Lion In Wait (A Paranormal Alpha Lion Romance) Read online

  “I never shoulda traded those girls for you,” he said with a tone of remorse in his voice. “Three of ‘em, young and pretty. I figured, I had her,” he cocked his head at Cass. “I didn’t need ‘em anymore. God what an idiot I was, huh? I coulda had four instead of just one. All of ‘em scared, all of ‘em owing me everything? Why’d I have to go an’ try to make this thing into a real circus instead of a traveling,” he shook his head again, still smiling and licking his lips.

  He took another step toward Lex, who was having the slightest trouble keeping his eyes open, but his muscles were still taut and hard, and he was still on his feet. “Ah well. No time for regrets, right? No time for all that? What’s the point?”

  “You won’t get away with this, Lyle,” Cass gritted her teeth. For the first time, as Lex began to wobble, she thought maybe this wasn’t going to work out as well as she hoped. “You can shoot me, you can shoot him, drug us and leave us for dead, but don’t you think someone is eventually going to find us out here?”

  He laughed in that thick, surly, smug-as-shit way that Lyle laughed when he thought he was smarter than whoever else was talking. The one time Cass heard him get that full of himself was when he was cheating at cards one night, and the only reason the other guy didn’t call him on it was because he was aware Lyle would beat him half to death.

  That is what it meant when Lyle thought he was smarter than someone. “But who’s gonna say anything to anybody? You’re in the middle of the damn desert honey, you ain’t a hundred miles from Mexico. How many bodies you think are out here?”

  Lex was tense, but he was fading. Cass knew if she was ten feet closer, she could rip that grin right off Lyle’s face with a flick of her wrist but… she wasn’t. And if nothing else, Lyle kept his threats most of the time.

  “Huh?” Lyle asked, taking another step forward, dart gun still trained on Cass. “Who the hell’s gonna know? Whose gonna miss some dead street urchin and a damn lion? Huh?”

  “They will,” Cass said, tilting her head at the men in various states of pain, unconsciousness, or terror scattered all around. She focused the most of her attention on the pair that Lyle decided to hide behind. “You tricked them, same as you tricked me. They’re not stupid. Only reason they haven’t run right now is because they know you’ll do something to them. Isn’t that right?”

  Lex let out a confused growl, but clawed at his neck, managing to knock a syringe free for whatever good that did. She hurt for him as she watched the clouds descend over his eyes. She wanted to run to his side, yank that dart out of his neck, run away and feel Lex’s beautiful fingers on her sides, on her face.

  “Oh shut up,” Lyle spat. “They’re as dumb as they look. As dumb as you’re actin’. They’re gonna do whatever I tell ‘em to because I pay their damn checks.”

  There was a wave of tension that passed between the two men nearest where she stood. Cass caught wind of it when she looked at them. She cocked her head slightly to the side. “Do you really? When’s the last time they got paid on time, paid what they were supposed to? You railroaded me into being your helpless pawn, Lyle, what’d you do to them? Why would they protect you?”

  Lyle started to answer, but he wasn’t stupid.

  She was right.

  Cass took an unanswered step toward Lex, and then another. Lyle’s hand began to shake. “That’s it,” Cass said. “You kill us, those men aren’t going to protect you.” She edged one step closer. Just a little bit further. A little closer. Not far, just gotta keep talking, keep him nervous.

  “Isn’t that right?” she asked out loud, but not looking at anyone in particular. “He doesn’t pay you, he just drives you into the ground. Isn’t that right?”

  There was some noncommittal grumbling, but not much more. But, that grumbling was more than there was before. “Right?” she asked again. “You’re really willing to go to jail for this idiot? To cover for him killing people?”

  They had no idea that Lyle wanted them to kill a person, but from the way the men started exchanging glances, she knew she’d hit a nerve. She watched her boss again, looked back at Lex, who was still slowly fading, but luckily the fading was just that – slow.

  “We ain’t,” one of them said, breaking a few seconds of silence. “Least… I… I won’t,” he said. “This ain’t right. This isn’t…”

  Lyle fired a dart at the naysayer, and loaded again. That one collapsed, clutching the hip where he’d been punctured. “Who’s next?” Lyle screeched. “Which one of you wants one of these? Huh? Which one?”

  It all happened so fast, so fluid, like it had been practiced a thousand times.

  While Lyle was ranting, Cass took enough of a jump to knock the dart out of Lex’s shoulder. Lex lunged, swiped at Lyle, and knocked him backwards for two somersaults and sent him careening over the flipped over dune buggy, ripping his ill-fitting jeans down the seam on the back right pocket.

  He screamed – oh God did he scream. Lex was careful not to cut him, at least, not badly. But from the way he was carrying on, you’d think Lyle Bertram’s leg had been torn halfway off, and then as he was trying to hold it on, ripped the rest of the way off.

  If Lyle squealing like a stuck pig wasn’t good enough, the meaty whipsh! of her bullwhip’s leather meeting his bared ass cheek was every birthday wish she’d ever had coming true at once.

  A wild, almost hilarious peal of a scream escaped from Lyle’s mouth as he tried to scoot away, but then, just for good measure, Cass popped the whip above his head.

  “What in the son of a fuck?” he screamed out, yelping in pain and grabbing at himself through his torn coveralls. “Oh my God you shot me! You killed me! I’m… I’m killed!”

  In one quicksilver motion, Lex dove toward him, shifting mid-air and landing with his fists on Lyle’s throat, straddling the warbling, whining, mess of a man. “She popped a whip over your head,” he whispered in that low-throated, menacing tone. “And no, she didn’t kill you, no one has. Yet.”

  He started squeezing. “This is for hurting her, for threatening her. This is for all those people you’ve done the same damn thing to for far too long and gotten away with it.”

  “Waaooork!” Lyle sputtered, and then spittle flew from his lips as he gasped. His face went red – or redder than usual – and Lex’s eyes raged with murder. The cords on Lex’s forearms, his wrists, all stood taut and hard. Cass could have bounced a quarter off his traps, they were so flexed, so engorged with rage.

  “Who…?” Lyle was gasping, scrabbling at the ground, trying to either breathe or get away.

  Lex yanked his head off the ground, inches from his own face, and screamed, “what?” right at him, still squeezing. His fingers were almost completely sunk into Lyle’s fleshy neck. “What did you say?” he demanded again.

  “Lex,” Cass came to his side, placed a calming hand on his shoulder, and forced his head to turn toward her. When he looked, she shook hers, keeping his gaze with her eyes. “This isn’t you.”

  By this time, all the disheveled carnies were beginning to mill around, absolutely confused, completely perplexed. One of them, at some point, asked another one if the naked guy with all the muscles was the lion somehow. The one who he asked responded that he thought so, and that it was really impressive that he’d been shot with all those tranquilizers and not keeled over dead.

  Lex, though, wasn’t stopping. Not yet anyway.

  He focused on Lyle. “You were going to kill us. Kill her.”

  “No!” he squawked. “No I wasn’t! I’m,” he let out another moist sputter, then a cough. “I can’t…!”

  “Stop,” Cass said. “This isn’t you.”

  The fire, the hell-born hate, in Lex’s eyes, subsided for just a moment. He was still squeezing, but he relaxed enough that Lyle was able to suck a breath.

  Lex took a deep breath. “Are you sure? He was—”

  “Nothing,” Cass said. “He’s nothing. He’s the past. We don’t need him, and we don’t need this h
anging over us forever and ever. It’s you and me, remember? Two misfits making our way?”

  A half smile crossed Lex’s lips that sent a trill running up Cass’s belly.

  His fingers relaxed. His muscles loosened. “Can I at least knock him out?” he asked. “Or is that too much?”

  “Well we can’t have him follow us, can we?” she asked with a grin. “I doubt these guys would mind.”

  She looked around, and to a man, each of them shook their heads.

  Lex drew back his hand, smiled, and from the way he grinned, Cass could tell he loved how it felt when he finally got to crack that son of a bitch in the face.

  -8-

  “Finally. You have no idea how hard it was to wait for this.”

  -Cass

  “I never, not once in my life, thought that I’d take a shower in a Motel 6 bathroom, and be as happy as I could be about it,” Cass said, flopping back onto the springy mattress with the slightly rough blanket over top. “Even this scratchy ass old blanket feels good.”

  “I got something for you!” Lex shouted, his deep baritone carrying over the sound of the running shower. She’d wanted him to just throw her across the mattress and have his way with her until dawn about four days from then, but he insisted that he wanted to shave and get to looking “good” for her. “Bag, by the door!”

  She rolled back and forth on the king-sized bed, loving the squeak of the mattress, loving the rasp of the mixed-fiber comforter, but most of all? Just loving the fact that she was there, with him, and they were safe.

  That was maybe most of it. She had him. She didn’t need to worry anymore about Lyle. Not since his workers came around, and marched him straight to the police in whatever the nearest town was. Turns out, he’d had them all picking pockets the whole time the show was running. All those circus peanuts and overpriced beers came with an extra tax. And that? Turns out, counts as theft. Since he’s the one who ended up with all the cash, he’s the one who got the brunt of the legal pain.

  And now, three weeks later, it was all over.

  The circus was a memory passed on to the workers who should have owned it in the first place. As part of the deal to keep it running, they’d gone through whatever was left of Lyle’s legally-gained accounts and paid what they could to the people who were owed. It wasn’t much, couple grand a piece, but that was enough to keep Cass and Lyle in a steady diet of all you can eat IHOP pancakes, and rooms at cheap motels all over the place. It was a really good thing about the IHOP deal because she couldn’t handle any more pizza buffets, and Lex ate so many pancakes that paying for all of them would probably have put them right back in the circus.

  Oh, and they had a cheap Toyota, just like the one Cass sold all those years ago – a 1989 Corolla, with faded blue-green paint – to get them from place to place. They picked that up at a dealership right outside of Beeville, for a grand total of eight hundred bucks.

  It wasn’t much materially, but just then as she rolled over and saw the Target bag next to the hotel door, she didn’t care one damn bit how much stuff they had or didn’t. She had everything she needed, right there with her. And after all – what’s a house except a place to put all that stuff?

  I don’t need all that, Cass thought, as her lion made a huge amount of noise trying to towel off in the tiny bathroom. All I need is right there.

  He came out, wrapped in a towel just long enough to cover his gear. “You look like you came off a calendar.” Cass stated flatly, shamelessly devouring this huge specimen of a man with her eyes, which settled on where she thought he was going to shave. “Okay, how did you do that?” she stared at the impeccably grown stubble on his cheeks and jaw. “You managed to shave down to the perfect amount of stubble? How do you even do that?”

  Lex shrugged. “I shaved before the shower. You know that kid in school, the freaky one who enters third grade with a beard? That was me.”

  “Perfect body, beautiful face, eyes that take me to another world… and a beard that’s always just the right length? What else could a girl want?”

  “I’m also fairly nice, and have a reasonably good personality, although I guess that doesn’t matter in calendar hunks, huh? Oh, also I don’t have to cram socks in my underwear. Hell, most of the time I don’t bother wearing any. That’s one human thing I never understood. Seems so… unnatural?”

  She eyed him with one eyebrow raised. “That’s weird,” she said. “I guess I’m not wearing any either. Say,” she cut off Lex’s excited advance. “What were you talking about with the bag? When did you go anywhere?”

  He smiled and sat on the creaking bed, which gave even more under his weight. A sneaky hand made its way up one of Cass’s thighs, probing into places she’d always wanted him to probe. “Boldly going,” she started, and then trailed off.

  “Where no man has gone before? I’m not an alien, remember?” He laughed softly, then lifted Cass’s foot, kissing her ankle, then her calf.

  “Well, one, to be fair. Also, you just sprung the Trekkie trap.” She smiled, inhaled deeply. Lex chuckled softly, the laughter vibrating Cass’s foot as he massaged. A moment later, he kissed her ankle, then her calf, and made his way to the inside of her knee, a place she hadn’t even known she wanted to be kissed until he did. The trill of pleasure that escaped Cass’s lips sort of alarmed her, because she hadn’t known she could make that noise, either.

  She’d wanted him – wanted this – since the first time he stood up in front of her. She had ached for him for all the time they’d been on the run, but Lex had been reticent to give her more than his fingers, or his tongue. Those were incredible, but by the time they found themselves in this old, rickety motel, she was just about beside herself for wanting all of him.

  But as she looked at him, something else stuck in Cass’s mind.

  “Wait,” she whispered, her voice barely louder than the whop-whop of the ancient fake-wood ceiling fan circling slowly above them. “I… I know this is painful, I know you’re not used to talking, but it’s been eating at me ever since that thing with Lyle.”

  Lex paused, but fluttered one more soft, lilting kiss behind Cass’s knee, then sucked gently before taking his lips off of her skin. “How he got me?”

  She nodded, pushing a fallen curl back behind her ear and sitting up on her elbows. “And that bag, too, get that while you’re spilling your soul,” she said, to lighten the mood. Thankfully, he smiled.

  “Yeah, I suppose that’s about what I’m going to do.” With his foot, Lex reached over and plucked the plastic bag off the ground, then tossed it straight into Cass’s hand.

  “I’ll never get over how you can do that,” she said, digging into the sack. “Holy shit, a comforter? Why—?”

  Time for another kiss. “Because I know how much you complain about these. And anyway, yeah, you get so cold at night that I’m pretty sure you’re going to drain my body heat and leave me hypothermic at some point. Plus, it’s soft. I like soft.”

  It was such a simple thing, just a blanket, but as she looked at it, and ran her hands through the fuzzy backing, and felt the weight on her arms when she pulled it around herself, tears ran down Cass’s cheeks and she couldn’t stop smiling.

  “I hope I didn’t get the wrong color,” he smiled, lying beside her, tucking one end of the blanket around Cass’s hips, and sliding underneath. He spooned her, inhaling the scent of her soft, lavender-scented shampoo, and growling deep down. “The blue matches your eyes.”

  She sniffed, but the tears were gone. “You’re physically incapable of not being smooth, huh? The color is perfect, but you forgot to answer my question.”

  “Well,” he said, kissing the spot beneath her ear that got Cass wiggling. “I’m sure I have my moments. After all, I did fall for your Trekkie trap, didn’t I?”

  “I know it’s hard,” Cass said in a whisper. “If you don’t want to tell me, just say so. But—”

  “I gave up,” he said. “I left the pride, left my family. It’s kind of…
it happens. It isn’t very rare that one of us goes and experiences life somewhere else, but unless we’re ready to give our all to the pride, we don’t go back.”

  “Sounds very Amish.”

  Lex smiled at her, his eyes twinkling even in the vague light coming through the blanket. “Yeah, sorta, I guess,” he laughed. “I don’t know what I expected to find, but all I ended up with was a bunch of credit cards, a bunch of junk I didn’t need, and an apartment in some college town in Oklahoma. Let that register for a second.”

  She stifled a laugh. “Okay, so, a were-lion ends up living in some bachelor pad apartment in Oklahoma? How the hell?”

  He got very serious all of a sudden. “I asked myself that over and over and over. I never shifted, never felt like I was me, just like I was running from who I really was. And honestly, that’s what I was doing, just running, pointlessly, for ever and ever. So, I ran again, convinced that if I just did it one last time that everything would be fine.”

  “Don’t tell me you got caught by some school and turned into a mascot?”

  “I never even thought of that as a possibility, but that may have been worse. That might be the only thing that could have been worse. No, I ended up on the run, sometimes sleeping in the woods, or the desert, or wherever. Other times I slept in cheap motels if I could scrape together the money.”

  Cass was shaking her head. “I guess I owe you an apology.”

  He gave her a confused quirk of an eyebrow. “Why?”

  “You said our stories weren’t all that different. I didn’t really believe you until now.”

  Lex nodded. “Well, either way, in the end, I tried to run one too many times. Everything caught up with me, and I just went sort of… feral, I guess. I got shot and captured by some half-assed zoo outside of Knoxville. I have no idea where they thought I came from, but I lasted with them about a month before they sold me to Lyle.”