Read 03 - You Only Live Nine Times for Free Online

overdrive.  Her kitty was almost rolling around at the delicious scent.  She was almost tempted to rub herself against him, to mingle his scent with hers…
    “Ahem!”
    Isis snarled, fangs dropping and eyes flashing yellow as she rounded on the person who dared interrupt them.  The young police office gurgled and dropped his flashlight.
    Raf stepped forward and placed a hand on her arm.  While his touch was pleasantly tingly and gave her visions of many naughty things she shouldn’t be thinking about, his skin was cool to the touch.  Her tiger chuffed at Isis to do something about that.  Shifters ran hot and thought nothing of running around in the wet and cold.  But humans were different.  They could easily catch a cold, or a bug, or pneumonia – Raf could already be dying as they spoke!  No, that was intolerable!   She had to make sure he was alright.  The urge to ensure her mate’s safety was paramount, it was…  Wait a frigging second, mate?   Her tiger nodded her head and rolled her eyes with an expression that said, ‘keep up dumbass’.   No, no, no, no – this was not her mate.  She didn’t have a mate.  She wasn’t into the whole mating thing.  Yet, here he is purred her kitty.
    Isis snarled again at the surprised vehemence of her beast.  The patrol officer whimpered and almost wet his pants.  Raf stepped forwards to the trembling young man.  “Officer Collins, right?”
    The young man nodded, and Raf gave him a calm smile.  “Have the crime scene techs arrived yet?”
    “Y… y… yes.”
    “Good, show them over will you.  By the way, this is Isis Martin from the SEA.  You’ll have to excuse her, she’s horrified by what has happened to this shifter’s body.  I told her we all felt the same way, right?”
    Collins nodded dumbly while looking at Isis’ flashing eyes.  “Yes, horrified.”
    “Good man, now go and wrangle the crime scene techs.”
    “Yes,” he agreed eagerly before turning and running as fast as his feet could carry him.  They heard an ouch and a thump a few seconds later, but he just got right on back up and kept running.
    “Sorry about scaring your little officer,” she pouted.
    Raf arched an eyebrow.  “He was miniscule, wasn’t he?”
    “I forget that most humans don’t like it when we growl.”  She made a clawing motion with her hand for emphasis.
    “Didn’t bother me.”
    “No, it didn’t, did it?” she mused, looking him up and down.  It was obvious that he wasn’t overly familiar with shifters, yet she turned into a total psycho bitch and her human detective didn’t even bat one of his long, black eyelashes.  Ugh, her kitty was almost drooling over the pretty, pretty man .
    “So, you know why I called you out here.  Did something happen to get you in that grave, or did you mistake it for a swimming pool or something?”
    Was it wrong how much she was enjoying the playful lilt of their conversation while standing over the grave of a now armless corpse?  Well, if it was wrong, she didn’t want to be right.  “Actually something pushed me in.”
    Raf sucked in a breath, and his handsome face turned solemn.  “Shit, we looked around, but we couldn’t find anyone.  We thought whoever did this was long gone.  Fuck, Isis, you could have been seriously hurt.” 
    Isis had to stop herself from grinning as her tiger swished her tail.  Ooh, angry Raf was hot, too.  “Whoever it was, they were strong.  If they wanted to hurt me, they could have.  Instead, they just pushed me into a hole – that kind of fall wouldn’t hurt the weakest of shifters.”
    “You think they knew you were a shifter?  So what?  Another shifter?”
    “No.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “Knocked me on my ass, didn’t it?”  She wriggled her peachy, round rear for emphasis, and her tiger mewled as Raf actually took a long, hard look at it.  Be they shifter or human, no one could resist her derrière.  “Shifters aren’t that