Maybe he wasn’t a predator like me—he smelled like another house cat—but this was clearly the kind of man who liked to fight over the food dish. He wanted to mark his territory.
Me? I wanted to rip his throat out.
“That’s not my home. And Dean has nothing to do withmychina,” Landon snapped. “You have no business with it. Where is it? You didn’t bring it with you, so did you leave it back in Boston?”
Geoff held up his hands, rocking back. “I thought we could have a civil conversation, babe?—”
Okay, he needed to stop calling my boyfriend “babe”.
“—but this obviously isn’t the time. So I’ll just?—”
“Landon?” I cut in.
He turned his amber eyes, wide and trusting, my way. “Yeah?”
“Do you mind if I . . . ?”
I raised a brow and nodded significantly at Geoff.
Landon’s nose flared as he considered it. After a few seconds, he shrugged. “That’s fine. If you want to.”
Did I ever.
Instead of swinging at Geoff or shouting at him, I stepped back, let the panther dance over my skin, and shifted right there in the middle of the hall.
“Fuck,” Geoff yelped, stumbling back.
On four powerful legs, I was too fast for him. He spun to try and get away, but I pounced, knocking him to the ground. My claws dug into his shoulder when I flipped him, and my fangs found his neck.
I didn’t bite down, but I was the one in charge here, and he’d damn well know it.
“The car!” he yelped. “It’s in the car.”
I was lucky it was so damn early. If Landon’s neighbors had heard the scuffle, they hadn’t come out to see what it was. I had about as long as it’d take someone to grab a jacket and stumble out here from bed.
“Grandma’s china?” Landon confirmed from behind my shoulder.
My tail flicked as Geoff nodded. “All of it,” he swore. His heart hammered so loud I could hear it, and the animal inside longed to put him down.
Unfortunately, we dealt with things like humans nowadays.
I changed back, sitting naked on his chest, smirking down at him. “Now that wasn’t so hard? Let’s go get it?—”
“Oh, fuck you,” Geoff spat, but the little claws on his fingers weren’t enough to scare a panther like me.
“Fuck me? Oh, you’d be so lucky. No, babydoll, that’s not how this is going to go. If you come back here without an explicit invitation from Landon?—”
“Which he’s not getting,” Landon piped up.
I grinned toothily and leaned in close enough to hiss in his face. “Which you won’t be getting, apparently—I will fucking eat you. Do you understand?”
With his jaw clenched tight, Geoff nodded.
Then, there was a creak to our right. The door of apartment 7C opened up on Landon’s neighbor, a petite woman with brown skin and a baby-pink robe wrapped around her.
She frowned at us all—me, sitting naked atop a man in the corridor, and Landon there in his doorway, covering his mouth, the corners of his eyes crinkled as he stifled his laughter.
She glared skeptically, a little pucker between her black eyebrows. “Landon, sweetheart, is everything all right?”
