Triumphantly, the beast raised its head before unleashing a mighty, unbridled roar. It would have lasted quite a while, too, had the body underneath the lion not exploded in the most horrible way imaginable.
What the— Claudia tried to think, but her instincts caused her to grab the back of her head and lie down on the floor. By the time she raised her head there were bits and pieces everywhere, and most of the hallway was colored an inconsistent crimson.
She rose to her feet as quickly as her large body allowed, and immediately ran toward the smoldering heap that was ground zero. The lion was nowhere in sight. However, the badly injured body of Dillon lay curled near the right wall. His hands and feet were missing, and the wounds bled so badly that death seemed imminent.
Usually composed enough in these situations, Claudia found that she couldn’t articulate a single thought. Instead, she merely fell to her knees in front of him and covered her eyes with the palms of her own hands. They were wet soon after. The room was spinning, even though she didn’t look. She lost track of time.
Who knows how much time later, the sound of Doc Addams’ voice stirred her from that state. “Would you look at that!”
Afraid to open her eyes, Claudia forced herself to do it regardless. When she did, whatever she was about to say got stuck in her throat.
Before her lay Dillon, unconscious, but with all of his limbs completely undamaged.
Five hours later
Time to finally go through with it.
Taking a deep breath, Claudia grabbed the door’s handle. Without hesitation, she turned it and passed through, trying not to hit the doorway with the bag that she wore on her back.
On the other side was a hospital room, albeit of a very different type than the ones reserved for more normal patients. This one had reinforced walls as well as bulletproof glass; everything they’d need to contain a violent or otherwise dangerous patient.
In its center sat Dillon, cleaned up and nude. He had been provided with a hospital gown to wear, but he chose not to don it. Seeing him like this was pleasant without a doubt, but nevertheless did something she did not enjoy: it clouded her judgment.
“Came to see me, Clarice?” He opened the conversation in the creepiest voice he could manage. Somehow it didn’t make him repulsive.
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Claudia responded in the most formal way she could manage. “So, are you going to tell me what’s happened today, or are you going to lie to me? I’d be careful about my answer if I were you, though. Your fate now lies in the responsible hands of Doc Addams, a dear friend of mine.” Unceremoniously, she let the bag drop to the floor.
Dillon didn’t smile anymore. With feline grace, he rose to his feet, standing in his spot with all the splendor of an antique statue. “Are there cameras in here?” he asked, apparently more out of curiosity than fear.
“No,” Claudia replied, preferring to say the truth. “But that door back there will only open from the outside, and the orderly near it will only respond to my voice, so don’t try anything funny.”
“Oh, the things I would do to you are anything but funny, Claudia,” Dillon retorted, a slight chuckle creeping onto his face before disappearing again. “But enough about that. You wanted my story and I will give it to you. But I’m warning you: it’s about as crazy as you can imagine.”
“I can imagine many things,” Claudia commented, unaware that she was smiling just a little bit. “But please indulge me.”
“No problem. Ever heard of a werewolf? Of course you have. Well, I’m a werelion. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, you’ve seen it with your own eyes, so you won’t need any convincing about that. Are you following this?”
Yeah, right out of a bad movie, alright.
“I’m all ears.”
“Thing is, it’s hereditary. I can’t ‘infect’ anyone with it. But it’s extremely recessive. Apparently, I’m the first my family line’s had in almost a century. As I’ve told you, not everyone can be me.” He seemed to want to smile, but was obviously not into it.
“So, you turn into a lion every night? And you regrow limbs? You are allergic to silver, as well? Is that it?”
“Basically, except I don’t have to shift. It’s just something that feels incredibly good once in a while, and I have need of it. Like sex.” The way he pronounced the word, combined with the manner he stared at her while he spoke, made the already present tingle in her loins intensify significantly. “And silver is not harmful to me. Frankly, I have no idea what is.”
“Do you kill people, Dillon?” Claudia asked, her expression suddenly comparable to that of a medieval inquisitor.
“What? No! Well, I did murder the guys who went after me, yes. I ripped them up good! But innocents? Never!” The way he accentuated the word made it obvious that he was serious. “I do eat a lot of meat, and I can’t stand plants, but that’s about it. I hunt animals from time to time, but never people. What kind of sicko do you think I am?”
“You’re the first person I’ve ever met that has killed people, Dillon. It’s not exactly something most people tend to do.”
“Touché.”
“And speaking of that, why were those men after you, anyway? They were obviously some kind of special force members. How do you explain that?”
“Easily. They were hunters. I have no idea what particular group they were part of, not that it matters in any way since they’re all the same. Hunting organizations are essentially small, undercover militaries whose only job is to root out anything remotely unnatural. Incidentally, that moniker includes me, for some reason.”
“You mean that there are others like you?” At this point, Claudia couldn’t conceal the surprise in her voice.
“Like me, probably, although I don’t think there are that many. Lions, I mean. I certainly haven’t met any in my lifetime. As for other shapeshifters, you bet there are! I’m not exactly fond of hanging out with them, as a matter of fact. Their scent offends me.”
“So, all this time you were merely defending yourself? You won’t attack anyone without provocation, right?”
“Of course I won’t. There’s nothing in it for me.”
Relieved, Claudia exhaled. Carefully, she opened up her bag, revealing a doctor’s uniform.
“I’m glad to hear that, Dillon. You see, Doc Addams is a good friend of mine. I’ve talked to him, and it seems that he is willing to proclaim you legally deceased if you would do as much as leave the city and not come back. If you agree to those terms, I will go and confirm to him that you are no monster. And he will believe me. In the meantime, you are to get into this doctor’s uniform. Then, we will use it to smuggle you out of here. How does that sound?”
Almost out of breath from all that talk, Claudia didn’t even manage to react to Dillon pouncing on top of her and knocking her to the ground. The force of the impact was fierce, but the additional padding she had made sure that she was not hurt at all. At first, she considered that he may have been attacking her, but the taste of his wriggling tongue immediately put that idea to rest.
Powerfully, Dillon’s hands worked their way over and around her soft flesh, causing the traces of heat that lay within her abdomen to quickly erupt into a bonfire; a bonfire that threatened to expand and consume all of her, especially after she felt the touch of Dillon’s erect member on her meaty thigh.
“Don’t waste time and jam it in!” Claudia wanted to yell out, but all that came out of her was unintelligible moaning. Her legs slowly spread to her sides, without any input from her.
Someone else might not have been capable of it, but he understood her perfectly. In a single motion, he let his right hand slip inside her wrinkled white skirt, moving her panties slightly to the side. Then, having pulled his tongue out of her mouth in order to take some air, he swung his hips and impaled her mercilessly.
Oh, yes!
Claudia felt the pleasure expand across and over her prone body. There was a little pain, but the enjoyable sensations quick
ly drowned it out completely. Without a word, Dillon pulled out for a little bit, then jammed it back in, this time all the way to the base.
Oh, God, it’s so good!
Grabbing her left breast with his right hand and her right thigh with the other, Dillon proceeded to work his way in and out of her. Soon, he lifted her leg up in the air, creating an angle that made his thrusting feel so good it threatened to obliterate her sanity.
At this rate I will, I will—
An explosion followed, originating from within her center. The fire did indeed expand, and it consumed everything in her existence.
Everything except pure, refined bliss.
Epilogue
A month had passed since Claudia and Dillon had disappeared from the city.
Pleased with her life, the former nurse sat upon a sunny beach, thoroughly enjoying the day. She wore a tight (by her standards) bathing suit, one that accentuated her assets and made them spill out whenever she moved. Some would consider the display shameless. She called it an offering to her lion.
There is no one around here yet, anyway. She observed the area with wonder, though this was not her first time here, not by far. The beach was crystal clear, the sand soft and pleasant to the touch. Even the nearby mountains looked amazing.
Now all that remains is for the repairs to be finished and we will be good to go! Indeed, liquidating their assets and buying the slightly old motel they now lived in turned out to have been the best idea they could ever have. Who’d have thought that he had that much money around!
As if summoned by her thoughts, Dillon appeared from behind her, still in his lion form. He didn’t do it that often, but she didn’t mind when he would shift and go on a run.
After all, love is all about not suffocating the other person’s needs.
While he transformed back into his human self before her eyes, Claudia took on a different, more seductive position. With a single enticing wave of her hand, she moved her bikini bottom to the side; just the way her panties were the first time they made love.
Now human again, Dillon stared into her emerald eyes with sheer desire. In case his expression wasn’t enough, his fully engorged manhood spoke volumes about just what was on his mind. With the fury only a wild animal could muster, he leapt on top of her, burying himself all the way.
Though love is like that, it doesn’t mean that you can’t drown them in other ways, of course.
THE END
Protected By The Cowboy
Western Romance
Prologue
Inez Guzman dreamed of being a nurse since she was a little girl. When she was 5-years-old, a mobile medical clinic came to her neighborhood in Mexico City to vaccinated the children and old people against the flu. She remembered swarms of women in blues scrubs walking from family-to-family down the long line of people waiting for their shot, gathering their names and medical information, asking all of them if they needed to see a doctor for another reason other than receiving their vaccination. Almost all of them did. Inez’ neighborhood was a poor one and most of the children had not seen doctors since they were born, the same could be said of a good number of the adults as well.
When the nurse came to her family, she smiled at Inez with a brilliant perfect smile. Her voice was so cheerful and happy as she asked her about how she was feeling. But then a rough man came and interrupted the nurse, shoving her by the shoulder, telling her to hurry up, that people were waiting. The nurse apologized to the man for the wait and politely asked him to wait his turn and then tried to start talking to Inez again. But the man was very angry and he shoved the nurse again, harder this time causing her to stumble backward.
And then the nurse hit the man.
Inez remembers it so clearly. The man’s large, beefy hand shoving the nurse in the chest and her feet tangling briefly, but then finding solid footing. The nurse’s face was so full of rage, the corners of her mouth turned downward, her jaw set, and then she reared back and seemed to punch the man with her entire body right in the man’s nose. She remembered the sound of her fist against the soft bones of the man’s face, a hard packing sound followed by a spray of blood from his broken nose. The man fell straight back into the dirt, unconscious. The nurse then returned her attention to Inez with the same broad and friendly smile.
She decided to become a nurse on that very day. She had never seen a woman so powerful, so strong. Her father was a gentleman who never laid his hands on his wife or children. But Inez knew many men who did. Men who used their wives as punching bags when they were drunk, or just whenever they became angry. Men like her uncles, her grandfather. But the nurse, Inez knew no man would ever touch her. She was to be treated with respect or you would face her wrath.
So Inez worked hard in school, was always at the top of her class, but her family was poor, and she was sent to work at one of the cell phone factories when she turn thirteen. She hated it, but her family needed her. She saved her money, though. Every extra peso she made, she stashed it away, keeping it buried in a coffee can in the weed backyard of an abandoned house two streets down from her. Every week, the amount grew larger and larger, and she knew that God was looking out over her because no one ever discovered her can. God wanted her to become a nurse as much as she did. He wanted her to go to America, find a better job, and then go to school to become a nurse.
And on her 24th birthday, Inez counted up her money—her pounds of coins and wads of dirty bills—and she had saved up $5000, which was enough to pay the coyotes to take her across the border into the deserts of Arizona. She had to admit that it wasn’t the way she wanted to come to America. But it seemed like America only let the wealthy into their country legally, and not even her $5000 was enough to convince the American government that she would be a productive citizen. So her only way across the border was to give her money to the coyotes and pray to God that when they dropped her off in Arizona, the sun would not be too hot, or her walk to civilization too long.
But the coyotes were not good men. In fact, they were not even coyotes, but killers. Dirty white men who smelled of sweat and cigarettes who did bring her group to America, but they only brought them here to execute them and leave their bodies to rot under the boiling sun.
Inez ran, though. The minute they stopped, she felt that something was wrong, and when the men rolled up the door of the box truck her group was riding in and she saw the semi-automatic rifles over their shoulders, she knew she was about to die, so she ran. She ran out into the hot desert with bullets chasing her, slamming into the dirt around her feet, whizzing through the air over her head. She had never been so scared in her entire life, but she didn’t lie down and cower in the hot dirt, she ran. She ran for hours under the scorching sun, her body dripping with sweat until she found an asphalt road and a sweet retired couple picked her up just as she was about to collapse.
She told them her car had broken down and for some reason they believed her and told her they would take her as far they were headed, to a town called Apache Junction.
Inez felt so lucky. She was safe, she still had a few hundred dollars hidden in her shoe, and she believed she would never see the dirty white men again.
But she was wrong, they were coming for her.
Chapter 1
Most people think that Arizona is nothing but a bunch of gun crazed hillbillies running around in the desert, and the fact is, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong in that assumption. Arizona has more than its fair share of yahoos and peckerwoods running around shooting their mouths off, carrying around some big guns they don’t need, and driving around in gas guzzling pickup trucks that they don’t have much use for, either, other than proving that they have a lot of money, or at least pretending they do. But for the most part, Arizona has a lot more good, hard working people than we do crazies, and the only reason you hear about them more is because the whacko’s have bigger mouths and make for more interesting television footage.
Arizona is in my blood. My family—the Collins�
��have lived in the state for 100 years longer than it's been a state. My family were a group of madmen who traveled across the country from Pennsylvania and Ohio in covered wagons, fought off bandits, fought off Apaches looking to collect their scalps, and decided for one reason or another that a nearly uninhabitable stretch of copper orange desert was a fine and dandy place to set up a homestead and raise a family. And I’m sure if I knew my ancestors from way back when, I would have laughed at them and told them to hustles their asses back home because one-half of them were going to die of heat stroke, and the other half burn up with fever caused by small pocks. But a couple of them, well, they would make it out of those harsh early times alive and prospered.
The first of our wealth came entirely from gold. Back in the mid-19th century, southern Arizona was absolutely teeming with the stuff, but the thing was there weren’t enough people around to pick up off the ground and turn it into folding money. But the Collins’ were here and we scooped up by the ton. And when that all disappeared, we became a bit more sensible and went into copper. Needless to say, but precious metals were good to my family … At least until it all ran out. Well, the family at least with the family claims. Then for some reason or another, my father—the senior Henry to my junior—thought it was a fine idea to go into horse and cattle ranching. Which would have been incredibly profitable if we didn’t live in a sun-blasted desert?
Now I won’t say that the Collins Ranch of Gold Canyon, AZ went belly up—it’s alive and well, obviously, because it's running takes up the bulk of my time and money—but it’s really just more of an expensive hobby as opposed to an actual business. Don’t get wrong, it brings in an income, and I’m damn proud of the horses—we dropped the cattle back in the mid-80’s due to the overall cost—that come out of here. But the fact is, year-after-year, more money goes out than comes in, and on certain days it feels like a thousand pound weight dragging off my shoulders. But on days like today, when the sun comes up and turns the sky into a riot of brilliants oranges and reds, and I’m riding on top of my favorite horse watching it happen, I love it more than life itself. Just like Arizona, ranching is in my blood, and even if it was completely bankrupting me—which it’s not even close to doing—I would still soldier on and work two or three jobs just to keep it afloat.
Highlander's Pride: Winter Solstice (Against All Odds Series 1) Page 32