Wanted Lion: Lion Shifter Romance (Black Ops Mates Book 6)

by Ruby Knoxx

  Moments later, pizza ordered, Justine sat next to me and passed me a glass of water with ice and lemon in it, a can of diet cola in her other hand.

  “Pizza is backed up,” she said. “But it’s a really good pizza place, so it’s worth the wait.”

  “How long are they saying?”

  “Best case scenario, we don’t have to wait longer than we normally would, which would be about 45 minutes. Worst case, closer to two hours.”

  “Wow,” I said, my eyes widening and the clench of hunger tightening in my core. “This must be a good pizza if you’re willing to wait that long.”

  “I assure you, it is. Have you had D-Rose Pizza?”

  I shook my head. “Never heard of it. But there’s a pizza place not far from my building that we usually order from.”

  “We?” she asked, smiling as an eyebrow rose. “Is there a lady in your life?”

  I couldn’t read her expression, didn’t know if she was teasing me because she knew she had always been the only woman for me or if she was genuinely interested. But why would she be? She left me behind. What was the point in making small talk just to be polite? Unless she was wanting to know because she hoped to start something again with me.

  I couldn’t think like that. I couldn’t let myself get my hopes up. And I didn’t even know if I wanted those hopes to be up in the first place. The woman next to me on that couch, waiting for an answer from me, left a lot of damage in her wake.

  “No. My—friends,” I said, remembering that none of them were a part of my team anymore. They were just some guys I was closed to. “We used to have pizza nights once or twice a week when they lived in the same building as me. Now they’ve all gotten themselves shacked up and moved out.”

  “I see,” Justine said, nodding. That was enough to help us lapse into silence.

  “So,” I said, sipping the water. “Nice place you have here.” If I was honest to either one of us, I would have admitted that I was too afraid to actually look around. I didn’t want to see evidence of someone else living here or even of the life she had been living since I had seen her last. I didn’t want to wonder if with each thing she bought, she had me in the back of her mind or if any part of her missed me over the years.

  Instead, I went for small talk, telling her lies. I didn’t know if it was nice. I didn’t even have the balls to look at it.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I actually only just moved in a couple of months ago.”

  “Oh,” I said, not really sure where to go from there. “Have you been in LA long?”

  She shook her head, cracking open her soda. “No. This is my first place here. I only moved because I got that job. I’ve actually been living with my parents in Sacramento.”

  “What about the band? Are you still playing gigs?” I asked. When I saw her play, she was in a very talented cover band, playing 70s and 80s rock. She had been behind the rock, leading the way on the guitar. I had never paid much attention to oldies before her. In fact, the only things I really listened to were show tunes and classical music. Just knowing her opened up my musical world.

  She shook her head. “No … things changed pretty drastically since … well, things changed.”

  There was something that she wasn’t telling me. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t know that I truly could handle knowing what was in her past.

  But the words came out before I could stop them.

  “Justine,” I asked quietly. “Where did you go?”

  Her eyes met mine, her lips coming together, a perfect pink pout as her eyebrows knotted together.

  “I mean, you just disappeared,” I said. “You were there, and then—the plane. Justine, I thought you were dead.”

  As I said the word, I felt the pain well up in me, filling like a balloon in my chest. The news of her plane going down brought a freshness of hurt through me, and I fought back the emotion in my throat, threatening to suffocate me.

  “Dead?” she asked. “Really? All this time you thought I was dead?”

  I looked at her, confused now. “Of course I did. Justine, your plane—”

  I watched her suppress a shudder. She knew what I was going to say, and that time had left a mark on her.

  “I was so close to being on that plane,” she said. “And … I was so lucky I wasn’t. Now I can see that, anyway.”

  “I don’t understand. Why weren’t you?” I realized how harsh my words sounded, demanding why she didn’t perish like I thought she had, as if she had thwarted her fate. Maybe she had. Twice. Her fate with me, with the plane … maybe that was the gift of being human. No destiny.

  “That morning, when I left for the airport,” she said, her eyes looking down at her drink that fizzed in its can, “the taxi never made it there. We were in an accident. I’m told that a truck’s breaks failed, and it went through a red light and into us.”

  “Oh my god,” I said, watching her. All this time …

  “It was pretty bad. I was in a medically induced coma for a while.” Justine didn’t look at me. She raised a finger to her mouth, chewing on her nail. “I guess I had some pretty bad swelling to the brain, some other damage. Lots of broken bones, internal bleeding … I had enough damage that when I came out of the coma, I couldn’t remember the majority of the year leading up to the accident. I didn’t know any of it. Eventually, it came back to me, but it took a long time. I was in the hospital for a long time, I had lots of physical therapy, for a few years, actually, and a lot of counseling as well. It was really hard for me. That’s why I was living with my parents.”

  “You didn’t remember me,” I breathed, feeling both baffled and relieved. She hadn’t left me. But she had forgotten me. I knew that it was unfair to think like that, but she had. Her brain erased me for a while.

  “By the time I did remember you and our time together,” she said, looking up, her eyes shining with welling tears, glistening against the fairy lights, “you were the one who disappeared, Leon.”

  “I …” I was at a loss for words. I had. Justine had never left me. I had left her.

  “Why didn’t you come looking for me?” she asked, a tear sliding down her face. “You told me you loved me, and yet you never came looking for me.”

  “I thought you were on that plane,” I said. “There were no survivors. And then I was offered a position in the black ops, and I took it. Anything to forget that you were gone. I just needed to forget.”

  I couldn’t believe it. It was my fault that we had lost the years. I never tried to contact her family, to find out if there was a memorial to go to. Nothing. I just thought she was gone, and I accepted that. I threw myself into my work to distract myself. I never tried to find out more. I knew why. I didn’t want my last memory of her to involve people I didn’t know paying tribute to a life I barely got to touch. I wanted to keep my time with her in my mind. Our only time together was mine, and only mine. I didn’t need anyone else’s memories, just my own.

  If I had looked her family up and tried to find out more, then I would have found out she hadn’t been on the plane. I could have been there through her rehabilitation, through all of her healing. I could have supported her. Instead she was on her own.

  How could I have been so selfish?

  “I tried to find you, Leon,” she said. “I did try to look you up. But it was like every trace of you had been erased.”

  I nodded. “That’s the ops. It’s like a clean slate. Everything had to go.”

  She sipped her pop and looked away, trying to slyly wipe away a tear on the unseen side of her face. As if she could hide it.

  I took her soda and put it on the coffee table along with my glass of water. I took her hand in mine. It was so small against mine. I knew what a beautifully powerful woman she was. I had seen it on stage when I met her and over the week that I got to know her, I only felt her strength grow. She was an amazing woman, and I wondered if it was my cowardice, my inability to handle such strength, that kept me from trying to find her fami
ly.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I really am.”

  “Leon, it’s water under the bridge, okay?” she said. “It’s neither of our faults. We tried—”

  “It’s apparent to me that I didn’t try hard enough,” I said. “And I lost something really amazing because of that.”

  “Leon …”

  With my name still vibrating on her lips, still being carried out by her breath, I kissed her. For too long had I been idle, too much time was wasted, and I wasn’t going to let another minute slip by without seizing it.

  Chapter 6 – Justine

  I knew he was going to kiss me as soon as his hands touched mine. I meant to stop him. It wasn’t a good idea, right? Not when I had so much to consider. I hadn’t even thought about dating since Leon, and now that it was him who was there, making me think about these things, I didn’t know what to do.

  As our lips touched, I couldn’t bring myself away from him. Everything in me wanted more, wanted to remember what it was like to be held, not just by anyone but by him. I wanted to remember what it was like to be touched again.

  It had been so long, and as he parted my lips with his, letting his tongue into my mouth, I let out a soft moan. I felt almost surprised that I could remember how to kiss.

  His arm wrapped around my shoulders, drawing me closer to him, and I felt powerless against him. There wasn’t one part of me that wanted to break this embrace. Excitement pushed all my nerves on end. Not since before I knew I was pregnant with Kat had I been kissed or touched in any romantic way.

  My body longed for him. There was a long-ago part of myself that remember his touch, how he moved.

  His hand pushed away the hair from my face, his fingers moving into my locks before moving down the back of my neck.

  “Justine,” he murmured, his lips still on mine. I took in his breath as I felt myself ache for him. He pulled away and looked into my eyes. “I’ve waited six years to be able to kiss you again.”

  “What are you doing talking about it?” I asked, smiling. I slid my face along his cheek and pulled him to me, slipping my tongue into his mouth as I pressed my body against him, feeling how hard he was. He was always in good shape, but the ops had perfected what I didn’t think could be more perfect.

  Our tongues swirled together as I arched my back, my breasts against his chest and his hand running down to the small of my back. His fingertips brushed against the top of my thong that hovered above the lining of my jeans, and I felt electricity move through me.

  I pulled away. He was right. It had been so long, and I didn’t want to waste any more time either. As soon as his fingertips found the top of my underwear, I knew that I wasn’t stopping until it was time to stop.

  I took his hand around my shoulders and brought it in front of me, kissing his fingertips gently before I threaded my fingers with his and pulled him to his feet, leading him down the hall, to the room at the end. My bedroom.

  “I haven’t been with anyone since you,” I said as I guided him closer to me. He was so much taller than me. I had forgotten our height difference. But I brought his hands around to the small of my back, forcing him to bend forward.

  “I find that hard to believe,” he said.

  “I only tell you,” I said, kissing him briefly, “because I don’t want you to hold it against me if I’m a little rusty.”

  His hands slid down the small of my back, cupping my ass as he kissed me, inhaling me as he drew me up his body by my cheeks. I wrapped my legs around him and pulled off my shirt, throwing it on the ground.

  “You’re off to a good start,” Leon said.

  I bit his lower lip as he carried me to the bed, falling forward. He caught himself before he fell on top of me, and I let go of his body with my legs, letting myself bounce onto the mattress. I felt him hard between my legs through my jeans, and I pressed against him. Leon let out a soft moan in his breath before he pulled me up into a sitting position.

  He pulled off his own shirt, and I stifled a gasp. The ops had been good to him, indeed. I had no idea that a man could be so chiseled, so detailed with their muscle. There wasn’t a scrap of hair on his bronze chest. I ran my tongue from his belly button up his abdomen, between his pecs, standing as I did so, planting my boots on the edge of the bed so I could go all the way up his neck and to his mouth.

  “Fuck,” I murmured. “You got hot.”

  He chuckled. “Shut up. I’ve always been hot. You’re just now paying attention.”

  His hands grabbed the back of my knees, and I fell backward onto the bed with a surprised yelp. His hands went down my legs to my boots, finding the zippers to them and slowly pulling them off. With my boots joining my shirt, my legs at his hips, he kissed my knee as his hands ran up my thighs.

  As his hands moved along my hips, his lips went down the inside of my thigh, biting through the tight jeans fabric as he went. I could feel myself pulsing with want for him. His mouth found its way to the nook between my legs, and he pressed his mouth against me, breathing me in. I arched my back against him, wanting to feel his mouth directly on my skin.

  I shuddered in anticipation and looked down in time to see him look up.

  “My, my,” he said. “It has been a while for you.”

  “Are you going to take my jeans off or just torment me?”

  “Demanding, too.” His tongue slipped out from between his lips, and he pressed it against the golden ticket. I felt the heat of it, and I began quivering. God, I was so close, even before he even took my clothes off. All he would have to do was let me grind against him just a little, and I would be there.

  Instead, he moved his fingers to the lining of my jeans and found the button with his teeth. With some of the hottest skills I had ever seen, he pulled the button free and led the zipper down with his mouth, revealing the black lacy underwear I had underneath.

  “You dressed up for me,” he said as he spied it.

  “I dressed up for myself,” I corrected.

  “Sure,” he said before his fingers pulled my jeans over my hips and down my thighs, turning them inside out on the floor. “They’re sheer, too.” I could feel his breath between my legs, and they involuntarily opened wider for him. “And look at that, they get smaller the further back they go. Now if memory serves me, you enjoyed a little ass play, didn’t you?”

  “Leon,” I said, trying to warn him that he was getting no such privileges, but the memory of it made my voice weaken. My warning turned into more of a purr at the thought. The truth was, in that moment, I didn’t care what he did to me so long as I got to feel him inside of me again.

  His tongue pushed aside my underwear and slipped between my lips, as gently as kissing my mouth, needing my swollen want for him. He didn’t waste any time finding my engorged bud, my bundle of nerves that had been waiting so long for his touch.

  “You’re delicious, Justine,” he murmured into my clit.

  My body quaked, convulsing against him as he said my name while his face was between my legs. I felt the moisture soak through my panties as he began circling with the tip of his tongue. His lips drew me into his mouth, gently massaging me, letting his tongue get behind my little bean, the sensation growing, quickening, until I cried out, my back arching and my fingers twisting in the comforter.

  “Turn around,” he said, patting my thigh. “Roll over for me. Let me see that ass.”

  I obeyed though struggled to keep myself up on my knees, which felt weak from the first non-self-induced orgasm I had had in years. I leaned on my elbows as Leon’s fingers pulled my underwear down, leaving them stretched between my legs. He patted my cheek, and I gave a playful yelp. He responded with a harder smack, and I moaned. His lips kissed where his hand met flesh, and he ran his tongue down along the bottom of my cheek until he found my slit.

  His tongue slipped inside my opening, and I relaxed as he massaged my vaginal walls with his tongue.

  “God, that’s magic,” I said.

  “Just wait.�
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  He reached under me, feeling up my belly, between my breasts, and to my mouth. He slipped two of his fingers inside my mouth, and I happily sucked on them, circling them with my tongue. His own tongue continued to work inside of me, and he moaned, sending tendrils of pleasure through me.

  Leon took his fingers back, along with his tongue before he slipped both of them inside of me.

  “Oh god,” I moaned. “Jesus, Leon.”

  In and out they went, slick from my wet. His mouth was on my ass cheek, between my cheeks, moving down until he found my button. I wanted to stop him, but I couldn’t. His fingers spread me open and caressed my inner walls, and his tongue massaged my ass, circling and soothing, tantalizing the nerves there as he fingered me.

  The excitement built in me, his thick fingers spreading me as his tongue relaxed my rear until all my muscles below were clenching against him, pumping in my orgasm. My hips bucked, and I moved against his fingers, riding him as I came. His teeth bit into my butt cheek as I rode out the orgasm, only intensifying the pleasure.

  I turned, reaching for his jeans and pulling myself up by them. I pulled away at them revealing what he was concealing. It sprang out, hard and just as long and thick as I remembered. I slipped him into my mouth, hungrily wanting to devour him, to let him know my gratitude for making me feel so good. I pushed him to the back of my throat, my fingers wrapped around his base, covering the area that I couldn’t with my mouth.

  His hand moved to the back of my head, just resting there, letting me take charge of the work. He moaned, which only spurred me on. His other hand unclasped my bra at the back, and I paused briefly to remove it. As I sucked on him, his fingers found my nipple and pinched it, expelling a whimper from me.

  I pulled away from him, looking up as I leaned back on the bed, pushing myself to the middle. He leaned down, finding my pubic mound and kissed it before running his tongue down my slit while his hands busied themselves somewhere beyond the edge of the bed, where I couldn’t see. I had a pretty good idea what he was doing.

  I ran my hands through his hair as his tongue massaged me just above my opening but below my clit, finding the spot that had never failed to get my hips rocking. He brought me close, pushing hard with his tongue. I clenched my fingers in that amazing hair of his and pressed myself against his mouth as euphoria took hold. He didn’t relinquish, only continuing to lick as my body arched and spasmed against him.