by Vivi Andrews
She shrugged. “I was scared, but it was all right. He didn’t hurt me.”
Confusion broke through his anger, shattering it. “What?”
“Dominec. He didn’t touch me. I’m fine.”
“What. Happened.”
As she explained, he felt his arms tightening around her and had to forcibly restrain himself from crushing her to him. She could have died. Tonight. On the pride lands. And he hadn’t been there to protect her.
“We need to leave the pride.”
She cocked her head to the side, withdrawing slightly, though still in the circle of his arms. “Adrian, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Non-negotiable. You’ll be safer somewhere else.”
“The Organization will kill me somewhere else. This pride is the best and only protection I have.”
“I’ll protect you.”
“Adrian, darlin’. Relax. I like it here. And so do you. I like who I am here. I can help. I can do good. We both can. You won’t convince me that doesn’t mean anything to you.”
“You mean more.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
This. This was what the poets meant when they said their hearts melted. Hers felt like chocolate oozing over a s’more. But no matter how her heart melted, she couldn’t yield now. Adrian would shatter the world to protect her, but she wanted the life they shared to be one worth living.
“I don’t want to run. This is home now.”
His gleaming yellow eyes were adamant. “You’re my home. You’re the only home I need.”
“And you’re mine, but—”
“I didn’t want to let myself love you, but I always did. If you’re hurt, I would lose my mind. I tried to keep my distance from you because to love you so much is to risk my very soul, but you are everything, Rachel. Do you understand?”
She pushed back in his arms, but he didn’t let her go. “Adrian… I can’t. I can never give you children. And even if by some miracle I could, they’d never be able to fly. You may truly be the last of your kind.”
“You can do anything. I’ve seen you work miracles. You gave me back my wings.”
“I didn’t do any—”
“You gave me back my heart. And I have faith in your ability to make science bow to your will. We’ll in vitro, or adopt or whatever you want. And whether we ever have children or not, you will always be the one I love the most. You are my soul, Rachel. A hawk mates for life and you are all I will ever want—even if you reject me now because I don’t deserve you.”
The words made something wonderful unfurl like a flower in her chest. “I think I must mate for life too, because it’s always been you. I’ve loved you from the first second I saw you. Though I’ve wanted to smack you a time or two since then. But it was only ever you for me.” She smiled up at him. “It’s about time you came back to me.”
Love shone in his eyes as he lowered his lips to hers.
It was, Rachel decided, quite possibly the most perfect kiss ever in the history of kisses. The walls were gone. Everything he was poured through his lips to hers. Her love. Her soul. Her mate. He was finally hers.
Every cell of her body felt like it was radiating joy like gleaming rainbow light. No moment could ever be as perfect as this one—except for the next, and the one after that, with the knowledge that there would be a million more moments to come with this man.
She didn’t know how long they stayed like that before he lifted his head, his eyes somber as they met hers. “I’m sorry.”
“For kissing me?”
“For being a fool for so long. For losing faith in you. For trying to stop myself from loving you. Can you forgive me?”
She smiled. “On two conditions.”
“Anything.”
“You can’t keep making these unilateral decisions for both of us. Leaving the pride? We have to be a team again.”
“We are. But I will still be overbearing and obnoxious in my attempts to keep you safe. And you will do the same for me.”
“I guess I can accept that. But this time, we stay. We’ll be careful. But this is where we belong, Adrian. It’s home.”
“For now. But we have to discuss this thing about impregnating Patch and Lila. Do you have idea how risky it is to experiment on them? If the pride turns against you—”
“Lila has a plan to deal with my image—whatever that means—and I promise I won’t try anything with them until I’ve had some success with Kathy.”
“You’ll talk about it with me first?”
“Of course I will. We’re a team.”
“And the other condition?”
“Never stop loving me.”
He smiled, that small, secretive hawk smile. “Never.”
The ceremony had been Lila’s idea. A special Thanksgiving Thank You. A public statement of trust and gratitude for all Rachel had done for shifters in general and Lone Pine Pride in particular. They’d dedicated the entire feast to her.
Roman, Patch, Grace, Dr. Brandt and Lila had all said a few words. Adrian had watched Rachel blushingly accept their praise, hoping it would be enough, that any shifters who were against her would be swayed by the show.
So far, it seemed to be working.
He wouldn’t stop guarding her and never again would he doubt her. It had been unnatural not to forgive her, so unnatural he’d cut out a piece of his own soul. He would never be whole without her and he would never do that to both of them again.
Madison was under lock and key, isolated from the other prisoners and being questioned on a daily basis, though she hadn’t revealed anything about the Organization. Yet.
Adrian had taken over the training of the new recruits for the security team, putting them through their paces since it wouldn’t be long before they would all be needed in the fight against the Organization. When Rachel wasn’t working with Kathy, she’d started giving classes on first aid and battlefield triage to as many of the shifters as were interested. Each class was larger than the next. Everyone sensed that something big was coming.
After the meal, the celebration devolved into a dance party—the cats would take any excuse to play, especially now when there was an air of last chance desperation to the frivolity. As if this might be their last night on earth. But if it was, Adrian knew there was only one person he wanted to spend it with.
He tucked Rachel against his side and the two of them slipped out into the snowy night. She hugged him against her side and lifted her face to the sky as the flakes drifted down and they crunched away from the Pride Hall.
“They should have celebrated you too,” she grumbled softly. “We did it all together.”
“Yeah, but I’m a cranky ass with a face like a lawnmower and you’re the hot, compassionate doctor. You’re easier to love.”
She turned to face him, twining both arms around his neck. “I beg to differ.”
For a moment, looking down at her, Adrian couldn’t speak. His brain had lost all the words he’d ever known. All he could do was cup her face in his hands—still and always the most beautiful face he’d ever seen in real life—and tip her lips up to meet his.
“Fly for me, Hawk?” she whispered when he finally lifted his head.
“Always.”
About the Author
An Alaskan born and raised, award-winning paranormal romance author Vivi Andrews still lives in the frozen north when she isn’t indulging her travel addiction by bouncing around the globe. Whether at home or on the road, she’s always at work on her next happily-ever-after. For more about her books or the exploits of a nomadic author, please visit her website at www.viviandrews.com, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
Look for these titles by Vivi Andrews
Now Available:
Reawakening Eden
Ghosts of Boyfriends Past
Superlovin’<
br />
Serengeti Shifters
Serengeti Heat
Serengeti Storm
Serengeti Lightning
Serengeti Sunrise
Karmic Consultants
The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant
The Ghost Exterminator: A Love Story
The Sexorcist
The Naked Detective
A Cop & A Feel
Finder’s Keeper
Naughty Karma
Lone Pine Pride
Jaguar’s Kiss
Taming the Lion
Hawk’s Revenge
Coming Soon:
Lone Pine Pride
Unbearable Desire
Tangling With the Tiger
When she’s in heat, there’s no cooling down…
Taming the Lion
© 2014 Vivi Andrews
Lone Pine Pride, Book 2
Wilderness guide and cougar-shifter Patricia “Patch” Fontaine has known the dangers of lone-shifter life since she was ten, when her parents mysteriously vanished. All grown up now, she thrives on her hard-won independence.
When rumors of a new rash of shifter abductions crop up, she’s forced to come home to the Lone Pine Pride for protection—right as the man she’s always secretly wanted is about to marry her best friend. And right as she’s going into heat.
Roman Jaeger values his role as Alpha heir apparent, but he isn’t thrilled about his arranged marriage to the Alpha’s daughter—especially when his bride is just as nonplussed as he is—but he’ll do his duty for the pride. Seeing Patch again challenges his noblest intentions. The wildness in her sets him on fire, and he can’t resist the chance for one last fling.
Both know a future together is impossible. But when chemistry and sowing wild oats grows into a need deeper than lust, their bond could threaten the very heart of the pride they both love.
Warning: This book contains a strong sexy Alpha-to-be, an independent cougar-shifter who knows her way around a lion’s heart, secret affairs, arranged marriages, politics, passion, and a pride full of lions and tigers and bears. Oh my.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Taming the Lion:
“I thought you were going back to the Den,” Patch snapped, not backing down and yielding the space to him as any less dominant cat should.
“I am.”
“So why are you still following me?” She stopped so abruptly Roman would have crashed into her if he hadn’t been acutely attuned to her every move. “I’m a big girl. You don’t have to protect me on the pride lands.”
He knew that. He was pretty sure Patch Fontaine didn’t need his protection anywhere—pride lands or no. But he wasn’t here to be her bodyguard. He was here because he literally couldn’t make himself walk away. There was fire in her and he wanted to warm himself against it. Cold for so long…
She’s in heat.
The thought was salvation, an explanation he could latch on to. Hormones, instinct, animalism. They were all reasonable excuses for this drive to chase her down and make her submit to him in the most basic way. It wasn’t insanity; it was instinct. Chemistry. A purely natural compulsion.
He reached out, catching a lock of hair that had gotten loose and bobbed next to her ear. Her breath caught and she went still, her eyes, dark stars in the night, widening just a millimeter.
“How close are you to the peak of your heat?” he asked, hearing the gravel roughness of arousal in his own voice.
Her lips parted. It was invitation enough.
Bad idea. Worst idea ever. Epically atrocious idea.
She shouldn’t be here with him. Roman. Lila’s Roman. She should have run back to the Den at top speed. She should have stopped walking the second she realized he was following her. It should never have gotten to this point. The two of them. Alone. In the dark. With his strong, callused hand raised almost as if to cup her face, one lock of her hair caught around his finger. With his body so close to hers she could just lean a little and fall against all that delicious, rock hard strength. With his gaze locked on hers—Holy Hades, his eyes. No man should look at a woman like that unless she was beneath him and moaning. Which didn’t sound like a half bad place to be.
“Roman.” She was going to tell him no. Tell him to leave her alone. To walk away. Hell, she was going to walk away herself. She was. But then he lowered his head and her hands were suddenly, of their own volition, splayed on the glorious firmness of his chest, and she was kissing him.
Or she thought she was. It was so soft, so fleeting, so indescribably inadequate that it was hard to know for sure that she’d been properly kissed before he lifted his lips away from hers, and cool air washed away the fleeting sensation of warmth.
No. If this was it, if this was what she’d been waiting for and dreaming about for the last decade it was not going to end like that. A peck. A brush. A tease. Hell no.
A growl ripped out of Patch’s throat as she lurched up into his arms, nails raking into his hair, grasping his skull to hold him steady as she yanked his mouth to hers, their bodies colliding hard as she devoured his mouth. An answering growl rumbled against her body from Roman’s chest and the kiss caught fire—teeth and tongues and lips tangling wantonly. The iron bands of his arms pressed hard into her back, pulling her in closer than close, until she lost track of where she ended and he began. It was all heat and friction and a symphony of hungry growls.
Her feet left the ground and she barely noticed. Who needed the ground when she had this?
One of his hands plunged into her hair, angling her head for better access, as the other gripped her hip and ground her harder against the long, delicious length of his erection. Oh my. Her thighs clenched involuntarily. Yes, please.
His teeth found her lower lip, the bite just shy of too hard, and she heard herself making noises she’d never heard before—high, breathy and feminine pants of need. Then his teeth were skimming the side of her throat and she tipped her face back to stare up at the lattice of black branches above, exposing her neck to him in perfect submission. She who had never submitted to anyone but the Alpha. His teeth scored deeper at the junction of her neck and shoulder and a rough gasp wrenched between her lips. Holy Hades, that spot. It was like a one-way ticket to her G-spot. If she hadn’t already been wet and aching, that bite alone would have done it. She was ready, so unbelievably ready…
Then he was spinning them, pinning her back to the coarse bark of a nearby tree, the scent of crushed pine bark rising up to mix with the tangled scents of lust, Roman’s shaved-cedar-sunshine musk…
…and beneath it all the faintest echo of scent on his clothes, barely-there traces of a cloying, medicinal sweet-and-sour tang…
A tang that triggered something violent and terrified deep inside her. No.
She threw out her hands, struggling with more panic than skill or finesse, but as soon as Roman sensed her resistance, he backed away, probably scenting the sudden surge of fear on her, his hands over his head in a gesture of innocence that was five minutes too late to be believable.
As soon as she wasn’t drowning in his scent, the panic fled—replaced by a heavy weight of realization.
Holy Hades. She’d kissed Roman. They’d almost done a lot more. If she hadn’t come to her senses, God only knew what they’d be doing now. What part of her he’d be nibbling on, caressing…
Not a helpful line of thinking, Patch.
She didn’t know what had triggered her freak-out—that scent, the horrible wrongness of it—but she was damn glad something had woken her up to what she was doing. Sure, she’d wanted to kiss Roman since she’d discovered boys, but he was Lila’s. She would never betray her best friend like that.
Except for the fact that she just had. Crap.
“Patch…” From the expression on Roman’s face, he was ju
st as horrified by what they’d done as she was.
“The heat,” she blurted, insanely grateful for the excuse. It couldn’t have just been her wanting him like she wanted to keep breathing. Not if she ever wanted to be able to look her best friend’s husband in the eye. “It was just the heat. My bad. No hard feelings.”
He lowered his hands from his stick-em-up stance, shifting uncomfortably, and she realized he probably had some very hard feelings left over from their little bout of insanity.
Don’t look. Do. Not. Look.
She looked. And he was just as big as she’d felt. Just as deliciously hard. Oh, have mercy.
“I—” She didn’t know what she would have said. I have to go? I-need-you-take-me-now? I can’t ever see you again? I want to lick you like a lollipop and swallow you whole? Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. The words clogged in her throat and she gave up on pushing them past the shame.
She couldn’t meet his eyes. Didn’t want to know what color they were when they were drenched in need.
Taking a page out of Lila’s book, Patch ran.
Do not pass Go. Do not look back. Do not shift because the cat will say yes, no matter how badly she needs to say no. Patch ran.
Thank God he didn’t follow her. She didn’t know what she would have done if he’d tried to come after her. To chase her down. If he’d caught her…
Images crashed against one another in her brain, half-baked fantasies springing instantly to life. Roman catching her, those muscled arms sweeping her off her feet, taking her to the ground, his weight riding her down, hands stripping away her clothing, caressing, always just on that perfect borderline of too rough. So strong. So dominant. Leaving no question of whom she belonged to, body and soul.
Holy Hades.
To get what he wants, he’ll have to rattle her cage…
Jaguar’s Kiss
© 2014 Vivi Andrews
Lone Pine Pride, Book 1
Lila Fallon, the Lone Pine Pride Alpha’s only daughter, has been betrothed since childhood to marry her father’s chosen successor. The match is designed to maintain peace by shoring up any cracks in pride solidarity.
