Page 8 of Lucius

He leaned forward and she picked up the scent of his cologne, which reminded her of sunshine and sandalwood. Her stomach flipped and she barely controlled the urge to run her fingers through his dark hair and find out if it was as soft as it looked.

“You’re drawing the plant? It’s so detailed.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re really talented. Are you an artist for a living?”

“Ha, I wish. I work at the front desk of my mom’s hair salon. I’ve always wanted to see exotic animals up close so I could draw them, so when I got the coupon I thought it was fate giving me a chance to see them.”

He hummed. “The tours don’t stop that long in front of the paddocks, just a few minutes at most. Is that long enough for you to sketch the animals?”

“I thought I could use my phone to take pictures too.”

She’d figured the tour stops weren’t very long, but she’d hoped she might be able to wrangle a few extra minutes from whoever was her tour guide.

He pursed his lips and then said, “Are you busy today?”

“In what sense?”

“I mean, if I moved your reservation to the last one of the day so you could have more time to see the animals, are you free?”

“Really? You’d do that for me?”

“Sure. I’ve never seen someone come to the VIP tour and want to sketch the animals, it’s cool. Are you interested?”

“I’d love that.”

“Give me two minutes. I’ll be right back.”

She hummed as he strode off.

Dang he even had a nice butt.

Her heart was pounding. Honestly pounding!

She couldn’t remember being so quickly attracted to a guy before. And he wanted to help get her more time to sketch. How cool was that?

The day had started out crappy, but things were definitely looking up.

Okay, his soulmate was even more beautiful up close. Long, dark hair tied back in a loose braid with tendrils that framed her heart-shaped face perfectly. She had the most full, kissable lips of any female he’d ever seen, and her eyes were the prettiest deep jade color.

He didn’t want to leave her, but he had an idea to spend time with her.

Like any male who’d met his soulmate in the park, the most important thing to Lucius was getting to know her and hopefully getting her phone number, and maybe even a date.

When he filled his friends at the tiki hut in on what happened, they all stared at him in surprise and then cheered quietly for him so they didn’t draw any attention to themselves.

“Freaking awesome, man, congrats,” Greg said. “You want to take her on the tour? We can arrange that.”

“Yeah, I do, but I was wondering if I could move her to the last tour of the day?” He explained that she was an artist and wanted to sketch the animals, and if he could give her more time to see them, then he could spend time with her too.

“Actually,” Brent said, “we’ve got a whole hour open from two to three. Do you want to take her then? You could spend asmuch time as you wanted at each paddock. You just have to keep her entertained until two.”

“I could totally do that,” he said.

“Lemme call Joss. I think he’s running around here somewhere,” Brent said.

Joss, alpha of the park’s wolf pack, was in charge of the safari tours.

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