Free Shifters on Fire: A BBW Shifter Romance Boxed Set by Marissa Farrar, Kate Richards, Marian Tee, Lynn Red, Dominique Eastwick, Becca Vincenza, Ever Coming, Lila Felix, Dara Fraser, Skye Jones, Lisbeth Frost Page B

needin’?”
    “I, uh...”
    “It’s fine, sweetie,” she said. “Everyone goes through a long period of involuntary celibacy every now and then and it’s our business to put those to an end. Welcome to Mating Call, can I have your name?”
    “Rex Steele,” the big guy said in the same growly, throaty voice from before. “I usually deliver that with a line that I think sounds cool, but—”
    “It doesn’t,” Dora said without looking up, as she took down his name. “It’s nothing personal, I mean it’s just that I’ve never heard a good name-line. People with short names pull the Bond thing, people with names that sound like billionaire playboys say it like they’re the guy from Gilligan’s Island . Just for the hell of it, let’s hear yours.”
    Rex laughed softly. “I don’t know if—”
    “Oh, come on, don’t be shy. If you want a good story, I scared the shit out of my mate the first time we met. I got way too excited, which I’m sure you can’t imagine me getting excited.”
    She was going a mile a minute, but the truth was, she talked like that because it gave her typing a rhythm. Little did Rex know that as Dora yammered on and on, she was filling out hundreds of words of information about him. She started to run scans on him through the Batman-esque computer that ran the backbone of Mating Call’s business. Background checks
    “Go,” she said. “Go, go, go.”
    Rex backed slowly away, not quite sure how to take the very excitable girl at the desk in front of him, but inexplicably liking her all the same. “Go?” he asked, even as he backed away. “Like leave? I’m sorry if I offended you, I—”
    “You’re precious, you know that?” Dora asked, still not taking her eyes off the computer screen. “I want to hear your line, you big, beautiful dummy.”
    “Steele, Rex Steele.” As he delivered the line in a vaguely British accent that recalled a mixture of the best of Bond and the worst of Bond, he arched one of his dark eyebrows and smiled in such a way that it caused a dimple in his left cheek.
    “Cute,” Dora said. “But stupid. Although that’s an interesting twist. You heard what you did, right? You combined the two kinds of pick-up line I said people deliver. You’re better than that though, and I think you know it. Job?”
    “Sometimes I feel like him.”
    “No, that’s Job with a long ‘O’ sound. I’m guessing I’m not about to write ‘Biblical Scholar’ on this form.”
    Rex laughed briefly and visibly relaxed. “No, I guess I’m not. My job is kind of difficult to describe.”
    “Central Intelligence Agency? You don’t have to give me any specifics, I just can’t leave it blank because the last time we left it blank we ended up matching someone with a hitman.”
    “Seriously?”
    “No,” Dora deadpanned. “Of course not. You think there are hitmen in White Creek? If there are, I’d love to meet one.”
    That time, instead of chuckling or softly laughing, Rex burst out with a bellow that shook the walls. “But seriously, no, I don’t think there are any hitmen around here.” He had this low, serious tone to his voice. “I believe I’d know.”
    “That’s ominous,” Dora said, putting down the pen that she habitually spun while she typed. “Don’t tell me you’re being serious.”
    Rex sat down slowly, languidly dripping himself into the chair in front of Dora’s desk. He leaned forward and propped himself up on his elbows. “I,” he said slowly, “am absolutely not serious. I’m a party planner.”
    For a long moment, Dora stared at him and her mouth fell open little by little. “You,” she said in disbelief, “are the best kind of asshole.”
    They both broke up laughing, and a moment later, Rex took a deep breath and let out a sigh. “No seriously, I’m a party planner. I was in Afghanistan, then I came back to no job and a whole shitload of college loans so I did what I did.”
    “So you were a big drunk in