“You’re an artist?” He seemed to perk up at my words. He smiled brightly, and I knew that I had made the right decision in telling him. I hoped the pictures on the walls were his; I wanted to compliment their beauty and tell him that he was the greatest artist I’d ever met in the flesh. I wondered if he would blush at the compliment the way I had when he spoke to me and looked at me. I wondered if he was capable of blushing like I did, or if he would just cough and look away, like most men I knew. Or get defensive. The last option seemed unlikely, but also the most dangerous.
“I draw,” I said. “Usually I draw the city, but sometimes I like to draw the forest.” I drew the forest far more often than I had led on, but I didn’t want to explain that to him. I didn’t want to explain that I drew things I didn’t know the names of. I didn’t want to explain that most of my drawings were exaggerated proportions of trees and flowers etched into fairy tale creatures. My forest drawings were filled with fantasy and wonder. They were nothing like the beautiful paintings on the wall. Suddenly, I was much less confident in having told Leon about my drawing.
“Was that what you were doing out there, when I met you?” he asked.
I cringed. I wanted to say that yes, I had, if only because I thought it would sound much better than what I had been doing. I loved to read, and I loved romance novels, but I had come to learn over the years that most men did not take well when you showed them a book with a half-naked man on the cover. Most got jealous, I’d noticed, because they looked nothing like the men on the cover. But, now that I thought about it, Leon was just as ripped, if not more so, than the man on the cover. He wouldn’t get jealous, although he might laugh a bit at me.
My sketchpad had been in my bag, but my priority hadn’t been the drawing. I had wanted to finish reading my book. It was a good book, the trashy romance variety. I paused, thinking back. My cheeks were red when I looked back up to Leon. It was a little embarrassing to think about a graphic romance novel in front of a man sitting on my bed. I bit my lip. It wasn’t my bed. It was his bed. That thought made me blush even harder.
“Are you okay?” he asked. I wasn’t, not really. I hadn’t been okay since I’d woken up in his bed. I hadn’t been okay since I’d caught the first glimpse of want in his eyes and realized that he could probably smell my own. And, if I was honest, I hadn’t been okay since I had first seen that tiger. It was hard to believe so much had changed in such a short amount of time, and that all I wanted now was to throw myself at this almost complete stranger. And it shocked me to realize how comfortable I was around him, and in his cabin, and with that idea. It was shocking, but it was easy to adjust to. I squirmed a bit, thinking.
“I wasn’t drawing,” I said. “I was reading.” Leon leaned back and grinned at me. I paled. He had seen the book. Did he think me a fool for reading something like that? Had he read parts of the book out of boredom? What would he think of me now? I pressed my hands tightly together and picked at the edges of the nails without looking. My gaze focused on a point behind Leon’s head. I blushed deeply and looked away from him and his knowing grin.
“Yeah, I figured,” he said. He climbed off the bed with his knowing smirk, and swayed out of the room. I couldn’t help but stare as he went. His jeans hugged his muscular backside in all the right ways and left me aching for a more in-depth and hands-on look at what was beneath them.
A moment later, he returned with my bag in one hand. In the other, he held the book I’d been reading – the cover was a bit muddy and torn, but still readable. I flushed when I saw him smirking.
“Nice taste in books,” he said, tossing it to me. I buried my face in my hands to hide my blush, Leon’s laughter ringing in my ears. The laughter echoed a dozen times over as my headache returned. I didn’t look up, I didn’t want to. I was a fool, more so for ever thinking I stood a chance with a man like him. I closed my eyes and willed the blush away, head down and disappointment stinging my heart.
CHAPTER THREE
It took a few minutes of convincing before Leon got me to uncurl from myself. By then he had set my bag back on the bed and covered up the cover of the book with its corner. He’d also taken my dishes away and sat on the edge of the bed again. This time, he perched himself as far away from myself as possible. I wondered if that was for his benefit or for my own. We both seemed tense. I could feel the heat coming off him, even though he was several feet away. I could see the want in his eyes, hidden behind dark lashes and shaggy hair. I could practically taste the thin line of sweat that was slowly drying on his neck. And I wanted to reach out and touch him. I had a feeling that he was thinking similarly adult thoughts, if his darting eyes and apparently parched lips were any indication.
“Would you like to see the rest of the cabin?” he asked me after a few minutes of silence. I watched him closely, looking for any signs of humor or deceit. I had no reason to believe he would lie, but I still smarted from his earlier laughter. I smarted even further from wondering about his motivations. Why was I here? Why was he so attracted to me, and me him? I didn’t have the answers, but I wanted to.
“Sure,” I said. Leon stood and held out a hand to me, smiling. I took it and allowed him to pull me off the bed. Together we walked out into the rest of his cabin, and I couldn’t help but stare.
“I guess we’re both artists,” I said quietly, but that didn’t begin to explain how I felt about the way the cabin looked. Of course, I had seen the paintings in the bedroom and the architecture there – vaulted roof, wooden walls, gorgeous beams, but it dimmed in comparison to the rest of the cabin and its artwork.
The vaulted roof led to wooden crossbeams. Each beam was painted in intricate patterns. Some were painted with lions and other animals; others were covered in flowers and trees – plants that I couldn’t recognize because I’d never seen them before, at least, not outside of television. Even then, there were others I had never seen at all, period. The plains and jungles of Africa, all of it was painted on canvases and logs and cross beams in the cabin. It was painted so thickly that I couldn’t see the walls in places. Entire expanses of wooden and stone were covered in thick murals and overlapping patterns. Birds flew from desert to enormous flower. Lions leaped from a stone wall to a jungle floor. The entire cabin was an overlapping mural.
In the middle of it all stood an enormous grey stone fireplace. The open concept room was covered in paintings except for the stone. Not one drop of paint touched the flagstone. It was crackling with a small fire which filled the room with a woodsy and smoky smell. That must have been what I smelled earlier.
“This is amazing,” I said. But that didn’t even begin to cover how I felt about this cabin. It was like living in another world – a world where animals dominated and flowers grew as tall as people. A world where nothing was what it seemed. I was reminded of a more animalistic Alice in Wonderland, and it made me grin. That had always been a favorite story of mine growing up.
“I’ve been painting for about fifteen years now,” said Leon. He gestured to the kitchen cabinets. They were painted with a thousand different colors of leaves. “Those are my favorite.” The intricate details in the leaves made me frown and pause. They didn’t match the sweeping style of the rest of the room.
“They aren’t the same,” I said, echoing my thoughts. And they truly weren’t. Leon’s paintings were filled with sweeping lines and action. Life and death, combat and movement, destruction and creation. The despites on the kitchen cabinets were filled with tiny details. Golden lines dancing around the edges of painted leaves. Tiny bugs touching the leaves and pressing themselves into the very depths of the cabinets. The trees looked like they would lift off the cabinets at any given time. They were more out of place in the cabin than the pale unpainted expanse of the fireplace.
“They shouldn’t be,” said Leon. “My mother painted them.” He walked over to the kitchen and ran his fingers over the island. It was big for a cabin, I thought, but I liked it. The size of the kitchen dominated the open
concept space, but the pillars kept it from being more of a center point. “She got me into painting.”
“My grandfather started me on drawing,” I said by way of conversation. “I never painted though, just sketched. He wasn’t my inspiration, though.” It was not that I never wanted to paint – I’d tried it for over a year. But discouragement and lack of portability had brought me back to my sketchbook. I didn’t mind. It was nice to have something portable to record my thoughts in when a simple journal wouldn’t capture the scope of what I wanted to do. I didn’t know why I mentioned that he wasn’t my inspiration. My grandfather had only started me on drawing once I’d asked. I remembered seeing him draw portraits for most of my childhood. The family always got a new hand-drawn portrait each year at Christmas.
“Yeah?” Leon looked over his shoulder to me and smiled. “I was always the opposite. Couldn’t draw to save my life, but when you gave me a paintbrush…” He trailed off and gestured to the cabin around him. It spoke for itself. I wondered at that. I wondered how he could paint without being able to draw. I wondered if it was odd, or if it meant he had a talent I didn’t.
My sketchpad suddenly felt very, very inadequate. I held my bag a bit tighter to my side, willing it to disappear before Leon asked to see what I drew. “Who sparked your love for art?” asked Leon. He gestured for the two of us to sit on the couch, and I reluctantly followed. My hands were shaking a bit, though I couldn’t place why, and my gaze kept darting to the too-tight shirt he wore over his impressive physique.
“My older brother,” I said, leaning against the kitchen counter. He circled around it and pulled two bottles of water from the fridge. I took one. My throat felt parched and sore. I wasn’t sure if it was still sore from screaming earlier, or if it was parched because I kept swallowing to keep myself from saying something stupid. “He was always sketching, I absolutely loved it. Watching him create entire worlds with a single pencil…” I sighed, putting my cheek in one hand. “It was always one of my favorite things about my childhood.” I smiled. “I remember asking him how he learned to draw, and he told me it was my grandfather. So I asked him and the rest…” I shrugged. “History.”
“I can only imagine. It was much the same for me and my mother,” said Leon. I wondered if Leon had any siblings, but it didn’t seem terribly important to ask. He and his mother seemed very close. That sounded nice. It had never been that way for me and my own mother. We only spoke on holidays now that I had moved out. She didn’t approve of my art. She’d turned my brother off it very efficiently when he was only fourteen, but she’d never broken me. I remembered listening to long, angry arguments between her and her father – my grandfather – about my love of art. She’d hated it, wanted me to do something useful. He’d loved it and claimed I had a gift.
I shook off the memories and turned my attention back to Leon. “Do you still talk to your mother?” I asked, undoing the cap on the bottle.
“Not often,” said Leon. “She lives up north – far, far up north. What about you and your brother?”
“He’s military, so I haven’t talked to him for a while,” I sighed. “Except for the telephone, but that’s not much fun.” For a little while, we were both quiet. We drank our water and stared at the paintings that marked the walls. I thought back to the last time I saw my brother. It had been almost a year ago, before he was last sent out. We had stayed up the entire night on the roof of my grandmother’s house, staring at the stars. I had never met anyone who could name as many stars and constellations as my brother. These days, the closest I got to seeing him was looking up at the sky at night and knowing he was looking at the same stars. He’d come home someday, but until then, I was alone.
“We should get going,” said Leon. “I doubt you planned to spend the night in the forest, and the sun will be going down in about four hours.” Four hours? That meant I’d been asleep for at least one. Maybe more. It was the right season for the sun to go down late, but I didn’t know exactly when sunset was. I sighed and nodded to Leon.
“Right,” I said. Then I realized he hadn’t simply stated that I should leave. There’d been something else in the statement that drew my attention. “Um, we?”
“That tiger shifter could still be around.” Leon picked up a jacket and slung it around his shoulders. “I’ll walk with you to make sure he doesn’t attack you again.” The tiger shifter. Of course, I’d forgotten about him. I wondered if there were more like him running around the forest. Leon said they had been in the middle of a turf war, so I there were, but I wasn’t quite sure. Were there other shifters running around as well? The image of lions and tigers morphing into men and women as they ran through the cities and forests flooded my mind. I wondered if there were bird shifters. I wondered if they could fly.
Then I remembered that I was supposedly in danger. Would the shifter really come back? “Thank you, but is that really necessary?” I asked. I frowned thoughtfully.
Leon gave me a flat look. His eyes narrowed and his lips drew together in a tight line. “That tiger wasn’t supposed to be here. If he’s here, there’s a reason.” He scrubbed his hands through his shaggy hair. “That means he’ll still be around.” A reason, I thought to myself. A turf war with a reason. I scowled to myself. Leon wasn’t telling me everything that was going on. I was fine with that, mostly, but I didn’t like that there was someone out there who might be trying to hurt me. Or worse.
I suppressed a shudder and bit my lip. “And seeing as he knows who I am…” I trailed off, and Leon nodded.
“You could be in grave danger,” he finished. I swallowed hard and forced myself not to make a sound at that. Grave danger. The shifter could want me dead. I nodded to Leon, grateful for his protection.
“All right, then.” I tugged my bag tight around my shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Together we left his cabin and hiked back into the woods. It was late afternoon now, and the sunlight filtered through the trees above. It threw a thousand shades of gold and green through the trees, tossing it across the flowers and letting the light spread in puddles on the dirt and gravel trail through the forest. It looked almost like a sunlight shower. The puddles and drips which extended from the leaves and branches. I could imagine the sunlight raining down from the skies, coating everything in its brilliant light.
Leon’s cabin was deep within the woods - farther than I had ever walked. If it hadn’t been for my accident, I doubt I would have ever found the cabin. It was simply too well hidden to be chanced upon. The shading of the trees and the overgrowth of the bushes and vines around it allowed the cabin to hide within the forest as though it did not exist. The wooden exterior let it disappear into the darkness of the forest. The overgrown vines and bushes surrounded the walls, and overtook parts of the windows. Flowers bloomed across a small fallen branch on top of the cabin. It had long since gone soft with decay.
I studied it all closely, taking in every detail with the knowledge that I would probably never see it again. Then, with a soft sigh and a nod to Leon, we set off.
We trekked through the forest. Leon made scarcely a sound as we moved, leaving me to feel like a bull in a china shop. He moved like a dancer – fluid and light as a feather. His body was liquid as he stepped from place to place. One movement flowed into the next until I couldn’t help but stare at the way his body rolled and rippled across the forest floor. He barely touched the undergrowth when it wasn’t necessary. And when he did, he stepped quickly and lightly, darting over it with barely any damage left behind. By contrast, I trampled the undergrowth, crushed the flowers, and snapped the twigs with all the grace of a newborn elephant. Flowers wilted in my wake and the undergrowth turned to mulch from my trampling. The twigs seemed to cower even when I tried to step over them, only to result in a crackling snap that was audible even over the noise of the birds.
That was one thing that didn’t change in the forest – the calls of the birds. Jays and cardinals and chickadees all buzzed overhead, chirping and whistlin
g as they called out to one another. Their songs filled me with a light as bright as the afternoon sun. My favorite part about the forest had always been the birds and the animals. In the city, those sounds were absent. In the city, the only sounds that were constant were the traffic and the sirens. Barking dogs or yowling cats would occasionally join in, but it was nothing compared to the lovely sounds of the animals all around us.
It was then, listening to the birds, that I realized something. The small forest critters were strangely absent, and I cocked my head in Leon’s direction to ask why.
“Where are the squirrels?” I asked. Part of me wondered if he had eaten them. Either through capturing and cooking them or through… other means. I winced a bit at that. Had he just torn them apart as a lion? The thought was both gruesome and strangely… intriguing. I shifted uncomfortably, wondering where the thought was going. Wherever it was, I wasn’t sure I liked it.
“They don’t like shifters,” said Leon.
I blinked. “Why not?” It made a bit of sense. As a lion, Leon would no doubt scare them off. He was large, powerful, and predatory. The thought brought a flush to my cheeks. Of course the creatures would be scared of him. But that didn’t explain why they would flee when he was human, especially if the birds weren’t affected by it.
Seduced By The Lion Alpha Page 3
