by Vivi Andrews
It was a familiar argument. “You could always have gone the human route,” Patch said, though she could already predict Lila’s response.
“And always have to worry about whether or not I’m going to lose control and shift during sex? No, thank you. Just kissing humans is weird enough. They smell so…weird.”
“They don’t smell weird. You’re just a lion elitist. Admit it.”
“Lions smell right.”
Patch couldn’t argue with that. Especially when it came to one particular lion. There’d always been something about Roman’s scent. Something her human mind had never been able to find the word for. That subtle combination that was somehow reminiscent of burnt sunshine and cedar shavings had always been enough to make her heart rate accelerate.
She took a breath and damn if she couldn’t smell him on the wind. Her pulse jumped. Shit. Was that really him?
“Speaking of lions smelling right, is that Roman?”
Lila’s eyes widened with shock and she inhaled, stumbling a step when she recognized the scent. “Oh, would you look at that, we’re out of beer,” she said, speaking so fast the words tripped over one another. “What kind of fiancé would I be if I couldn’t offer him one? I’ll run back and grab another bucket.”
“Lila?” That was not a normal reaction to the arrival of her betrothed. Was Lila actually afraid to see Roman? “Do you want me to—”
She wasn’t sure what she was offering, but Lila cut her off before she had to come up with something. “No! No, I’ve got this. We’re good. You guys just, you know, talk or whatever and I’ll be right back with some more brewskies. Lickety split.” And Lila bolted. Without another word, just turned tail and ran.
“Lila!” Patch shouted after her. Probably a bad sign when the bride fled her groom like he was waving a chainsaw at her and covered in blood.
Lila didn’t respond, just vanished into the darkness, leaving Patch alone with a bucket of empty beer bottles, her best friend’s fiancé, and the dark, stirring need of her heat crawling up her spine.
Perfect.
Chapter Seven
Patch considered running, too, shifting and bolting into the woods so she wouldn’t have to come face to face with everything she would never be allowed to have, but before she could even set down the bucket, Roman came around a curve in the path and suddenly she didn’t want to run—at least not away.
Why did it have to be him? Why did he have to be the one who made her heart trip over itself in clumsy enthusiasm?
He was among the tallest members of the pride and, with the exception of Hugo, easily the most muscular—but his brawn was tempered by feline grace. Jeans hugged his lean hips and a dark buttoned shirt strained over his broad shoulders.
His hair was the varied golden browns of a lion’s mane, but he kept it shorter than most lions, just long enough for a girl to run her fingers through. His jaw was firm and broad, but his eyes, his eyes were her personal obsession—changeable gray, always surprising her with a new shade from pale, glittering silver that jumped out in contrast to his tan face to smoky charcoal like pools of night in all the gold his coloring. He would never be thought pretty and even handsome might be a stretch, but he was so purely, exquisitely masculine, so undeniably male, that no other man could ever be half so attractive.
Her hormones leaped up and began a celebration worthy of NFL cheerleaders in his honor—and she couldn’t even tell if it was the heat or just him. She’d wanted him for so long the ache of it was a familiar weight against her skin, stretching it taut. Need coiled at the base of her spine and her breasts ached, the fabric of her shirt suddenly too much stimulation for their sensitive tips.
Roman slowed as he approached, not smiling, though his face did ease into less severe lines.
“Patch.” There was a hint of surprise in his deep voice—and pleasure? Was he happy to see her?
“Hey, Roman.” His name was a little too breathy on her lips, but he didn’t seem to notice, his eyes already tracking past her.
“Is Lila with you? I thought I heard her name.”
Lila. Of course. The words were just the kick of disappointment she needed to get her hormones under control—or at least enough under control that she didn’t start stripping on the spot. Damn heat.
“Yeah, that was me.” Yelling at her because she’s currently escaping you like you’re Patient Zero. “She should be back soon. She went back to the Den to get us another bucket.” Patch lifted the bucket, hating the empty excuse.
“Right.” A quick frown tugged at his face—something had annoyed the almighty Roman. Whether the fact that his darling fiancé was missing or the fact that she’d clearly been partying without him was anyone’s guess. He stood rooted, not moving, just staring into the night past her and the silence stretched on, seeming to last for days. In anyone else she would have thought he didn’t know what to do or say next, but this was Roman, always confident. The prototypical alpha male. What was he waiting for?
What was she waiting for? Patch kicked herself. Her first time alone with the object of her lifelong obsession and she was standing there gawking at him while writhing need slowly incinerated her higher brain functions. Say something, dummy.
“Congratulations.”
She nearly groaned. Of all the things she could have said, starting with take me now and culminating in you can be on top, why had she said that?
Especially knowing how Lila felt about the marriage.
He shrugged, muscles bunching and releasing across his shoulders. “It’s a formality.”
Patch’s eyebrows flew up, indignation on her friend’s behalf dousing her body’s urgings somewhat. Sure, he might be hotter than Vesuvius on volcano day, but that didn’t mean he got to take his fiancé for granted. “I’m sure Lila will be delighted to know she’s a formality.”
“That’s not what I meant.” But his grimace said it wasn’t far off the mark.
Ignoring the fact that Lila had just run from him like the hounds of hell were after her and the complete lack of rational thought involved in being pissed at him for not wanting another woman when she wanted him with a constant burning fever, Patch challenged, “Is that why you’ve been hiding from her tonight? Because she’s a formality?” Her blood simmered and she stomped up to get in his face, spoiling for a fight.
“I’m not hiding from her. I’m just not looking for her very hard.”
Her chin lifted pugnaciously at the wry note in his voice. “Is this funny to you?”
Roman’s expression darkened and he folded his arms, muscles bunching and bulging, so close to her they almost touched. “I don’t need you playing conscience for me,” he said, a hint of I-am-the-ruler-of-the-universe-bow-down-to-me creeping into his voice as he glowered down at her. “We have more and more shifters showing up on our doorstep every day requesting sanctuary—at least those who are conscious to request it. The asinine Texas lions are stirring everyone up in the south with the idea of coming out to the humans and some of the new arrivals are saying they already have one of the Colorado wolf packs on their side. There may or may not be a group of humans kidnapping our kind to experiment on us and the Alpha won’t even let me send out a hunting party to see if there is any credibility to the rumors. Forgive me if I have more pressing priorities right now than playing fiancé to Lila.”
If she’d been capable of calm, logical thought in that moment, Patch might have acknowledged that he had rather a lot on his plate at the moment. But that quiet, thinking part of her brain was buried under layers of fire and Patch heard herself snarling, “Of course,” acidly as she shoved past him, deeper into the pride lands, away from the Den. “God forbid you make getting to know your future wife a priority. How silly of me.”
She felt him on her heels, looming, that alpha male presence pushing at her back. “I know her well enough.”
The words spun her around. “Do you? What’s her favorite color?”
“Pink, I imagine.”
Lucky guess. “What kind of books does she like?”
“Does it matter? She can read Mein Kampf in the original German if it makes her happy. Just so long as she marries me on schedule.”
Patch glared up at the lummox. He really wasn’t that good looking, now that she thought about it. There was definitely something of the Neanderthal in his forehead. “She’s going to marry you. Would it kill you to make the experience a pleasant one for her? Maybe woo her a little?”
“Is this because I didn’t propose?”
Patch’s jaw dropped. “You didn’t even propose? How did you get engaged?”
“Haven’t we always been engaged?” he retorted. “The Alpha informed us that it was time to make it official, so we’re making it official.”
“And you never once thought, gosh, maybe I should propose to this girl? No down on one knee? No big romantic declaration?”
“This isn’t a romance, Patch. I thought you knew her well enough to know that this is an arrangement.”
“So what are you saying? You aren’t going to sleep with her? Be faithful to her? Have little lion babies with her?” Her traitorous heart gave a hopeful lurch.
“Of course I’ll do all those things.”
And her heart replied with a hopeless lurch.
“It’s still a marriage,” he plowed on, oblivious to her lurches. “But we all know it’s an alliance first and foremost, and I don’t think bringing wooing into it is going to help matters.”
“Lila’s a romantic, you dumbass. She wants the fairy tale.”
His head jerked up, chest swelling, and he halved the distance between them—which hadn’t exactly been wide to begin with. “Did you just call me a dumbass?”
“Yes. And as long as you keep acting like one, I’ll keep calling you one.” Brilliant, Patch. Insult the big bad alpha lion, why don’t you?
But he wasn’t snarling and puffing up to take her down a peg. He frowned down at her, seeming suddenly puzzled. “You aren’t afraid of me at all, are you?”
Afraid? She wanted to crawl all over him. Scale him like freaking Everest and let him plant his flag wherever he wanted to put it. Lila’s husband. She needed to keep reminding herself this was Lila’s groom she was inches from mounting. “Should I be? Are you going to hurt an innocent little cougar shifter who happens to be your future wife’s best friend?”
“Of course not, but most people are at least a little leery of me at first.”
“I’ve known you since I was ten. I was leery of you for six months. You just didn’t notice.” He’d never noticed her, but then, most people didn’t. “Just like you’re not noticing now that Lila is miserable.”
His king-of-the-universe expression faltered and he rocked back on his heels. “Miserable?”
The cougar pushing against the inside of her skin snarled in protest at even that slight increase in the distance between them—so Patch forced herself to take a full step back. “Okay, fine, she isn’t miserable. She’s resigned. But she could be happy. You could make her happy if you just put a little effort into this engagement. I know you don’t love her and the wedding is just to solidify your place in the pride hierarchy and to distract people from the fact that the outside world might be crashing down around our ears, but couldn’t you at least try to befriend her before she’s supposed to start bearing your children? She’s an amazing woman. If you would just try to get to know her, you’d see that.”
Patch should win some kind of friendship award. Here she was, practically bullying her best friend’s fiancé into falling in love with her, all the while being hopelessly, stupidly infatuated with the man herself.
Holy Hades. She’d reached an entire new level of idiocy.
The first conversation of any length she’d ever had with Roman, one-on-one, and she was simultaneously antagonizing him and yelling at him to court her best friend. If they awarded prizes for self-sabotage, she’d be raking them in.
“You’re right,” Roman said.
Oh great. “I am?”
“I’ll make getting to know Lila a priority. Woo her—if I can figure out what the hell that entails. Happy?”
“Ecstatic.”
The worst part was, she wasn’t even entirely sarcastic. There was a part of her that was genuinely pleased that Lila was going to get the wooing she deserved. She couldn’t even be properly bitter and jealous that what Lila deserved was the man of her dreams.
Patch sighed and began walking again, deeper into the night. The wind in her face, she took a deep, cleansing breath, one not saturated in Roman’s scent, and felt the vise of the heat loosen its grip on her better judgment. “I’m sorry,” she said without turning back—she had a feeling looking at him right now would not be the wisest choice. “I’m not usually so combative.”
“I know.”
Her heart lifted a bit at the thought that he knew her well enough to know what she was usually like. Stupid heart.
“I expect everyone to be on edge for a while,” he went on, and his footsteps crunched softly along the path until he was keeping pace beside her.
He thought it was the restrictions. Of course he did. Why should he know her at all? But, God, she wanted him to know her.
“It’s isn’t that. Well, not entirely that,” she admitted. “I just normally go off by myself when I’m like this so I can be moody and bitchy without inflicting it on anyone else.”
“You isolate yourself whenever you’re in a bad mood?”
“Only when I’m going into heat.”
At the word heat, he shied away from her so suddenly he almost tripped himself. Fabulous. The man was literally falling over himself to get away from her. If she’d needed any confirmation of his feelings for her, she sure as hell had it now.
Not that she’d needed confirmation. She knew he didn’t see her as a sex object. She was Lila’s little friend—and completely invisible as a woman. It was her curse.
She glared at him, even as her libido gave a hopeful lunge in his direction. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to jump you.”
She didn’t even want to at the moment, no matter how the need tangled and coiled at her core. She just wanted to be far away from here. Alone at her lovely little cabin in the mountains where she never felt unsexy or unworthy. Just her and a few billion stars.
But she couldn’t be there. Until they could be sure the world was safe for lone shifters, she was stuck here in hell. With the devil’s temptation.
Chapter Eight
Don’t worry. I’m not going to jump you.
Roman had never had a sexual thought about Patch in his life—this was Patch, little tomboy Patch, Lila’s dark shadow—but then those words tripped from her tongue to his brain, and suddenly all he could think about was her jumping him. And him jumping her. And every debauched and delicious place that jumping could take them…
She smelled like sin and his blood was up—had been since he first approached her. Something he’d been doing a very good job of ignoring until she announced she was in heat. He’d tripped over his own goddamn feet, broadsided by the realization that he wanted her. Female shifters were all but irresistible to the males when they were in oestrus, but Roman was the Alpha’s heir. He could handle himself around the women of the pride, regardless of their point in the breeding cycle.
Or he’d always been able to until tonight when Patch sent him from oblivious to up-for-it in less than a second.
But by the time his brain caught up to his libido enough to realize that some mutual jumping was something he was very interested in, the moment had passed and she was several feet ahead of him on the trail, her strides quickening as she muttered irritably to herself.
Which was good. Good, damn it. The last thing he needed was to let his dick drag him into another woman’s bed when he’d just gotten engaged to Lila.
Besides, Patch had said she wasn’t going to jump him. And even if she would have, that was just the heat talking. The hormone imbalances that led up to a female’s
heat tended to make them irrational and bitchy as hell—as well as insanely horny. He should have guessed something was up when he’d first come around the corner and seen her standing there with a bucket of empties from the Den and a pissy attitude.
He’d been halfway back to the main compound, on his way to play the role of besotted fiancé, when he thought he heard someone call Lila’s name. But when he came around a bend in the path it was Lila’s shadow standing there with her dark, knowing eyes.
Patch had always seemed like the steady one of the pair. Competent and direct, independent and capable. Her dark hair was tied in a loose knot, little tendrils escaping to frame a face characterized by high, tanned cheekbones and an unflinching gaze.
And a lush, perfect cupid’s bow of a mouth. Funny how he’d never noticed her mouth before. Now he couldn’t take his eyes off it.
Patch was usually the quiet one, the one he never had to worry about coming up with something clever to say around because she wasn’t inclined to chatter just for the sake of flirtation—unlike her lioness friend.
She was the last person he’d have expected to rip him a new one about the way he’d been treating his engagement—but he shouldn’t have been surprised. The two girls had always been protective of one another. It was oddly refreshing, the way she tore into him. She was honest, and she really wasn’t cautious with her words around him. His closest lieutenants might banter with him about his perfect bride, but they were always careful to keep a respectful distance. And most of the pride’s civilian members gave him a wide berth, always with that awareness of what he was first, before anyone looked at who he was.
But not Patch.
He quickened his pace to catch up with her—which was the wrong thing to do. He should turn around, march his ass—and all his other horny parts—back to the Den where his fiancé was doubtless waiting for him. He was marrying Lila. Now was the absolute wrong time to be pursuing anyone else.
But he didn’t turn around. He trailed after Patch like a fucking dog on a leash, compelled by something about her dark intensity.