Seduced By The Lion Alpha (2 page)

A figure moved to my left. I twitched, my fingers drawing together into a loose fist, but I could barely move. The figure turned toward me. Through my half-open eyes, I could see it holding a cloth. Gently, it dabbed it against my forehead. The sensation burned before it cooled and tingled. I hissed, struggling to squirm and shake my head. A warm hand settled over my shoulder. My eyes had gone out of focus again, leaving the figure cloaked in shadow and darkness.

“Welcome back to the land of the living.” The voice was a deep rumble – smooth and low, like he’d spent years hiding his smoker’s voice. I blinked a few more times, and my vision started to come back into focus. The man standing above me was tall and lean. His shaggy hair was a few shades darker than gold, and his skin was only a bit lighter. He grinned at me, flashing several teeth too sharp to be human. Then it hit me – this was the man from the forest. The man who had been a lion.

I gasped and jerked back from him. Searing pain roared in my skull. It burned across the side of my head and slammed into my ears and eyes. My vision fogged. My ears pounded. Hands leaped to my shoulders – hands that were not my own. They pressed me back into the bed. Foggy words spoken in a soothing voice barely reached through the pounding. I could not understand them, but they soothed me slightly. Against my better judgment, I began to relax. The words filtered through, slowly changing and faltering until they started to solidify. I blinked a few times, straining with my ears to try and understand what he man before me was saying.

His mouth came into focus. It was a pretty mouth. A little bow flexed in worry and wrinkled around the edges with confusion. I wondered what had him so worried. It struck me then that it might have been me. I didn’t understand why. I couldn’t fathom that this man, this lion man, would have been upset over me. I was just a girl, and he was… Well, I didn’t know what he was. I wanted to ask him.

He was still talking, and now my ears were coming back into focus. Slowly, ever so slowly, his words solidified into something I could understand.

“Are you all right?” he asked. The words echoed around my skull, rattling a new headache. I didn’t dare nod for fear of my head falling off and rolling away, but I also didn’t want to speak. My throat was raw, like I had been screaming. But I knew my screams from earlier wouldn’t have been enough to hurt my throat so much. I wondered if I had been screaming after I fell. I wondered how hard I had fallen. I wondered if perhaps this was all a dream – a dream with a very attractive leading man.

Eventually, I managed a weak, watery smile through the pain, and leaned a little further back into the pillows. They were soft and downy, and they rushed up to meet me. The sounds around me were further muffled, but I didn’t mind. Their softness, coupled with the muffling, did wonders to my headache.

“Do you need anything?” asked the man. His words were soft, but they still struck hard. I winced, waiting for the stab of pain to vanish. Then, when I was sure I wouldn’t throw up, I opened my eyes again. I stared at him for a moment, trying to understand him. This was a man I had seen turn from a lion into a man. A man who had fought a tiger trying to kill me. A man who had been naked the last time I had seen him. My face heated up at that last thought. Images of his body – long, lean, and hairy, though not nearly as much as the lion – floated up in my mind. I ducked my head to hide my blush. When I looked back up, he was grinning. The too-sharp teeth were visible again. This time they didn’t look menacing. They looked almost friendly, almost playful. I nearly smiled before remembering I had no idea who this man was, or why he had taken me to his house.

“I’ll get you some water,” he said. Standing, he turned and walked out of the room, still chuckling to himself. I rubbed my face with both hands and cursed internally. I had gotten distracted in my thoughts, leading me to stare even longer at him. It wasn’t that I was thinking of him naked – those thoughts had only lasted a moment, but I couldn’t erase the feeling that that was exactly what he thought I was thinking about.

With the man out of the room, I was finally able to take in my surroundings properly. I pushed myself up and struggled back against the pillows. My head was ringing. I shook my head slowly to clear the fog in my vision. It seemed to be working – slowly, but steadily.

I looked around and tried to determine where I was in the world. I was in a cabin, as I had first expected. The wood panel ceilings and log walls gave that much away, at least. It appeared there were multiple rooms. I sat on a bed in one. It was a single bed - low to the ground - and an end table and dresser took up the majority of the room alongside it. A woven rug sat on the wooden floor and went almost to the door. It was an old fashioned looking thing. It had lions and other big cats woven into its fabric. It looked like it was telling a story, but I couldn’t tell the story from where I was sitting. I suspected most of it was hidden by the bed.

Paintings took up much of the wall space, excluding the door and singular curtained window. The paintings depicted the forest I usually walked through. I smiled. They were beautiful creations, full of color and warmth. I could almost picture myself in them, walking down the pathways and counting the flowers as I went. Some of the paintings depicted details I’d never picked out. I saw a painting showing off a bird’s nest high above the trees, nestled in the thinnest of branches. The painting that caught my attention the most was the one which depicted the flowers and bushes at night. In the center of the painting, just big enough to be noticed, were a pair of glowing eyes, hiding in a bush. I shivered, imagining what it would be like to see such a pair of eyes at night.

Would I run, like I had with the lion man? Or would I stare, like I did with the tiger? I wasn’t sure, and, truthfully, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.

The man reappeared in the doorway with a glass of water and a sandwich. I took both gratefully and downed most of the water in one large gulp. The glass clinked as I set it down on the end table, and I fiddled with my hands while I stared at the sandwich. Awkward silence filled the room for a moment, and then the man cleared his throat. I looked up at him. He smiled at me. His smile was warm and wide, and it wrinkled the skin around his eyes. His eyes were honey brown, and filled with a depth that made me want to sink into them. I felt my body relax just a little bit more into the bed. Despite knowing that the man wasn’t technically possible, I found myself drawn to him. I felt safe in his company, even knowing what he was capable of. And I felt calm. I wasn’t sure why I was taking this all so well, but I was, and I could live with that.

“So, what’s your name?” he asked. His smile brightened even further, and he sat down at the edge of the bed. I pulled my legs up to keep myself from touching him. I wanted to know if his skin was as soft as it looked, if the muscles would tense under my fingertips. I swallowed hard, and felt my face heat up again. He would have callouses, I reasoned, on his hands and feet. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the thick hardness of paws didn’t translate to the rest of his body. It made me lick my lips. I could feel myself being drawn toward his golden hands. I wanted to touch them, to feel them, to track the pads of them with my fingertips.

I shook myself, blinking hard. What was going on with me? “Lauren,” I said, licking my lips. My voice cracked a bit from the rawness of my throat. I tried to ignore it. But my throat was scratchy from screaming, and the rawness ached with every word I spoke and every harsh breath I took. I forced myself to breathe deeply through my nose. That brought the musky and animalistic scent of the man to my nose. It washed over me in a wave, and I tried not to sway from how much I ached to be closer to it.

“Lauren,” he echoed. He sounded like he was rolling the name over in his mouth, drawing it out and testing it on his tongue. I licked my lips again. I liked the way my name sounded on his lips. I wanted to hear it again. I wanted to hear him say every word in the world. With a voice like that, I could imagine even the phone book would sound interesting and seductive. Rows upon rows of numbers and nothing else. It would be fine by me, just to hear him keep speaking. And if he wanted to say my name that way, over and over as well, I wasn’t about to complain. “My name is Leon.”

I snorted. I couldn’t help it. I snorted, clapped a hand over my mouth, and dissolved into disbelieving laughter. Leon stared as though he couldn’t believe me. I grinned back, my face straining against the strength of my smile. I couldn’t believe that his name was actually Leon. Despite everything I had faced today, I had to admit, that name was the most ridiculous. I could handle lions and tigers in the forest next to the city. I could handle one of them turning into a man and saving my life. I could even handle seeing said man naked. But learning his name was Leon? That was simply too much.

Leon was still staring at me. Now his expression had morphed into one of curiosity. I tried to stifle my giggles so I could respond to the look, but ended up snorting again. I covered my mouth, forced myself to take a few deep breaths, and smiled.

“Lion,” I said simply. He paused, stared at me with narrowed eyes, and then broke out into a wide smile. Moments later he burst into laughter. It reminded me of the earlier roars of the lion. But these were calmer, happier. I liked them. I liked him. I joined his laughter, and together we laughed in the little room in the cabin, shaking so much that I was afraid we would topple off the bed. I couldn’t believe it had never occurred to him that his name was essentially his… What did I call it? Race? Species? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t even sure how any of this was possible.

“So, I take it you know about that?” he asked when our laughter finally calmed down. I nodded. “What do you know?” I knew very little. I knew he had been a lion and then he had been a man. I knew he was not exactly what he looked like now – a regular man. An attractive one, but a regular man, nonetheless.

“There are no lions or tigers around here. Not in the entire state, except for zoos,” I said. I remembered thinking these thoughts earlier. It seemed harder to say them out loud now. Much, much harder. “But there were, earlier. A lion and a tiger. They fought, and then the tiger ran off. The lion…” I trailed off, shaking my head.

“It’s okay if you don’t believe it, I know it’s hard,” said Leon.

But I did believe it, and that was the entire problem. I believed everything I had seen earlier. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt as though I could trust this man in his little cabin. For all I knew, he could have brought me here to kill me so I didn’t tell anyone else about what he was, but I highly doubted that was the case. He seemed too kind to do such a thing.

“What are you?” I asked. I stared at my hands. They were a little banged up, and I had to resist the urge to rub them together. To rub the dirt off them and to rub the cuts and scratches until the dead skin flaked off and I could take a long shower. A shower long enough and hot enough to make me forget everything that had happened today. Nothing made sense. The man before me was a lion, I knew that. But I didn’t know how. I wanted to wash away my confusion alongside the dirt, and try to return to my normal life. But some part of me insisted that life would never be normal again, and, if it was, that I would never forget the man before me. That I would be haunted by his existence and his beauty no matter where I went. My hands itched to do something. I wondered what had happened to my bag. I wanted to draw him. God, I wanted to draw him.

“You are right,” he said, “about there being no lions or tigers in this state outside of the zoos. At least, not technically.” He leaned back on the bed against his hands. Even that simple movement was impossibly graceful. All shifting muscles and tilting shadows from the fan overhead. My hands ached, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to touch him or draw him. Or perhaps it was equal parts of both. “I’m a shifter. So was the tiger you saw earlier today. It was a bit of a turf war. Sorry about that.”

“A shifter,” I echoed. So he was a lion, just like I had thought. I’d known that from the start, but it was nice to have some confirmation.

He nodded. “A shifter,” he repeated. “I have the ability to turn into a lion. I’m part of a pride. I’m the alpha – the prime.” I recognized those words, though largely from stories about werewolves, not lions.

“You lead them,” I said. He nodded. I smiled again. It was nice to have someone confirm everything I’d been thinking since I’d woken up. Still, I felt as though I should have been worried. This man was obviously very powerful, and if he wanted to do something to me… I quickly shuffled the thought off to the recesses of my mind. He’d brought me to his cabin, taken care of me, and saved my life, all in the span of a day. Surely he had earned my trust? I nodded internally and returned to the conversation at hand.

“I do,” he said. He rolled his head, flexing the muscles in his shoulders and neck. I watched lines in his tanned skin flex and shift. My mouth was very dry again. I snagged the sandwich he’d brought me and took a huge bite to hide the way I stared at his appearance. I felt unusually possessive as I stared. This man had saved me, and for some reason that made me think of him as
mine.