by Vivi Andrews
She didn’t want to forget a moment of this. Because she could never have it again.
Chapter Nine
Santiago lolled on his bed, feeling like the king of the universe. The water was running in the bathroom. His woman was in the shower. His woman. He should go in there and join her, but it was too soon to take her again. She’d be sore. He hadn’t missed the fact that she was a virgin.
He knew it made him a Neanderthal, but part of him loved that he’d been the first. That she was only his, and always would be. His lioness. His Lila.
Perhaps they wouldn’t go as far as Seattle. Just far enough to shake her free of the pride’s obligations, to show her that the world wouldn’t crumble if she didn’t marry Roman. Over to Billings, maybe. Or up into Canada. There was a wolf pack just north of the border Lila might be interested to meet.
The water shut off and he came to his feet, eager to see her again, even if they’d only been apart fifteen minutes. He pulled on his jeans to remind himself not to touch her and crossed to tap on the bathroom door she’d left cracked open. It swung back to reveal her standing in front of the vanity, wearing only a towel.
She met his eyes in the reflection and smiled. “Hey.”
“Hey. How are you feeling?”
He hadn’t been as gentle as he would have liked. He hadn’t been gentle at all, but Lila had seemed to be with him all the way. He hoped she wasn’t regretting it now.
Her smile turned wistful. “Right now I’m so good I wonder how I’m ever going to leave.”
“So stay. We can pick up anything you might need on the road.”
The smile fell away from her face. “The road?”
“I thought you might be interested in seeing Canada. There’s a wolf pack—”
“Santiago. I can’t.”
He came up behind her, looping his arms around her waist, the terrycloth rubbing against his skin. “We wouldn’t be gone long—just enough time to get some separation from the pride. If we stay here, it’ll be that much harder to make a clean break, but if that’s what you want, I’ll stay with you.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” She turned in his arms. “I can’t go. Nothing has changed.”
Dread began to seep in around the edges of his perfect contentment. His hands curled into fists, the cat rising to press against his skin. “Everything has changed. You’re mine and I’m yours. You said—”
“I know. And I’ll always be yours. Nothing can take that away from us. But this can’t happen again. I’m sorry, but I have to go back. I have to do my duty for the pride.”
“You can’t be serious.” Anger throbbed, blinding and hot, with every beat of his heart. “What the fuck do I have to do?”
“Nothing. Santiago—” She tried to put her arms around him, but he shoved away, stalking out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.
The jaguar clawed and snarled beneath his skin, itching to get out, but he shoved it down. He paced to the bed and back as Lila hovered in the bathroom doorway, watching him warily. “Do you want me to challenge Roman for you? Is that it?” he growled.
“No! No, you can’t. You have to promise me you won’t.”
“Because it might destabilize the pride? Because every goddamn thing we do has to be about the fucking pride?”
“Because I couldn’t bear it if you were hurt,” she whispered.
Rage flared that she could doubt him. “I wouldn’t lose, Lila. I will tear any bastard to pieces who tries to keep me away from you, do you understand?”
“He’s so much bigger—”
“I would gut him,” he said ruthlessly. “You’re mine.” He prowled over to her, the jaguar riding him hard, and claimed her with a hard, fast kiss. “Understand?”
She braced her hands on his chest, right over the brutal thud of his heart. “I do, and I wasn’t lying when I said I was yours. Part of me—”
“You can’t offer your heart and soul in half measures,” Santiago snarled. “I love you.”
She gave a little gasp, as if she could actually be shocked by the words. How could she not know?
But he wasn’t done yet. He bent his head, pressing their foreheads together. “No one could ever love you the way I do. I was fine being alone, thought I always would be until I met you. You changed me. Brought me to life. Made me feel like I had a heart for the first time. I only know how to love because of you and I will never stop.”
Moisture sparkled on her eyelashes. “I should go.”
An angry growl ripped passage through his throat. “Tell me you really want me to let you go and I will.” His arms closed around her, drawing her into his body. “But we both know it would be a lie.” She wanted to be with him. He knew that down to his soul. But she was ruled by her fear. Too damn scared to take hold of the life she really wanted when it was staring her in the face. “I won’t make you rule the pride or be anything you don’t want to be. We can choose our own life together, whatever you want it to be, if you’re only brave enough to take it.”
“It isn’t bravery. Don’t you see? It’s selfishness.” She twisted out of his grip and moved around the room, gathering up her scattered clothing. “If I run away, it creates an appearance of weakness in the pride, a fault line in the power structure. My father or Roman could be challenged by one of the new lions—”
“If they can’t hold their own against the new lions then they don’t deserve to hold the pride.”
“So you want to see some stranger who doesn’t love this place take over and do whatever the hell he wants with it just because he’s good in a fight? You want all the non-lion shifters who have lived here for twenty years to be turned out because that isn’t the way the new Alpha wants it? You want some unknown nomad in charge of things right when it’s time to decide whether we’ll come out to the humans or whether we’ll fight back against this organization that’s hunting us?”
“I want you.”
“There are consequences!” she shouted. She sucked in a breath, seeming startled by her own volume. When she spoke again, it was with careful modulated softness. “I shouldn’t have come here. It was selfish of me to want you, even for a little while, but I thought if I could just have this one thing it would be easier to go back and do what I have to.”
“You won’t convince me that you have to. Roman can hold the pride. No one will challenge your father.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Have a little faith in them. Hell, have a little faith in me. I’ll take care of you—which means I’ll never let anyone hurt your father. I’ll fight right next to him if it comes to that, and so will half the pride. What about Hugo? You think anyone wants to tangle with an enraged bear-shifter after they slaughter his best friend?”
“That isn’t how things work. Challenges are one-on-one.”
He shook his head and stalked toward her. He’d given her enough space. “You can pretend this is about your father or the pride or Roman or your fucking duty, but the fact is you’re scared. So fucking scared of wanting me. Why is that, Lila? Why can’t you let yourself believe me when I say I will always be here for you?”
He caught her and she went unresisting into his arms, her protest whisper-soft. “Because I’m just a fantasy to you.”
“Does this feel like a fantasy?” His mouth swooped down on hers. The kiss started rough and dominating, but it gentled instantly. How could she not see how true this was? Couldn’t she feel it? How could she have doubts? He coaxed her with lips and tongue and teeth and she came up on her toes, clinging to his neck as a soft, yearning sound caught in her throat.
He swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed, sinking down onto it with her draped across his lap, the towel slipping loose beneath his hands at the first tug. The kiss stretched on and on, long and deep and achingly sweet as he tempted her to believe in this, to believe in them.
When he finally released her lips, she pressed her face against his neck and whispered, “Please.”
&nbs
p; “Please what?” he growled, the words a dark rasp.
“More.”
He groaned and kissed her again, trying to keep himself in check, holding in mind how sore she must be, but when she straddled him, bare to the skin, and tugged at his jeans, begging so sweetly, he couldn’t deny her. He stroked his fingers into her slick folds, crooking one up inside her, but she twisted and clung and pleaded for more. Always more.
He tipped her back onto the bed and lifted her to his mouth, sucking on the sensitive nub of her clit as his fingers worked inside her. Lila released a high, gasping keen, but still that word came again. “More.”
He nipped the soft skin of her inner thigh and set his mouth to her center again, deliberate flicks of his tongue making her shudder and writhe. But when she threaded her fingers through his hair it wasn’t to hold him closer, but shove him away, pushing him onto his back and crawling up over him, spreading her thighs over his and reaching down to undo his jeans.
“You’re too tender,” he warned, and her eyes flashed.
“I’m a lioness. Don’t baby me. I’ll tell you when it’s more than I can take.”
God, she was gorgeous. Blonde hair falling over her shoulders, eyes flashing, breasts flushed and rising with each breath. Her fingers released him and he half-growled, half-purred at the first feather-light stroke of her hand. “Harder,” he urged.
“Like this?” She tugged him from base to tip in a long, firm stroke and his verbal center melted. He groaned incoherently and she repeated the gesture with a rub of her thumb over his slit at the end. “Or like this?”
“Where did you learn to do that?”
She bent and sucked the head into her mouth, laving it with her tongue and releasing it with a succulent pop. “I read a lot.” Then she set her lips to him again, drawing him deep with a mind-melting wet suction.
“Fuck.” He would buy her books. He would buy her every goddamn book in the world.
Her head bobbed up and down and he gathered her hair out of the way so he could watch himself sliding in and out of her mouth, the sight so fucking erotic he felt his balls drawing up tight.
“Lila.”
She ignored him, totally focused on her task. He was panting now, his vision starting to fade out around the edges until only she existed.
“Lila, I’m going to—”
“Hmmm?”
Her humming around his shaft almost killed him. His hips jerked and his eyes rolled back. It was starting. The next stroke…
She lifted her head. “Did you say something?”
“Minx.” He growled and lunged for her, flipping her to her stomach and pressing his chest to her back. He scraped his teeth over the place where her shoulder met her neck and she shivered. Notching the head of his cock against her entrance, he let her wetness coat him until he was slick with her scent. “Say please.”
Her claws flashed out, leaving little punctures in the sheets. “Make me.”
He reached beneath her and found her clit, strumming it with teasing flicks until her head thrashed from side to side and she whimpered, “Santiago, please.”
He drove into her, high and hard inside her slick channel with one luscious stroke.
Mine.
He stopped himself from saying it out loud by sinking his teeth into her skin, marking her as he plunged deep. He withdrew until the head of him notched at her entrance and she tipped her shoulders lower, pressing her ass up into him in wild invitation. He growled and slammed in again, shoving them both forward on the bed until she braced her hands on the headboard and he gripped her hips to keep her still as he pistoned into her, fast and slick and perfect.
He could feel her fighting a shift and was ready to go with her if she turned, but that wasn’t the kind of release she yanked him into. Her scream was purely human as her inner muscles contracted and they both slammed into ecstasy. He groaned her name against her neck as his brain exploded and scalding heat rocketed from the base of his spine, up his shaft and into her tight sheath. Mine.
Chapter Ten
Her jaguar lover was all cat even though he was in human form, lounging on the bed and watching her from lazily slitted brown eyes as she dressed. They hadn’t spoken since he slipped from her body. He hadn’t drawn her tenderly against his chest like last time, hadn’t protested when she rolled out from under his haphazardly draped arm. He didn’t protest now as she fastened her bra and stepped into her skirt. He just watched.
She wanted to apologize again, to beg him to understand, but she knew if she broke the silence it would only start another fight. One she desperately wanted to avoid. So she dressed in silence and avoided looking right at him. He was beautiful, all muscle and heat. She’d never expected a man like him to want her and now that he did it was almost too much to bear.
“I’ll wait.”
She was crouched down, buckling her shoe when his deep voice rasped over the words. She didn’t answer. Didn’t have any words that would magically make everything different so they could be together.
“Go back to the pride if you want. Take the time you need. All you have to do is come back to me. I’ll wait for you.”
Her chest ached and Lila swallowed hard. This was what people meant when they said their hearts were breaking. This was what it felt like. She’d read about it. Imagined it. And yet she’d never understood exactly how much it would hurt. “Santiago—”
He must have heard the rejection in her voice, because he cut her off. “I’ll try to give you space, if that’s what you want, but you can’t ask me not to fight for you, not now that you’re mine.”
She felt like she’d always been his. Even before she knew it. But that didn’t change anything. “I have to go.”
He rose then, all lithe feline grace as he stood and strode toward her, stopping before he was close enough to touch. “Don’t make me wait forever, Lila. I won’t watch you marry him.”
She couldn’t respond to that. Didn’t even have the words to try. “Goodbye, Santiago Flores.”
She didn’t look back. Not when she felt the air-pressure pop of him taking his jaguar form behind her. She didn’t want to see the beautiful black-on-black rosettes or the way his eyes went yellow, glowing bright against the midnight fur. She ran down the stairs and didn’t stop when she heard the first coughing roar.
She fled, refusing to look back, as more roars chased her down the road.
It felt wrong, driving away from him, but she couldn’t think with him there, and she needed to sift through all the layers of confusion that had invaded her neatly ordered life. She’d never felt so lost before—but then she’d never had to choose between what she should do and what she wanted to do, because she’d never let herself want anything the way she wanted to go back to Santiago.
Could she trust that he was right? That the pride would survive without her? Or was he just another person trying to get her to be what he wanted her to be?
She was scared. Just as he’d accused her of being. Scared that she would turn against her pride, hurt her family, destroy so many lives and he might not even really love her the way he thought he did. What if he was only in love with the idea of her? What if he stopped wanting her the second she stopped being his perfect fantasy?
How could she risk it? Not just her heart but all the lives she would disrupt by chasing the dream of him.
But when she closed her eyes, she couldn’t imagine a future without him, couldn’t see herself marrying Roman any more. Not knowing what she did now, being the woman she now was.
Lila opened her eyes—the better to not drive into a ditch—and focused on the road taking her farther and farther away from where she wanted to be.
Santiago may only be in love with the idea of her, but wasn’t that what everyone did? All they had was ideas of each other. And Santiago knew her, knew things about her only Patch had ever discovered, and his affections were unconditional—or conditional only on her being bold enough to take the life she wanted. All she had to do wa
s love him back.
Which she was already doing.
She was in love with Santiago Flores.
She’d dreamt of this—loving and being loved in return. It had always been there, in the back corner of her heart, a longing she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. It had taken Santiago to make her see. She was more than the perfect daughter and perfect future Alpha’s mate. She could be more with him.
The pride gates came into view ahead and Lila tapped the code into Patch’s remote. She didn’t feel her usual surge of homecoming as she drove onto pride land. Her home was behind her now, in a spiral tree house in the woods.
She would speak to Roman. Speak to her parents. They would work something out. No one wanted her to be miserable. There wasn’t a wicked witch standing between her and Prince Charming. Together they would find an answer that wouldn’t weaken the pride and she would be free to be with Santiago.
Lila slowed as the second perimeter line rose up in front of her headlights. The same guards who had stood aside when she pulled rank on them hours earlier now blocked her way. She hadn’t expected her absence to go unnoted, but she hadn’t expected to be barred entry. Lila threw Patch’s Subaru into park, waiting for one of the men to break away from the others and approach her door, but another figure appeared out of the darkness to her left.
Lila cringed as her mother jerked open the driver’s side door.
“Slide over.”
Lila unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed over the center console into the passenger seat. Her mother took her place behind the wheel and the guards parted like the Red Sea when Lucienne Fallon inclined her regal head in their direction. She drove deeper into the pride lands, away from the main compound, without saying a word. She didn’t need to. The little wrinkle of distaste between her brows when she sniffed the air in the cab spoke volumes.