Craving Her (Keeping Her Series Book 4) (12 page)

Shawn and Logan circled
the lions until Ian dumped the large body and shook the blood off his muzzle. 
They all turned to watch Lucas with the first lion, but between him and Cleo,
they had already finished.  Lucas shifted first, heading for Miley as soon as
it was clear no one else was showing up.

He picked her up; naked
and covered in blood, he gave the appearance of a marauding Viking storming off
with his prize.  Cleo shifted and Shawn circled her, checking for damages
before he swung up and over the area.  Seeing no more danger, he finally landed
beside her with Ian in lion form at her side.  If a 700-pound teenage lion
could prance, he was.  The wolf had disappeared into the brush, probably
following Lucas and doing his own check.

Shawn shifted and walked
around Cleo, checking one more time to make sure she was unharmed.  It didn’t
occur to him that he was naked and splattered with the blood of his enemy.  He
started wiping blood away from Cleo to check for wounds.  But none of the blood
was hers.

“Ian,” she said, her
voice breathy and attention hard on Shawn as he circled her with his eyes and
hands, intent on checking her out.  “You should leave. Now.”

Hearing the smoldering in
her voice and belatedly understanding what her body was telling him, Shawn
froze at her side.  His eyes went to hers and instantly he was hard and
grateful that Ian was behind his back and not in a position to see the reaction
he couldn’t hide.

Cleo ate him with her
eyes as her brother snorted and took off on four legs with a disgusted chuff. 
But her brother’s sensibilities were the least of his problems.  He needed to
get Cleo somewhere fast, or they would be going completely wild and coupling on
the bodies of their enemies, literally.  He could feel the repressed need
crashing down on him like a freight train.  With a curse and a hard time
thinking actual coherent thoughts, he grabbed her hand and started running. 
Cleo actually laughed, and it was such a fucking sexy laugh he felt it in his
dick.  At this point he was hard as a pike as it was.  More importantly, she
followed him, running beside him with that laugh trailing behind and a bright
gleam in her eyes that matched the heat in his.

It might not be civilized
or even remotely human, but after the fight all he could think about was
fucking his mate.  And as with everything else, his mate was matching him in
passion, and exceeding him in the way she ate life.  She was fucking amazing,
and he could not wait another minute to claim her as his.

Just as he had accepted that
no way were they going to make their destination before he jumped her, she
shook him off and bolted, giving him one laugh-filled challenging look over her
shoulder as she went.

Narrowing his eyes on her
sexy ass as she disappeared, he felt the hunter in him awaken.  With his eyes
shifting ahead of him, Shawn smiled, and if Cleo had seen it she might have
been worried.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Cleo shifted and ran
faster when she heard the hawk caw above her.  Chances were Shawn knew exactly
where she was every second with those eyes of his, but no way could he take her
as a bird.  He was not likely to go for her eyes or bleed her till she was
weak, so she had the advantage.  Of course, she was never going to outrun a
hawk in flight, so something was going to have to give.  Then he started
bombing her which she did not expect.  It was the third time he turned her
coming at her face that way, that she realized he was herding her.  By then she
knew exactly where he was taking her and why.  If anyone had seen the smile on
her lion face they might have been freaked out, but she was having fun and more
importantly, completely turned on, and she had been since the fight ended and
Shawn shifted all naked and blood-spattered badass.

Now she was running
through Lionsgate land feeling all needy and primal, and her mate was chasing
her like he was going to claim her hard and fast wherever he caught her,
whether she liked it or not.

It was
awesome.

With one last swipe and
caw, Cleo found herself turned one last time and they were in the overgrown
yard of the old winery house.  She shifted on the jump to the porch and took
the door as a human, her laugh trailing tauntingly behind her when she heard
Shawn landing on human feet right behind her.

The house had been the
first on the property and had housed the winery manager and his wife until they
moved into a bigger home with their growing family.  It was a one-room, one-bath,
900-square-foot cottage, so it was tiny, though cleaned regularly and used by
business guests on the rare occasion when they were not housed in a luxury
hotel downtown.  In this instance, the only thing that mattered was that it had
a bed and was far, far away from her father and the rest of the pack.  Because
she had plans to make
noise.

She laughed again when a
muscled arm wrapped around her naked waist and she was yanked up and off her
feet.

“Are you trying to make
me crazy?” he asked in a heated low voice against the skin of her shoulder that
sent shivers through her body.

Like the cat she was, she
relaxed every muscle in her body and rubbed just a little.  She felt more than
heard his growl along the skin of her back.  “You can hardly complain after the
crazy you made me, for
years
.”

Instead of an answer he
swung her around so that they were front to front and she was suspended in the
air looking down at eyes that were still more raptor than man.  Every breath
she took dragged her breasts along the hair of his hard chest.  She lifted her
legs and wrapped them around his hips, determined to feel him
everywhere
,
and breathed deeply.  She had to admit it was way better to feel that giant
dick of his where it could do some good.

With her eyes on his, she
placed her tongue on her top lip and shifted her hips, rubbing wetness along
the heated length of him.  She leaned forward and spoke right into his ear.  “You
finally going to do something about this virginity of mine mate, or will I have
to throw you down and mount you myself?”  She ended with a playful nip and lick,
then another shift along the hard heat of him.

Shawn growled again, and
then tossed her so that she flew through the bedroom door, and across the room
to bounce on the bed.  She rolled and came up with a hiss and a whole different
kind of fire in her eyes.

“Do I have your attention
now?” he rumbled out, his head down and his eyes eating her up as he prowled
across the room towards her.  He was actually smiling, and it was both scary
and hot as hell.

“You have my attention, Tweedy. 
Question is,” she said, her sudden anger flowing just as fast to heat and tease,
“can you keep it?”  She stretched out her arms before her and bowed down, so
that she was wagging her ass in the air, her eyes an open challenge.  She was
so turned on she was sure her eyes were pure cat and all sex.

He moved too fast for her
to see and she was on her back and dragged around by her leg until she was at
the edge of the bed with Shawn holding her open and accessible, and there he
was, standing between her legs, a hardened warrior set on conquest.  She tried
to kick him just because she could, but he seemed to expect it, catching her
leg before she could do any damage and yanking her closer, so that he was
bending over her. He bit her shoulder blade in retaliation and she felt every
bit of moisture in her body flow to her pussy.

“You tell me if I lose
your attention, kitten, and I’ll do my best to get it back,” he growled out in
that sexy fucking voice.  Then he moved his attention down her body, his lips
heating a wet trail that started at her nipple and ended with his hot wet mouth
between her legs.  Without any preliminaries, he dug into her wetness with that
wicked tongue.

“Motherfucker,” shot out
of her mouth and her back arched without any connection to her brain.  Pushing her
hands into his hair, she dragged him closer until he was practically a part of
her, and then she had not a single thought while he forced pleasure into her, a
lick and suck at a time. 

When she was writhing and
seconds away from screaming her pleasure, he jackknifed up with his own curse
and rammed the full length of his hard heat to the core of her.  She did scream
then, as the sudden fullness and friction, and she had to admit a touch of
sweet pain, sent her right over the edge into mindless pleasure.

She came back to the feel
of his muscled back under her hands and the hard length of him filling her. 
She opened her eyes and found him watching her with a clearly satisfied look on
his face, even as it held the strain of holding himself back.  “Still with me,
kitten?”  He ran his lips across hers and smiled right into her eyes.  “I don’t
want you to miss anything.”

She grabbed him by his
hair and forced his lips back to hers hard enough to draw blood.  She nipped
and sucked at his tongue as he growled, and with the metallic taste of him all
over her mouth and his body against the rest of her she purred, “Give me
everything you got.  I can handle it.”

He chuckled.  “Of that I
have no doubt.”  The strange satisfied sound coming from Shawn was foreign
enough it had her blinking up into the gleam in his eyes.

Her hands went to his
cheeks as she studied him.  Feeling her sudden seriousness he stilled under her
hands and watched her back.

“I don’t think I’ve ever
seen you smile like that before.”  Her grin turned a little self-mocking.  “And
I’ve been watching a long time.”

He didn’t say anything
for a long moment, thinking before he spoke was just his way, and she waited
for it patiently, running her hand along his jaw.  Finally, he spoke and the
words were a warm balm to the open wound she had not realized still existed
from his rejection. “I convinced myself when you were fifteen and I realized
what you were to me that I would never have my mate.”  He pushed his hands into
her hair on either side of her face, his rough skin snagging on her silken
tresses, and dug into her scalp gently.  “I watched you grow up for six years,
kitten, and each time I saw you again, you were more fearless, cleverer, kinder,
and more fucking beautiful than I could ever have imagined.  You were
everything I wanted and nothing I could have.”  He smiled right into her eyes
and it literally took her breath away.  “Being here,” he rolled his hips,
making her gasp at the friction deep inside, “is a miracle to me, and a whole
lot to smile about.”

Cleo’s smile went
blindingly bright as she felt the tears hit her eyes.  She tried to suck it up,
but the man was killing her.  “You trying to make me cry?”

A brow went up as he
searched her face and caught the brightness of tears in her eyes, and realized
she was serious.  His smile turned wicked, and instantly, Cleo was catapulted
back into a sex smolder.  “The only time I want you to cry, kitten, is when I
blow your fucking mind with pleasure.”

Ooh, good answer.
 
Her hands went back and fisted in his hair with a little more force than
strictly necessary.  “I never thought this would be an issue with you, Shawn,
but your forcing me to say it. 
Shut up and fuck me.”

He didn’t waste another
word, but let his dick do the talking.  He pulled out and pounded in hard
enough to make his point, again and again, until she was clutching at his flesh
and growling at him to move faster.  He didn’t, showing her, again without
words, that he was in the driver seat, literally.  At one point, she tried to
push him over and take over, but the wily bastard just chuckled and wrestled
her back down where he wanted her.  And pounded her some more.

Finally, Cleo felt the
pleasure building again and nearly screamed with the need for him to move
faster.  She was cursing him loudly and colorfully when he pulled back and
flipped her to her belly, raised her hips and thrust back in.  Then he was
really moving,
at last
, and just as the pleasure hit her, he bit down on
her shoulder and growled into her skin.  She screamed as the pain of his
claiming pushed her over the edge.  Shawn followed right behind her, shuddering
his pleasure against the marked skin of her shoulder.  Cleo felt both the
shudder along her skin, and the warmth of his seed marking her deep inside. 
Even as she felt herself sinking into the soft bed below her, Shawn was
crushing her into the mattress with his weight until she could not have moved
if she wanted to.  The good news was, she didn’t want to.  Instead, she
wallowed in the feel of her mate’s weight against her back and pressed against
her ass, while her lioness purred inside her.

***

Shawn knew he was
crushing Cleo into the mattress; he just could not get himself to move just
yet.  She had drained every inch of energy from his body.  Now he was just a
husk of a man.  With a mate.  He smiled against her shoulder and she must have
felt it because she shivered and twisted enough that she could speak, and was
not in danger of suffocating.

“Is that a smug, ‘I am
man and have conquered my female smile,’ or a happy, ‘I just got laid and it
was awesome smile’?” she asked the pillow.

He let the silence drag a
bit and could feel her start to twitch beneath him.  He smiled wider.  “Can’t
it be both?”

She snorted out a laugh
and then made a sudden move to shove him off, but he was ready for it, and even
with her shifter strength, he didn’t budge. 

“Comfortable?” she asked,
finally settling back down.

He shifted so she could
feel his dick was back to a hard spike.  “Yes.”

She purred, and the sound
was like gasoline on a fire.  Suddenly he was ready and able to give her more. 
He reared back and flipped her on a surprised gasp, then he pushed open her
legs and entered her in one thrust.  Cleo arched her back and moaned her
pleasure.  And he watched her do it, his eyes absorbing every nook and curve of
her responsive body.  Then, without warning, she shot up and clamped her jaw
down where his neck met his shoulder.  She was not gentle about it.  She practically
lion mauled him, and he bled from the mark she placed there.  More feed to the
fire.  With her mouth on his shoulder and her teeth marking him as hers, he
really did lose his mind.  This time he pounded her until they both came
together, and this time when they came back down to earth, neither of them
worried about his weight holding her to the mattress.  They just slept that
way.  He did notice that Cleo fell asleep purring, and that was enough for him.

***

After the amazing
fuckfest, Cleo could tell that Shawn was going all stoic for the return to
Lionsgate.  “You do know that we can just get in our cars and head out?” she
asked him, studying his clenching chin.  They had already agreed on the lake
house since Cleo still wanted to see it.  And Shawn didn’t argue too much
despite the gleam in his eyes when she mentioned breaking in her new bed later.

He tilted his head her
way.  Cleo was struck by the very bird-like pose he sometimes employed.  Every
time he did it, she wanted to smile, but she didn’t know how he would take it
if she told him she thought he was just the cutest thing.  Looking him over in
all his naked glory, clean now, true, after the shower they had grabbed, but
still over six feet of twisted steel predator, somehow she didn’t think he
would enjoy the sentiment.  She choked back a laugh and looked away fast.  “Dad
is probably busy with Miley anyway.  The last time she was in danger they didn’t
come out of the room for a week.”

“Whether we stay or go we
need to get some clothes.  We can’t drive all the way to the lake house like
this without being arrested.”  He looked her over appreciatively.  “And the
chances of us making it without me jumping you again goes down significantly
when you’re naked.”

“Wait,” she said stopping
him, “is that your argument
for
getting clothes, or against?”

He smiled again, and like
every time he did it since they mated, she lost her breath.  She moved in
closer, which admittedly was not far to go since he had refused to stop holding
her hand, even when the path narrowed and he had to press her before him.  She
rubbed her chest up against his and purred.  “You want to get to the lake house
without being mauled by a horny lioness you need to stop smiling that sexy-ass
smile.”