Lion In Wait (A Paranormal Alpha Lion Romance) (11 page)

“I’ll never get over how you can do that,” she said, digging into the sack. “Holy shit, a comforter? Why—?”

Time for another kiss. “Because I know how much you complain about these. And anyway, yeah, you get so cold at night that I’m pretty sure you’re going to drain my body heat and leave me hypothermic at some point. Plus, it’s soft. I like soft.”

It was such a simple thing, just a blanket, but as she looked at it, and ran her hands through the fuzzy backing, and felt the weight on her arms when she pulled it around herself, tears ran down Cass’s cheeks and she couldn’t stop smiling.

“I hope I didn’t get the wrong color,” he smiled, lying beside her, tucking one end of the blanket around Cass’s hips, and sliding underneath. He spooned her, inhaling the scent of her soft, lavender-scented shampoo, and growling deep down. “The blue matches your eyes.”

She sniffed, but the tears were gone. “You’re physically incapable of not being smooth, huh? The color is perfect, but you forgot to answer my question.”

“Well,” he said, kissing the spot beneath her ear that got Cass wiggling. “I’m sure I have my moments. After all, I did fall for your Trekkie trap, didn’t I?”

“I know it’s hard,” Cass said in a whisper. “If you don’t want to tell me, just say so. But—”

“I gave up,” he said. “I left the pride, left my family. It’s kind of... it happens. It isn’t very rare that one of us goes and experiences life somewhere else, but unless we’re ready to give our all to the pride, we don’t go back.”

“Sounds very Amish.”

Lex smiled at her, his eyes twinkling even in the vague light coming through the blanket. “Yeah, sorta, I guess,” he laughed. “I don’t know what I expected to find, but all I ended up with was a bunch of credit cards, a bunch of junk I didn’t need, and an apartment in some college town in Oklahoma. Let that register for a second.”

She stifled a laugh. “Okay, so, a were-lion ends up living in some bachelor pad apartment in
Oklahoma
? How the hell?”

He got very serious all of a sudden. “I asked myself that over and over and over. I never shifted, never felt like I was me, just like I was running from who I really was. And honestly, that’s what I was doing, just running, pointlessly, for ever and ever. So, I ran again, convinced that if I just did it
one last time
that everything would be fine.”

“Don’t tell me you got caught by some school and turned into a mascot?”

“I never even thought of that as a possibility, but that may have been worse. That might be the only thing that could have been worse. No, I ended up on the run, sometimes sleeping in the woods, or the desert, or wherever. Other times I slept in cheap motels if I could scrape together the money.”

Cass was shaking her head. “I guess I owe you an apology.”

He gave her a confused quirk of an eyebrow. “Why?”

“You said our stories weren’t all that different. I didn’t really believe you until now.”

Lex nodded. “Well, either way, in the end, I tried to run one too many times. Everything caught up with me, and I just went sort of... feral, I guess. I got shot and captured by some half-assed zoo outside of Knoxville. I have no idea where they thought I came from, but I lasted with them about a month before they sold me to Lyle.”

“Holy shit,” Cass said. “I had no idea.”

“No one did, because I never told anyone. But now you know where I came from, I know where you came from, and we can put all of that behind us. We can just be who we want to be for the first time in... well in my life, anyway.”

“Mine too,” she whispered. “Let’s, yeah, let’s do exactly that.”

Both of them stayed in place, frozen and silent, for a moment; just breathing, just being with one another.

She turned to face him, his hardness already swelling so that it pushed between her legs, just where she wanted him. Reaching down, Cass adjusted her lion so that his cock rested against her sex. Already she was so ready, so wet that he could have slid right in, but for that moment, the two of them were perfectly happy to just lie there, staring at each other.

“Also, yeah, you sprung the Trekkie trap, but there’s nothing wrong with being a Trekkie,” she said, kissing Lex’s bottom lip and nibbling just a little. He chuckled too, which relieved her. The last thing she wanted was to make some obnoxious joke and make him feel like an idiot. “If you can quote an episode, I’ll let you do whatever you want to me.”

“Any particular one?” his breath slid around Cass’s open lips, his taste filling her in the instant before he returned her kiss.

She shrugged and opened her eyes, staring straight into his. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “But I’ll tell you that my favorite captain is Picard.”

Lex watched her face from so close she could feel his breath, she could taste his anticipation. “Well if that’s not good enough pillow talk, I don’t know what is.”

“So, are you gonna manage, or are you faking?”

He narrowed his eyes, doing his best to take on that dangerous, terrifying look he had when he was about to pop the eyeballs out of Lyle’s skull. He clenched his jaw, moving it back and forth, which flexed the muscles on the sides of his face, pushing his beautifully sculpted cheekbones out even more.

And then in an absolutely terrible, appalling, almost alarmingly poor English accent, Lex – the man who stood almost seven feet tall, weighed enough to make the mattress on a Motel Six bed actually move when he lay down – said “Mr. Data? Engage.”

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this or that the occasion upon which to say it is actually real. But that horrible accent got me so excited that if you don’t get on top of me right this second, I’m probably going to rip all the hair out of your forearms. No more waiting. No more being scared of hurting me or anything else.”

She made a halting move toward him, and after jokingly protecting his arms, Lex let Cass catch him, and then caught her in a deep, powerful kiss that forced her head backwards, into the folds of blanket and pillows.

His next kiss was right on her lips, soft, and smooth and gentle, but the one after that forced them apart, and he drank deeply, breathing her in, his tongue pushing into her and swirling in Cass’s mouth.

“When you kiss me,” she whispered, “I can feel it in my toes. I want every inch of you, every shred of you, Lex, and I don’t even understand why you’re here. It feels like it doesn’t matter, it feels like—”

“Because it doesn’t,” he cut her off, then sucked her lip between his teeth, and swept his hand up her bare chest to cup her breast and gently pinch her nipple in the crotch of his index and middle fingers. When she arched her back and moaned softly, he took the hint and squeezed just a little harder, pinched a little more eagerly. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing does except that you’re here, and I’m here.”

“But you’re a
lion
,” Cass said, half smiling and half serious. “I never even knew you existed, I thought all that stuff about werewolves, vampires, whatever, I thought it was just stories.”

He had kissed halfway down her chest by that point, but Lex shoved Cass’s knees apart so that he felt her wetness against his belly and she felt his hard, muscled stomach grind down against her clit. Little shudders crept through her that seemed to give him more hungry energy.

Tongue swirling on a pivot between her breasts, hands gripping, and torso grinding, Lex groaned at the taste of sweat that had run down Cass’s neck and to where his tongue pleased her skin.

“You know what else some people think is just a silly story?”

She shook her head, drawing a short, sharp breath at the little nibble he gave on her nipple, and then the gentle suck and twirl of his tongue on her pebbled, aching flesh.

“True love,” he whispered, his soft breath prickling her nipple before he sucked again. “True, pure, honest love. They’d think me existing was just as ridiculous as that.”

“I think I was one of them,” she said, running her fingers through Lex’s hair. “But now, I... I’m not so—oh!”

Her surprise came in a gasp when his finger slid inside her waiting sex, and he curled it upward, lingering on that place that drove her wild. Cass wiggled her hips, letting him explore deeper, as he slid his tongue along the line running down her chest, to her navel. He nipped, he bit when she moaned, and pushed his finger just a little deeper, until he heard a squeal and Cass pulled her legs up as the pleasure spread from her core to the tips of her toes.

“I’m just as real as love,” Lex growled. “If there’s anything in the world you don’t need to worry about, it’s that.”

“Yeah, well,” she took another breath as he sucked at her again, his tongue sliding along the line of her hip and then into the small tuft of hair above her cleft. “I think that as long as we’ve got each other, neither of us has much to worry about.”

He growled again, the sound vibrating on his lips and then moving through Cass’s most sensitive parts. Lex slid his tongue a little further, teasing her clit as he rotated his finger slowly, tantalizingly, inside her.

“I can’t,” she gasped, grabbing for his hair. “I can’t believe this is real, I can’t believe how good this feels. How... just... how?”

“It feels this good,” he flicked his tongue across her, then growled again, making Cass’s entire body tingle, “because it’s supposed to feel this good. Because we’re meant for each other, because,” he trailed off. A second later, his gentle licks, his patient sucks and hot kisses moved down the fringe of Cass’s pussy, to the deepest part of her inner thigh.

If anyone else touched her there, it had always just tickled, but when he did it, when he traced those lines with his teeth, she felt the warmth, the slickness of sex slide out of her. “I don’t want anyone but you,” she whispered. “Not now, not ever. I’ve never felt this alive.”

“Are you sure?”

“You’re asking?” Cass let out a laugh, followed by a pleasured sigh as Lex kissed her thigh, licked her, tasted her sex, and then bit gingerly beside. “Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, oh God yes, I’m sure. I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

The gentle bite turned harder, hotter, stronger. It stung for a moment, and then her entire body washed over with a tide of pain that went deep, and almost immediately melted into sweet, sticky, molasses-like tension.

She grabbed his head, and a moment later, her lion began kissing back up her body, lingering on her belly button, her waist, and then her nipples before touching his mouth to hers, parting her lips, and drinking her again.

“Now,” she whispered, between kisses. “I can’t wait anymore, don’t make me. Give me what I need, or we’re going back to me ripping the hair off your forearms.”

“There’s more of it now,” he growled, sucking a kiss on her neck, and teasing her with the rounded tip of his cock in a slow stroke up her, then back down.

She grabbed one of his arms, just to test, and sure enough, where before there was barely any hair at all, now it was longer and thicker. “How?”

“Just happens,” he said. “My eyes get brighter, my teeth kind of grow. But only when I’m with the person I’m meant for. Only when I’m with my...”

“Your what?” Cass looped her legs around his body, trying to clutch him closer with her ankles. “With your girl?”

“Mate,” Lex corrected her. “Much more serious.”

Just the word made her head swim.

Mate? Mate. Is this real? Am I dreaming? Am I half dead, soulless and alone in that damn trailer again? Or is this really happening?

Where Lex’s teeth dug deep, Cass felt an unearthly warmth emanating up her body, through her spirit. She felt alive, lifted, flaring with ecstasy. And when she opened her eyes to find her unlikely, impossible, but achingly real lover on top of her, with those warm brown eyes melting into her soul? She knew right then, at that exact moment, that whatever had led her to this, whatever pain, whatever agony and suffering and confusion and loss?

“It was all for a reason,” she whispered, not even aware of the tears running down her cheeks before Lex kissed them away with a sweep of his lips.

“Everything is,” he whispered. Lex’s voice slid across Cass’s ears, inside her soul, filling her with warmth, and that familiar safe security he gave her.

“Scratch me,” he hissed. “Drag those nails down my back. Make me hurt.”

She did, but gingerly at first. He threw his head back, hissing in pleasure. “Harder,” he groaned, pushing deeper inside Cass’s aching, slick, waiting sex. “Harder, harder, make it hurt.”

With a grin, Cass tried again, digging her nails in harder, and sinking her teeth into the forearm where Lex propped himself beside her head. She turned and bit, then turned the other way, biting down to keep from screaming as he wrestled his cock further, achingly, sweetly further, inside.

“I never want this to change,” she hissed as he sunk in to the hilt, filling every inch of Cass’s body with his erection. “I want it to always be you, and be me. Is that... can that happen?”

Sweat ran down Lex’s semi-shaven jaw, collected on his chin and fell into the hollow of Cass’s throat. He licked, he sucked again, and thrust deeper, harder and hungrier.

His breathing grew heavier, and each time Cass lifted her hips to invite him deeper, he took her up on it, driving into her. She threw back her head, and then a moment later, flung off the blanket covering them so that her body could feel the cool air, but also so she could see her mate in his nakedness, and he could see her.

“Bite... me,” he groaned, as the pulsing between Cass’s legs tightened every little muscle around Lex. “Bite me, Cass.”

Her name on his lips sent a different sort of thrill entirely snaking down Cass’s belly and making her somehow wetter, more ready than she was before, which she didn’t even realize was possible.

Lex’s teeth massaged one of her stiff, sweetly aching nipples before she remembered what he wanted. She slid down a tiny bit, just enough that the heat from his heavy balls pressed against her most sensitive parts. It crept through her, warmed her to the core, sending electricity down that curled her toes, making her grip the rough, sweat-wet sheets against the palms of her feet.

She felt him thicken and begin to twitch in her deepest parts, and managed to squeeze a hand between their clenched, sweaty bodies and wrapped her fingers around the base of her lion’s thickness. She squeezed him tight, stroking with each of his thrusts, until he was almost panting.