Lion In Wait (A Paranormal Alpha Lion Romance) (12 page)

“Not yet,” he whispered. “You got me so close... I’m not done with you, not just yet.”

In one fluid motion, Lex flipped Cass over onto her stomach, sliding his fingers down her back hard enough to leave white trails where he pressed. Somehow, his cock never left her, though his thrusts stopped while he caught his breath.

A kiss on the back of her neck sent another electric surge around Cass’s throat, and left a trail of red flush where the pleasure crept. Before she knew it, he was deeper than he’d ever been. Lex’s tip beat a delicious rhythm up and down. Each time he drew back, Lex knew exactly where to linger to make Cass’s entire body shudder.

Each stroke brought her closer to the brink, closer to the escape she’d wanted for her whole life, but never knew.

“This is real,” she hissed, biting down hard on her bottom lip and clenching the horribly low thread-count sheet in her fist. “You... me... this...” her voice trailed into a series of uncontrolled gasps, and softly whimpered moans.

“You and me,” Lex said, his voice halting and punchy. “Just... two misfits, in love, against the...”

“World?”

Cass stopped bothering with the lip biting, stopped trying to keep herself from crying his name, and letting the pleasure drive her straight over the cliff.

With his hand tight on her shoulder, Lex braced himself, thrusting hard and heavy and deep. Each stoking drive pushed the fire in Cass’s belly deeper and deeper, made it flare hotter and brighter, until all at once, she felt him swell again.

Reaching underneath herself, she split her fingers around her entrance, feeling the sense of Lex sliding between her finger and deeper inside her than she’d ever felt anyone. She felt the beat of his heart by way of his pulse, deep inside, faster and faster with every desperate shove.

This time though, instead of stopping, he pushed harder, deeper, than ever before.

Their breath came and went together in hot bursts. Cass sucked a deep breath through her nose, thrilling at the mixed scents of their sex, their sweat.

“One last thing,” Lex said, flipping Cass over gently to her back again as the tension inside her was screaming that her climax was seconds away. “Keep your eyes open. We’re going to watch each other our first time to...”

“Oh God,” she whispered. “How is this the first time you’ve fucked me? How did we keep from doing this for so long?”

“Tired from running, I guess,” he said, grinning through the strain in his voice. Lex’s mouth fell open, his teeth longer than usual, and his eyes almost glowing. “But now we’re... you and I, we’re...”

Cass grabbed his hands away from her breasts and squeezed them as tightly as her sex squeezed his cock. She held her breath, bit her lip, but never, not once, took her eyes off this man who loved her, who took away her pain.

Lex squeezed back, his thickness swelling, ready to burst. He fought the urge to devour Cass with another kiss, he fought the urge to close his eyes and not let her through this one final wall. He fought the urge to be anywhere in the world but right where he was.

The world shook for them right then.

Their bodies intertwined, their hearts beating as one, Lex pulled her into his lap as their final shudders, the final tremors and the final pulses exploded. She felt his heat pump inside her, he relished the relentless tugging of her muscles against him, and the way she dug her nails into the backs of his huge hands.

When they were finally spent, the two collapsed in a heap, Lex sucking air, and Cass laughing in the release, in the sweet safety of her afterglow.

Neither said a word for long enough for both of them to catch their breath.

“Thank you,” Lex said at length, his voice trembling slightly, his words shakier than Cass had ever heard. The sound was still strong though, still reassuring. “I... I never thanked you.”

She laughed, still languid and lazy feeling from her orgasm, but Cass turned to face him. “What in the world could
you
have to thank
me
for?”

Lex grabbed her hands, stared straight into her eyes and watched them for just a moment. When he did that – stared at her in that way – Cass felt the entire world melt into a single point. Right then, the only things alive were her and him. The wheat-colored walls, the 1980s television set, and the car alarm going off in the distance faded again, just as they had when they were in their love.

“For being you,” he said, that deep voice reverberating through Cass. “For being you, and for letting me be me.”

He slid his arm under her head, and pulled her against his chest, where she nestled her head and felt his skin warm her to the bone.

As the fan whop-whopped above them and the car alarm across the street fell silent, Cass took a deep breath, taking in everything she could. “You and me, right?” she asked, turning to look into Lex’s eyes one more time.

“You and me,” he whispered back, kissing her forehead softly as she closed her eyes. “All I want, all I need.”

A smile crossed Cass’s lips as she closed her eyes. “Being whoever we want. Whoever we really are.”

His lips brushed her forehead. Right then, she had no more questions, no more doubts. She knew that life was starting over, pure and simple and clean, right there on the squeaky bed in a rickety old motel.

Cass couldn’t think of anything in the entire world more perfect.

She curled her chin closer to her chest and nuzzled against her lion. For the first time she could remember, no dreams came that night – but not because there was something wrong. No dreams came because she didn’t
need
to dream of anything.

Everything she wanted, for the first time in her life, was right there with her.

––––––––

––––––––

“E
nough!”

Erik slammed one of his fists onto the lectern, then grabbed his gavel and pounded the wooden podium. “Calm... down!”

Furiously, I typed away on my keyboard, trying my very best to keep up with the near-constant noise from the audience, but there was no way. Questions were coming from the left, and then an insult from the right, and someone even threw a bottle from way in the back.

“Alpha!” Seth, a young wolf, shouted above the crowd. “This is court! You can’t just show up and make us listen to you rant for half an hour and then tell us to be quiet! We’re wolves—”

“Some of us are,” Clay Tomkins, a proud hyena-shifter added. “Don’t be so exclusionary.”

Erik bared his teeth and for a second, his eyes went yellow. I swallowed hard, hoping he managed to control himself. If he lost his temper in the middle of a pack meeting, there would be a massive brawl and I’d be serving alcohol-soaked bandages at the reception instead of cocktails.

“Izzy!” Erik hissed. I typed it down.

“Isabel! Pay attention to me,” he said. Erik bent down to talk in my ear and narrowly avoided a chair that crashed into the wall above his head. “We need to go. I’m about to throttle that prick.”

“Which one?” I asked.

He didn’t answer except to snarl.

I took a deep breath and pushed my carriage return. No matter what happened, I had to keep typing. It might sound crazy, but part of my job as the alpha’s personal assistant is to go to all these insane meetings and try to make sense of it so he can read over the notes later.

Don’t ask.

I heard the wood on the podium top start to crack. Erik wore out two or three lecterns a year like this, habitually stress-squeezing until they finally gave out.

Real bad month at the courthouse.

“I’ve made my decision,” Erik growled. “If you want to hear it, sit down and shut up!”

The crowd just kept on. Shouting, complaining; the whole courtroom was an endless drone punctuated with screams.

“Izzy?”

I turned to see Erik’s bright gold eyes flash. When he does that little thing with his eyes, it makes all my girl parts clench up. It’s some kind of werewolf magic, he’s told me, that makes human women ache for them. But he seemed to be doing it more lately. For a split second, I wondered if there was any significance to that, but then he smiled and my head started spinning.

“Izzy? You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said shaking my head. “Sorry, you stared at me in that way you have, and...”

“Oh,” he shook his dark hair from side to side and smiled at me, flashing his dimples
and
his eyes. “Sorry, didn’t mean to do any charming.”

How he could do that – make the whole chaotic shit-fest of a world around us vanish – was beyond me, but there he was, forcing my attention on him in the midst of a pack of screaming shifters.

Someone threw a chair.

“I want you,” he whispered, “to duck.”

“What?”

“Duck. I’m going to take care of this right about now.”

“I—”

“Now!”

I hesitated long enough to see someone else rear back and sling a briefcase toward Erik.

“Get down,” he shouted, pushing me off the chair and to the ground.

As quickly as I could, I scurried under the table, peeking around one of the legs in time to see the lectern that I had
just
ordered go sailing across the room and catch one of the chief complainants in the side of the head.

He might’ve well pulled out a hand grenade and yanked the pin.

No one moved.

The only thing I could hear was Erik’s ragged, heavy breathing beside me. He reached down and wiggled his fingers. Tentatively, I took his hand and pulled myself up. As soon as my eye-level went above the tabletop where my typewriter sat, I couldn’t believe what I saw.

Every single person in the room – be they wolf, coyote, fox, or whatever the hell Leon is... some kind of lizard – was dead quiet and staring, open-mouthed, at Erik.

Duggan Degger, the town historian-cum-hedgehog, was characteristically tugging on his suspenders and shaking.

“Good,” Erik said, in a satisfied voice.

I hunched my shoulders and slid as quietly as I could into my chair.

I just about threw up when I adjusted my carriage return, and it let out a ding that turned a whole bunch of heads in my direction.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

Erik smiled at me again. Those damn eyes flashing, those stupid dimples that got me all clenched up... if it weren’t for all that, I’d want to punch him right in the mouth. Maybe I did anyway.

“It’s fine, Isabel,” Erik said, giving me another dashing smile and turning his attention back to the previously-rowdy audience. “Good! I’m glad we could come to an understanding about proper courtroom procedure. Now, could someone check on Devin? He’ll heal pretty quickly, but someone make sure he doesn’t have a concussion.”

I watched, wide-eyed, as Leon the mystery shifter crouched down and checked Devin’s pulse, then his eyes. He nodded, and returned to his seat.

“Excellent! Now, as you all know, we were here in the first place to work through a little problem that came up in the last week. One of our townspeople, Lucien,” he stuck his hand out, indicating the black-haired wolf with the ponytail, “wants to file a claim that his mate has been stalked and stolen by Flavius.”

Erik rifled through a folder.

Two years ago, fresh out of school and without a shred of experience to my name, I saw an online ad.

How many stories start like that?

This ad, it said there was a small town mayor in the Appalachians who needed a secretary. No experience necessary, it said. Oh, and also, there was in innocuous note in the ad about the town being
‘an organization looking to expand’
which is one of those phrases that just sorta flies past when you’re out of work and needing to pay bills.

Good God was I ever in for a shock.

Upon arriving, I was shown around town, and needless to say, the first time you see someone strip naked, crouch down and turn into a horse, it’s a whole different sort of immersion learning.

“Are you getting this down?” he asked me. I nodded.

“What is it, then?” I’d recognize Lucien’s high-pitched voice anywhere, even if I was face-down to a typewriter. “Do I get my request?”

Erik took a deep breath and heaved a sigh. “I can’t go around letting everyone challenge each other to duels whenever the mood strikes. If you look around, the entire pack, minus a few of us who had to work or whatever it is that keeps them from mandatory meetings... we’re all here. And if you notice, we’re not as numerous as we were. I can’t have you killing people just because you feel like you’ve been insulted.”

I looked around the room in the second’s worth of a pause. I never noticed before, but he
was right
. Just last year, when our weekly shifter court convened – which, by the way, gives very different meaning to the term ‘monkey trial’ – this room was packed full. As it stood now, there were a handful of empty chairs in the front row, and scattered throughout the hall.

“I... I know that, Alpha,” Lucien said. He was so whiny that even
I
wanted to smack him one across the mouth. I’m not exactly the smacking-in-the-mouth type, either. “But I’ve been wronged, and this is the way of our pack! When someone steals your mate, you have the right to challenge them to a duel.”

Going back to my typewriter and adding what Lucien just said, I let my mind drift a little.

I’m
so
not like that. It’s crazy what being around a bunch of testosterone-pumped, muscle-bound, machismo-dripping werewolves, werebears, werefoxes and weregators can do to a person. As I looked around the room, Leon flicked his tongue out and licked an eyeball.

I never did figure out what he actually was. He got really mad when you called him lizard.

These days though, it was harder to think about going home and dealing with normal human drama. The shifters I had gotten used to, but Judgmental Uncle Ted? Ugh.