The Alpha's to Share: A BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance Read Free Page B

startling to you.”
     
    “It is a bit,” she admitted. “It’s rather… distracting.”
     
    “Yes, I can smell…” he started to tell her that he could smell her arousal wafting in waves from her flushed body, but he thought it would be unwise. “I can imagine that it would be.”
     
    “Oh, for goodness sake,” Madge grumbled, grabbing a blanket from her bed and tossing it to Seth, who caught it quickly. “Cover up with this.”
     
    Seth wrapped the faded old patchwork quilt around his body and asked Callie, “Is that better?”
     
    “It’s… less distracting,” she shrugged.
     
    A smile almost twitched on Seth’s lips. He could smell disappointment on her. She’d enjoyed his body, and the thought gave him more satisfaction than he ever could have imagined.
     
    He watched the human as she nervously wound a strand of her red hair around her finger and twisted it. His heart beat faster as she nibbled her lower lip, her eyes scanning the room and refusing to look directly at him.
     
    She was a stunning creature. Her breasts were full and plump, her hips rounded and barely concealed by her thin white dress. He would have taken her right there on the table had he not been certain her kind would frown on such things. No, humans preferred courtship over the immediacy of sex. And most of them, he’d heard, preferred to couple in privacy.
     
    “So,” Seth said, trying to break their awkward silence. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself.”
     
    “There isn’t much to tell, really,” she said, and he detected a hint of deception in her voice. Her pulse quickened, and he could smell the harsh odor of sweat erupting on her skin. “I’m currently between jobs. I’m… temporarily staying here with Madge. I can’t cook, but I love to eat. I don’t know what else to say. What about you?”
     
    “What would you like to know?” Seth asked.
     
    “What do you do?” she asked.
     
    “Do?” he wondered aloud.
     
    “You know… for a living. How do you pay your bills?”
     
    “Shifters do not have bills,” he said. “We claim our territory, and it becomes ours unless the humans push us off it. We hunt for our food. We barter with humans for the things we cannot find or make. Occasionally we steal if we cannot get something any other way.”
     
    “I see,” she said, shifting uncomfortably in her chair.
     
    “You judge us for theft?” he demanded.
     
    “No!” she said quickly. “No, not at all. I just… it was startling to hear you speak of it so openly.”
     
    “We do it only when we must and only for things that are crucial for survival such as medicines,” he said. “So I feel no shame in admitting it.”
     
    “You shouldn’t,” Callie said. “My father used to try to shoot the raccoons and opossums who came to knock over out trash cans in the middle of the night to steal food, but I would beg him not to. They weren’t causing any harm. They were just trying to survive. And that’s what you’re doing. You’re trying to survive.”
     
    Seth nodded and said, “It doesn’t make it any easier. I hate taking things that don’t belong to me. But sometimes there is no other way.”
     
    “I understand,” Callie said.
     
    “So what do you, Callie?” he asked her.
     
    “I work in the accounting department… um… that is, I used to work in the accounting department of a Fortune 500 company,” she quickly corrected herself.
     
    “I don’t know what accounting is, nor Fortune 500, but it sounds important,” Seth commented.
     
    “Not really,” she shrugged. “It’s actually a bit boring, but it paid the bills.”
     
    “So why is it you no longer work there?” Seth asked.
     
    “Long story,” she said, shifting again in her chair.
     
    “You don’t have to talk about it,” Seth said, sensing her discomfort.
     
    She said nothing, instead choosing to look down at her hands as they played with a string that was coming unraveled from the hem of her