Craving Her (Keeping Her Series Book 4) (18 page)

There was no surprise in
those brown eyes.  Just assessment.  They looked him over, even as Logan took
in her arching brows and thick lashes over chocolate brown eyes.  Clearly a mix
of African American and a whole lot of Native American.  The slightly exotic
slant of her eyes and smooth, dark hair proclaimed a heritage that the darkness
of her café au lait skin seemed to contradict.  Her lithe stature and compact
body in the drab maid’s uniform would not turn any heads.  But despite clearly
fighting her way through the trail of men at her feet, he could not see any
damage to the garment or the girl.  Logan was relatively certain she wasn’t
even breathing hard, and if she was a shifter, she was something he had not
smelled before – a delicious smell he realized that had been absent a second
ago, as if she just started releasing a new scent.  Her legs were short but well-shaped
with shapely ankles in her black hose and clunky black shoes.  Her cheeks were
rounded, her chin pointy.  She was not what you would call pretty; in fact,
everything about her was non-descript. Until she smiled, and his eyes were
drawn to the lush shape of her lips.  Then suddenly, she was straight up sexy;
between her lips and that wild luscious scent, Logan was standing in an unknown
situation with armed hostiles sporting a woody. 

She must have sensed his
consternation because she laughed.  It was a smooth, sexy ultra-feminine laugh
that he recognized.

Slowly standing tall, the
woman continued her own perusal of his person, and the approving gleam in her
eyes was not helping his fucking boner one bit.  Then she spoke, and like the
laugh, he had heard that voice before.  “Took you long enough,” she said, and
then she fucking took off like a goddamn gazelle, leaving Logan standing in the
hall with a stupid look on his face.

“Shit,” he muttered,
knowing without even trying that he was not going to catch her.

He was still standing
there when Lucas and Ian came up beside him, both looking over him and the
carnage around them.

“What is that glorious
smell?” Ian asked with obvious appreciation.

Logan turned on him with
a snap and a growl, and Ian blinked and took a big step back.  “Never-mind.”

Logan shook off the
unfamiliar anger and looked back at where the woman had disappeared.  He had an
overwhelming desire to give chase.  But he already knew by that last
challenging look in her eyes that it would not be a fast hunt, and he had other
considerations.

“Logan?”  Lucas growled
the question and Logan shook off his wolf, who was screaming at him to chase,
hunt, claim.

“I met our anonymous source.” 
He looked at Lucas; something in his eyes must have given him away because his
alpha studied him closely.

“Something I need to
know?”

“Not yet,” Logan answered,
collecting his usual calm with an unusual amount of effort, “I’ll tell you
later.”

Lucas studied him for
another minute, then took him at his word.  “Then let’s get Gerent and finish
this.”

This time, Lucas took
point with Ian close and Logan watching their flank.  Logan shook off the need
to follow the female and did his job.  But inside, his wolf was growling and
straining at the bit.  He settled it down with the assurance that once this
mission was completed, they would start an entirely different kind of hunt. 
For now, they would remove the threat to the pack and make sure the den was
safe again.  At the reminder, his wolf growled but finally settled.  But Logan
was feeling particularly vicious and knew his eyes had bled to wolf gold and
stayed there.

***

Xena did not stop running
once she escaped the building and hit the jungle.  Remembering the tall, lean
wolf and the way he had looked at her, she shivered and ran faster.  Eventually,
he would be coming after her, that much she knew from the look in his eyes, and
something told her she would need all the head start she could get.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

Cleo heard the distant
caw of a hawk and her heart tried to burst out of her chest.  The lioness tried
to get her going but she knew how impossible it would be for Shawn to be here. 
It sounded like him, but that was her own wishful thinking.  Still, she waited
to hear the sound again, and when it did not come, she threw her head back and
roared out her sorrow to the jungle.  The cuts and bruises had long since
healed, but the emptiness was enough to swallow her.  It might be stupid, but
with the feelings of despair fighting inside her, she was ready for another go
at Gerent and his men.

Let them come,
she thought. If they were that stupid she would show them, again, the error of
their ways.  When nothing jumped out at her from the brush, Cleo laid her lion
head back on her paws and watched the water drifting below her rock perch and
waited some more.

***

Shawn heard Cleo roar and
shifted his direction mid-flight.  He didn’t caw again, not wanting to lead the
bad guys her way, but she was still alive and out of enemy hands.  That much he
now knew.  The cold frost that had saturated his chest and had nothing to do
with the bullet wound eased and he could almost breathe again.

***

Cleo heard the rustling
and turned her elegant lion head, her eyes narrowed, and she sniffed.  They
were up wind but still, how the hell had someone gotten that close and she only
now heard them?  But when Shawn flew out of the jungle and shifted, she shifted
to human to match him so fast she was dizzy with it.  “You’re alive?!”

He didn’t speak.  He just
came at her like a freight train, and Cleo faltered under that hard stare, taking
in the naked length of him and the scar on his chest, her breath hitched as he
slammed that hard naked body into her softness and wrapped his arms around her
so hard she could barely breathe.  Wrapping her arms around his neck just as
tightly, Cleo was beyond caring about such a small thing as oxygen when Shawn
was there, alive, and holding her.

Then his lips crashed
down on hers, and like the last time he kissed her in a hostile jungle, she was
lost.  Her last coherent thought was that if he left her high and dry this time
a bullet to the heart would be the least of his problems.

But Shawn didn’t seem to
have any intention of stopping.  With rough hands and an almost brutal hold on
her he kissed her.  The feel of his lips and tongue, the taste of his near
desperation told her she was his.  Completely and irrevocably.

He took her to the ground
and Cleo briefly considered that she would have more bruises to add to her
collection, but she couldn’t care less.  She wrapped her legs around his hard
hips, grinding against the rock-hard cock that pushed between them.  He pulled
back, his eyes on hers telling her exactly how much control he didn’t have, and
then watching her with those raptor eyes. With the slightest adjustment, he
thrust home.  Cleo felt him enter her and the impact on her senses was like a
tsunami wrecking everything in its path.  Both breathing hard, still feeling
the burn of their connection, he leaned down slowly and kissed her softly.  In
the midst of the brutality of his claiming, it was more than a caress of his
lips on hers.  It was a declaration and an apology for his need.  But that wasn’t
what she wanted from him.  Later she would have a need for soft kisses and a warm
touch, not now.  Now she craved a hard claiming as much as he did.

“I want you to pound into
me until every inch of my body bears your mark,” she whispered against his
lips, her own eyes a beacon of heat on his face.  He pulled back by the neck
slightly so he could see her whole face and then his face as serious as she had
ever seen it.  He made a promise then.  He said, “Done.”

Without another word, his
eyes and body doing all his talking for him, Shawn pulled out and then slammed
back in, again and again, until every part of her body felt his claim, inside
and out.  And as she screamed his name into the wilds and he groaned his
pleasure into her skin, she cried, mourning what she had been so close to
losing.

The large rock she was
pressed against was warm from the tropical sun, the scent of wet green and
humidity saturating the air around them, promising more heat later in the day. 
Just past where her head rested, the boulder dropped off to the sound of a
rushing river, a sound almost loud enough to disguise the sound of her tears. 
But Shawn was a shifter; even a hawk heard better than a normal human did, and
he pulled back to look at the tears flowing down her cheeks and then ran his
hands softly down her body.  They were still connected and neither of them
moved to change that.  “Did I hurt you?” he asked softly, his hand moving to
catch a tear as it fell.

“I thought I lost you,” she
whispered back just as softly, her eyes tortured.  Then she wrapped her hands
around his neck and pulled him down so she could bury her face in his neck. “I
thought you were dead.”

“Not that easy to kill,
kitten.”  He pulled her closer and pressed a kiss to her hair.  “Not when I
have this to live for.”

After a time of silence
where he held her and let her cry, his hands a caress up and down her bare back
and thighs, his neck wet from her tears, “Did he hurt you?”  The grim cold in
his words promised retribution.

Cleo snorted and felt how
the sound shocked him.  He pressed her back to the rock and searched her face. 
He blinked at the satisfaction in hers.  Not what he was expecting apparently.

“I thought he killed you,”
she said, her eyes going dark with rage.  “The only reason he’s not dead is
because I wanted him to suffer.”

He pulled back a little
more, his eyes widening with questions.

She cleared her throat.  “I
may have ripped a whole in his chest and jacked up his heart,” she said mildly,
then popped her lips, and then as an afterthought, “plus, I bit off his nose.”
Cleo thought again of what she had felt when she thought Shawn was dead and
remembered the smug look of superiority on Gerent’s face right before she
jumped him.  “Fucker,” she muttered mostly to herself but with no less heat.

Shawn started to laugh. 
Before she could take offense and ask him exactly what he thought was so funny,
he was kissing her and she lost her train of thought.

***

Demon signaled to Mac and
Ben with a closed fist.  Ben was in the trees behind them in jaguar form and
Mac was beside him walking as wolverine, his nose to the ground. They all
stopped at his signal, and he raised his nose and sniffed.  His ears picked up
the telltale movement of cautious men hunting a wild beast. 
I guess they’re
done underestimating Cleo,
Demon thought with a certain satisfaction,
thinking of the other lion’s trail of blood back at the house.  They had been
following the trail left by Cleo and her pursuers.  They could see that Cleo
had been moving fast and had quite the lead.  Even with that, the men who
followed did not seem in any particular hurry to catch up.  But then it was a
small island, and if they had seen Cleo in action, they might be thinking
better safe than dead.  Of course, the time to be careful was before you
kidnapped the daughter of one of the scariest pack leaders on the planet. 
Their caution wasn’t going to do them a fuck of a lot of good today.

He gave the signal and
the wolverine took off, the jaguar right behind.  As Demon stripped down and
shifted to wolf, the screams began. 
Yep
, he thought as his body
shimmered into a large timber wolf,
that would have been the time to show
some brains.  Too fuckin’ late now.

He heard the enraged roar
of a lion and headed for the fight.  While the humans were running away,
pussies
,
that left Mac ripping into the back of a six-hundred-pound lion with his bone-crushing
molars.  Never a pretty sight.  The lion was dancing around and flicking claws
at him to try to get him off. 
Yeah, good luck with that, asshole. 
There
was a reason wolverines were feared in shifter circles.  The scary little
bastards did not let go.  Ever.  He turned his attention to Ben who was teasing
an enraged lion with his feints and leaps.  When Demon rammed into his side, he
didn’t even see it coming.  The lion felt the jaguar claws ripping out his
belly though, while he swiped at the wolf.  It was the last thing he felt. 
After they finished with the lions, Demon shook the blood off his fur and
thought about heading for the escaping humans; the few that were not already
dead were running.  But even if they stopped running long enough to decide to
go after Cleo again, which he very much doubted, she was more than a match for
a few humans.  Especially when they smelled like blood and death and were
bumbling through the trees like frightened rabbits.

With a growl of disgust,
Demon led them back towards the compound and hopefully a real fight.

***

Arnaud Gerent looked at
the ragged hole where his nose used to be in the mirror and cursed viciously. 
The blood had stopped but the hole in the center of his nightmarish visage
looked the same size.  “Why isn’t it healing?”

“It will, but your body
will heal the life-threatening wound first,” his second in command assured him,
doing his best not to look Arnaud in the mangled face.  Slightly shorter than
Arnaud’s 6’ 3”, he had the usual gold good looks of the lion clan, strong
bodied and big framed.  But there was a weakness to his eyes that Arnaud
approved of.  Unlike his father, he would never be foolish enough to surround
himself with men who could be a threat to his position.  The significantly
younger lion was clever enough to know what he needed to do, and submissive
enough to do it without question.

Lawrence kept his eyes on
the chest wound, watching as it slowly knit itself from the inside out.  “The
hole she put in your chest is almost healed.” 

At the reminder that it
was a woman who did this, Arnaud snapped his teeth and hissed, making Lawrence
flinch.  The pain that the movement caused his face was nothing to the burning
fire in his chest.  The bitch had nearly killed him, would have if that was
what she wanted.  It was untenable.  He roared and pounded both fists on the
mirror before him breaking it and sending shards of glass raining to mix with
the blood already coating the sink and floors around him.

He turned and pushed his
second nearly through the wall, stomping into the master suite without a care of
the blood and glass he trailed through the all-white room.

“I want her back alive. 
I want to cut her into little pieces and salt the wounds while she screams.” 
His voice had dropped to a fierce growl of rage that spewed out.  “I’m going to
rip her fucking heart out.”

Seeing the look on his
second’s face, he hissed again.  That the young lion had doubts that he could
handle her was clear in the eyes that refused to meet his.  Arnaud roared again,
“Bring me that
bitch
in chains!”

His second headed for the
door while Arnaud pulled the heavy solid oak dresser from the wall and tossed
it through the floor to ceiling sliding doors as if it was a toy.  It landed in
the infinity pool along with the screen door, but the ache in his chest and
fatigue that dogged him sent him into another rage.
  She had nearly killed
him. 

He heard a thud and
turned to the door just as Lawrence came flying back through it, hit the wall
leading to the closet, and kept going, leaving only a man-sized hole where he
hit.  Arnaud watched him fly, feeling like time was moving somehow slower.  He
blinked at the hole in his wall, and then turned.  When he looked back to the
double doors that were swinging listlessly open and in pieces, it was filled
with the Lionsgate pack.  Lucas Gibbs stood before them, his face partially
shifted in his anger, making his cheeks and jawline look like a knife’s edge,
his hair nearly a mane, his nose flatter, and his teeth, which he had bared, looking
like serrated death.  Looking into the raging gold of his fully shifted eyes,
Arnaud felt all the blood that had been raging through his brain with his anger
drain to his suddenly trembling knees.  He did not even glance at the men that
stood behind the behemoth that was Lucas Gibbs, or the guns they carried.  He
was too busy staring at his own death.

“I could say a lot of
things about how fucking stupid you have to be to attack my home, endanger
my
mate
, shoot and almost kill my man,” Gibbs voice was more lion than man,
coming from a low growly register that Arnaud could feel in his bones.  “Probably,
you have some insane fucking reason you think entitles you to
my daughter.
” 
He bit out the words, and each one felt like a nip directly on Arnaud’s abraded
nerves.  “But frankly, I could give a fuck.”  Then, he opened his hands and
Arnaud watched the claws pop out. Each ‘snick, snick, snick’ a threat and a
promise.   “You wanted my attention. 
You got it
.”

Unfortunately, it also
reminded him of the dainty Cleo Gibbs doing the same thing, with the same
threat behind it.  He felt the burn in his chest flare as he remembered what
damage the small, seemingly fragile girl had managed, and again his rage
flared.  He was not going to lose to this nobody of a soldier who was beneath
him in every way.  With a roar, he threw himself at the bigger and heavily
armed men, shifting as he went and aiming with his shifted jaws for Gibbs’
throat.  If he was going to die today, he would make sure Gibbs went with him.