Primal Song (2 page)

The tempo picked up until the guitar player, an outrageous-looking tiger shifter with a Mohawk practically burned up the strings of his guitar. The other tiger leaned against the first’s back, his face a study of intense concentration as he followed the lead. The bass player was another gorgeous cat with black hair and muscles. The drummer, who she could finally see once the other band members moved around, looked like a smaller cat, but was equally attractive as the other four men.

Someone growled, low at first, but increasing in volume until it became an ear-shattering roar. A tall male with a buzz cut ran onto the stage wearing nothing but a very tight pair of black jeans, black shit-kickers and shades. He rested one foot on the amp at the edge of the stage and roared again.

Daisy’s ears rang from the undeniably lion-like scream that was immediately answered by the screams of about five hundred teenagers who ran en masse for the stage.

Oh shit!

Ram was having the time of his fucking life. As soon as he belted out the opening line of
Let Me Hear You Roar
, a crowd streamed from everywhere to gather around the stage. Their energy bolstered his confidence, as well as his band mates because the tension on stage disappeared as they settled in to do what they did best—play music.

He was vaguely aware of some kids attempting to get on stage, but figures dressed in black surrounded the platform, protecting the band from overzealous fans. Ram couldn’t be bothered with security though, not when he was in his element. He screamed and roared through five older songs, the set as familiar as breathing. His heart pounded, adrenaline scoured his veins. This was what he fucking lived for.

He took a short breather while Nick, their lead guitarist, took stage for his solo in
Raising Hell.
Ram gulped back a bottle of water Clint held out to him and then wiped his face with a towel, his gaze scanning the crowd. They were totally into it. A mosh pit had formed right in front of the stage, young bodies tumbling into each other. A wall of people surrounded the writhing mass of bodies, shoving the kids back in and helping those who stumbled back onto their feet.

“Fuck,” he breathed when a bony kid catapulted out of the group of moshers and straight toward the stage and probably a fractured skull.

He stepped forward, ready to spring out to stop the collision, but a black-clad figure expertly caught the body and tossed him back into the throng of metal heads. The long, dark hair caught back in a tight ponytail looked familiar. The woman turned to shout something to a deputy next to her and Ram caught her grin.

It was the dancing cop. She didn’t look freaked out by the moshing and seemed eager to join in herself. She caught another young male almost twice her size, shoving him away from the stage and into the arms of his friends. It had to be one of the coolest things Ram had seen in a long time.

Again, as though she felt his stare, she glanced over her shoulder straight at him. This close she wasn’t beautiful, or even pretty. Her jaw was too strong, her chin too stubborn, and her nose a little too long, but she had the most gorgeous eyes. They were wide and slightly slanted with thick eyelashes surrounding irises so dark they were almost black with gold specks around the pupils. Ram’s heart slammed faster and it had nothing to do with being on stage.

Her eyes lightened slightly, her animal moving through her as though checking him out for itself before it disappeared and she turned away again. Feeling as though he’d just had a life-changing experience, Ram almost missed his cue to return to the stage. Only Clint’s frantic shove reminded him he was there to work, not to think sappy shit like maybe he’d been looking for her for a long time.

*

The hotdogs seemed to settle right in the middle of her chest and all she wanted to do was pop a couple of antacids and put her feet up. But no, she was stuck protecting the big-city cats from the metal-maddened teenagers. Not that she really minded. She wasn’t so old she couldn’t remember what it was like to get high off the adrenaline you could find in a mosh pit. Hell, she was half tempted to join in.

With her back nearly touching the stage, she felt the music pound through her with primal fury. The blood rushing through her veins seemed to keep tempo with the beat of the bass and drum, her heart adding a little backbeat that made her want to hurl herself into the mosh pit. But she’d stopped doing crazy things like that when she became a cop. Nowadays she stuck to nice, calm things like country music and long runs through the woods.

The lion was singing again, each word out of his mouth seething with passion. She didn’t pay attention to the lyrics, her whole body sizzling with the raw hunger in his song. She didn’t have to know what he was singing about to know he raged because of heartbreak, she felt it in her bones.

The song ended and the kids chanted, “Saber! Saber! Saber!”

The hair on the back of her neck rose and she sensed him staring at her. Daisy wanted to peer over her shoulder at him, the lion with the absurdly short hair, but kept her eyes on the crowd. This couldn’t be Saber. She hadn’t been a part of the rock/metal scene in years, but even she’d heard of them. Hell, when she was drunk and feeling blue, she might have even played a few of their singles to tide her over.

There was no friggin’ way they’d play a small festival like Pointe-Aux-Chat.

“Hello, Maison Rouge!” the lion shouted into the microphone, his breathing slightly labored. “We’re Saber and we’re so…” He paused as though realizing there were young kids out there. “Uh, glad to be here!”

The crowd roared, but Daisy was deaf to their excitement. It really was them. She couldn’t stop herself. She glanced behind her. He was looking directly at her, his golden skin gleaming with sweat. With his sunglasses still on, she couldn’t see if he liked what he saw, but did it really matter? Males of his caliber did not get stupid over females like her. Daisy knew she wasn’t tie-a-pork-chop-around-her-neck ugly, but neither was she gorgeous enough to attract a guy like him. But she sure as hell wished she was. Hell, she hadn’t been this close to such luscious eye candy since the all-male revue her cousin Kitty had taken her to in New York.

His broad shoulders led to a muscled chest with a thin pelt of dark hair that matched the shortened locks on his head. A bead of sweat slid down his rippled stomach to dip beneath the waistband of his jeans and Daisy almost licked her lips.
Yummy.

Uh, no. Bad bear! She didn’t lust after big-city boys anymore and she definitely didn’t do lions. But hot damn, he was magnificent. He stood straight and tall, feet braced apart. The black denim hugged his long, muscled legs and caressed the bulge beneath the zipper.

She shook her head. He was still talking.

“We’re on the last leg of our
Never Surrender
tour and we’ve been trying to find the perfect spot to shoot the video for our latest single,
Digging Deep
. And I think we found it!”

The kids roared again and Daisy swiveled her head around, peering at the corners at the edge of the dance space. Sure enough, there were cameras set up at several points. Deeper in the shadows she noticed a familiar shape lounging against one of the light posts and her hands fisted. Monk-fucking-Badeaux. She knew without asking he was responsible for this.

“So what do you say? You want to be in a music video?” the singer shouted into the microphone.

The excited screams of the crowd nearly knocked Daisy off her feet. She exchanged wary glances with the deputies to either side of her. If the crowd rushed the stage, they’d be flattened. She braced herself. She knew most of these kids, knew they’d never harm a soul, but they weren’t themselves. If they charged—

“But before we start filming, let’s get a round of applause for the hardworking members of the police force who’re doing their best to keep everyone safe,” he stated in his deep, raspy voice.

Whistles and cheers abounded, some of the frantic energy abating. Daisy’s body relaxed a bit. Okay, so maybe the big-city lion wasn’t a complete asshole. She shot him a thankful grin over her shoulder and almost passed out when she noticed he’d crouched right behind her.

She could smell him, all male musk and heat with a wild tang of cat underneath. He’d propped the sunglasses on top of his head, his amber eyes pinning her in place. He must’ve signaled the band because the song started, fast and heavy.

Daisy was only peripherally aware of the mosh pit starting again because the lion hypnotized her. He did it without saying a word, letting the heat and hunger in his eyes do all the talking.

And then he started singing. The lyrics poured from his mouth, sinking right through Daisy’s skin and into her blood. This time she heard the words. No, that was wrong. She felt them. Despite being nearly shouted at her in his rough baritone, they washed over her like gentle laps of his tongue.

Daisy’s skin heated and the flesh between her thighs grew slick and swollen. The plain cotton bra she wore beneath her uniform chafed nipples that grew overly sensitive. She scented her arousal on the air and knew he smelled it as well when his nostrils flared.

Someone bumped into her, shocking her out of her trance. Daisy blinked and looked around to see the kids still moshing and her fellow deputies doing their best to contain them. Brett Melancon, another deputy, shoved a kid back at the pit and shouted, “Get your ass in gear, Picou!”

Oh God. She spun back around to face the roiling bodies slam dancing in front of her, but in her mind, she kept chanting,
Oh God, Oh God
. The lion was dangerous. He made her want things she’d given up long ago. She had to harden her resolve to stay away from him or she’d end up a notch on some city boy’s very expensive belt. Again.

Ram didn’t know what came over him. He’d been performing for over ten years and he’d never sung a single song to one particular female. It wasn’t necessary. He knew without an ounce of conceit that women would come to him. He never had to lure them to his bed—they wanted to be there and were sometimes embarrassingly eager about it. It had nothing to do with his looks and everything to do with his status as a musician. He could’ve been the ugliest bastard in the world and the chicks would flock to him. Hell that had been part of the reason he’d learned to play music, because women dug it.

Fifteen years later, he was no longer the undersized lion cub who desperately wanted to impress the more physically mature girls at his school. He had a career he loved, friends he couldn’t do without and as much pussy as a single man could handle. Yet he’d just poured his heart out to a stranger.

Digging Deep
wasn’t a love song by any stretch of the imagination. It was about raw, agonizing sex—the kind that left you covered in sweat, streaks of blood and come. It was about how a male had to protect himself from falling under the lure of a particular female. It was a song for shifters whose brutal sexual appetites made coupling look more like fighting than something pleasurable.

It had nothing to do with tender feelings, but when he sang it to the deputy, Ram’s whole body had strained toward her. He’d scented her arousal, had seen her pupils explode. He’d wanted nothing more than to fling her over his shoulder, find a quiet spot and dig his claws deep into her hips while he fucked her long and hard.

When one of the moshers had crashed into her, the spell broke. Ram somehow made it through the rest of the song. He didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but he didn’t like it. Maybe he was coming down with some weird sub-tropic illness or something? It certainly felt like it. His head swam, his eyes wouldn’t focus on anything but that female, and his body was hotter than it’d ever been.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Nick demanded backstage as he looked Ram over.

Ram slumped against the wall, prayed it wouldn’t collapse and when it didn’t, let it take his weight. He felt…drained yet invigorated. His heart pumped double time and he felt strong, but the weird buzz in his head wouldn’t go away.

Nick leaned closer, his topaz eyes studying Ram closely. “Fuck, did you know your fangs are out?” he whispered in shock.

“What?” Ram reached up to touch his mouth and sure enough, his fangs had descended.

“And your mane is growing again,” Nick added, a twinkle in his eyes.

Ram raked his fingers through his hair. Back in the day he’d let it grow how it wanted, but after Clint took the band under his wing, he suggested buzzing away the long locks. Now Ram kept his hair short because he liked the sense of freedom it gave him. A mane was a pain in the ass to haul around all over the place and though he’d just had it trimmed down a week ago, it’d grown a couple of inches.

“Dude,” Nick breathed with wide eyes, “I think you’re in the mating frenzy.”

He shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. There’s no scientific proof something like that even exists.”

But Nick wasn’t deterred. “You started acting funny when you got close to that cop. I think you initiated a mating heat with her.” Ram could only blink in horror when Nick clapped him on the shoulder. “Congratu-fucking-lations!”

Chapter Two

Saber played for an hour and a half. Daisy barely heard any of their other songs, the weird buzzing in her head made it hard enough to pay attention to her job much less the lion running back and forth across the stage behind her. The heavy sluggishness in her mind made her wonder if the hotdogs she’d eaten were bad or something—except it didn’t feel like food poisoning.

Because while her thoughts were fuzzy and distant, her body felt more alive than it ever had. Her nerve endings sang with awareness of the humid air, the sweat that slipped over her skin and the shift of her clothes every time she moved. The ache in the lower half of her body was something familiar, yet still strange.

Daisy didn’t get worked up over every attractive male who crossed her path. She’d been nothing but a mass of raging hormones when she was younger, but at thirty-three she was determined to do everything the right way. She was ready to settle down, start having cubs and ready herself to take her daddy’s place as Pointe-Aux-Chat Parish Sheriff. She didn’t have time to fall in lust with every stray cat that came along, especially when she knew they wouldn’t stick around. She’d played in that sandbox before and she hadn’t liked it one bit.