Grayslake: Lion to Get Her (Alpha Lion Shifter Romance) (Kindle Worlds Novella) (The Jamesburg Shifters Book 8) (5 page)

“I’d believe it,” she said, laughing softly as his tongue warmed a spot in the middle of her chest before another kiss sent a wave of tingling electricity all the way to Laney’s fingertips. “I’d
really
believe it.”

She ran her fingers along the sides of his face. Her fingertips rasped gently over the stubble of beard that was there, and then she traced the lines of his cheekbones. Before she could do much anything else, he pulled away, then sucked a gentle kiss between her breasts, and Laney realized that, at some point, her shirt had vanished.

“Where did my shirt go?”

He shrugged. His fingers danced a soft rhythm down her naked belly, and at the same moment that his lips closed gently on her nipple, he brushed her naked sex with wilting curls of his fingertips.

Laney reached down and pressed the back of his hand. With his palm flattened against her clit, he pushed the tip of a finger just past her entrance. With slow circles, he had her breathing harder and heavier, faster and hotter, with every passing second. “Not yet,” he finally whispered, pulling his finger away from her.

Slowly, he raised it to his lips and kissed her scent, then rolled his eyes back and let out a slow, deep growl that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest. With his body against hers, the vibration of his growl pulsed through Laney, and somehow felt even better, even deeper, than his finger had just a moment before.

“I can’t stop,” he whispered. His voice took on a slightly dangerous sharpness. For the first time, Laney noticed that his eyes were so blue, so burning, deeply blue, that it looked like there were fires burning instead of just glittering irises. She stared into them, just drinking in the color, the fury, and relishing the way he made her feel inexplicably safe and secure and... wanted.

“Why?” she moaned as he ran his fingers down both sides of her sex, squeezing her gently. “Why... me?”

He kissed her belly softly, cupping her breasts in his hands as his lips moved down her body lower and lower. He tickled the tuft of hair with the tip of his tongue and pinched her nipples softly between his thumb and forefinger with each hand. Laney let her head fall back against the chair, as the breath caught in her lungs.

Spreading her legs wider, Laney got them around her visitor. She draped them on either side of his head, and let out a soft trill when his tongue found her button. With soft, methodical circles he sent swirls of pleasure snaking up Laney’s stomach. Her nipples prickled harder and stiffer, and grew more sensitive with each passing second.

A spider’s web of electricity spread all over her body as every single nerve flared to life. She clutched him, holding tight like she knew he’d fade at any second.

A suck.

A kiss.

Fingers gripping her, pulling at her.

And then the whole world went white.

Hot breath slid out of Laney’s nose and mouth as she exhaled her pleasure, and her climax shook her to the core. Almost as soon as her white heat began to fade into the background, she felt him slipping.

“No!” she whispered, clutching for him. “Don’t go, just... just this once.”

Suddenly, her words were echoing in her mind. This wasn’t the first time she’d dreamed this, and she had the feeling it wouldn’t be the last. At least, unless she stopped
needing
this dream.

“Not long,” a ghostly voice whispered. “We’re meant for each other. We always have been. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but...”

“Soon,” she finished for him as he faded completely. “Yeah, soon. I’ll believe that when it happens.”

“Trust me,” the voice came again, a whisper on the wind. “It’ll be worth it.”

BZZZZZT! BZZZZZZT! BEEEEEEEEEP!

Reality flickered each time Laney opened her eyes. Sensing the location of the enemy, she lunged over, throwing her hand on top of her phone and clumsily mashing at buttons until the alarm finally gave up the ghost. She fell backward, collapsing into her chair.

There was a hint of sweat lingering on her chest. She wiped at the moisture, and then went to clean her palm on the shorts she’d been wearing the night before.

“What the hell?” Laney asked the empty room, standing up quickly. Her shorts were gone, and so was the shirt that should have been on. She still had the gray bikini briefs she always wore to sleep, but that was all, and that was... not normal.

“Dreams don’t undress you,” she announced. “Well, not unless you’re
really
into them I guess.”

Glancing around the living room, she found her shorts and her shirt, both hurled unceremoniously into the corner. She never did that.
Never
. The only thing in the world Laney hated more than hangovers was de-wrinkling clothes. It was almost an obsession with her, bordering on compulsion. She
always
put her clothes, no matter how big of a hurry she was in to get out of them, away neatly.

Suddenly, it hit her. “I must’ve been really into that dream. But why now? And...”

Her voice trailed off when her eyes fell on the folded note on the table, tucked between her lamp and the wine bottle. She could almost hear the mysterious lion’s words from the day before, and when she imagined his voice, she burned for him.

Your smile
, he had said,
I love your smile
.

She shivered, but it wasn’t the sort of shiver that comes when you’re outside pumping gas and didn’t bother to get your coat.

It was the sort of shiver she hardly recognized.

The sort that only comes when you realize the worst thing in the world that’s also the best thing at the same time; the sort you get when you figure out you’re in love, and there’s no damn reason at all for it.

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, Laney walked over to the bay window that looked out over the pond in her back yard and drew the curtains until the streaks of crimson from the breaking down settled across her naked body. She closed her eyes, trying to remember her dream, but it was already gone except for a vague memory of blue eyes.

They weren’t just blue eyes though, that wouldn’t be memorable at all—they were deep and so blue they were almost violet. And there was danger behind them, or power. Whatever it was, it was something she couldn’t describe exactly, but at the same time, she smiled every time she thought of it.

“It was
him
,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest as a squirrel trotted across a tree branch in front of her and turned his head in Laney’s direction. She wasn’t paranoid enough to think that it might be one of her neighbors getting an eye full, but... well in a place like Redby Township, you just never knew.

Before she could put too much thought to whether or not any of her nearby neighbors were squirrel shifters, and if they were, which one was a dirty enough old man to actually play peeping tom, the phone she’d choked into submission moments ago buzzed violently on the tabletop.

“Hello?” she asked, and was surprised when instead of a voice in her ear, she got another nasty buzzing, right in her eardrum. “Oh damn it.” She held the phone at arm’s length, and squinted at the screen. Some things about getting older are great: more experience, more money, more time to travel. Failing eyesight though, really not one of Laney’s favorite parts of aging. “Oh,” she said as she swiped. “Hey Elaine.”

Her friend yawned, deeply and loudly. “You called me?” she asked.

“Er, no?” Laney said. “Wait, what the hell are you talking about? Why did you call me at quarter to six?”

“I did? That can’t be. I don’t wake up until ten minutes before the library opens and I have to be at work.”

“I realize that,” Laney said, laughing softly, despite the exhaustion. “My phone rang, and when I answered, you were on the other line.”

“No I wasn’t,” Elaine said.

A low growl from Laney warned her that maybe, just maybe, the pre-dawn hour wasn’t the best time to play ‘who-called-who’ with a sleepy lioness.

“All right, all right. Jeez, it’s like somebody always wakes up on the wrong side of the man. Er, the bed.” She laughed at her own joke. “Anyway, listen, Gilligan just called me and he’s having a root canal done at ten, so—”

“He told you
just now
that he’s having a root canal today?”

“Something about biting a frozen Snicker’s bar when he woke up and... you know what? Okay fine he told me like a week ago, but I forgot until just now.”

Laney blinked, hard, against the sun that had just begun to peek over the tree line. Pale yellow light stung her sleepy eyes, but she loved the way the colors looked. To her leonine eyes, the red and orange of dawn wasn’t static; instead, the colors swirled around each other like water in an eddy. Deep, mellow yellows danced around bloody red that seemed to stream in and around a pool from where the deepest blue emanated.

“Deep blue,” Laney whispered, not realizing she was vocalizing her thoughts. “Deep...”

“Huh? Like the chess playing computer?” Elaine asked. “I watched a documentary about that a couple nights ago, and let me tell you, that Russian chess player was
hot
. Wait, I don’t mean like he was hot, although he sort of was, I mean he was pissed about that computer. So Gilligan won’t be here today and as you know, we have another session of kiddie time at eleven, and you know I can’t stand kids and you have a heart of gold and won’t say no to me. Also, I can’t believe how crooked the thing with that computer was. Did you know they wouldn’t let anyone in the room with the programmers?
Did you know
they wouldn’t let anyone see the real print out reports from the thing’s memory banks? Did you know all that?”

“I love you Wendy,” Laney said. “Even if you did just sneak in the fact that I have the distinct pleasure of enjoying kiddie time with a bunch of rambunctious baby shifters that will no doubt spend the entire time asking about the sleeping lion who was having what appeared to be a sex dream in front of them.”

Elaine snorted a laugh. “Gross! You didn’t say anything about that yesterday! Was he really gettin’ it on back there? I wonder who he was dreaming about.”

“A hamburger. And yes, I’m serious.”

“Wait, what? A sex dream about a hamburger?”

“No,” Laney said with a laugh, “turns out it wasn’t a sex dream. But our mystery man—”

“
Your
mystery man,” Elaine cut in.

Nodding, Laney found herself smiling again. “Yeah, right,
my
mystery man. He was having a dream about turning a hamburger patty. I don’t know if I believe him or not.”

“Really? Who the hell would lie about something that weird. I mean, maybe if he made up a story about... actually you know what? I can’t think of a single thing that would be weirder than a sex dream about a hamburger. But you know what I think?”

“You’re probably going to tell me no matter what I say,” Laney said with another laugh.

“I think you found the one guy who can match you in being fucking weird. Also, there’s something I was supposed to tell you that happened after you left last night. I forgot what it was, though.”

Laney sighed and shook her head. “Like I said, I love you, Wendy.”

As Laney held the phone at arm’s length again, closed one eye and squinted the other to figure out where to stick her finger to end the call, she didn’t hear Elaine remember what it was that she’d forgotten. And then after the phone went dead, Elaine was too tired to bother calling back.

Laney looked back out the window after she tossed her phone absently onto her sofa. That time, she didn’t bother covering herself up when that same squirrel, who she was reasonably certain was just a slightly obnoxious
real
squirrel instead of a perverse neighbor, got another eye full.

“I think I need this, and I need it right now. It’s been a long, long time since I had a run.” She looked down at herself and laughed. “Maybe I should do it more often, even when I’m not halfway into a nervous breakdown over a guy I hardly know.”

The squirrel cocked its head to the side as though it understood what she was saying. She glared at the little rodent as she pulled her underwear off and crouched down in the pool of sunlight that formed on her floor when the big, burning orb finally rose over the treetops. As the hair slid out of her follicles, turning into golden-brown fur, the world all around her changed alongside Laney.

The colors all turned brighter, the sounds all grew more intense and clear. She nudged the window open with her nose and slid out of it, her feline grace impossibly different from her standard, slightly-clumsy, nature. She tripped, first, over a loose brick on her back walking path, and then when she broke into a full run, stubbed a toe and went head-over-heels on a railroad tie that separated her garden from the grassy knoll behind her house.

Laughing out loud, which sounds very strange coming from lion lips, she tumbled, rolled in the grass, and then lay on her back, wiggling back and forth to scratch an itch. Everything was right there in that moment, in that time. She didn’t want for anything she didn’t have.

Except for those eyes.

They were still in front of her face, still dancing in her memory as she took off like a shot. She stumbled one more time, this hiccup happening as she flubbed a leap over an extraordinarily high ant mound. But nothing could stop her. Laney felt every shred of energy exploding through her muscles. The entire world was alive around her with birds calling, bees buzzing. Laney looked up at the sun, surprised to see it was framed on either side by a set of puffy clouds that said rain was on the day’s plan.

She hopped up on a moss-covered tree trunk that extended out over the pond, and laid down, resting her chin on her huge paws. A deep breath filled her lung with all the scents she expected: trees, moss, earth, the cool water below, and... something that shouldn’t have been there.

Sensing another lion’s scent—a sharp, dangerous smell that she was accustomed to, but not used to finding around these parts—Laney immediately crawled back to her feet and crouched down into a low position, ready to pounce or sprint, whichever was a better idea.