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“Of course.”
He pulled her by the hips into him like a superhero, pressing his mouth onto hers, a hard and passionate coming together. Violet pressed herself against him, the fact that they were surrounded by his entire team escaping her awareness for a moment.
Franco broke the kiss then and gazed down at her with a million-dollar smolder. Violet was breathless.
“Thank you,” he crooned.
Violet’s underwear had begun to dampen, and she was unsure whether or not she could keep herself upright when he let her go. Thankfully, she could, using the desk that held the monitors as leverage when he slid his hand down her arm, kissing her fingertips, and finally going to the car.
Violet’s entire body was flushed, and she had to cover her face with her palm to conceal the stupid smile stretched across her face.
“He’s certainly never done that,” Cornel joked.
Violet was speechless as she watched Franco, her hero, climb into the car, shut the door, then take off onto the track at a magnificent speed. She twisted around to regard Cornel, her lips forced into a thin expression of bashfulness.
“I’m going to walk around the track for a bit if that’s okay?”
Cornel nodded, smirking as he continued to scribble along the clipboard.
“No problem, Violet. He might be a while today.”
She sensed Cornel’s tiger shifter detecting her elation. He was happy for her in the same way that he was happy for his friend. She spun around and shuffled into the daylight, the smile returning to her face and making her cheeks ache.
Violet had already considered exploring the park on her own, way before the concept of Franco sweeping her off her feet like some 1950’s bombshell had even occurred to her. He was already so different from when they’d first met. There was no way that he didn’t feel the same pull she felt. He wouldn’t have kept her around for so long if he didn’t.
She had thought about it in the shower, considering the wolves who had attacked them during their morning run. She knew that they were shifters based on the virtue of their scent, as well as their focused behavior. Shifters had a mix of animal and human smells to them, different from wild animals. They had also come for them personally, attacking them relentlessly, while the majority of wild wolves would have avoided them altogether.
Violet had wondered as she dressed earlier if Franco was right or that perhaps they both were. She made a mental note to ask him about potential threats in the past, but her mind had been wiped clean from that devastatingly romantic kiss.
She traced her lips with her fingertips as she strolled around the outside of the track, putting on her sunglasses to shade the beating sun. She continued to smile to herself as she conjured the memory of the wolves from that morning, then pulled the specific thought of their unique scent.
Violet had an impeccable memory, even for a shifter. Most shifters’ memories were better than the average human’s because they relied on their sensory experiences far more astutely. When a human tried to remember what song had been playing on the jukebox during a night on the town, they thought about faces and the feeling that it elicited.
But a shifter recalled everything at once. The scent of the people around them, the mold that had formed around the top of a beer tap, the palpitations of the heartbeat of the man who leaned against the wall when they brushed by him on the way to the bathroom. It could be overwhelming for someone who couldn’t organize their thoughts in an efficient and precise manner.
Violet was an expert in the art of memory organization.
It was because of her interest and ability to juggle multiple projects at once that she was able to thrive in disorderly situations. It was what helped her when she worked at Senior Rights, often having to cope with accounting difficulties and patient demands simultaneously. She would fall into a place where she felt like she was floating, a lot like a space that she imagined writers and painters fell into when they engaged in their creative craft.
So she pulled at the memory of the distinct scent of the wolves who had come for her and Franco that very morning. They would remain poignant in her mind, considering that her mate was put in danger. She found the smell as she walked along the track, listening to Franco’s car zipping by, making her gasp with a nervous high each time it passed.
The scent glowed lilac purple in her head, just the way she thought it would. She yanked at it, summoning it to the forefront of her mind, and spilled the cells along the side of her brain where the smell was housed.
She cringed as she walked, her throat beginning to heave with a gagging sensation.
The scent was slightly mangy, like a bowl of fruit ready to sour at any moment. There was something else embedded within it that was tangled, almost veiled beneath the obvious scent of rotting sweetness.
Violet detected it but couldn’t put her finger on it. She continued to stroll around the track, not quite concerned but not quite at ease either.
The car whizzed by again, then two more times. She meditated on the scent, trying to see if anything around the track could be related to it. She was nearly gone an hour when she realized she had been moving in circles along the track just like her mate had been.
Violet decided to place the thought on the shelf as she returned to the pit to greet Franco. It was when the fence was pulled open, and the car pulled in, the engine shrieking to a halt, that she realized what the mystery smell had been.
Car oil with an air of gasoline blended with it. She wouldn’t have really known if she hadn’t caught a gust of Franco’s exhaust straight up her nose.
She was glad she had figured it out, but she was also a bit disturbed.
Franco climbed out of the car, positively spritely. He spoke to Cornel, as thrilled as a little boy on Christmas morning. She stood against the chain link fence, watching him. His passion was contagious and addicting.
