Lion to Get Her Page 5

  She laughed out loud and turned to run. She didn’t need to look back to know what was going to happen, but did anyway.

  The massive, regal-looking, mighty lion took a spill. He let out a whooping noise, turned two somersaults, and got a mane full of mud. She couldn’t stop laughing, even as she ran.

  When he climbed back to his feet, the lion let out a roar that shattered the morning’s peace. Laney sprinted away, her muscles already aching from the exercise, but she felt alive—really alive—for the first time in forever.

  He roared again, and when she looked back, he was shaking the mud and water and burrs and reeds out of his messy mane. “Not long!” he shouted out. “I’ll catch you!”

  And then she heard him laugh.

  At that exact moment, that one singular blip of time, she realized that Elaine was right. Somehow, some way, Laney had happened upon the one lion who was a match for her—clumsiness and all.

  “I’ll believe that when I see it!” she called back to him. “Wanna make a bet?”

  “You’ll lose!” he shouted back. They were both running full tilt, but the alpha’s bulk meant that Laney had a slight advantage, even when considering her general distaste for cardiovascular training.

  “If I catch you, you have to tell me your name!”

  “And if I catch you?” he roared.

  “You can have whatever you want.”

  The words she said occurred to her after they were already out of her mouth. She’d meant it, of course, she’d wanted to say something like that to him in the middle of the Stephen King section, but she also didn’t want to get sued for public lewdness. But out here in the woods? There wasn’t a reason in the world to act more human than she felt.

  “I’ll take that bet,” he said, his voice drawing nearer. “And then I’ll take you.”

  Laney’s heart skipped a beat. She wanted to flop over right then and there and let him win the bet and let him finish what he’d started in the dream. Oh my God the dream, she realized as she deftly avoided a tree stump, and then immediately stumbled on a rabbit hole, but quickly caught her balance. It was him in the dream. How did I not realize it?

  Electric thrills coursed through her body. She wanted him to catch her, but she thought that for the moment anyway, the chase might be a hell of a lot of fun. One more glimpse backward saw her pursuer slightly closer, but also saw him take a huge spill over the tree stump she’d avoided.

  She laughed, and laughed, and when he got back to his feet, so did he.

  Nothing, she thought, has ever felt this good.

  5

  Time seemed to pass faster than Laney ever remembered. Every crashing turn, every spill one of them took, every taunt or playful insult thrown by one or the other of the lions brought laughs, fake anger, or witty comebacks.

  “You won’t catch me until I let you!” Laney called out, laughing out loud as she careened around a turn and didn’t fall on her ass, which was happening more and more the longer they went and the more tired she got. Constant laughing didn’t help her balance or her endurance either, but that was a price she was happy to pay for how perfect she felt.

  Already the sun had grown hot overhead. The pale yellow disc of morning was then a full, burning orange overhead.

  “You want to let me catch you!” his voice came from behind, and then pitched to the side with a yelp and a howl. When Laney looked back, her mysterious suitor had managed to not only stumble over the tangle of roots that she’d just dodged, but from the way he was pulling and spluttering, he’d gotten his foot stuck as well.

  She slowed to a trot, then a walk, and then a full stop. “You okay?” she called back.

  “It’s all fun and games until someone breaks an ankle,” the response came.

  Did he really? Or is he just playing me for an idiot? I’m gonna go back there, thinking he’s hurt, and then he’s gonna jump on me and... well, I guess everything will turn out pretty well either way it goes. She smiled to herself, thinking of the possibilities, many of which included some light spanking and maybe a climax to the crescendo she felt deep inside every time she thought of him.

  At the same time, this could conceivably all be a game. Or if not a game, a situation that could go from bad to worse real quick if he proved to actually be a creep instead of just an alpha lion doing what he does best. If that were the case, then going back to help him was the stupidest thing she could possibly do... but why? Why go to all this trouble just to troll after some woman who hardly knew him? She’d heard of, you know, Ted Bundy, but Redby Township was a small place; it was a place where word travelled fast, and doing anything crazy like that wasn’t going to last very long.

  After all, it had been almost ten years since the last shifter serial killer struck Redby Township’s population, and that ended up being some lunatic with the weird idea that he was some kind of Batman-esque villain hunting down one of each different shifter.

  She shook her head again as he cried out. “You sure you aren’t a serial killer?” she called, laughing at herself for even vocalizing such a thing.

  In response, he just flopped around and grabbed for his foot. Something about the performance was admittedly impressive, and a little bit Buffalo Bill, but honestly, if Elaine didn’t register any sort of psychic complaint about the guy, there wasn’t much to worry about. Then again, Elaine had been wrong more than once. For instance, the time she was absolute sure that a guy she looked up on SHIFTR, a shifters-only hookup site, was absolutely normal.

  That turned out about the way you’d expect. Turns out he was a cobra looking for a mongoose to have for dinner, in the Hannibal Lecter sense. As luck would have it, he was a really, really specific cobra. Even if Laney thought ferrets and mongooses... mongeese? were the same damn thing, they aren’t at all. Who knew?

  But not even thoughts of a cannibal serial killer were enough to dissuade Laney. She had one thing on her mind, and when a lioness gets something in her head, there’s nothing in the world that can stop her. Usually that’s a good thing. Sometimes... not so much. She hoped with every fiber of her being that this wouldn’t be one of those times.

  With a deep breath, Laney called out again. “You better not be trying to eat me,” she said and then laughed when she realized what she’d said. “I mean, not like that. Well okay, like that, but not that that.”

  “You just made me forget about the ankle pain,” he said. “The headache I just got keeps me from thinking about it.”

  Stalking back toward where her former pursuer had been snagged, Laney considered shifting back to human form and just jumping on him naked. She thought maybe, that wasn’t the best idea though, considering there was still the slight possibility that he was a serial killer, after all.

  “Why do I believe you?” she asked, slinking closer but still keeping her head down, just in case. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Sometimes we don’t need to know names,” he said. “They just get in the way. They make us believe things that aren’t real just because someone’s got a name we recognize.”

  Laney thought about this for a second. “You’re saying your famous?”

  “I’m saying we don’t need names all the time. We don’t need to think so much. We just need to embrace our animal nature a little, you know?”

  Arching an eyebrow, Laney searched her memory banks. That sounded sort of familiar, if she was being honest with herself, but she couldn’t tell exactly where she’d heard it before. If he was some kind of famous figure, Laney wasn’t going to be the first to notice. She wasn’t much of a newshound, and she certainly wasn’t the sort to sit around reading gossip sheets in the grocery store checkout line. She was always more interested in looking at the horoscope books to laugh at how wrong they were. Except when they weren’t wrong, which was starting to happen more often than not, which drove Laney kinda nuts.

  “You realize how weird that sounds, I’m sure,” she said as she drew within spitting distance, or within grabbing dista
nce, should her intuition have failed. “Not telling someone your name is one of the first warning signs that you’re into skinning people.”

  He laughed, easily and shrugged, even though he was visibly pained, and winced when his ankle turned a little. “Let me just say that I’ve been taught to keep things quiet. Especially when I’m in places where not everyone likes me all that much.”

  She paused for a second, watching his face and waiting for any sign that he wasn’t being entirely honest. “What sense does that make?” she asked. “Why would people around Redby not like you?”

  “Okay,” he said with his arms raised in a deflective gesture. “Look, you get me out of this currently very embarrassing situation and... wait, you really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?” Laney was starting to get very irritated. She had a slow fuse, for a lioness, but once it started burning there wasn’t a lot that could stop it. And once it hit the end? Holy hell boy, you better look out, because a bomb’s about to go right the hell off. “What the hell is your big secret and why do I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t know?”

  “I’m not some kind of national celebrity,” he said, wincing again, “although if I were a movie star or something, you’d probably not be asking me all this stuff right now, huh?”

  “I’m fairly oblivious,” Laney said, honestly. “I find that kind of stuff usually just confuses me. So what are you, a politician I’ve never heard of?”

  He paused ever so slightly before groaning again. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”

  Laney’s temper was starting to burn down to a fine point, like a laser about to melt the last tumbler on a safe’s lock. She felt it bubbling up and knew that if she didn’t do something, and fast, it was going to erupt.

  She put a paw on the tangle of roots where his back paw was tangled, and gave it a little push. Not enough to break the bone, or even hurt that bad, just enough to give him a shock.

  “Ow!” he cried out. “What was that for?”

  “Do I really need to explain it?” she asked, sharply. “You waltz into my life, then you disappear, then you chase me around the woods... and through all of it, you won’t tell me your damn name like it’s some kind of national secret. I don’t know who you think you are, but I’m getting pretty goddamn sick of—”

  He let out a long sigh that rumbled in his belly as it ended. “Fine, I’m Rip Black.”

  Rip pre-emptively rolled his eyes in anticipation of a line of questioning that never materialized. When she didn’t respond, he pinched his eyebrows into a point.

  “Is that supposed to impress me?” she finally asked, sitting back on her haunches and returning his semi-glare. “Sounds like a gameshow host name.”

  “I,” he stammered, very obviously taken aback. “I’m... you know, shifter’s getting back to nature? Shifters not needing to act so much like humans?”

  She opened her eyes as wide as saucers, and her mouth just about as much. “I heard you on TV,” she said. “Er, I think. It was that day you fell asleep in the library, but I think someone was watching you on one of the TVs in the back of the library. But... wait, why the hell are you here?”

  “Things got hot,” he said, wincing again. “Listen, I hate to test your temper again, because my foot really hurts. Could you maybe...?” Tilting his head toward the tangled mass of roots, Rip gave her another brief smile. “Thanks,” he said, exhaling slowly as the pressure let up. “God that’s better.”

  Before her eyes, the lion rolled on his back, then hopped to his feet. He had a visible limp as he walked, and for a moment, Laney felt a twinge of regret at having possibly contributed to his foot pain. Just a moment of it, after all, he did deserve what she’d done in her mind. Unbelievably, he shamelessly reverted back to human form. Stretching out languidly on the grass, he yawned, extended his claws to their greatest length, and sighed with pleasure as his fur retracted and there, instead of a tan-furred lion, was an absolutely glorious ass, which was attached to a completely naked man.

  Laney stared, her eyes somehow even wider than before. “Uh,” she started to speak, but couldn’t manage to coax the words out of her mouth. Instead of getting anything useful, she just sort of babbled for a second, and then clapped her mouth audibly shut. “You’re, uh,” she managed to squeak a few moments later, but wasn’t in any frame of mind to complete a thought, no matter how tiny and insignificant.

  “Like I said,” Rip rolled over onto his back and stood. As he did, his joints popped, one after another, as though they were sliding back into place after his frolic through the woods. “Why can’t we just be what we are? Underneath all these manners and pointless embarrassment, aren’t we all animals? Why deny what we know is real?”

  Laney couldn’t deny that right that second, turning into a naturist seemed like a pretty good idea, mostly because that would mean she was naked with this atomic warhead of a guy. But on the other hand? Uh... nature doesn’t hide her love of little chocolate donuts quite the same way a good pair of Spanx can.

  “I don’t know about all that,” she finally said. “Won’t just letting ourselves be animals turn everything back to how it was a thousand years ago? No rules, everyone acting like Wyatt Earp every time something bad happens to them? That’s not good, surely you’re not—”

  He shook his head, and for a moment caught Laney’s gaze. She was having a hell of a time not drinking him in. She cleared her throat to try and focus her thoughts. “What,” he asked, slowly, almost like he was taunting her with how beautiful he was, “did you do this morning?”

  “Woke up and got a phone call? That’s not too animalistic.”

  “No, after that. I’m guessing that whatever phone call you got stressed you out some?”

  She laughed softly. “You could say that.”

  “So my point is, when you were feeling like you needed an escape, what did you do? You didn’t go buy a pack of smokes and a bunch of Fruit Roll-Ups.”

  “I quit both of those a while ago,” she said, grinning slightly. “You’re getting after the fact that I shifted and decided to go for a run. Which, by the way is completely uncharacteristic for me. The running part. Not the... oh damn it, you have me all flustered. This isn’t fair.”

  “When things got bad, you looked inside and you found your inner beast, right? That’s all I’m saying. Why do we have to be embarrassed about what we are? About who we really are?”

  “I never said I was embarrassed.” Laney took a step back, like she’d gotten flashed in the eyes with an incredibly bright light. The things he was getting at made sense, but then again, she was also staring at a naked man, and when she did that, her logical sensibilities tended to be a little more fleeting than they normally were. “It’s just that... I don’t know, I don’t like to think of myself as a beast. I like being a person, I like to have the things that make us all human. Art and books and music... Without all that, what are we? We’re already stuck between two different worlds, I’ll give you that, but why does it have to be harder than it already is?”

  He frowned. “That’s where I get stuck,” he said. “I can’t answer that one. All I know is that when we tie ourselves up in all these rules and regulations and making ourselves feel bad for who we are? That doesn’t do anything good for us. Just gives us dyspepsia.”

  “You made fun of me for saying ‘relations’ and here you’re talking about your dyspepsia.” Laney laughed and took a step closer, recovering the distance she’d lost.

  “Listen,” Rip said with a slightly impatient sigh, “I’m not the person they say I am on talk shows. I’m not some kind of militant asshole who runs around trying to make my point by being a dick and saying ‘oh hey, that’s just how I felt, what’s wrong with that?’ That’s not who I am. I just think that if we let go of a few things that have taken us away from what we really are, we’d be better off. I’m not saying we need to revert to a time before the polio vaccine.”

  Laney backed up again. Something wasn’t cli
cking right in her head. She couldn’t quite place it, but the warmth in her guts and the relaxed way he made her laugh just moments before had shriveled. “Are you trying to make some kind of point with me?” she asked. There it is, she though as soon as the words escaped her lips. My doubts were right there all along. He didn’t want me, he was trying to make some kind of statement. Go grab yourself a librarian who doesn’t have a clue in the world who you are, and make it into some kind of BE YOURSELF moment.

  Aside from not understanding why she felt that way, and why it had come on so quickly, she also couldn’t quite figure out how or why she’d been taken in so damn quickly. “I have all the answers I need,” she whispered. Her smile faded, and she took another pair of steps back from where Rip lay in the grass. “You just told me everything I need to know. I just... I can’t believe I fell for it.”

  “Fell for what?” he asked. “This isn’t some kind of ploy, this isn’t a game. I’m hiding out in town because I can’t take the heat anymore. I can’t take being trailed by paparazzi trying to catch me doing something creepy and turning it against me.” He stood up, and covered himself with a hand. It might’ve been out of some latent self-consciousness, or it might’ve been because suddenly he was less comfortable than he had been a few seconds before. “What did I say that made you think that? I don’t understand all this. Five minutes ago we were having a good time running around the woods and—”

  Laney turned, cutting him off. She couldn’t bury her fear, and couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that this was anything but a play. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. In her voice was the tension of everything she’d been thinking for the past two days. In her voice was fear, anxiety, near panic, and utter confusion. “This,” she said with a sad note in her voice, “isn’t what I signed up for. I thought this was something it isn’t.”

  As Laney turned and ran, back the way she came, back into the forest and back into the life she’d been leading for the last ten years, she heard him ask what she signed up for.