“Lion tamer,” said Darius with a grin. He leaned in close, his breath warm against her smooth round cheeks as he whispered into her ear. “But be careful with that whip, Kitten. Or you’ll get a taste of it yourself when the curtain drops.”
Lacy just stared into his eyes that were like liquid gold, and she gasped when he stepped back from her and Changed into his lion with smooth, beautiful control. He tossed his mane back with a flick of his head, and quickly padded towards where she could hear the other lions pacing restlessly in their cages.
He won’t leave his lions, she realized as her mind raced even as she had to almost break into a run just to keep up with Darius’s lion-sized strides. And he’s been outed as a Shifter, so he can’t just continue being the lion-tamer. This place would turn into a media circus. Perhaps even worse. There’d be researchers and government officials all over the place! Perhaps the military would shut down the circus and try to take Darius so they could “study” him or whatever! Not a good idea to put a Lion Shifter in a cage. Not unless he chooses to be in that cage.
So what do I do? Leave his side and try to find my sister? What about those dark Shifters that followed us here and then stepped back into the shadows? My bobcat can fight with the best of them; but no way I can take on a group of male Shifters without Darius’s help!
Are you done rationalizing why you need to stay by his side, you dumb human, sighed her bobcat. The real answer is that he is our mate, our lion, our man. Your place is by his side, and you will obey him.
“Obey him?! Ten minutes with a lion and you turn into a spineless kitten?” whispered Lacy to her bobcat as she hurried after her lion. In the distance she could hear voices, and she realized the circus folks were cautiously making their way back to their caravans. She still didn’t understand exactly what Darius was planning, but there wasn’t time for a long discussion. She had to trust him—if only because she needed him to find her sister.
Darius stopped right then, and Lacy bumped into him from behind, getting swatted by his tufted tail in the bargain.
“Unlock the big cage,” growled Darius softly, his lion looking at her with those big golden eyes.
Lacy blinked as she looked past Darius and into the eyes of what looked like a million lions, all of them staring intently at Darius like he was in charge.
“I’m not unlocking that cage,” Lacy whispered, feeling her bobcat tense up at the prospect of being surrounded by animals many times its size. Sure, these were just animals, and animals were no match for Shifters. But fourteen animals? Um, no.
“Trust me, Kitten,” whispered the lion. He turned to the fourteen beasts in the cage, and in a firm, low voice said, “Sit.”
And all fourteen lions sat down in unison, purring like overgrown house cats, all of them staring at their master as if waiting for his next command.
The voices were getting closer, and Lacy knew she had to make a decision. This sounded like a dumb idea, but what choice did she have? She didn’t know what was going on. Hell, she didn’t even know there were so many Shifters in the world! Darius was the only one she could trust right now.
So with a sigh she reached out and unlocked the cage, watching in silence as Darius stepped inside and took his place at the center of the group. He looked into her eyes and nodded, and she closed the cage and locked it again.
“Go,” said the lion. “Come back tonight and tell the ringmaster that you heard he might need a new lion tamer. You can hide in my caravan.”
Lacy nodded absentmindedly. It might look a bit suspicious for her to be standing there like a fool in front of the lion-cage. She turned to go, but then stopped. “Wait, won’t they notice that there’s an extra lion in here?”
“Nobody deals with the lions but me,” said Darius. “I feed them. I care for them. The clowns and jugglers keep their distance. And the trapeze artists are too aloof to care.”
“Trapeze artists too aloof? Hey, that’s a pretty good joke for a circus animal,” said Lacy. “Which reminds me, have you heard the one about—”
“Go!” rasped Darius, his golden eyes twinkling as if he wanted her to stay and tell him her silly joke even though this sure as hell wasn’t the time.
Lacy smiled and nodded. But when she turned to go, she realized she had no idea which one was Darius’s trailer. She was about to ask, but then she sniffed the air with her bobcat’s sense of smell, and she knew she didn’t need to ask.
She already knew his scent.
She’d never forget it.
4
“Forget it,” grunted the ringmaster, squinting through a monocle that Darius had always suspected was fake. But the squint wasn’t fake, and neither was his hesitation. “I already have a lion tamer. The best in the business. And business is gonna be up big time after that little display yesterday! Darius is one of those Shifter thingies! I’ve been getting phone calls all day from reporters around the world! The circus is sold out three times over! There’s tickets being scalped for ten times the price!”
“Well, they’re all going to be disappointed,” said Lacy, standing straight and confident, her curves making Darius pant as he watched from the distance. “Darius isn’t coming back. He has no interest in being a circus freak, which is what he would become after being outed as a Shifter.”
The ringmaster snorted, adjusting his monocle and looking around the dark campsite. “Darius will be back. And the show will go on.”
“What show? You’ve already cancelled tonight’s program. Which means you’ve had to give refunds to thousands of customers. What happens if Darius doesn’t show up tomorrow? Or the next day?” Lacy demanded. “Are you going to get into the cage with those lions?”
Darius let out a low growl, and immediately his fourteen lions joined in until it sounded like distant thunder rolling in. Perfect, he thought as the ringmaster’s eyes went so wide his monocle fell off.
“No,” he said hurriedly.
“How about your clowns?” said Lacy, taking a step closer and putting her hands on her hips. “Maybe one of them can handle the man-eating beasts until Darius decides to come back.”
The ringmaster snorted, but Darius could smell the little man’s nervousness. The lions were a major attraction of the circus—especially since most circuses didn’t use animals anymore. As for lion tamers . . . hell, they were hard to come by.
Speaking of hard . . ., whispered his lion as both man and beast watched their curvy, confident mate talk her way into being a goddamned lion tamer at a circus.
“Do not even go there,” Darius muttered under his breath as he felt his lion’s heat roll through him. It wanted to Change back, to give control back to the man, to let the man take his mate, claim her, mark her as his and his only. “We’re going to have to stay in animal form.”
For how long, grumbled his lion.
“As long as it takes to figure out what’s happening,” whispered Darius.
What’s to figure out? said his lion. She is our mate. You claim her, get her pregnant, and then we take care of our cubs. Next year we do the same. Ad infinitum. There! Easy! All figured out for you, King of the Ring!
“Shut up,” Darius grunted, straightening up as he saw that Lacy was winning the argument and was now walking over to the big cage, the ringmaster following at a safe distance. “And get ready.”
“Sit!” Lacy commanded through the bars of the cage, her voice clear and steady even though Darius could sense the nervousness in her.
With a low, almost inaudible growl, Darius repeated the command to his lions. Immediately they sat down on their bellies, all of them staring at Darius’s lion, no doubt in their minds who was in charge.
“Roll over!” said Lacy.
Darius gritted his teeth and stared at Lacy through the bars of the cage. Roll over?! What was he, a puppy? Even a housecat wouldn’t roll over on command!
“Roll over,” Lacy said again, her brown eyes sparkling as she met Darius’s gaze and held it.
Oh, you’re gonna pay for this, Bobcat, Darius thought as he finally exhaled and repeated the command to his lions. He heard his lions clumsily roll over, their heavy bodies making the wooden floor of the cage creak, some of them releasing small growls of protest like they were saying, “What the hell is this, Darius?”
The ringmaster clapped in excitement, staring at Lacy and smiling. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Darius make them do that! What else can you do?”
Lacy shrugged. “Name it,” she said.
“Make them stand on three legs!” squealed the round little man, rubbing his small hands together like a child.
“Stand on three legs!” said Lacy, spreading her arms out wide in a grand gesture like she was conducting an orchestra.
After a long hesitation, Darius ordered his lions to stand up and then balance on three legs. He could feel the anger boil through his proud lion’s blood, and he wondered if the other lions had felt similarly humiliated when he’d led them into the ring and made them jump through flaming hoops.
“Now two legs!” shrieked the ringmaster. “And make them clap their front paws together! And jump like bunnies! Yes! Bunny-hops all around the cage!”
“There isn’t enough place in the cage for all that,” said Lacy hurriedly, and from the way she lowered her eyes and blinked, Darius could tell she’d picked up on his anger. “I can let them out if you like. Here. I’ll just unlock this—”
“No, that’s all right,” said the ringmaster. He hurriedly took three steps back, smiling and shaking his head. “You’ve got the job. Until Darius comes back, of course.”
“Of course,” said Lacy, winking at the lion and then shaking the ringmaster’s outstretched hand. “I can take over Darius’s trailer, I presume?”
“Yes, go ahead,” said the ringmaster. “It’s yours. Until he—”
“Great,” said Lacy, interrupting him and glancing over at Darius once more as a wicked smile broke on her pretty round face. “I’m going to do some re-decorating.”
Wait, what did she just say? whispered Darius’s lion.
“Wait, what did you just say?” Darius growled through the cage once the ringmaster had walked off.
“Oh, nothing,” said Lacy, widening her eyes and shrugging. “Just going to move a few things around. And throw out everything else.”
“My lair!” Darius roared as he watched Lacy pull open his trailer door and walk inside. “You do not mess with a lion’s lair, Kitten. You don’t know what you’re doing. My lion can snap these bars like they’re pretzel sticks.”
“Go ahead,” called Lacy from inside his trailer, where he could hear her rummaging through his drawers. A moment later she emerged at the door, a bundle of his old clothes in her arms. “But there’s no way I’m sleeping in a trailer filled with T-Shirts from like twenty years ago. Look at this one! It’s got rips and tears all the way down! There’s no way you still wear this!”
“That has sentimental value!” roared Darius, pressing his massive head to the cage bars, his lion’s heavy body making the metal bend. “Oh, woman, you are going to get it. You can’t just walk into my life and . . . and . . .”
Darius roared in shocked anger as Lacy made a pile of his clothes on the hard ground outside the trailer, dousing it with a healthy squirt from the bottle of lighter fluid he kept on a shelf. She lit a long kitchen match, the flickering flame lighting up her face and eyes in a way that made Darius weak at the knees. He could see the defiance in this woman, the strength, the independence. She’d spent her life answering to no one, and this was her way of showing him that even though she understood they were fated mates, she wasn’t going to submit to his lion’s dominance.
“You’ll thank me later,” she said, smiling at him as she held the match over the pile of musty old clothes.
“I’ll spank you later,” growled Darius, backing away from the cage bars and pacing restlessly. He knew he couldn’t break through the cage, couldn’t lose control. His lions followed his lead, and he couldn’t allow himself to go berserk over a few old T-Shirts. Well, all of his old T-Shirts. Shit, she was going to pay for this when it was time.
Lacy’s eyes widened at his threat. But Darius picked up the scent of her telltale feminine musk in that moment, and he knew that the image of her bent over his knee, bare bottom upturned and exposed, was making her hot, making her wet, making her ready. Good, because he was going to make her wait. Make her pant. Make her beg.
Make her submit.
“Whatever,” he said finally, exhaling hard and turning his back to her. “I don’t care about those clothes. “Burn them all.”
“OK, cool,” said Lacy cheerfully, and Darius almost lost control when he saw her drop the match, setting his entire wardrobe on fire as his lion bared its teeth and dug its thick claws into the wooden floor of the cage. “Done! Well done, rather! Crispy!”
“You’re insane,” Darius whispered, shaking his mane and growling as he did a full circle and looked at her again. “Wild. Out of control.” But at the same time he couldn’t help but smile at her wildness, her defiance, the way she’d walked into his lair and decided to make it her own.
“On the contrary,” she said, her face going serious as she stared into the flames. “I’m extremely sane and always in control. As for the wild part . . . well, I am a Shifter.”
“Yes, you are,” Darius said as he watched the flames light up her silhouette through the thin cloth of the black skirt she’d been wearing. He could see her strong hourglass figure, those wide hips, thick thighs, beautiful breasts. He could smell her scent—the woman and the animal. Hell, he could smell her heat too! But the human in her was clearly in control of her animal, of her lust, her need to be claimed by him. She wasn’t going to just flop down on the ground and spread her legs for him no matter how much her bobcat mewed to be taken. Darius would have to win over the woman in her. Her animal was ready to be claimed, ready to submit, ready to be tamed. The woman, however, was another matter, another challenge, a beast of a different nature.
“So you agree that I’m sane?” Lacy said, looking up at him through the flames.
“I agree that you’re a Shifter who’s in control of her animal,” said Darius quietly. “And you’re smart, I’ll give you that. You know I won’t break through this cage, won’t risk people knowing that it’s Darius in lion form, hiding amongst the animals. I’d be hounded by the press, the government, every research organization in the world. They’d put me in a real cage! Stick me with needles. Who knows what else.”
“They’d kill you, that’s what else,” said Lacy softly, her brown eyes penetrating him with an understanding that shook the lion. “Because you’d kill any human who tried to put you in a cage, and once we start killing humans in public, there’s no hope.”
“No hope for what?” said Darius, frowning as he tried to interpret the depth of feeling in her words. Where was it coming from? Who was this woman? He knew she was his mate, and although his lion didn’t care about anything else, Darius the man was suddenly deeply curious.
Lacy shrugged, rubbing her arms and slowly walking towards his cage. She sat cross-legged on the ground in front of him, so close he could smell every part of her, the scent making him want to roar in delight at being so close to his mate.
Suddenly a bolt of exhilaration ripped through Darius when he realized that in all the chaos of that day, he hadn’t had time to bask in the simple joy of finding his fated mate! He’d been alone so long it seemed like that was his destiny, that the legend of fated mates was just a story, a myth, some crap his grandparents had told him to ease the grief of losing his parents at such an early age.
“Shifters never truly die,” Grandma had whispered, brushing back young Darius’s golden hair which was like a mane even before his first trans
formation.
“Not once they’ve found their fated mates, as your parents did,” Grandpa had explained. “Yes, their bodies may die, but their souls are mated forever, and their spirits stay together through eternity. Your parents are sad to leave you, but they are happy together, complete together, forever together in a place of light and happiness. You should not grieve for them, Darius.”
Darius had nodded as he listened to his grandparents, two old and proud lion Shifters who were the last of his kind—the last of any kind of Shifters, they’d told him.
“Fated mates,” the young lion had said. “What does that mean?”
Grandpa had cleared his throat and looked at Grandma, an embarrassed smile breaking on his lips as if he wasn’t quite prepared to have the birds-and-bees discussion with young Darius.
“You’ll know what it means when you meet her,” Grandma had said without hesitating, her gold eyes twinkling as she glanced at her own mate and then down at her grandson. “And so will she.”
“No hope for peace,” whispered Lacy through the cage, through Darius’s daydream, through the smoke from his burning clothes.
“What?” he said, frowning as he rested his massive head on his paws and looked into his mate’s eyes. It took a moment to remember what they’d been talking about, and then a chill went through him when it came back to him. “Oh, you mean if Shifters start killing humans in public. Yeah. My grandparents told me that’s why there are so few Shifters left. So many out-of-control transformations, Shifters going feral, running wild. And in a civilized world, when a beast runs wild you put it down.”
Lacy’s pretty face hardened as she listened. “Wait, you’re saying our kind was wiped out by humans?”
“Not quite wiped out, Kitten,” whispered Darius, smiling through his lion’s jaws. “Soon enough our cubs are gonna be crawling all over the jungles of Africa.”
Lacy blinked as the color rushed to her face, and Darius could tell she was still processing the flood of human emotion and animalistic need that flows when a Shifter meets her fated mate. Damn, if only they’d had time to consummate their meeting before circumstances put a set of iron bars between them!
Tamed for the Lion Page 4
