Lee walked up and gave Teal a hug. “Thank you.”
“For covering up Jim’s junk? Not much of a favour. It was a nice view.”
Lee snorted, “No, for showing me that you can meet someone without suspicion and make friends. I haven’t had any friends who could offer me the help you did and still look me in the eye the next day.”
Teal quickly hugged her back. “Jim is waiting. Go on, I will see you tomorrow. You have to give me a list of supplies you need for the new first aid station.”
“It’s ready?”
“The beavers work fast. So, think about an equipment list and come back after you have enjoyed a good night’s sleep. You look exhausted.”
“A fine thing to tell a bride on her wedding day.”
“I call it like I see it.” Teal winked, “It’s what friends do.”
With warmth swelling in her heart, Lee returned to Jim’s side and took his hand. “Time to go.”
Jim laughed, “Yes, Mrs. Barnes.”
She blinked. “Oh wow. I never considered that. Leandiir Barnes. I heard you before but it didn’t register.”
They were walking down the street and the Crossroads were alive with people running from the café to the bar and back again.
“What would you say to some dinner?” Jim’s stomach rumbled alarmingly.
“Yes, please. I wouldn’t want you to mistake me for your next meal.”
“That could be fun.”
“Consider me dessert, but for now, I want some fries and gravy, maybe a steak.”
“A salad?”
“Under duress, perhaps. For now, steak.”
They walked into the café and conversation stopped. Nia bustled toward a table where two males were eating, and she shooed them away. The men took one look at Lee and Jim before they got to their feet and evacuated the booth.
Lee looked at Jim and giggled. She hadn’t noticed the blood streaking his body. Wait a minute. She looked down and groaned. “Aw, I got blood on me.”
They passed the two males who took their plates to seats at the counter, and the men gave them polite nods.
Nia came forward with a pitcher of hot water and two white towels. “Clean up, and I will get you some water and coffee.”
“Thanks, Nia.” Lee took a towel, dipped it in the water and scrubbed at her face. Blood came off in streaks and she sighed. “I thought I got it all.”
He took the towel once she was done and started to scrub at himself. By the time Nia returned with the coffee, they were both clean and neat from the neck up.
“Congratulations, you two. It is so nice that you have made it official in both worlds. You gown is lovely, by the way.” Nia chattered at them.
They ordered, and while they waited, several of the beavers came up to offer their congratulations, including the one that she had captured earlier. “I am sorry that I…uh…did that while you were working.”
He grinned. “It was fine. You were careful, though it did scare the crap out of me at the time.”
She smiled at his acceptance of her nature.
She looked around the café and saw the smiling faces and open natures of the majority of the occupants. She was welcome here as a lion and she was welcome as Lee. When she came to that conclusion, she started to sniffle.
Jim was at her side in an instant. “What is it?”
“I was just thinking that most of the people here have been nice, welcoming and made me feel at home in my own skin. I don’t remember having felt that before.”
He held her under his arm until their food arrived. At that point, they ate in silence with only the bottles of condiments passing between them.
Nia brought them more coffee and two huge slices of cake. One had a lion made of candy, the other had a tiger.
Lee rescued the candy tiger from Jim before he got it. “I am keeping it. We can eat it later.”
Nia passed by and slid a box with one of each inside it. “I figured he would eat them now.”
Lee laughed, and when she looked at Jim, he had the tiger sticking out of his mouth. He mumbled, “What? She brought us a spare. It’s good.”
She snickered and delicately licked the head of the lion. It was white chocolate with a hint of milk chocolate mixed in.
Jim groaned. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” She licked again.
“Lick a piece of candy in a room with thirty-five men in it. Every male is watching you, and I have had enough fighting for the day.”
“If you have had enough fighting, what do you want to do for the rest of the night?”
She licked delicately one more time before he grabbed her and hauled her out of the café and carried her toward the Open Heart.
Some things could go beyond words.
Chapter Twelve
Dira smiled from the front desk as they passed. Lee waved as Jim carried her up and back to the room they had roughed up earlier.
Pristine sheets and bedding were in place. There was no trace of the claws and blood that had marked their first time together.
“Wow, she’s good.” Lee admired the pristine nature of the room.
“She is the best and those who come and stay here pay for it.” Jim let her legs slide down his body, but he kept her held to him with one arm.
“I thought I was the best.” She draped her arms around his neck.
“I have no idea what your housekeeping skills are, but at putting yourself between the innocent and danger, you are definitely the best I have ever known.” He kissed her and the kiss deepened.
His tongue stroked along her lips and the rough texture sent shivers through her. Lee moaned and used one hand to release the cord that held her gown in place.
Once she felt the fabric of her gown loosen, she slid her hand along the edge of his wrap and tugged it loose until it dropped to the floor.
“You are getting ahead of me.”
“Girls need to start first or so I have been told.” She squealed as he lifted her and swung her onto the bed.
“It doesn’t mean to get me naked. It means I have some licking to do.” He laid her back and slid his hands up her legs until the white fabric was bunched around her waist.
She knew about oral sex but wasn’t sure what the fuss was about until he licked her. The first stroke tensed her thighs and raised her knees. When he continued, her mind cried out, Hot, wet, ohgodohgodohgod and a scream built in her throat.
His teeth grazed her folds, and his tongue scraped at her clit, causing her orgasm to spiral out of her in a wave of sound and power.
James moved up her body, and his cock nudged at the folds he had just teased into hypersensitivity.
Lee wrapped her leg around his back and pulled him into her. “My favourite part of being a shifter. One change and any wounds on the human body will be fixed.”
“What wounds?”
She tugged at him, trying to get him to thrust into her, and recognition ran through his features. “Oh, those wounds. Are you sure? We can take it slow.”
He moved into her with deliberate lack of speed.
Lee panted, tugged and hauled at him, trying to get him to come completely inside her.
“No hurries, we have the rest of our lives.”
“Your life will be very short if you don’t finish what you started.” She leaned up and nipped at his neck.
Her teeth sharpened when he pulled out and thrust in a little faster.
“More.”
He nuzzled at her neck and moved faster, harder, plunging and sliding into her until she was rocking with every thrust.
She licked at every inch of skin she could reach. Lee caressed his chest, dragged her nails across his nipples and down his abdomen before dragging them up his back and pulling him close.
He growled, groaned and ground his hips against her until she whimpered and gasped, her climax striking her and shaking her around him.
He pounded into her, and the friction heated her channel into another round
of palpitations around his cock. James grunted, and his neck flexed as he held himself to her, his shaft jetting its contents deep within.
James sighed happily and collapsed on her, rolling so that they were side by side with his hand holding her hips to let him stay inside her.
She smiled and caressed his skin as a dreamy lassitude took her over. Her lids were heavy, and she snuggled against him, pulling his body heat into her until it rocked her into sleep.
* * * *
James looked down at his lioness and smiled, so much for myths of men falling asleep after sex. She had been through so much in her life, and yet, she trusted almost everyone she met. It was a rare quality and one that he intended to preserve.
The first aid centre would be done by the end of the week, and Lee’s three eligible half-sisters had been given a free pass to the Crossroads. If they wanted a mate, they would find one. It had taken a lot of negotiation on his part, but the Pride Master had agreed. The Aflai sisters might do better with another species to break the cycle of subservience to a male lion.
The rest of the females that had been taken from the lion compounds were to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Some might thrive in their sheltering homes and some might not. It was a wait-and-see situation.
Lee murmured and shifted closer. James closed his eyes briefly as his cock swelled inside the silken embrace of her body. None of the women he had had in his life felt this right, this perfect.
How could he have thought she was timid? As he remembered the light of battle in her eyes, it was a peculiar counterpoint to the lioness that chased butterflies. She was a complicated female, and she was all his.
He caressed the dark hair that translated into dark fur on an otherwise golden lioness and smiled. If he was honest with himself, he had been hers the moment that she had followed those two thugs out of the bar.
Give him a woman who could handle herself in an alley fight but was afraid of eye contact, and he was doomed to worship at her feet. What a way to go.
* * * *
Two weeks later
“Okay, Chuck. You only have one…what is the drink of the day?” Lee rubbed her hands together and watched as Chuck mixed, blended and twirled his way behind the bar.
“It’s a surprise. A little of this, a little of that and a lot of that.” He winked and produced a martini glass rimmed with graham cracker crumbs and the glass appeared to be filled with cream.
Lee was suspicious after the sour cherry debacle. On the other hand, she now knew that her spitting distance was twelve feet.
She licked daintily at the graham crumbs and found them sweet. A sip of the concoction and she smiled. “It tastes like cheesecake.”
Chuck grinned with triumph. “Good?”
She sipped and sighed. “Very good. What’s in it?”
“Two parts sweet and sour, one part limoncello, one part vanilla vodka and three parts cream.”
A young woman came to the bar and looked at it with longing in her eyes. “May I have one of those?”
Chuck chuckled. “Cheesecake in a glass. Yes, you may.”
He got to work, and in twenty minutes, all fifteen women in the bar were enjoying his concoction.
“It must be nice to have skills that are needed.”
Chuck paused. “In the last week, you have found more of that drug, set two broken limbs and engaged in twelve sets of stitches.”
Lee sighed, “Yeah, but I am not needed right now.”
He flicked his tongue out as he did when he was exasperated. “Go up to the office then. I am fairly sure that Jim needs whatever you have to offer.”
Lee haughtily lifted her glass and soared toward the stairs after throwing a wink at Chuck. Her husband would pretend to be exasperated by her appearance, but the moment she walked up and sat in his lap, he would take a well-deserved break.
She had her first foot on the stair when she heard someone call her. “Lee, a tree fell on Mark’s leg. We need help.”
She looked up at the stairway and the office door, sighing, she turned and passed the bar, depositing her glass near Chuck.
Nia’s brother Bronson was standing in the doorway. They broke into a run as Mark was being carried into the First Aide Centre. Lee knew that her equipment was waiting—drugs, x-ray machine and all the bandages that the shifters could handle. It was a tiny medical paradise, and it was all hers.
When she saw the mess that Mark had made of his leg, she slipped on her black scrub shirt and got to work.
Life was good at the Crossroads, and if she could help the inhabitants in any way, she would. They were her family now, and she was going to protect them from harm by any means necessary.
Author’s Note
We will see Lee and Jim in the next book, Deer Heart in spring 2013. A reindeer out of season heads to the Crossroads and falls for a wolf who can’t come to grips with what she is.
Reindeer are rare enough, but albino reindeer shapeshifters are one in a million. Will the wolf come to his senses before she stomps reason into his head?
Zenina Masters
http://www.zeninamasters.com
About the Author
Zenina Masters was born in Canada and lives in Canada. She has a regular job and does nothing particularly exciting with her life. She enjoys fishing, silence and the ability to pick and choose friends she can trust. Life is too short to watch your back all the time.
Her writing life is a teeny bit of escapism, she would probably chicken out if confronted by three naked men and looks forward to one day finding out.
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