Lions and Tigers and Bears (5 page)

The rush of his teeth sinking into her skin was blinding. The scent of her blood drove her wild. The slow tempo was no longer enough. She needed fast, needed furious. She needed to make him hers.

Curling her fingers into the rug beneath them, she thrust back hard, tipped her hips and took him to the hilt. The movement of his fingers picked up in turn with their hips, plunging into her wet sheath, strumming over her clit, driving her to the edge in seconds. Climax pounded through her like a tempest, ripping through her body and screeching the air from her lungs. A roar tore from her lips as he shot his cum into her ass. The sound was wild, feral. It wasn’t human, but she couldn’t stop it, and concentrated instead on riding out the wave of orgasm as it thundered through her.

With the last of the tremors, Kevin slipped from her body and turned her around, until she was on her back on the rug. Placing a hand on either side of her head, he came over her. He lowered to her mouth, nipping a kiss at each corner, before raising concerned eyes to hers. “You okay?”

Liddy allowed the elation filling her to reflect in her smile as she lifted a hand to his cheek and stroked. “So much better than.”

“Good, because I need to ask you something and I want a truthful answer.”

Something in his voice and the way his concern stayed intact even after her assurance she was okay called forth her anxiety. Her fingers stilled on his cheek.

She could trust him. She wanted him to feel the same way about her. No matter the question, she would answer. “I’d never lie to you, Kevin. What do you want to know?”

“Are you a shifter, Liddy?”

Chapter Four

Liddy’s hand jerked from Kevin’s cheek and her eyes went wide. She attempted to push him off her, but then clearly realized he wasn’t going anywhere and gave up the efforts to squeak out, “Why would you think that?”

He smiled at her anxiety while happiness soared through him. If she wasn’t a shifter, she wouldn’t be acting this way. “The way you licked my wound today. The way you wanted me to bite you. The way you roared when I took you in the ass. And for so many other reasons.” He added solemnly, “Liddy, you affect me in a way no normal woman ever has.”

“What are you saying?” she asked, her voice tremulous.

He brushed a reassuring kiss across her mouth. “I’m saying it’s okay to admit what you are. It won’t scare me. I told you I know shifters, many who live in this city. They mean more to me than you could ever guess.”

Her lips pulled into a thoughtful pout. Long, silent seconds passed. Finally, she admitted, “No one knows about me. Just a few other shifters I’ve met through the years. No one else even suspects. If I hadn’t licked your hand today, we might not be here now and you wouldn’t know either, would you?”

She looked scared, like telling him the truth had cost her dearly. Kevin hated seeing the fear in her eyes—she was too strong of a woman for it, too strong of a lioness. At the same time, he gloried in her unease. Liddy believed he was human and had entrusted him with her secret. It spoke highly of her feelings for him, her faith in him.

He captured her hands in his. Linking their fingers, he brushed her lips a second time, needing to show her that she had nothing to fear. “Eventually I would have figured it out.”

“How can you be so sure? You didn’t know for the last six months, did you?”

The words were barely a whisper. Kevin pulled back to meet her eyes. The glimmer of tears made her eyes seem as bright as the moonlight and tugged at his heart. This was a good moment, the best he could remember. The only tears in her eyes should be happy ones. Thankfully, he knew how to accomplish that. “I didn’t know, but I should have. I never tried to read your thoughts until yesterday. When I couldn’t it made me wonder and then, when you cleaned my cut with your tongue, everything began to fall into place. Still I was afraid to hope.”

Liddy’s fingers went limp against his. Her eyes narrowed. “Afraid to hope. Read my thoughts. What are you saying, Kevin?”

He smiled supremely, relieved beyond measure to have the truth out between them. To think he’d been ready to give up on ever having anything beyond friendship with her. “I’m saying I’m one, too. Like you only other shifters know. And honestly very few of them know who I really am. Making it in this city hasn’t come easy. If the people I do business with knew what I really am… I was afraid to tell even you, Liddy. As much as I know you love your animals, I was still worried you would reject me.”

Kevin was sure the admission would be followed by Liddy’s enchanting smile, her delighted laughter. Instead, her hands stayed limp in his, her eyes narrowed in speculation. “You go to the gatherings?” she asked quietly.

“I lead them.”

“You…?” She broke off and shook her hands loose from his, once more attempted to push him away. When it proved unsuccessful, she implored, “Please let me go.”

His smile erupted along with his happiness. His gut tightened. He’d been so sure she would be pleased. Damn it, she
would
be pleased. There was so much good between them. She had to see that. He shifted his position over her, applying the weight of his lower half fully to hers. His cock cradled against her pussy. That she was still wet both thrilled and angered him. She couldn’t leave him.

“You’re not going anywhere, Liddy,” he growled, asserting the power he so rarely used. “This is where you belong and I’m not letting you go until you see that. Don’t even think about telling me no. I’m your leader, your king. You have to abide.”

Unlike his power, Kevin asserted his strength regularly through his business dealings. It was met by anxiety with some and hostility by others. Laughter was a new reaction. But laughter was exactly what came out of Liddy’s mouth, throaty and low and sensual in a way that fired his libido anew.

Tears shimmered in her eyes once more, but this time they were those of amusement. “I wasn’t going anywhere, you big lug. I just wanted to show you something.” She sobered to add, “Now that I know you think I belong here with you, I want to show you more than ever.”

He huffed out a breath as the fight left him, and rolled off her. She’d never planned to go anywhere. If he’d been operating on logic and not his fear of rejection, he might have understood that.

Kevin reclined on his side and came up on an elbow. He gestured to the room in front of him. “Show me.”

Liddy came to her feet, a lithe move that had her body open to him and her lush breasts thrust high and hard-tipped. Moonlight tangled with the curls at her mound, making them seem so much lighter than their typically black shade. Almost white. Thoughts of sinking his tongue past those tight, wet curls to lick at her delectable pussy pounded through his brain and had his cock solid and aching for her again.

He pushed to his knees, ready to crawl across the floor and skewer his tongue into her pussy. He only made it a few inches when the reality of how white and thick the fur at her sex had become. His focus pulled from her mound and all thoughts of crawling to her were forgotten.

Liddy the woman was gone. Liddy the lioness stood before him, strong and graceful and brilliant white. Soulful dark eyes fixed on his and her mouth pulled back in a familiar smile.

Kevin grinned back as understanding dawned. He should have known. No other woman had ever appealed to him the way Liddy did, just as no other lioness had ever appealed to him the way the white lioness he’d fucked the previous night did. The white lioness looking upon him now. “Sierra.”

Balendin
, she thought his feline name with an incline of her head.
I didn’t know who you were. I thought… I felt so guilty about the other night. From the first time I saw you, something about you captivated me in a way no other lion ever had. Now I know why.

And now he knew why he hadn’t been able to resist Sierra.

Kevin shifted into his lion form, wanting to be both physically and emotionally as close to Liddy as possible. He went to her and nuzzled her neck, inhaled her scent. How could have he missed the connection? Regardless of her form, she was the same incredible Liddy. His Liddy.

Joy pressed at his heart as he lapped a kiss at her mouth.
I felt guilty, too. Like you I was drawn in. It was your eyes for me. Dark, soulful. I couldn’t place them before, but now I can. I was looking into Sierra’s eyes and seeing Liddy. My Liddy.

She purred against his mouth.
I want to be yours, Kevin. I want you to teach me. To show me everything. There’s so much I don’t know.

His joy turned to curiosity as he recalled her saying only a few other shifters knew about her. Most shifters came from a line of the same. That Liddy hadn’t, could only mean she had been turned, clearly by a lion who hadn’t stuck around long enough to instruct her in their ways.
How did you become this way? When?

She brushed his mouth a last time and moved to look out the window. He’d purposefully surrounded his home with trees so no passersby could look inside and catch a glimpse of something they would fear.

Six years ago, when I spent the summer interning with the sanctuary.
Liddy’s thoughts came across quietly, as if it pained her to share them.
I was studying the lions’ behavioral patterns when one of them went wild. It lunged at me, pinned me down. I was out back, too far for anyone to hear me screaming. Eventually someone came looking for me. They found me asleep. Seemingly untouched. And gave me a lecture about taking naps in the lion preserve.

Kevin’s heart squeezed with hurt for her at the picture she painted. Poor Liddy. He had heard tales of the turning process and it sound painful and often unwanted. Had she wanted it? Did she regret it even now? No, she couldn’t. If she did, she wouldn’t be asking to learn more.
But you weren’t untouched?

No. The cat didn’t hurt me, just bit me and exchanged enough blood to turn me. At first I was fine, then little by little I started feeling sick. I figured out slowly why that was, what was missing from my diet. I had been a vegetarian up until then.

Her thoughts had grown stronger as she shared, and he took that as the sign it would be okay to approach her. He moved to the window beside her and glanced over. It was hard to hang on to his sorrow for what she had gone through when he was looking at her, seeing her, his beautiful white lioness in his home. Remembering how amazing she’d felt in his arms, her body joining with his. He wanted that forever.

You weren’t scared?
he asked, fighting back the urge to declare his love here and now. He’d been falling for Liddy since the day they’d met, but as much as he knew how authentic that love was he wasn’t certain if she was ready to hear the words.

I was scared of telling my family or pretty much anyone else, yes, but otherwise, no. I was happy, content in a way I’d never felt before. For the first time, I felt truly comfortable in my own skin. At least, behind closed doors.

Some of Kevin’s happiness faded. No matter how great his feelings for Liddy, there were some things he couldn’t accomplish for her or anyone else.
I wish we could feel that way with those doors open, but you know that’s going to take years to accomplish. If your mother felt differently about shifters it would help, but obviously she isn’t going to change overnight. You would have told her long ago, if you thought there was a chance of that happening.

Mama struggles with accepting people from different ethnic backgrounds dating. She’ll never accept shapeshifters into her city, let alone her life.

Her eyes shimmered with tears of unhappiness. He wished he could make them go away, but all he could do was speak his heart.
I’m sorry your mother is so old-fashioned, but I won’t hide my feelings for you, Liddy. I already have to hide my identity.

A smile pulled back her lips and reached into her eyes, banishing the tears.
Oh Kevin, I don’t want you to hide anything. Mama loves me and she’s going to learn to accept you in my life. And if she doesn’t…
She would. Liddy would make her. But if for some reason she couldn’t… Fresh tears pricked her eyes.
I hate the idea of her not speaking to me, respecting me, but I won’t give you up for her beliefs. I want you. I need you to teach me.

Everything I know,
Kevin promised, closing the short distance between them to nuzzle her nose reassuringly.
You can count on that, Liddy.

I know I can. I trust you. I care about you so much.

He ceased his nuzzling to stroke his tongue along her lips. Slipping inside her mouth, her taste ignited his senses and brought his cock to aching awareness. He had once dreamed of the day he would find his mate and make her his. In some ways he had already done that when he’d taken Liddy in her lioness form at the gathering. But he hadn’t really known it was Liddy, hadn’t known what they were meant to be. This time he knew and he planned to lavish her with every carnal indulgence she deserved.

* * * * *

Liddy knew falling asleep each night and waking each morning in Kevin’s bed was not the best way to keep it secret from her mama that she was dating a white man. Still, she couldn’t make herself leave him after they made love. Not only did that lovemaking lead to more lovemaking, but talk of both the mundane and things about her and what she was capable of as a shifter that she had never known.

Now wasn’t a moment for talking though, Liddy acknowledged with a laugh as Kevin returned to the bedroom and rejoined her on the bed. He’d gone to find food. She had believed to eat. The playful gleam in his eyes as he set the plate of fruit next to him on the bed and plucked a grape off the plentiful vine suggested otherwise.

“Hungry?” he asked, raising a dark eyebrow.

For what she could guess he had in mind, definitely. She returned his sensual smile with one of her own. “Always.”

“Then open up.” He didn’t direct that question to her mouth, but her legs. The momentary thought to be embarrassed passed through Liddy’s mind, but then was quickly forgotten as she spread her thighs.

Kevin’s expression went from playful to carnal as he moved between her legs. He slid the cool grape along the inside of her thigh and upward until it caressed the length of her slit.

She shivered against the hedonistic sensation. “That feels so…”

“Good,” he supplied, using one hand to splay her labia wide and the other to dip the grape into her sex.

Her pussy pulsed forth a stream of juices, and her fingers dug into the sheets. “Fucking amazing,” she bit out as he rubbed the fruit against her sex.

With a chuckle, he brought the grape to his mouth and popped it inside.

Liddy squirmed with the bliss that stole over his face as he chewed. How could it be possible watching him eat that grape, knowing her juices coated it, was more arousing than watching him fuck her with his mouth?

The answer was forgotten as Kevin returned to the plate of fruit and lifted a peeled banana. She gasped as he skimmed the soft banana along her thigh and toward her dripping pussy. “You aren’t serious?”