by Layla Nash
I groaned and grumbled, but I knew he was right. I sat up, waiting for the room to stop spinning before reaching for the cold bottle. Maybe hair of the dog was better than just water, but anything that smelled like alcohol might push me over the edge. I sipped carefully, drawing my knees up to my chest. I wore only a t-shirt and panties, and his gaze drifted to my bare thighs. I blushed, looking away. "What happened?"
Logan took a deep breath, leaning back against a pillow along the foot of the bed. I studied him carefully — given the choice, he always stayed close to me, touching me. To distance himself like that meant something was wrong. I rubbed my forehead.
He looked tense as a coiled spring. "Do you remember what happened at the soup kitchen?"
I squinted, finishing off the bottle of water. It came back in pieces. Him chopping fruit after he burned the chili. Talking about moving in. Taking the trash out. And then — "Joey," I said.
"Yes."
I sucked in a breath, staring at him as I backed up against the headboard. "And you — you were —"
"A lion." Logan nodded but otherwise didn't move. "I was a lion. We talked about it a little at Ruby's bar, if you remember."
The empty water bottle fell to the floor and rolled under the bed. I put my hands over my face as the sickness welled up in my stomach. It wouldn't stop in my head, the image of the lion landing on Joey, the red across his chest and the ground, the dull crunches as Logan stood up out of the body of the lion.
"Breathe," he murmured, soft and slow. "Just breathe through your nose."
"What the fuck are you?" I couldn't look at him. The flaking walls of my tiny studio closed in around me. Like a cage. A trap.
"A shapeshifter. I'm a lion. There are others — wolves, bears, hyenas. Most predators."
I shook my head, but his words jogged something else loose. Wolves. I stared at him, struggling to breathe. "Ruby and Rafe — they're?"
"Wolf shifters," he said, nodding. As if this were a perfectly normal conversation to be having. That my best friend and her brother, who I'd known for years, practically since I left foster care, were werewolves. But he went on, slow and deliberate. "They're the alphas of their pack. Fierce leaders. Very protective." Logan smiled a little ruefully. "Very protective of you, too. They threatened to kill me yesterday if I wasn't a perfect gentleman."
"Oh. That's nice," I said in a weak voice. None of this made sense. "How - how many are there? Of y-your kind?"
"Of lions?" He frowned in thought, staring up at the ceiling, and I refused to admit it was the most adorable expression his face could wear. "Not many. My brothers and I are one pride. There are two more prides in other parts of the country, but there are very few of us. Less than fifty total, I'd say."
My stomach burbled in warning. I slid to the edge of the bed. "I need to excuse myself for a moment."
He didn't move but only nodded, watching me with those golden eyes.
I didn't wait for any other response and hustled to the bathroom, where I threw up pretty much everything I'd ever eaten and half a bottle of whiskey. Holy shit. I sat on the edge of the tub and covered my eyes, fumbling for a washcloth so I could wipe the tears and snot and yuck off my face. The tears wouldn't stop, though, even after my stomach remained in place. Cold water on my face didn't help, yelling at myself in my head to get my shit together didn't work, nothing would stop the tears. So I gave up waiting for them to stop, brushed my teeth, and walked back out to confront Logan.
He still lay draped across the end of my bed, looking more like a cat than I could have admitted the day before.
I put my hands on my hips and fixed him with my fiercest look. "Okay. Start explaining."
Logan sat up and rested his elbows on his knees. "I like you, Natalia."
I snorted, about to turn away, but his quiet words near knocked me flat. "Really. I love you. I love you, Natalia. I've loved you since you kicked me out of your restaurant."
I flushed, but I couldn't look away from his fiery, glowing, beautiful eyes.
He went on, almost hypnotic in the measured rhythm of his words. "Our kind, we recognize our partners right away. You're meant to be mine. But you're not a shifter, so it's possible I'm not meant to be yours. I will spend my entire life showing you that we belong together. I will do anything to show you now. I love you. I want you to be my mate, to be my family."
The breath caught in my throat, my lungs constricted until the world grew dark around the edges. Mate? Family?
The words dragged out of me. "You mean — what do you mean?"
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Logan eased to his feet. Took a slow step toward me, his hands held out in invitation. Ready to draw me close to him, to hug me, hold me. "I love you, Natalia. That's what I mean. I want to marry you, to take you as my mate. If you want to become a lion, I could change you. But you don't have to — I love you as you are. I love you exactly like this."
I pressed the heels of my hands against my forehead, staring at him. The headache pounded against my eyes. Become a lion? Become a monster like the one that killed Joey? Uncontrolled and uncontrollable? I swallowed hard, then turned and strode into the kitchen for more water. I braced my hands on the flimsy kitchen island. "Change."
His eyebrows arched. "You want me to change?"
"Yes." I gulped water and wiped my mouth with a shaking hand. "I want to see it. You want me to be near you. I need to see what you — what you are."
"Okay. Just — remember to breathe, Natalia." He never took his eyes off me as he stripped down, pulling his clothes off without a hint of modesty. He even folded them carefully before placing them on my bed. I refused to be distracted by the hard lines of muscle across his abdomen, the straps of muscle over his hip and down to his — I jerked my eyes back to his face, my cheeks burning, and found him grinning.
Logan took a deep breath, making fists in front of himself before flexing his shoulders and chest, and then... His skin tore open. Bursts of red and white and yellow as he turned inside out. Bones cracked and tendons popped. A scream caught in my throat and I couldn't move, every muscle frozen. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
A lion stood in my living room, in my apartment. He was easily five feet tall at the shoulders, his massive maned head at eye level with me. Warm golden eyes studied me, more intelligent than predatory, and his coat looked like velvet. Massive paws, larger than the dinner plates at the restaurant, tread silently over the stained carpet as he flowed a few feet closer to me. I backed up until I bumped into the fridge, and one of my magnets fell off, shattering as it hit the cracked linoleum.
He made a huffing noise, somewhere between a chirp and a purr, and I held my arms across my chest, trying to breathe through the panic. The reasonable part of my brain tried to explain that it was him, it was Logan, and he would never hurt me, but the caveman part of my brain said to run the fuck away. Fast.
A pink tongue lolled out of his mouth, but the finger-length teeth remained mostly hidden. He grumbled and huffed again, getting closer still. I forced myself to stay where I was even as he eased into the kitchen and bumped his head against me. Almost knocked me right over. I reached out to steady myself, and my fingers sank into his mane. Deep and wiry, a thick mass of hair that covered halfway to his shoulders. Mostly golden, but it had a few streaks of black in it. My hands tightened to fists, grabbing more of his mane, and he shifted his paws. I tried to release him, to back away, but he rubbed his face against my middle with another cat noise. Then — the rumble started.
My heart dropped because it sounded a little too much like a growl, but as I stood there, pinned between the fridge and a lion, it bounced through me. A purr. A real freaking purr, the more substantial cousin of that cute grumble when he was in his human body. I put a hand over my eyes. His human body.
Logan purred louder and his wide pink tongue rasped against my thigh. My face burned, and I backed up. "Don't you dare."
I could have sworn that lion laughed at me and licked my kne
e. The purr grew louder. I held my breath as he stalked me around the island, his head lowering and the intensity of his gaze increasing along with the purr. It rattled through my brain and almost drove away the headache, until I bumped into the bed and fell backward across the mattress.
Logan the lion placed a giant paw on the mattress next to my hip, raising himself up to look down at me. Then his giant face lowered and he licked from my throat to the top of my cheek. I spluttered and turned away. "Enough. Enough."
Before I could look at him, the popping and tearing erupted behind me and then naked Logan — human once more — flopped onto the bed next to me. I rolled away but he didn't follow, his expression pained as he lay there in silence.
"It hurts, doesn't it?"
Only his harsh breathing answered, and a low groan as his hands clenched.
He lay there, eyes closed, and for the first time, I had the chance to study him. Taut muscles along his shoulders and chest looked like they came from manual labor, not a fancy gym, but scars decorated his torso as well. A hard life led to scars like that. A light smattering of fur across his chest tapered to a narrow trail from his stomach to the nest of curls above his cock, impressive even while soft. I held my breath and bit my lip. The urge to touch him, to run my hands all over him, almost overwhelmed me.
As if he could read my thoughts, his cock twitched. Grew. A massive hard-on stood up against his stomach, made him look like a Greek hero in repose across my bed. My heart raced. Logan didn't open his eyes, his voice low and throaty. "I can feel you looking at me. If you want to touch me — please. Go ahead. I'm yours."
"I thought you said it hurt," I said, barely a whisper. Not believing I actually considered running my hands over his chest, down his washboard abs, up his cock to the perfect head where a single drop of liquid formed.
"It hurts more that you're not touching me," he murmured, his hand sliding over the sheets to squeeze my knee. "Natalia, I've dreamed of you touching me. Please."
My breath came faster but I wasn't quite brave enough to just reach out for his junk. Instead, I picked up his hand and examined his fingers, amazed they'd been paws and claws only a few moments before. My fingers traced the veins and muscles up his forearm and around his bicep, across his chest. I ran my nails across his shoulders, and a smile twitched across his face. But otherwise he didn't move.
I bit my lip, easing closer so I could see as his nipples tightened. My breath against his chest made him jump, and his fists tightened in the sheets, but his face remained perfectly relaxed. I licked his nipple and he groaned. It seemed a strange reversal that only a few moments before he could have torn me to pieces, and yet he lay on my bed and didn't move as I nibbled across his chest and watched the muscles tighten in his thighs. My palms stroked across his stomach, along his hips and down to his thighs, though his hips lifted off the mattress when I avoided his junk. But still he didn't touch me, waiting.
"I don't understand this," I said. My heart raced, desire coursed through me, and I wanted to tear off my underwear and straddle him. Ride him until I came and he came and we made a disaster of the bed. Put the headboard through the shitty plaster on the wall. Made the neighbors think the floor would collapse down on them. I shook my head, drifting my hands back up to his stomach so I could count the ripples of his abs. "You're you, and then you're that — other thing, and then back to this. Perfect. Whole. How does that even work? I don't understand."
"I know it's strange." His voice came out strangled, and his hips lifted again in a slow thrust. "Maybe it is magic. It sometimes feels like magic."
I bit back a laugh, getting more than a little pleasure out of tormenting him like this. I'd spent enough time off-balance and uncertain around him, and now I had him — literally — in the palm of my hand. I leaned down and breathed against his cock, the heated flesh twitching. He groaned. I wrapped my hand around the base, my fingers still a good inch apart despite squeezing, and stroked slowly to the head.
His breath escaped in a rush and Logan rubbed my thigh, his eyes still closed. He kneaded my leg with his strong fingers, and I had to swallow an indecent noise. Holy Christ.
"Keep going," he breathed, making progress up my thigh. I shifted and squeezed my legs together as I knelt next to him, and his hand drifted up my thigh to my butt.
I closed my eyes and stroked him again, then licked the tip in a slow drag that had his fingers digging into my ass. I rocked forward, took him in my mouth and ran my tongue around the spongy flesh. He tasted salty and musky and — different. Wilder. He worked my ass with one hand, his other hand rising slowly to rest on his stomach, just above where my hand held him.
Logan took a shaky breath. "I love you, Natalia."
"Tell me," I started, and then sighed in anticipation as his fingers slid under my panties, dipped under my thighs toward where I ached to feel him. I licked the underside of his cock, wanting to take more of him but needing to hear his voice. "Tell me how a lion would do this."
He laughed, fingers bolder in their explorations, and his voice deepened considerably. "The lion would have you on your knees already."
I wiggled, spreading my thighs so he had easier access to trace slow circles through my sex. "Well, technically I am on my knees."
A smile, slow and lazy, spread across his face but still he kept his eyes closed. He pressed a finger inside me and I gasped, back arching. Logan groaned, his other hand resting on the back of my head. "I love the sounds you make, Natalia. Do it again."
And I did, as he added another finger deep inside and his thumb pressed against my clit. I took his cock in my mouth again, deeper, sucking more as I tried not to moan and press back against his hand. Logan's hand tightened in my hair, guided me to take more of him. "The lion wants you on your hands and knees, your ass in the air. Wants to bite your shoulder to hold you in place while we fuck you. Drive into you until we mark you, until you're ours all the way through."
He kept talking and I kept moving, stroking him with my hand as I sucked the head and rocked my hips against his hand. Logan groaned, deep and loud, and when I looked up, I found him watching me with those brilliant gold eyes. His hips thrust against my face, and his fingers worked faster, circling and pushing and driving me closer and closer to the edge of pure ecstasy. I cried out, freezing as my muscles contracted in waves around his fingers, trying to draw them deeper, and Logan's hand tightened in my hair, pulled my face forcefully against his stomach.
I was lost. Pure pleasure rolled through me as he took control, holding me carefully as his hips thrust, and then he cursed. His cock jerked, and a heated rush of thick fluid coated my tongue, filled my mouth. My thighs tightened against his wrist as Logan continued stroking me, teasing and tormenting, and I moaned.
Logan moved to his side and pulled me up so my head rested against his chest, and he pulled me close against him. He smelled like sweat and sex, and so did I. I closed my eyes as he wrapped his arms around me, rubbing my back. He kissed behind my ear, along my jaw. "You are perfect, Natalia."
I didn't want to think about anything, certainly not the real world that waited outside my apartment. We were different. Too different. Even if I felt an unbelievable connection to him, even if the world only felt right when I was in his arms — I didn't want to live in the same world, where wolves threatened him and he killed a man in an alley without apparent consequences. I squeezed my eyes shut and held him close, tracing his shoulder blades with my fingers so I would remember what they felt like when I no longer had him to hold on to.
Logan rumbled his contentment and managed to pull a sheet over us, and then lay on his back and pulled me onto his chest. His heart beat steadily against my ear. He nibbled along my shoulder. "Say something, baby."
Tears burned my sinuses as I hid my face against his neck. Almost hoped he wouldn't hear as I said, "I love you."
Silence. Logan took a deep breath. "I hear a 'but' following that."
"But I don't think I can do this." Tears fell ag
ainst his neck. His hands stilled, fell to the mattress at his sides.
"Why not?" Painfully controlled, careful. As if I told him I didn't like bread.
"I just need to think." It was a coward's way out, hedging. And we both knew it. "It's too much changing too fast. I barely knew you a week ago, and now — now there's lions and wolves and shit, and people dying in alleys, and moving apartments. I just — I need time to think and figure this out."
Logan didn't speak for a long, long time.
Fifteen
He'd been shot once with a high-powered rifle. It hurt less than Natalia saying she didn't want to be with him.
Logan stayed until she cried herself out and fell asleep, then shifted her off his chest and got dressed. Walked out of the apartment in a fog and headed down the street. He didn't remember calling Edgar, but he blinked and one of the dark sedans pulled up next to him, Benedict at the wheel.
He got in the car and stared straight ahead, unable to look at his brother lest his face crack and fall to pieces. "Don't say a word."
The lawyer looked at him for a long time, then sighed and pulled into traffic. Neither of them spoke until Benedict parked in front of the mansion, kept his hands on the steering wheel and looked down at the gearshift between them. "I'm sorry, brother."
Logan threw open the car door and strode into the house, slamming the door behind him.
Sorry didn't cover it.
For the first few days after he left her apartment, Logan's lion raged. Roared and paced in his head, desperate to get their mate back. Desperate to smell her, to touch her. To feed her and hold her at night. But she wasn't there. He couldn't go to her. She didn't want them. Didn't want him.
It hurt with a deep burn that gutted him unexpectedly throughout the day. He would be fine, in the middle of a meeting to acquire a new business or negotiate a new trade deal, and he would think of her blue eyes laughing at him, or the way she bit her lip when he touched her, or the scent of her shampoo all over his chest. And his heart would seize up, and the lion would rage to the surface, and he would have to excuse himself before he tore every person in the room into bloody scraps.