearly imagine his panther on the hunt, bowing over a fresh kill – sexy as fuck. He swallowed and raised his chin a bit, eyeing her thoughtfully.
    “What do you want to know?”
    Wow. Progress!
    “Where are you from? Any family?”
    “Texas. I have a brother. We’re out of touch now.”
    “Did you do any other work before enlisting or have you always been a military man?”
    “I joined up when I was eighteen. So I’ve never really done much else.”
    “Why’d you leave?”
    And that killed the conversation. Diesel quieted and returned to his steak, taking another hefty chunk out of it. Sonya pursed her lips – a tough topic, alright. She could work with that. Or around that, anyway.
    “I’m from Illinois, originally. My parents are still there. I think my baby sister is in New York now. I, though you may not believe me after having seen me clean out gutters so expertly, have only ever really worked in retail. Or I guess we can say I’ve also been in ‘managerial positions’, though the situation was a bit… alternative.”
    That was the best way she could think to phrase that she had been reluctantly overseeing one of Blade’s clubs for a while. It was an operation solely used to wash his dirty drug money. Though it hadn’t been completely legit, Sonya had honestly enjoyed the work itself – trying to put on great parties, figuring out why people visited certain spots and not others, and what made them tick and spend more. It sure beat the hell out of selling t-shirts and stealing small appliances.
    “Are we not counting your impressive stint as a cat burglar now?” Diesel asked, smirking.
    Sonya smiled in response. At least he had bounced out of his moment of darkness. And she did like seeing that smile of his. It was just the right level of cocky and playful to make her buzz with interest to find out more about this mysterious man.  
    “I’m sure I could be a great little thief. If I could only stop breaking in to the sheriff’s home,” she said with a laugh. “Now, speaking of which – why does that place look like it’s abandoned? I know it has to have been built just recently, and you’ve been in town for a bit already, considering how everybody knows you. So how come you prefer sleeping out in the trees and not filling your home with… well, stuff?”
    Diesel shrugged, his powerful shoulders going up and then dipping down so that she had to remind herself to not reach out and feel the hard muscles. He was the most built man she’d ever seen, and the longer she spent around him, the more difficult it was to think about anything but seeing him shirtless. She’d seen glimpses a few times when he had hauled stuff around for the people and shifters Sonya had been doing little tasks for, and the way his muscles worked was just beautiful. Form and function together – who wouldn’t want a taste?!
    He hemmed and hawed again, but this time, she didn’t have to fill the air with chatter about herself – more progress. She liked how things were going so far. Something about that man made her want to get him to be comfortable around her. Maybe it helped that she didn’t feel at ease around people at the moment either. After being so disappointed by someone so close to her, it was hard seeing the silver lining or expecting a man to really be the kind of upstanding citizen Diesel seemed to be.
    “I haven’t really lived anywhere since I was a kid. The military keeps you on the move all the time and you learn to live out of your gear bag. The guys were nice enough to give me one of the cabins the Warfangs recently built and even got some furniture for it, but I