Jaguar's Kiss (Lone Pine Pride) (2 page)

“I was saving that seat for Patch.”

Kelly doffed his cowboy hat and reached across her to set it on the empty seat on her other side. “Now you’re saving that seat for Patch.” He winked. “I know you weren’t trying to subtly tell me to get lost just then. My manly ego couldn’t stand the disappointment if you rebuffed me, fair Lila.”

“Where does a cowboy learn a word like
rebuff
?”

He leaned in close to her, light brown eyes twinkling. “Can you keep a secret? The cowboy thing is all an act to get girls. I’m secretly a literary scholar with a weakness for Renaissance poetry.”

“You can’t use Renaissance poetry to get girls? I’d think they would eat it up with a spoon.”

“I could,” Kelly acknowledged with a shrug. “But the cowboy stuff is easier. Just a little swagger and a few
yes, ma’ams
and
y’alls
and they’re eating out of my hand. Or anything else I want them to be eating.”

She rolled her eyes as he wagged his brows in exaggerated lechery. “You are a bad boy, Kelly Mather.”

He laughed, sun-lined eyes crinkling. “I’ll take that as a compliment, Lila Fallon.”

She grinned at him, everything fun and light and easy. As it was supposed to be. As
she
was supposed to be. No niggling jitters. No doubts.

She wasn’t a coward. She was a valuable member of the pride. She may not be the Alpha’s mate her mother was yet, but her mother had been in the position for twenty-five years. Lila would grow into it. And maybe she wasn’t madly in love with Roman, but they’d grow into each other too.

She wasn’t letting other people run her life. She was choosing the right path for her, which just also happened to be the right path for the pride and the one her parents had always wanted her to take. Everything was going to go exactly as planned. Everything was
fine
.

Lila settled in next to Kelly for a good, long flirt.

Chapter Two

Santiago Flores was giving serious thought to murdering Kelly Mather.

Not that it was Kelly’s fault. He was a genuinely nice guy who would flirt with a rock if it stood still long enough. No, the reason Santiago wanted Kelly dead and safely stowed beneath six feet of dirt was perched on the chair beside him in a frilly white dress, laughing and leaning in to touch his arm and batting her goddamn eyelashes.

Lila Fallon. The bane of Santiago’s existence. His personal curse.

Not that it was her fault either, if he was honest. Lila had never done anything to encourage him, beyond her usual friendly flirtation and she hadn’t done even that in years.

No, it was all on him. No one to blame but himself.

Five years ago, when he’d first come up to Montana from California, he’d only planned on staying a week, two at most. His career was just starting to take off and he’d landed a job designing a vacation escape in the mountains for one of his Beverly Hills clients. He’d come to survey the site and tailor the house design to the surroundings.

He’d dropped by the pride lands to see what all the fuss about Lone Pine was and to catch up with Mateo, a leopard from Los Angeles who’d moved up to join a few years earlier.

Then he’d clapped eyes on Lila Fallon.

She’d been playing football. In a skirt. More worried about her manicure than scoring a touchdown, but no one in the casual pick-up game had minded her skewed priorities. They’d laughed and teased with the easy byplay of a group that had known each other their entire lives. Santiago had felt a pang in his chest when he realized what it was he was seeing.
Family
. It had been a while since he’d had anything resembling one. Raised by a single mother who was just as happy on her own as he was, he’d never had that.

Santiago had watched the game, hypnotized by the way Lila’s long golden legs would eat up the yards whenever they (carefully, so as not to chip a nail) handed her the ball. She was wearing strappy sandals and actually had a pom-pom attached to her pony tail, but even looking like a renegade cheerleader let loose in the middle of the plays, it was impossible not to admire her grace and athleticism.

She wasn’t the only girl on the field—her friend Patch was quarterbacking the opposing team—but she might as well have been for all Santiago could see.

Then two of their number had been called away by a senior member of the pride and Lila had spotted Santiago and Mateo watching the game. She’d danced over—it could hardly be called walking, the way she did it.

“Who’s your friend, Mateo?” she’d asked, eyeing Santiago with open interest.

“Santiago Flores. Old friend from LA. I’m trying to convince him he’s a fool not to join Lone Pine.”

“Is that so? And what do you think, Mr. Flores? Do you like what you see?” she’d purred, tilting her chin down the better to look up at him beneath her lashes, her gaze filled with a warm invitation that made his blood heat, even though he told himself she was too young for him to take her up on it.

“It is beautiful,” he replied, glancing to the mountains in the distance then back to her, so she could take that however she liked.

“We’re more than just beautiful.” She tipped her head toward the game. “Come play with us. Let us show you what the pride’s all about.”

“And what’s that?”

She smiled, eyes twinkling. “
Fun
.”

Santiago blinked. He didn’t have fun. It wasn’t his style. That wasn’t to say he didn’t enjoy himself, but he wasn’t playful the way the lions on the field were. He looked out for himself. Always. And when you did that, there wasn’t always a lot of time for goofing off.

“Come on, Santiago Flores,” she’d wheedled. “You know you want to.”

It was no use resisting. She’d beg and flirt and cajole until the two of them agreed to fill in, but the truth was he wanted to play. She made him want that playfulness.

Santiago had found himself on Patch’s team—a tomboy in a Seahawks jersey with a mop of thick dark hair shoved underneath a baseball cap. She was a dictator on the field with an arm like Joe Montana. It would have been a runaway, except for the fact that none of the players on his team seemed willing to tackle Lila so all the opposition had to do was hand her the ball.

Patch had called the defense into a huddle, glowering fiercely up at all the big strong cats. “Santiago, defend Lila. If she scores, I’m telling the Alpha you’re a pussy who should be barred from pride lands forever.”

The others had laughed and the guy next to Santiago clapped him on the shoulder. “She’ll do it too. And the Alpha listens to Patch.”

Santiago grinned. “She won’t get anywhere near the end zone.”

The huddle broke up and Santiago took his position opposite Lila. His muscles were warm, his body relaxed, and his mind at ease among his fellow shifters in a way he’d never felt in any other community. No wonder Mateo loved it here.

Lila bounced on the opposite side of the line of scrimmage, her ponytail swinging as she trash talked. “You’re going down, Flores. I’m like a cheetah. You’re hopelessly outmatched, boyo.”

Santiago had never bothered with trash talk in sports. He just looked at Lila and smiled—and damned if her cheeks didn’t turn pink.

The ball was snapped and the quarterback passed it off to Lila. Her long, graceful legs stretched out in a dead run and Santiago gave pursuit. Damn, she was fast. Hell, maybe she
was
a cheetah. Lone Pine was known for taking cats of all types. He’d never met a cheetah shifter before, but he’d believe it of Lila—all long lines and grace.

But fast as she was, Santiago was faster. He caught her with an arm around her waist, swinging her up and around and off her feet. She squealed, clinging to the football as he took them both to the ground, cradling her against his chest so his body took the brunt of the impact.

She lay against him, both breathing hard, her body so warm and soft and smelling like apples. Suddenly things weren’t so playful. He should let her go. Open his arms and help her to her feet. The play was over, the rest of the players running toward them to set a new line of scrimmage. He needed to let her go…

But Lila wasn’t moving either. She was perfectly still in his arms, like fresh-caught prey waiting to see what the predator would do with it. He spread his hand over her abdomen, one thumb against her ribcage, just beneath her breast, and heard a throaty gasp.

“I guess you aren’t such a pussy after all.”

Santiago jerked his hands off Lila as Patch came to stand over them. She extended both hands to tug Lila to her feet and Santiago rolled away to rise, fighting his body’s reaction. Lila didn’t look at him, but her face was flushed—he hoped from more than the run.

They returned to the game and Lila scored on the next play—Santiago preoccupied with thinking about baseball statistics and Margaret Thatcher. The game broke up after that, shifters scattering to their evening tasks, Lila and Patch wandering off arm in arm, but not before Patch grinned at him with a “Not bad, Flores” and Lila tossed him another look under her lashes with “Not bad at all.”

Mateo clapped him on the shoulder and jerked his head toward what looked like low-rise apartments. “Come on. Let’s get cleaned up before you meet the Alpha.”

Santiago had made it about five steps down the path before he had to ask. “Who is she?”

“Lila?” Mateo asked, somehow managing to seem surprised and not surprised at all at the same time. “She’s the Alpha’s only daughter.”

“Lioness.” Santiago cringed. Lions were the worst when it came to their rigid attachment to only dating their own kind.

“Yeah, that’s strike one,” Mateo agreed. “The Alpha’s barely legal daughter is strike two. And engaged to the Alpha’s successor is a big old strike three. Don’t get your hopes up,
amigo
.”

“Who’s getting their hopes up? It’s just the first time I’ve played football with a girl in a skirt.”

He hadn’t seen Lila again for the rest of his visit.

She was just eighteen then. Too young for him and wildly off limits even if her age hadn’t been an issue. It would have been idiotic to stay for her. So he told himself he stayed because Montana was gorgeous, the work was good, and he wanted that family connection being part of a pride could give him—which, as a jaguar, he could only get at Lone Pine.

He told himself that staying had absolutely nothing to do with Lila Fallon. But he could only lie to himself for so long.

He’d built a life he loved here. Sure, he wasn’t architect-to-the-stars like he’d originally dreamed, but this was even better, designing luxury vacation homes that flowed out of nature and melted seamlessly into their surroundings. He was in demand, and he’d even saved enough to build his own dream home in a secluded area a few miles off the pride lands.

He and Mateo were closer than ever, and Patch, of all people, had become one of his best friends. He’d bonded more with the other outliers than he had with the core lions, but that was to be expected.

It was a good life.

But he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Lila. He knew her marriage to Roman had been pre-ordained. The future Alpha seemed like a nice enough guy, though Santiago didn’t know him well. Santiago might have been jealous, but Lila and Roman had never acted like a couple. Neither of them seemed particularly interested in the future that fate had laid out for them. Santiago kept waiting for Lila to wake up and smell the options, for her to see that she could take hold of her life and turn it into whatever she wanted it to be, but she never did.

Their paths hadn’t crossed often. For the first four years she’d been commuting to the nearby university for classes and spending her free time with the other young shifters. Santiago hadn’t been invited to any more football games and she had never again tried to lure him in with a promise of fun. When they did interact, it was civil and distant. Polite. Lila was always polite.

He didn’t know why he’d given her a hard time before the meeting today. He shouldn’t have taken his bad mood out on her, but sometimes he just wanted to shake her until she realized she didn’t have to be the perfect puppet.

He’d been on edge ever since he’d gotten the notice for the pride meeting. He didn’t particularly care for being summoned in—no matter how much he liked and respected the Alpha—and he
really
didn’t care for the rumors he’d been hearing from the new arrivals. Things were far too unstable in the south.

He had taken to hanging around the pride lands more—not because he felt unsafe on his own, but because he wanted to keep an eye on Lila. Even if she was the most protected woman in the pride, he still felt like she wasn’t safe unless
he
was keeping her safe.

The possessiveness was irrational, but Santiago hadn’t lived as long as he did on his own without trusting his instincts and his instincts told him there was more to Lila Fallon than even she knew. More than a flirt and an obedient daughter. More than manicures and pretty shoes.

And whatever that
more
was, his instincts wouldn’t stop screaming that it was
his
. And he protected what was his.

He closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of her flirting with Kelly and the handful of other young lions who had flocked to her. This obsession wasn’t healthy. If he couldn’t get it under control, he was going to need to leave the pride, but every cell in his body rebelled at the idea of leaving her.