Sheer Bliss (4 page)

The thick-trunked tree in
the neighboring yard had branches that hovered close to Calla’s
window, and from where the panther stood Caleb saw one sturdy
enough to support his weight. With silent grace he leapt over the
brick wall separating the yards and crawled up the tree to settle
in for a covert watch. Calla, too preoccupied with her nighttime
preparations, thankfully didn’t look outside.

Chin settled on his paws,
Caleb exhaled roughly from his snout and let his tail curl and sway
free beneath him. As he watched Calla remove her nightshirt, then
her panties, he fought the urge to spring forward through the glass
and pounce. When he spied what she extracted from a nightstand, he
had to shift on the branch for better balance.

Lord help him if anybody
found out he’d fallen from a tree thanks to an unbalancing
erection.

* * * *

With the silicone dildo
properly lubed, naked Calla settled on her knees on her mattress,
facing the headboard. One hand grasped the top for support while
the other wrapped around the rod’s base and positioned it
underneath her. After a few teasing swipes of the slick head
against her pussy lips, she spread her legs wide and sank down,
impaling herself until nearly all eight inches disappeared inside
her.

She bent her head back and
closed her eyes, sighing on impact. The lube felt cool and slippery
and easily guided the raised,
faux-
veined surface of the
dildo against her channel walls. She’d worried she was too wet
herself to appreciate the girth of her favorite toy, but once she
settled into a bucking rhythm that pressed the shaft against her
hidden sweet spots she didn’t hold further apprehensions. Soon she
could set the hand holding the headboard free and use it to
stimulate herself more—she pinched her aching nipples, then slid
her fingers over her abdomen and settled them on her clit, rubbing
furiously in circular motion.

The tingle of a pending
orgasm sparked immediately, yet Calla knew this one would simmer
slowly thanks to the many thoughts clouding her mind. Maya came
into focus, and while any other woman with a healthy libido might
have used the image of the sexy she-wolf to help along the climax,
Calla associated her with a building sense of regret. Had Maya come
to call weeks earlier, Calla would have leaped at the opportunity
to take the shifter to bed. To think that tonight she could have
passed this time with her thighs spread over Maya’s skillful tongue
while the she-wolf’s fingers played with her ass…the memory of
Calla’s rejection of her darkened the mood. She pumped faster on
the fake cock in hopes of replacing the pain.

Why did she say no? She
still found Maya attractive, and the she-wolf’s attentions had done
more than boost Calla’s self-confidence over the past several
years. They were never an exclusive couple, just friends with
benefits who met when the urge proved too much to bear. Tonight,
though, as Calla embraced Maya’s nude body and reacquainted herself
with every curve and swell, an unusual emotion gripped Calla and
proved too powerful to ignore.

Holding Maya, Calla sensed
she’d become a betrayer, but to whom? Men in general, perhaps? The
second she’d closed the glass door on Maya she ran upstairs to
satisfy the ache in pussy—she needed a cock inside her, as it
seemed no amount of licking or rubbing clits together would
suffice. God, but she needed cock!

A real one, too. Nicely
though this toy filled her, the absence of added warmth from a
hard, male body kept her from tumbling over the edge into bliss
more easily. Calla had to admit she hadn’t experienced such a
gratifying sexual romp since…

Since…

Slowly her grinding motion
halted, and her hung low, chin nearly touching her
breastbone.

Caleb.

Damn him.

Chapter Four

When Calla stopped
grinding against her mattress and drooped from presumed exhaustion,
Caleb figured the peak had passed…or perhaps eluded her. She didn’t
appear satisfied, not that it surprised him. Surely
even a romp with the disagreeable Maya seemed preferable to a
solo flight with silicone. Caleb would liked to have offered Calla
some relief and a better chance at release, but knew if she caught
him spying on her that he greatly risked any chance at
reconciliation.

Eventually a lamp switched
off and her room faded into darkness. The panther stretched his
front paws before him and let out a quiet sigh, mentally willing
away his arousal. It wouldn’t do to trot home with an aching feline
erection bobbing between his hind legs, much less try to descend
from the tree without making noise.

Satisfied he’d heard and
seen enough of Calla for one night, he leaped from the branch and
landed gracefully in the sand several feet from her brick wall.
Time to head home to bed, he decided, yet the grand leap into a
swift run he’d hoped to achieve barely sent him inches from his
starting point. The show Calla had unwittingly put on for him left
him more aroused than he realized.

With a loud grunt, he
skulked back to the wall and curled down onto the sand, feeling the
cool of the brick against his long, lean back. His sharpened feline
vision detected no other beings—human or were—roaming along the
surf, so he quietly shifted back into human form. Naked and knees
raised, he looked down at the lengthened and erect organ bobbing
against his abdomen.

Caleb closed his eyes,
imagining for a moment his beloved Teresa with her long, dark hair
and brown nipples like the sweetest chocolate, straddled across his
hips to take in his full length. Though he missed her daily, the
pain of her absence managed to fade over time. Those aware of the
various were-species in existence might assume Caleb and others
like him possessed a stronger genetic makeup, yet shifters also
suffered the same risk of illness as humans. Some, like Caleb,
benefitted from a predisposition toward a sound immune system, but
others like Teresa proved easily vulnerable. She didn’t live a year
following her diagnosis, and no amount of were-panther power could
stop death.

Caleb’s fingers drifted
down to his sac to massage away the ache, then curled around the
base of his cock and slowly ascended to the crown. Up and down he
stroked in gentle rhythm with a dry hand, which seemed to enhance
his irritation. Since Teresa, he hadn’t known the pleasure of
making love with another woman, and despite constant thoughts of
his late wife he found the time played tricks on his memory. As he
sat just outside of Calla’s home, tugging his cock toward release,
he pinched his face in a poor attempt to call up a clearer vision
of Teresa riding him.

This
isn’t working.
He should just shift back,
tear home as fast as possible, and jump into a cold shower. Let
Aunt Sheila yell at him for tracking sandy paws through the house,
so long as she had a bag from Nunzio’s waiting for him on the
kitchen counter.

He made to lean forward to
better shift into a running position, but Teresa’s lovely visage
faded away entirely, replaced by the memory of Maya and Calla
kissing. The sight had aroused him earlier, perhaps it could help
finish. Caleb sighed at the thought. Typically the girl-on-girl
thing did little to stimulate him, but as the vision intensified
then altered to suit his desires he leaned back against the brick
and stroked his cock with renewed vigor.

This time, he pictured
Calla naked and writhing, just as she had on her bed earlier, only
she now rode him. Caleb conjured the visual as a voyeur watching
himself, mentally directing his every move. In this fantasy, his
hands first cupped her knees as she bore them into her mattress,
then slid up her thighs and ribcage to rest on her firm breasts.
She writhed around him and tightened her channel, thrusting her
upper body and cooing with each pinch of her nipples.

What sent him finally over
the edge, though, was the clear view of Calla’s face, and her
serene satisfaction. He’d always thought her lovely with her wavy
blond hair and sharp green eyes. That this conjured dream-Calla
smiled at him with such longing and love led him to believe, even
for the brief moment as he silently came, that he might win her
just yet.

Of course, he had to
want
to win her. He didn’t want to marry again. He’d rather
leave mating to the younger ones and rely on their prowess to
repopulate the species.

Spent and sated, Caleb
opened his eyes and waited for his breathing to slow before
shifting back to panther form. That completed, his hind paw kicked
sand over the telltale puddle of his essence. He didn’t expect
Calla to find it, but surely a passing shifter might sniff him out
and make much of it later.

Home
, he told
himself firmly. He’d go home, shower, and eat. Then he’d sleep away
any fanciful notions of winning over Calla Savitch as his
own.

Tomorrow, maybe he’d get a
haircut.

Chapter Five

“
What fresh hell is
this?”

Little Melina Wilkins, to
whom Calla had given her first haircut six years ago, twisted away
from the comb to frown at her with disapproval. “Miss Savitch, that
wasn’t a nice word,” she scolded.

“
I know, sweetie, I’m
sorry. Forgot where I was,” Calla said, but kept her gaze fixed on
the salon entrance. Perfect timing as decreed by some prankster
deity—Maya Winston opened the door just as Trisha Houlihan
quick-stepped up the walk and flagged her down.

Calla relaxed. Okay, she
could deal with this. She knew that Trisha, unlike others in her
extended family, considered the Winston/Houlihan feud ridiculous.
So long as Trisha hadn’t come with her—

“
Hey, Caleb.”

Cousin
.

Shit.

When did Caleb come back
to Bliss? Furthermore, why come here? Caleb hadn’t set foot in
Shear Bliss in years, not since Calla’s mother still owned the
salon.

The last time he came, he
stopped by to break the news to her of his mating with
Teresa.

“
Sh—” Calla, turning back
to the little girl in her chair, stopped the spoken expletive in
time, and stretched the syllable a few seconds before pitching the
save. “Sh…shall I put a few bows in this time, Deb?” she called to
Melina’s mother, who waited in the small lobby at the front of the
salon.

Deb, of course, didn’t
hear her. Like any other red-blooded woman in Bliss, New Jersey
would, she fixed an appreciative eye on Caleb in his tight jeans
and skin-hugging black tee. Only Caleb turned to the young mother
with nothing more than a kind nod in her direction. Those eyes
smoldered with desire only when he turned to silently greet
Calla.

“
You know, I think we’re
done here, sweetie.” Calla ducked his gaze, and quickly finished
with Melina. Once released from the bib, the little girl hopped
from the chair without concern for stray clipped hairs and dashed
straight for the large treasure box of toys Calla kept for
well-behaved child customers.

Yes, he’s still cooler
than the proverbial cucumber
, Calla noted as he quietly
surveyed the salon. His gaze seemed to pan the breadth of the
shotgun-style hair studio, casually studying the hairstyle posters
and displays of high-end hair care products she seldom managed to
sell. When he finally glanced her way again, his cousin and Maya
were jockeying for her attention.

“
Hey, Calla, I know Mom
set up an appointment for me right now, but I don’t mind waiting
while you do Maya first,” the younger one had said while Calla
focused on how Caleb turned slowly in place for an empty chair.
Given the dearth of waiting customers, he had his pick, and little
Melina’s mother might have succeeded at getting him to park next to
her had not the girl whined to leave.

“
Mom,” she punctuated the
multiple-syllabic call with a stamped foot. “You said we could get
ice cream.” The girl shook a fist, now decorated with a sparkling
stretch bracelet taken from the treasure chest.

Caleb chuckled and smiled
down at her. “I swear, girl, you are getting to look more like your
mom every day. So pretty. Hey, I’ll see you both at the dance,
right?”

That seemed to mollify
Deb, and after Mom paid the bill the two said their goodbyes.
Trisha pulled up the rolling desk chair from behind the front
counter to sit near Maya, who planted herself in the raised
barber’s chair.

“
Don’t you want to wait
for me to sweep up first?” She turned toward her new customers,
hoping that the distance from Caleb might ease the pounding in her
chest.

“
Why?” Maya waved her off.
“You’re only going to do it again when you’re done with me. This
shouldn’t take long, anyway. Just trim the bangs and take an inch
off the length.”

Trisha frowned. “Aw, no
updo this year?”

“
Honey, there’s no reason
for me to go all out anymore. My matchmaking days are long behind
me, but I do appreciate you letting me cut in line. Got a lot to do
as it is.”

Calla tightened a fresh
bib around Maya’s neck, earning a warning grunt in return. She
couldn’t decide if the woman’s remark served to needle her or not,
but looking at Trisha she realized the younger woman didn’t appear
fazed.