A Lion's Heart: A Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance (Shadow Shifters Book 7)

by A. C. Arthur

  “I knew someone was there. We were packing to leave. I had a team,” she said.

  “You wanna know why I watched you all those months?” he asked as he took a step toward her.

  She wrapped the towel around her body and tucked it beneath her arms. “Why?”

  “Because I knew,” he whispered. “I knew there was a connection.”

  The companheiro connection.

  He’d known and yet he’d tried to resist it. To ignore its lure and implications. He did not want a mate. The years he’d been a captive in the SIC had shown him the dangers of being a shifter. Of mating and possibly creating more shifters. No. He would not be a part of bringing new life into such a volatile world.

  “Each time I tried to leave Assembly Headquarters, I was brought right back. When I wanted to go in the opposite direction of where I knew you would be. I ended up just feet away from you once more. I was drawn to you and you were to me.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Didn’t you?” Decan asked and this time he did touch her.

  He grabbed her by her waist and lifted her to sit on the small vanity.

  “Didn’t you feel me?”

  “No,” she whispered, her voice just a little shakier than it had been just seconds ago.

  “Not physically,” he told her and then touched his fingers lightly to her temple. “Mentally.”

  “You see, the companheiro connection is stronger than the physical hunger of mated shifters,” he continued, letting his fingers slide down her cheek. “It’s a mind, body and soul connection that very few shifters experience before the lust takes over.”

  “There was lust,” she said and licked her lips. “All those months I wondered why it was getting stronger. Right from the start there was lust between us. It’s only grown in the short time we’ve been together.”

  He nodded.

  “And again, the mental.”

  Decan lowered his face to hers, he touched his forehead to hers and closed his eyes. “That night you thought I called you by another woman’s name,” he said quietly. “I didn’t. Not verbally. You knew that name because you pulled it out of my mind. You used our connection to see a part of my past I wished I’d never lived through.”

  She gasped.

  “You’re the only one that’s ever been able to do that,” Decan continued. “Just you, Nisa. Just. You.”

  His hands were on her knees now, pushing them apart.

  Nisa swallowed. And she did not speak.

  Well, to hell with that, she was tired of playing like she didn’t possess a coherent thought, or logical vocabulary.

  “I heard you say her name,” she told him. “You said Mar—“

  He leaned in and touched his lips to hers at that moment. His tongue moved slowly against hers and damn, hers followed its direction as if it were made for that reason alone. In seconds she was tilting her head and leaning into the kiss. Her eyes were closed, his hands warm against her skin.

  Marlee.

  She heard the name and was about to say something to him, but then she realized he was still kissing her. His hands were moving steadily up the inside of her thighs but his lips were most definitely still on hers, his tongue stroking against hers in a fashion designed to drive her crazy with desire.

  “Marlee is the one who called the Outlaw Task Force on you. She’s the reason you’re locked in here now.”

  The words continued and she reached up, grabbing hold of his wrists and then with all the force she could muster, pulled her mouth away from his.

  “Who? What? I don’t understand,” she told him.

  “I don’t either,” he whispered. “Not totally anyway. I just know that there are some shifters who experience this, while others do not.”

  “No,” she said and shook her head. “I’m just a shifter. My job is to fight and design computer systems. I’m not—“

  He kissed her again and Nisa felt like he was doing so to keep her quiet. She didn’t like that, but she didn’t stop him either. This time she lifted her hands to cup his face and when she was absolutely breathless from the kiss, she pushed his face away from hers.

  “Why can’t we simply be attracted to each other? I’m a virgin, but I don’t wish to be any longer. Let’s just get this over with so we can both start thinking straight again,” she said.

  “Nisa?”

  “No,” she repeated, shaking her head once more. “Just this,” she continued. “Just you and me and just this.”

  For a few nervous moments Nisa thought he would deny her. She thought all his talk of companheiro connection and body and soul was going to send him running. It was too serious—all that talk about connecting and committing. She didn’t want it. Not tonight anyway. Not after what she’d just been through.

  With his hands on the top of her thighs, Decan’s thumbs brushed over the sensitive skin of her pussy. She sighed with relief, her eyes closing slowly before opening again.

  “Is this what you want?” he asked.

  His voice was husky, his eyes a crisp clear blue that seemed to cut right through her. To the parts of her that no one had ever seen before. Nisa dismissed how uncomfortable that made her feel and instead pulled his shirt so that the buttons popped off. He’d obviously removed his jacket while she was showering. That was just fine with her.

  “This is what I want,” Nisa said and pushed the shirt down his arms in an effort to convince him and herself.

  He had to move his hands from her in order to totally remove the shirt. Nisa did not like that but it gave her time to ditch the towel that was hindering her from feeling the touch of his skin directly on hers. She’d been craving that touch since he’d held her in the water. His mouth had been so hot on her then, even with the cool of the water on her back. He’d unbuckled his pants and was pushing them and his boxers down his legs when she grabbed him, pulling him to her as she locked her legs around his waist.

  “Yeah,” he groaned and buried his fingers in her hair. “This is what I want too.”

  Pulling her head back, he kissed her roughly this time, his teeth brushing over her lips sending a quick slice of pleasure/pain through her body. The unfamiliar sound that escaped from her must have been a green light for Decan because his nails scraped along her scalp as he sucked hungrily on her tongue.

  She ran her fingers over his strong shoulders, up and down his bare back, pausing with a gasp at what she felt.

  “What?” she asked in a breathy whisper.

  He went totally still. So much so that if Nisa hadn’t felt and heard the quickened thumping of his heart she would have thought he’d died in her arms.

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  But as he spoke he’d moved away from her mouth, dropping a chaste kiss on her shoulder.

  “It feels like something,” she said still moving her hands over the parts of his back she could reach. “It feels like a lot of something.”

  “You feel better,” he told her. “Every part of you feels so much better.”

  As if trying to prove his point, Decan let his fingers slip from her hair down to her shoulders. He massaged her there and whatever thoughts Nisa had before his magical fingers had done the magical thing that relaxed her totally floated away. When his mouth touched the spot where he rubbed, she moaned. His kisses were lethal. The tiny bites that just barely pierced her skin were sinister. Her breasts felt full all of a sudden, her nipples hardened to a painful point.

  He must have sensed that change in her as his kisses moved slowly—tortuously so—down her chest until he’d taken one tiny bud between his teeth. The other nipple was now between his fingers as he tugged and licked, then sucked and cupped. Nisa arched into him, her head hitting the small circular mirror above the sink.

  “Yes,” he whispered over her skin, “you feel better than everything, Nisa. Better than I could have ever imagined.”

  She’d taken her hands from his back to grip the sides of the vanity.
It was small and she was certain it wasn’t built to accommodate her sitting on it and Decan doing what he was doing to her while she was sitting on it. He was taking full advantage of the fact that he now had unfettered access to her very naked and very sensitive body.

  She’d closed her eyes to the sensations his mouth was sending through her body and so was barely aware of the fact that he seemed to be moving lower and lower. Until the second his fingers touched her pussy, separating her plump folds and his tongue flattened over her clit.

  “Why does that feel so good?” she sighed and curled her toes. “I had no idea it would feel that good.”

  He moaned over her, licking every inch of her and making deliciously naughty sounds while doing so. Cracking her eyes open Nisa looked down to see the top of Decan’s head, framed by her thighs. It was a gorgeous sight, one she knew she’d never forget. Just as she would not forget the angry slashes she could now see crisscrossing his back. The sensation of being filled and the trembling of her thighs cleared the thought from her mind and Nisa bit her bottom lip to keep from screaming out.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Decan said gruffly and tilted his head back to look up at her. “I want every sound. Every pleasurable moan, every bit of your release.”

  She sighed and shook her head because he was moving his fingers in and out of her as he spoke. In and out, deeper and deeper he went, faster and faster Nisa felt herself falling.

  “Give them to me,” he urged and licked his lips before dipping his face back down to her dewy folds.

  He licked and pumped her. She bucked and moaned, feeling as if she were going to explode at any moment now. He continued, whispering instructions for her to “let go” and “give it all to me” and Nisa simply floated on the pleasure. Her body had begun to move on its own, her hips jutting forward and pulling back with the ministrations of his fingers. Her pussy creaming as he sucked on her clit and licked her plump skin. So by the time he pulled away from her, and fit his body between her legs, Nisa was about to explode.

  She literally felt as if she couldn’t take another prick of pleasure. Surely if she did she would tumble over the ledge she’d been precariously perched on since the moment he’d walked up behind her.

  “Look at me,” he commanded.

  She did.

  Her eyes opened wide, her lips parted as she panted.

  “Give it all to me, Nisa,” he told her once more. “I want it all.”

  “Yes,” she said and nodded. “Yes, Decan.”

  His name came out in a strangled cry as he thrust his complete length inside her.

  She screamed his name then, and tore her hands away from the vanity to clap hold of his shoulders. There was stinging pain that was instantly replaced by pleasure that started somewhere deep inside of her and bloomed to every corner of her being. He was thick and long and completely filling her.

  Nisa hadn’t realized her legs had fallen from around him, but Decan had. He wrapped them around his waist once more, clasping her ankles as he pulled her closer, nestling himself deeper inside of her.

  “We’ve been connected from day one,” he said and pulled out of her slowly. “Now, it’s official.”

  Nisa heard his words but didn’t have the strength to figure out what they meant. All she knew was that he felt good. Every part of him, every movement, and every word he spoke. It all felt good. So very good she rode along with him. Stroking and pumping, moaning and hissing, until her entire body trembled, her teeth clenching together and the cat inside roared loud and long.

  Decan pumped faster. He leaned in and let his lion’s teeth glide along the line of her shoulder. His hands were now gripping her bottom, his nails digging painfully into her skin there.

  “It’s done,” he whispered again, just before his teeth sank deep into her flesh.

  Nisa cried out again, the pleasure filling her and the pain…awakening her.

  CHAPTER 12

  Decan woke with a start, the dream having pulled him in instantly, bending him to the point where it threatened to break him once more.

  How many nights would he dream of his time in the SIC? How many times would he relive the most horrific years of his life? Forever, was his answer. He would never forget and thus would never stop trying to take Ewen Mackey and his band of killers that called themselves the Ruling Cabinet down. They were not rulers. They were anything but because they cared about no one but themselves. Working with shifters to kill other shifters all in the name of keeping humans safe. But Decan knew there was much more to it than that. He knew it and so did Keller. Together they had to bring them down. There was no other way for the shifters to be safe, whether above or underground.

  She wasn’t in the bed with him.

  That was the next jolt that Decan’s system didn’t need.

  He sat up looking around the dark space. They were still in the basement of the cabin that Blaez said they could use. Decan hadn’t bothered to ask the lycan how he knew of this place or who it belonged to. He’d only taken the directions and found the key in the location that had been given. They couldn’t go back to Oasis tonight because any one of them could have been followed. So they’d split up. Keller, Gold and Kyss were at a hotel while Jordin and Zion were at a campground that a group of protestors used when they weren’t walking back and forth in front of the Ruling Cabinet’s headquarters in downtown Houston. Those protestors knew more than the other humans gave them credit for. If anyone had truly decided to listen to them, they would know exactly where the majority of the Shadow Shifters were hiding and how to get to them. Luckily for the shifters, everyone thought the group of sixteen to twenty-somethings, were just troublemakers looking for attention instead of finding a job like the rest of the human world. The problem with that philosophy was that there weren’t many jobs to be had, unless one wanted to be a shifter hunter. Most large corporations and just about all of the small businesses had shut down years ago. The human’s economy was in shambles. Their homes, what was left of them after the months of hurricanes in certain areas, blizzards simultaneously in others, looting, fires…you name it, and this civilization had seen it.

  It was a totally different world from the one Decan had been born into and even more different than anything Nisa could have imagined.

  Tossing his legs over the side of the bed, Decan stood and inhaled deeply. He followed the scent which led him up the stairs and into the front room of the cabin. That’s where Nisa stood, off to the side as she peaked out the window. It was dark in the house and outside so if there were a human out there, they had no chance of seeing them. But Nisa could see out. So could Decan.

  “I didn’t know it would be like this,” she said quietly.

  He took another step toward her but thought better and stopped. If he got too close he’d want to touch her and no doubt take her again. The need to be inside her had not been satiated with one time. He’d known it wouldn’t.

  “My father said if we came above ground without supervision we would be killed. He and Uncle Nick told me and Shya that every day of our lives.”

  “They wanted you to be afraid,” he said. “Fear should have kept you obedient.”

  She chuckled wryly.

  “You don’t know me or Shya. We are the direct opposite of obedient.”

  “But you’re smart,” Decan told her. “Because you never let your father see how disobedient you were being.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him you knew I was going above ground?” she asked without turning to look at him.

  “It wasn’t my place,” he answered.

  “But you followed me. Why?”

  “I’ve been taught to protect. In the military, my parents, my cat. Protect our kind, protect the innocent, protect my comp…everyone,” he finished and cleared his throat.

  Decan knew what had happened between him and Nisa. He knew exactly what they were to each other now. He knew and he hadn’t decided how that was going to play out yet. So, for now, he wasn’t going to speak the word.
Not that refusing to speak it would make it any less so.

  “I’ve been taught to hide,” she told him. “To sit in an underground prison and hide.”

  “You were tops in your tactical training. Eli Preston thinks you’re ready to be elevated to an enforcer.”

  She shook her head.

  “My father will never allow that. Just as he never allowed me to travel with any of the guard teams that went above ground in search of other shifters in trouble.”

  “He’s been taught to protect what is his.” Decan couldn’t believe he was defending Roman Reynolds’ motives.

  The Assembly Leader had chosen to hide and he’d made the entire species do the same. It was disgraceful. Keeping them locked underground as if they’d been the ones to start this war. Sure, Blaez had said that Rome had no other choice. That he was trying to keep them all from being hunted and brutally murdered, but none of Rome’s new regulations had been there to save Decan when he’d been captured. The one that saved him had been the one that set that fire at the SIC. That fire had changed Decan’s life forever and now, he wasn’t going to follow the leader as easily as he’d been taught. Because this time, the leader didn’t have a clue what it felt like to be tortured and taunted just because of who he’d been born to be.

  “But I’m not his,” she said. “I belong to myself. So shouldn’t I have some say in what I will do with my life?”

  She was right and she was wrong.

  Nisa Reynolds did not belong to her father. She now belonged to Decan. He wisely did not say that to her. She was no more ready to accept their fate than he was.

  “You don’t know what’s out there, Nisa. You have no idea how dangerous it is for shifters now.”

  “It’s dangerous because we hide. We don’t know what’s up here because we’re stuck down there,” she said, her voice raising slightly as she finally turned to him.

  Her eyes were glowing. The cat’s eyes. Her stance was confrontational, her scent…mesmerizing.