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Captain Corbin Jones held a bouquet of wildflowers in one hand and his phone in the other. He was behind on paperwork and trying to walk and scan read at the same time. The documents had been sitting in his inbox for nearly a week as it was. He didn’t have time to go on a blind date, and he certainly had no inclination to be on one. Blind dates were for men who couldn’t get a woman. Not for him. He could land any woman he wanted. He’d been considered quite a catch throughout his lifetime and had gone through certain periods when he paid more attention to his sex life—the last big burst being in the 1920s. He was still fond of jazz and gin. A perfect pairing. Sure, his pick-up lines needed work as they were somewhat antiquated, but he could blend when need be and he got by. The roaring twenties weren’t that long ago, were they?

He nearly tripped as he thought about how long ago his last dating high period was. He blinked. “Your last rush coincided with the advent of sliced bread.”

He cringed, hoping his teammates didn’t figure that tidbit out. They’d never let him hear the end of it. It wouldn’t matter that he’d not had the time to date. He’d told his mother as much. That was of no importance to her, who, even at his age, still managed to scare him. She may be in London, thousands of miles away from him, but that was no matter—the woman could still make him listen as if he were but a boy, rather than the leader of his own special operatives team and hundreds of years old. She had that effect on a lot of men, so he didn’t take it to heart. His father was a proud lion-shifter and alpha in his own right, but next to his mother, his father was merely a cuddly teddy bear. She came from a long line of lion shifters herself, but lacked the ability to shift forms, as was often the case with female shifters. That didn’t stop her from putting the fear of the gods into those around her.

There was simply no way out of the blind date. At least, not unless a crisis at work came about. It seemed wrong to hope for one, but secretly he did. So far, it was just a mass of paperwork that he was behind on. Nothing pressing enough to convince his mother he didn’t need to be fixed up—again. Not one of her past attempts had stuck. He’d only fucked a couple of them. His mother’s taste in women she thought would work for him was that poor, to say the very least.

He sighed, his thumb scrolling down the document on his phone display. It was a briefing of another Paranormal Security and Intelligence (PSI) mission. It was not one his team had been on, but rather one with intel in connection to a group of very bad men Corbin’s team had recently begun tracking. Lately it seemed everything tied back to the Corporation.

He really and truly was starting to hate them.

He glanced up to be sure he wasn’t about to walk into anything and then continued reading. He felt out of place on the university grounds. He was far too old to be there, but then again, he was far too old for most everything—including his date. Looking at him, none would guess he was more than thirty at most. A perk of being immortal. As a lion-shifter he had heightened senses and drew upon them as he walked while reading, using them to smell and listen for anything that may be in his path.

All he could smell was the group of young men gathered off to one side of the common area, tossing around a football. He snorted in derision, failing to see what the American version had to do with feet, apart from a designated kicker coming out at what seemed random to him. His preference was definitely for European football—at least it required the actual use of one’s feet coming into contact with the ball.

Most called him British as he was born and bred in England, but the truth was, he was English. He had neither the time nor inclination to explain the difference to his American friends. And he was pretty sure that, outside of England, the rest of the United Kingdom spent far too much time with their sheep.

Corbin paused in reading the report and opened the screen holding a map of the campus. He glanced up, long enough to see he was indeed headed in the right direction, and then stopped as a scent caught his attention. Honey, cinnamon and vanilla filled his head, making his cat shove upwards, towards the surface. He had to take a deep breath and focus to keep from doing something incredibly foolish, like partially shifting forms in public where anyone could see him. Clutching the flowers tighter, he felt some of the stems give under the pressure of his hand. He turned, trying to find the source of the smell. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that the owner was female. There were so many women walking on the campus that he couldn’t zero in on the owner of the scent. He just knew that it was from the other direction—not the way he was headed.

Not his date for the evening.

Mae Bertelot, the daughter of one of his mother’s friends, was his dinner date. When his mother had pushed for him to agree to the date, he’d tried to point out the extreme age difference between himself and the young woman. She was, from his mother’s accounts, a fifth-year senior, studying fine arts. By his guesstimate that put her around the age of twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. He hoped. Anything younger and he’d spend the evening feeling like the sleazebag he was shaping up to be. Those men who trolled bars looking to pick up younger women always set his teeth on edge. His mother was doing her best to lump him in the mix.

He sighed.

Colette Corbin meant well. She always did.

Hence, him walking on a campus, with flowers, dressed for an evening out, while he really just wanted to be catching up on paperwork. He wasn’t a monk. Far from it. He liked sex. What red-blooded male didn’t? He was just too busy to bother with all the things associated with it—the wining, the dining, the romance aspect. And he wasn’t much into women who charged, who didn’t require those necessities.

He caught sight of another group of young men, this one gathered near a bench, talking and carrying on, seeming to have fun. They were all dressed in snug-fitting polo shirts with baggy shorts and leather slip-on shoes. Corbin paused and glanced down at himself. Was he dressed wrong to go on a date with a woman who was still at university? His fellow teammates liked to joke that Corbin reminded them of an underwear model. Frankly, he didn’t see it.

Did women prefer men who looked like that? If so, he was certainly out of his element. The designer button-down, long-sleeved shirt he wore had trimmed cuffs that, when rolled, showed a checked pattern, setting off the blue of the shirt. He’d paired it with charcoal-gray chinos. The black loafers he wore retailed for around five hundred dollars per foot and didn’t look anything like what the young men on campus were wearing.

Corbin’s long blond hair was fastened at the nape of his neck with a leather band, and while he was normally clean-shaven, he’d taken to wearing a close-cut beard. It was several shades darker than his hair.

He looked nothing like the men here.

Because they are boys , he thought, calming somewhat. You’re a man.

As a group of women approached, he chanced a glance at them, noting they were dressed as casually, if not more so, than the boys. He sighed. Yes, he was certainly a man who did not belong there. How his mother could even begin to think he would have anything in common with a woman so young was beyond him.

The smell that had caught his attention before hit him again, this time stronger. There was no way he could ignore it. He looked in the direction it was coming from and froze. The single most beautiful creature he’d ever laid eyes upon was there, off in the distance, but not too far that his preternatural eyes could not pick up on every detail of her. Her sable-colored hair was piled high upon her head and fell loosely in long, semi-waves down her back. Eyes so dark a brown they reminded him of fine chocolates, hid partially behind black-framed glasses. Never before had he thought he had a thing for a woman in glasses, but seeing her fast changed his mind.

She wasn’t dressed as the others around her. She wore a long, light yellow, flowing dress that somehow managed to hug every curve she had. And did she ever have curves! They were glorious. His cock responded at once, hardening as his cat made an attempt to surface. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t draw in air. Couldn’t do anything beyond stare as the goddess made her way in his direction. The dress had a slit in the side, gifting him a view of her long, creamy, pale legs. As she neared, his gaze drew up her slowly, memorizing her shape, the soft, sultry sway of her hips and her breasts. Her full lips had red lipstick on them, and while he wasn’t usually a fan of lipstick, he had to admit the color was stunning on her.

There was an elegance about the tall beauty that set her apart from the woman near her, though the other woman wasn’t anything a man would call unattractive. Quite the opposite. With her red hair, pale skin and bright blue eyes, she was very attractive, but the brunette was stunning. Possibly the most attractive woman he’d ever seen in all his years.

He wanted to stop heading in the direction where he’d been told to meet Mae and go to the brunette instead. As wrong as it sounded, his cock didn’t care. It wanted the woman in the yellow dress. Wanted to know what it felt like to sink into her, and he wanted to know what those bespectacled eyes would look like as she reached culmination.

He nearly did the unthinkable. He almost went to the woman, to hell with the blind date his mother had arranged. Had his phone not begun to buzz at that moment, indicating a call was coming in, he might very well have abandoned his date for the evening.

A total tosser move.

It went against everything he stood for. Yet the compulsion to go to the woman, to meet her and to know her in a carnal way, nearly did him in. He lifted his phone, seeing Striker’s number there, thankful for the distraction. “Yes?”

Striker (Dougal to his mother only) McCracken spoke, “You dinnae get to yer date’s place yet, did you? Please tell me I’m nae interruptin’ hot monkey sex. If I am, why the hell did you answer yer phone? When I’m havin’ sex, aside from a selfie, I do nae have my phone near me.”

Striker was addicted to social media. It had become a serious problem. Supernaturals had to avoid picture trails whenever possible. It wasn’t easy to explain away their lack of aging, and with the advancements in technology it was getting harder and harder. All had hoped he’d learned his lesson when he’d nearly ended up the star of a furry fetish fantasy, but the stubborn Scotsman hadn’t learned anything from the experience.

As not only a member of Corbin’s PSI-Op team, but as a close friend, Striker knew of Corbin’s date. He didn’t know the date came by way of Corbin’s mother though. Corbin cleared his throat, willing his hard-on for the woman in yellow down. “No. Not yet, why?”

“General Newman is here in the office,” said Striker, his Scottish accent as thick as it ever was. “He wants the team in now. Says it cannae wait. I did explain you were about to get laid, but he dinnae seem to much care. Sorry. Yer dick will have to wait for another day to get some release. Unless yer up for wanking, then that is on you.”

“Asshole,” snapped Corbin.

“Aye, I’ve one. So do you. What of it?”

With a groan, Corbin pivoted, turning back in the direction he’d only just come from. If General Jack C. Newman was in the office, it was serious. The matter couldn’t wait. A tiny pang of guilt hit Corbin as he walked, remembering how he’d been secretly hoping for a work crisis.

Be careful what you wish for.

“I’m just under two hours away,” he offered, accelerating his pace.

“Long way to drive for a piece of arse,” returned Striker with a snort. “There is great pussy to be had around here. I told you I’d take you out for a night on the town. We could throw back some beers, pick up women and see to our needs. We’re single. Us non-mated ones need to stick together. We’ll be outnumbered soon if another of us falls. Do me a favor and do nae go findin’ yer mate or anythin’.”

For supernaturals, a mate was more even than just a spouse. They were the one person who would complete a supernatural, make them feel whole, and someone they could reproduce with. Supernaturals mated for life.

Corbin had no interest in such distractions. He had a job to do. Bad guys needed to be handled, and he enjoyed stopping them. He didn’t have the time or inclination to mate.

Though, at the mention of mate, he found himself glancing in the direction the woman in the yellow dress had been. She wasn’t there anymore. “I’ll need to phone my date for the evening to inform her I won’t be able to keep our scheduled plans. I’ll be in shortly.”

“Might nae want to refer to yer date as a scheduled anythin’,” said Striker. “Make her think yer broken up about missin’ out. Women like to feel wanted and needed. They’re faster into the sack that way. And remember, the more they believe you want ‘em, the quicker they are to offer anal sex. Best kind of sex.”

Rolling his eyes, Corbin hung up on his friend and searched his recent calls for the number his mother had given him. He thought of calling Mae, but so far their back and forth had all been done via text message. He wasn’t sure why younger people preferred it. Going against what they’d established so far, he called her, forgoing messaging. Her phone went to an automated voice mail answering service. He left a short but informative message alerting her that their date would need to be rescheduled and that a matter at work couldn’t wait.

He considered seeking her out to give her the flowers and explain in person, but since he didn’t want to go on the damn date to start with, he kept walking in the direction of the lot where he’d parked his vehicle. With each step he took, his mind was drawn back to the woman in the yellow dress. He had to force one foot in front of the other to get himself to the parking lot once more—the need to seek out the mysterious woman was that great.

Corbin made it to his vehicle and glanced around, noting he was alone in the parking lot except for some men near a large black van at the opposite end. He paid them little mind as he reached down to adjust his cock. It was hard from seeing the woman in the yellow dress and didn’t seem to want to go down anytime soon. He had a decent drive ahead of him and he wasn’t about to attempt it sporting a twenty-five centimeter hard on.

Groaning, he lowered his head, trying his best to get his dick to obey. It wasn’t having any part of listening to him. He chanced another look around, making sure he was indeed alone before he did something he couldn’t believe he was about to do.

He unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out. He’d officially become one of those sick fucks who masturbated in public. He wasn’t sure how he’d fallen so far in an evening, but he’d ditched his date, wanted to bed a woman in a yellow dress and was now stroking his prick in a parking lot.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.