Proud Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 2) (23 page)

Tears? I’d never understand women. The lions were safe, the baboons were safe, we were safe. Win-win all around. Happy tears, sure. Tears of relief I might expect too. But that incredibly sad expression that Dee turned on me I just didn’t get.

Sheba butted her head against my thigh, rubbing her cheek along the outer muscles as she passed by on the way back to the rest of the pride. Marking me, Dee would say, as one of hers. She was back at the stream before I thought to wonder if the camera had captured the moment. Something had happened between the time I’d stepped off the plane and now. The experience of the moment itself with these big cats had become more important than sharing that experience with fans with the sole goal of bolstering my image, my brand.

When had these lions become more important than my career?

And when was Dee going to stop looking so dejected?

At a loss for what else to do but wanting to do something to ease whatever pain was in Dee’s heart, I wrapped my arms around her. Comfort was all I thought to provide her. A sense of security.

“The baboons wouldn’t have come if the hunters were near,” I whispered.

She shook her head against my chest, each strand of dark hair that fell over me a spark, each spark a part of the fire kindling within, turning my thoughts to more than just comfort and security. After last night, though, I had no idea what to expect from her, how she would react. So I treated her as I did the lionesses, respecting that unpredictability, moving slowly and with permission only before taking liberties. Knowing the fragility of our bond could be broken at any moment by the wrong word, the wrong gesture, even the wrong look.

With a careful hand, I stroked Dee’s hair, the strands electric and alive beneath my palm.

The lionesses had taught me a wild heart could not be tamed—no matter how much I
needed
it to be—unless it
wanted
to be.

Did Dee want to be?

After a moment, as night closed over us, she turned up her face, the emerging stars reflected in her eyes. She voiced no objection as I leaned down and kissed her.

Sitting impotently in the dark, pierced and wounded, the Range Rover no longer offered safe haven. My arm firmly around Dee, I led her instead to the shelter of my tent. She hesitated only the briefest moment before committing herself to the narrow space barely big enough to accommodate the outspread sleeping bag between its canvas walls.

“No cameras,” I whispered, gently tugging the handheld from her fingers and depositing it safely in a dark corner, lens turned away in modesty. “This isn’t for the fans or the ratings. It’s for me, because I need you.”

How much more cliché and selfish could I sound? But what other words could express the feelings that overwhelmed me?

“No,” I amended, “that isn’t true. I need more than just
you
. I need parts of you I’ve never needed from a woman before. I need your heart, your soul, the very breath of you.”

Oh god, she didn’t look convinced at how sincere I was. Was I better at acting the romantic lead than actually being one? Taking a deep breath, I gave it my last effort. “Mostly I need you to need that too. Because if you don’t need me to have all of you, then none of what I need matters. Please, tell me, what do you need?”

She smiled then, a soft smile, a tremulous smile, but one so radiant to my eyes it pierced the darkness between us. “That’s exactly what I need. For you to ask what I need. To wonder what I might need. To think that I might need anything at all. Have you ever asked anyone else what
they
might need?”

“Of cour—” I started to respond without thinking. But that was the whole point here—for me to think. When was the last time I had put someone else’s needs before mine? As I probed deeper, the question fast became had I
ever
done so.

“Mary Sanders,” I said at last. “I asked her what she wanted in exchange for a kiss.”

“And did you give it to her?”

“I got my kiss, yes. My first, by the way. It cost me two weeks detention when I was caught slipping her the answers to a geography test. That’s a scar I’ve carried all my life. I’ve spent the last 20-some-odd years trying to avoid that same pain. I guess you could say Mary Sanders is why I’m the self-centered egoist I am today. Or was, until this week. Tell me what you need in exchange for my heart and I’ll get it for you—even it costs me a month’s detention this time.”

“What if I said I need you to be serious for once?”

“What, you don’t think detention is serious? Then what would be serious enough for you?”

“This.” She blew breath into my mouth.

I closed my eyes, absorbing her into me.

Then, trusting to the lions outside to keep us safe, we came together in a slow and sensual dance. I filled my palms with the flesh of her, my senses with her essence. My tongue worshiped her and my lips caught her cries. I came inside her, fountaining her with promises.

All I wanted from her was a simple
yes
.

I fell asleep to a chorus of
yeses
ringing in my ears, but whether they came from her lips or they were all from my dreams I couldn’t know. Not that night.

But I slept in hope of what morning would bring.

We slept in the next day. Or rather, lay in. I still woke before sunrise, even before Dee opened her eyes. Spooned around her, I enjoyed the slight weight of her breasts in my hand and the silk of her legs twined in mine. Nuzzling her neck, I felt myself responding to her nearness, her availability.

Only…

Worrisomely, I stopped well-short of a full hard-on.

“Mmmm.” Dee wriggled closer into me, matching her curves to my hollows. The resulting fit, even though I wasn’t fitted in her, was pleasant perfection.

It was a new sensation for me, not to be driving toward sex but to be satisfying each other by the mere act of holding one another. Her arm snaked around mine, her hand covering my hand that covered her breasts. Not asking for anything more. When I allowed myself to stop worrying, I realized it wasn’t that I
couldn’t
get it up, it was that I didn’t need to. That this moment was enough.

I settled into enjoying it, listening to her soft breathing, the crickets chirping and the final yaps of hunting hyenas fading before the morning light. One moment turned into ten turned into twenty before another natural urge kicked in, resolving quickly from a suggestion to a demand.

Carefully, reluctantly, I untwined myself from her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I assured the disappointment in her tone. “I just have to pee.”

The mosquitoes were out in force, though they’d be seeking shade and shelter soon enough once the sun rose. Something else, though, demanded my attention; I just wasn’t sure what. Busying myself on the edge of the camp, I scanned around, hoping to catch a clue for my unease.

That clue turned out to be Mr. Obvious with a hint by the stream.

The lions were gone.

“Dee! Get out here!”

She was barely past the tent flap when her gaze snapped along mine to where the lions weren’t.

“Dammit!”

Before I’d even shaken myself dry, she’d disappeared back into the tent to claim her clothes. I followed after, but she was already crawling out of the narrow tent, shirt unbuttoned, shorts unzipped, socks and boots in one hand, and draping the handheld around her neck with the other.

“Even Caesar’s gone,” she called to me as I shucked into shorts and shirt and boots. She ducked back in again to claim her holster and the .38. “Why can’t they hunt at night like respectable cats?”

The irritation didn’t fool me, try though it might to mask her deeper worry.

A worry far from unfounded as a distant
thwocking
stabbed a chill through me as sharp and cold as an icepick.

“That way.” Dee pointed the direction of the helicopter. “Over the
dambo
.”

Over the lions’ new hunting ground.

The chill in me deepened as the helicopter went silent.

“They’ve found our lions.” Dee was ghost white, the fear in her voice, in her eyes palpable. Not for one second did I believe her fear was for anything other than the lions—not for me, not for her.

“So they’ll be hunting the lions who are on their hunt.” I was finally catching up.

Face grim, Dee slipped on her safari boots. “And we’ll be hunting them.”

I admired her courage, but I also admired reason. “Let me just remind you again you have a .38. They have at least one high-powered rifle capable of accurately hitting its target at 500 yards or more. At that distance, you won’t even come close to spitting at them.”

“Yeah, but we have surprise. Who would be stupid enough to do what we’re doing?”

Who indeed?

Was her life really worth the safety of the pride?

Would I allow her foolish determination to go that far?

She struck off at a jog. What could I do but grab the air rifle and dart case and follow.

The tall veldt grass was, in patches, high enough to hide hunting lions. Hunting humans, on the other hand, were easily spotted targets. Of that, I was acutely aware as we jogged a mile to the pond.

“I hope you can handle that thing.” Dee nodded in the direction of my hip. In other, less desperate times I would have pretended to confuse what ‘thing’ she was referring to. “Those darts have no real distance.” I let the obvious joke there pass as well.

What I didn’t let pass was the rush of adrenaline. I didn’t have to fake my fear, but maybe because I’d faked courage so often in the past, I knew how to shape that fear into the same grim determination Dee had.

“Don’t worry, I can handle it.” And even as I said it, I believed it. But whether I
could
handle it was a far different question than whether I
would
. What the hell was I doing? Why would someone in my success bracket even contemplate the risk we were taking now? This was no controlled environment where the risks, though very real, were also well-mitigated. Truth was, I trusted the finned and four-legged sharks a great deal more than the two-legged kind we hunted now.

How easy would it be to just let them have Brutus? He was old, and there was already a half-grown cub on the way to take his place. Wasn’t that Brutus’ job—to sacrifice himself for his family, to protect his pride?

And my job was what? To throw Brutus under the bus—or in front of a bullet? Was I really going to let him be more of a man than me?

Or let Dee be?

They were all my family now. My pride.

In the end, though, it was more than the obligation of responsibility that forced me forward. It was the acceptance that, for Dee, I would do anything.

Even this.