Predator's Refuge (Gemini Island Shifters, Book 3)

by Leo, Rosanna

  He gazed at her, sighed, and sat back down on the log next to her. She felt so small next to his expansive torso, felt so dainty and inconsequential next to his enormous biceps. She wanted to curl up into him and disappear for a while. A good, long while.

  “This is not something to be scared of, little lynx. Sex should be a pleasurable experience.” He stared at her, his jewel-green eyes burning her with the force of the sun, considering. He then looked away, as if forcibly changing his mind about what he wanted to say.

  “What?” she prompted. “What are you thinking?” When he didn’t turn back, she touched his arm with a finger. Unable to stop herself, she scratched her nail over his bicep, luxuriating in the hard bulge, marveling at his size.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them and turned on her with vehemence. “I’m thinking the right man would make it incredible for you. The right man would love you properly, so that you forgot you were ever with another. The right man would take all your fear away and would make you blind with euphoria.”

  Why did she get the distinct impression Anton Gaspar was the right man? It was wrong on so many levels, and Ryland would likely send her packing without a reference, but she just knew the tiger man would fill her lynx and fuck her like she needed to be fucked. Hard. Forcefully. Against a wall until she unraveled, screaming his name.

  Marci reached deep inside for every ounce of bravery she possessed. The same bravery that had led her to the Ursa Lodge as a shy teenager and helped her beg a job from the intimidating Ryland Snow. At the same time, she thought of Charlotte and her advice to just let go for once and try to enjoy life. She certainly couldn’t continue this way, a hard-up mess of a woman. If she didn’t give her animal what it needed, her whole life would fall apart, and soon.

  “Anton,” she murmured, her voice barely audible to her own ears. She raised her eyes to his. “I know we haven’t known each other long. And what I’m about to say makes a mockery of my sense of professionalism. But … I want to have sex with you.”

  The shock in his eyes hit her like a cinderblock to the forehead. But something else lingered in his gaze, something he was trying to keep hidden, and she could see it ran deep. With his tight lips and the vein pulsing at his brow, it looked an awful lot like desire. Marci almost breathed a sigh of relief.

  He would do this for her. He would say yes.

  “Marci,” he whispered. “I can’t do it.”

  “Right.” She gave him a curt nod, as she couldn’t seem to move from the chin down. His refusal hit home with a savagery she hadn’t thought possible, making her heart grow brittle inside her. Don’t you fall apart here, Marci! What did you think the stud muffin would say? “I understand.”

  As her lynx issued a grievous cry, Marci bolted off the log and ran into the woods. What was she thinking? She knew she was naive in ways, but to show it like that was unforgiveable. Of course, a man like Anton had to have a lover. He must be spoken for, despite all his talk of being alone.

  And then again, maybe he just didn’t want to sleep with her after all. Maybe he’d finally recognized her for the desperate buffoon she was.

  How could her animal instincts be so wrong? How could she be so stupid?

  Not daring to answer her own unmerciful questions, she ran as far from Anton as her legs would allow, knowing her shame would still follow.

  Chapter 8

  Anton fumbled as he grabbed his things. Damn. He never fumbled.

  He cursed as he chased Marci through the woods. Shit. He’d never chased anyone.

  This blasted little lynx had turned his whole world upside down in a matter of a week, and he didn’t like it one bit.

  She’d offered him her body on a silver platter, and he could no longer deny having sex with her was the thing he desired above all else. Since meeting her, all his good sense had flown out the window into the fucking tranquil Ontario woodland. And he had lost any sense of his own inner peace. All the hard work he had done at Pannonhalma was destroyed the second he smelled Marci’s scent. Even though Brother Ferenc trained him to treat his body like a temple, to forgo the baser pleasures in life, he was now ready to transform back into the rutting creature who had shown up at the monastery, begging assistance and guidance. Ferenc had made him see his sexual depravity was the root of all his sins.

  Right now, he wanted to wring Ferenc’s scrawny neck.

  No. He couldn’t be that man again. Hard and cold, a slave to vicious desire, just like Istvan, and in some measure, Gabi too. He wanted to be better than that. Needed it.

  And he needed Marci to understand. He wasn’t rejecting her. Holy Father, how could he ever reject such a sweet morsel?

  He spotted her up ahead and increased his speed. The lynx woman might be fast, but he was faster. As the perfume from her pussy slammed back into his senses, he caught up to her and grabbed her arm. He jerked her back, not quite as gently as he’d planned. “Stop running from me.”

  She turned, her eyes big and bright. “I’m not running from you. I just need to get back to work. I need to make sure the chef ordered enough supplies for the dinner service. Last night, they ran out of potatoes for the poutine—”

  “Marci, shut up about fucking poutine!”

  She stood still. Her lips drew together in a tight ball and she glared at him. Damn, he wanted to trace her lips with his tongue and coax them open. He wanted to see her relaxed, splayed out in front of him, her body open and receptive. He bit his lip, trying to figure out what to say next. She startled him by giggling. “What are you laughing at, lynx?”

  “You. With your accent, it sounds funny when you say poutine.” And then she giggled some more, making him even angrier.

  “First you throw yourself at me and now you make fun of my accent? Dear God, take me back to the monastery!”

  Her jaw dropped. “Monastery? I thought you lived in a castle.”

  “I did, all my life. But the past two years, I’ve been holed up with an order of monks. By choice, you understand. A pathetic attempt to atone for my sins.” He let her arm go, even though his tiger growled at him to take it back. It wanted to lick her arm. He swallowed back the desire that was now threatening to incinerate him.

  What was he thinking, going without sex for two years? It was a wonder he hadn’t hanged himself by now. If anyone understood Marci’s sexual frustration, it was he.

  “What sins?” she asked, her temper now dissolved.

  He looked at her, fighting the urge to draw her in for a long, deep kiss. And everything that followed. “Never mind.” He rubbed his nose. “Look, when you offered yourself to me, please believe I was flattered. More than flattered. But the fact is, I’m celibate, and have been for two years. And I need to stay that way. When I kissed you in the boat, it was a mistake.”

  He’d already thought her eyes were wide. They got wider now, with the whites almost encircling the golden brown. “Celibate? Are you a priest?” She moaned and ran her hands through her hair. “Oh my God, I offered to have sex with a priest!” She proceeded to run around in a frantic circle in front of him. “I’m going to hell!”

  He let out a laugh in spite of himself, knowing the only one of them with a chance to relocate to hell was him. He reached for her flailing hands and made her stop moving. He held her still in front of him, and took a step closer to her. God help him, dangerously close to her. “You’re not going to hell, cicuskám.”

  He watched as she sucked in a quick breath at the term. “Would you please tell me what that means? For all I know, you keep calling me ‘shithead.’”

  Ah, damn. He was going to hell anyway, it seemed. “It means ‘kitten.’ My kitten.”

  Marci’s mouth wiggled on her face and she frowned, not understanding. “But … I don’t…”

  Against his better judgment, Anton pulled her close and let her feel the erection inside his shorts. The one she couldn’t have missed because he’d sported it since he first saw her. “Marci, my father taught me many horrible less
ons. However, he taught me one that I follow to this day. Speak your mind.” He leaned in and put his nose close to her cheek, inhaling her, drawing her deep inside him. “I would love to have sex with you, angel. I can think of nothing but running my tongue through your wet pussy and swallowing you whole. I want you to come in my mouth, under my fingers. And more than anything, I want to take you so hard you won’t be able to see for pleasure. I would fuck you so effectively, Marci, you would doubt you’d ever been fucked before.”

  The strangled cry that erupted from her throat made him want to hurl her to the ground and cover her body with his. “Do it. Please.”

  He released her and almost shook with disappointment. “I can’t. I made a vow. I swore I’d do penance.” He motioned at the air between them. “It wasn’t hard before I met you, but now. Oh, now, I feel the weight of my penance.”

  Her eyes crinkled in sympathy, making him hate himself even more. “Why on earth should you do penance? It sounds so … so medieval.”

  He couldn’t look her in the eye. “I was a very bad man once. A selfish man.”

  She closed the distance between them, putting a small hand on his chest. “Anton, it can’t be that bad. You shouldn’t punish yourself.”

  He dared to glance at her, and the wave of his sins came crashing down on him once more. “You don’t understand. From the time I could speak, my father raised me to be a brute and a snob. And even though I grew to abhor his cruel punishments and tricks, it was hard for me not to absorb some of his messages.” He clasped her hand as it rested on his chest, feeling such comfort in her soft fingers. “In many ways, I was my father’s son. I believed life was for the taking … that people were for the taking. We all took after our father in some way. Istvan became the heartless dictator, happy to dole out punishments to our people. Gabi and I became womanizers. Women were nothing more to me than pretty instruments I could play.”

  He could not miss the disappointed cast to her eyes. “Okay, so you have a past. Lots of people do. It sounds as if you learned from your mistakes.”

  “Perhaps, but it was too late.” He gazed at her, loving the golden flecks in her brown eyes, wishing he could disappear into those warm pools and luxuriate there forever. “My brother Istvan was married. His wife, Mariska, was a good match for him, probably the only woman alive who could handle him and his sour moods. She was from another old tiger shifter family, and was just as cold and calculating in many ways. She was also very beautiful.”

  Marci looked down, and he knew she saw where he was headed. She removed her hand from his chest, and he felt her loss immediately.

  Steeling himself, he continued. “Mariska had a string of lovers, but was always discreet so Istvan never knew. One day, she offered herself to me. And because I was a selfish bastard, I happily accepted, eager to get back at my brother in some way.”

  “I take it you didn’t just have a one-night stand?”

  He clenched his jaw and had to force himself to relax it. “No, it was much more than that. We embarked on an affair, right under Istvan’s nose. We made fun of his ignorance and I suppose we both enjoyed seeing him get a dose of his own medicine. He’d cheated on her too, you see. Mariska was wild and uninhibited, and she excited me. We grew careless.”

  “What happened?”

  He sighed. “She became pregnant, perhaps with my child. I don’t know whose it was for sure. Not long after, while having an argument with Istvan, she told him everything. How he’d been cuckolded by his own brother. He flew into a rage to rival even some of my father’s fits of fury.” He closed his eyes, hating the memory of the awful scene. “He killed her. And left her bloodied body in my quarters one night, so I could see what he’d done to my lover and her child. I can still see her now, the horrible wounds at the back of her neck.”

  Marci just stared, unblinking. The morning light emphasized the dark circles under her eyes, and Anton could swear the circles grew darker with each horrendous word of his tale.

  “Because of my pride and greed, because of my sins, a woman and her baby died. And I will never forgive myself.” As he stood there with Marci, sharing his agony, he felt the wall around his heart begin to crumble. And even though he knew she must despise him, he felt a bit better for having shared it.

  She didn’t say anything for a long time and seemed numb, she stood so still. Finally, a whisper. “It wasn’t your fault she died. Your brother made that choice.”

  “I contributed to it.”

  “Oh, no, Anton,” she said, pulling away and pacing in a line before him. “Don’t go down that road. You can’t be responsible for your brother’s actions. That’s like saying I’m responsible for Charlotte’s injuries.”

  “You didn’t hurt her.”

  “And you didn’t kill Mariska.” She stared him down, hands on her hips, challenging him. “Now, don’t you think you’ve done enough penance? You came here to start a new life. You need to let go of the old one. You’re not that man anymore.” Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and he waited for further chiding. It didn’t come. Instead, she said, “Did you love her?”

  “No. I’m not even sure I liked her. But she didn’t deserve to die in such a manner.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He blinked in an effort to soothe his burning eyes, but it didn’t decrease the stinging sensation. “Me too. I keep thinking if I’d been a better person, she never would have propositioned me. I keep thinking if I’d been braver I would have wrung Istvan’s neck with my own hands. I keep thinking…”

  “Anton, stop. Just stop. You’re exactly like me in one way.”

  “And which way is that?”

  “You think too goddamn much.”

  He gawked at the beauty before him, amazed at her words, stunned by the fact she hadn’t run screaming from him. And all he wanted was to run to her. God only knew how badly he wanted to hold her and run his hand over the curve of her hip. To mold her body against his. The need to taste her skin built in him with every passing second, making him delirious with hunger.

  He’d been running from his sins for so long, seeking refuge. And here was the perfect sanctuary. Surely it wouldn’t be a sin to lose himself in her for a little while.

  Would it?

  Before he could answer his own question, Marci walked right up to him. Her face was set and her eyes clear. Gone was her hesitation. Gone, her fear. She looked vibrant and confident and so sexy his cock ached.

  “Anton,” she said in her sweet voice. “Stop thinking so much, and fuck me.”

  He stopped thinking, almost stopped breathing, and pulled her up against his body.

  * * * *

  Marci’s eyelashes did an involuntary flutter as his mouth opened on hers. Anton growled as his tongue invaded the cavity of her mouth, taking what they both so needed. His kiss, so savage and raw, made her head swim and their teeth knock. They bit each other’s lips. She tasted a hint of blood.

  And had never felt so alive or so cherished.

  When they finally fell apart on a breath, she gazed at his rugged face and wondered how he could possibly feel the same level of attraction as she felt for him. She might have acted brave when she told him to take her, but inside she’d quaked in her boots.

  Of course, she’d felt alone much of her life. While her shifter girlfriends were enjoying their bodies, shifting as young teens, Marci had been a late bloomer. She’d also been the only shifter she knew to need braces, and she’d worn the steely contraption for years, feeling like a loser. While other girls seemed confident and mature, Marci had spent most of her time talking with a pronounced lisp like a schmuck. And even though the braces were removed a few short weeks ago, and she was growing accustomed to her shifter body, she still sometimes felt like a lonely wallflower.

  But when Anton Gaspar kissed her, she felt like a princess.

  Her lynx roared to life, as it always did in his presence, and she heard an answering rumble in his chest.

  His lips twitc
hed. “My tiger likes you.”

  “My lynx likes you.”

  “Then it’s time they get better acquainted,” he muttered as he grabbed her hand. Before she knew it, he was dragging her through the woods and back to Cabin 47. He flung the door wide open, pulled her inside, and slammed it behind them. She stumbled to his bed, and couldn’t help noticing how the sheets were badly rumpled, as if he’d spent the night kicking.

  He locked the door and walked up to her, his face serious, and his green eyes flashing. While she watched, he slipped out of his gym shorts. His monstrous cock sprang free and he palmed it. “Do you have any idea how I burn for you?”

  Watching him touch himself made her internal temperature soar and razed her common sense. As she locked eyes on his swelling member, for it seemed to grow with every slow stroke, she tore at her own clothes. He didn’t help her disrobe, merely watched her with a small smile on his face. By the time she was down to her bra and panties, his grin became a tight line of barely disguised lust.

  He moved his hand to reach for her, but she brushed it away. “Don’t. There’s something I want to do.” And before he could object, she got down on her knees before him. As he gasped, Marci touched his cock and watched it bob in her hands. She smoothed her fingers all over the soft skin there, marveling at the strength underneath. She cupped his heavy balls, which were already so tight and full of explosive promise.

  “Angel,” he said, panting.

  She cut him off by taking him in her mouth, right to the back of her throat. His curses filled the cabin and made her heart sing. He liked what she was doing to him. Feeling empowered, she ran her tongue up and down his length, swallowing his salty goodness.

  And the entire time, her lynx purred, as if digesting a large bowl of cream. The animal closed its glowing eyes and seemed to sigh.