Alpha Lion: BBW Lion Shifter Paranormal Romance (6 page)

He could feel her breasts, her hips, her thigh still pressing against his erection…he growled into her mouth and kissed her harder.

She moaned underneath him and reached up to tug his hair elastic away, sliding her hand into his hair and cupping his head as they kissed. He pulled back just enough to breathe, “You like my mane?”

“I love it.” She leaned up for another kiss. “Men with long hair are a—” one more kiss, “—a weakness.”

“Well, brave,” kiss, “beautiful,” kiss, “smart,” kiss, kiss, kiss, why did she taste so
good
? “honest women are a weakness of mine.”

“Oh,” she said, but he stopped any objections with his mouth, and she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back.

Eventually, though, he had to either come up for air or start taking her clothes off. “Hey,” he said softly into her mouth.

“Hmm?” she responded, lifting her chin to ghost little kisses over his lips.

“We can’t do anything in the classroom,” he said, and then heard what had come out of his mouth and backpedaled. “Not that you have to—or that I’m implying we’re going to—we can do whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Now it was
his
turn to blush, which he hardly ever did. Sam seemed to bring it out in him, though.

And she was laughing at him. He pushed himself up a little more so he could see it better. “It’s okay,” she said. “I want to keep going. But Lynn probably wouldn’t like it if we did it in here.”

That was a bucket of cold water. “No,” he said. “No, she would not. In fact,” he scrambled up off of her, “sometimes she comes in to clear up the mats before she goes home.”

“Oh, boy,” and now Sam was laughing harder, with an edge of embarrassment. “I can’t even imagine—if she came in—”

“We would both definitely get a lecture about respecting the practice space,” Dale agreed. He held out a hand and pulled Sam to her feet. “Let’s see, there’s—” He stopped.

He’d been about to say that there were a few things he needed to take care of before leaving the studio, but he was struck by the idiocy of the statement. There were a few things he
would
have done if he didn’t have a gorgeous woman waiting for him to finish up and leave.

But none of them were so urgent they couldn’t wait until tomorrow. And it would be incredibly rude, not to mention
stupid
, to keep Sam waiting so he could finish up paperwork.

“There’s nothing keeping me here any longer,” he said instead. “Your place or mine?”

“Whichever’s closest,” she said. “Do you live nearby?”

“Right nearby,” he confirmed. “Get your coat and we can go. Oh, wait,” he said as she turned to go.

“What?” she asked, turning back.

He kissed her gorgeous mouth one more time. “Okay, now you can go.”

She broke into a grin. “Okay.” She turned for the door, glancing over her shoulder as she went.

Dale held the classroom door for her, and tried not to think about how he was acting like a dumb lovesick hero in a romantic comedy.

He just—he genuinely
didn’t
want to let Sam go without another kiss. Surely anyone would want to kiss that mouth as many times as possible.

Anyone didn’t get to, though. Only him.

That thought struck him, and he paused with his hand on his coat. If he was doing this, if he was ignoring any obstacles the pack might bring to bear and going for it, he wanted that to be true. He wasn’t the sort of jerk who led women on and then abandoned them. He wanted a relationship.

He just hoped Sam was on the same page.

* * *

Sam put on her coat with a sense of unreality. She’d been so sure Dale was just being nice, that he didn’t want her to get hurt. That he couldn’t possibly be interested in someone in her situation.

Well, he
was
nice, and he
didn’t
want her to get hurt, but she’d been dead wrong about the last one, apparently.

And he kissed like a god.
And
she couldn’t wait to get his clothes off to see all those muscles she’d been able to feel back in the classroom.

She went to go find him, and ran into Dawn at the desk. “Hi!” Dawn said.

“Oh—hi,” she said, trying to collect herself. “Still working?”

“Just finishing up a few things,” Dawn said. “The staff tend to stick around after the place closes. Dale and Lynn are always here late. Especially Dale. He practically lives here.”

“Really?” She wondered what it would be like to date a man who was already married to his job. Maybe not so great.

If Dale even wanted to date her. She still couldn’t quite believe that.

Well, if he just wanted a fun time, that was…that was okay, she thought firmly. She’d be happy to have a fun time with someone as gorgeous and nice as Dale, and it would be a good memory in the middle of a crappy time of her life.

She’d just have to be satisfied with that.

She was distracted from her thoughts when Dale himself appeared from the hallway. “Hey,” he said, giving her the real, full-on version of his smile.

She smiled helplessly back. “Hey.”

“Hey,” said Dawn, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Dale, are you sticking around, or should I—”

“You close up.” Dale didn’t look away from Sam. “Unless Lynn’s still here and she wants to.”

“You got it,” Dawn said. “Have a—uh, have a nice night, you guys.”

“Thank you,” Sam said faintly, and took Dale’s offered arm—he
offered his arm
—and went out the studio doors with him.

Dale’s apartment really wasn’t far at all; she suspected that made it easier for him to mostly live at his job.

But it
wasn’t
just his job, was it? It was the pride. She still knew hardly anything about them, but Dale was clearly devoted to them, and he wouldn’t want to be far if anyone needed help. And the studio seemed to be a kind of center for them, if Dale and (she was pretty sure) Lynn, and maybe even Dawn, were all lions.

It made sense. And it was the sign of a good man.

“Here we are,” said Dale, stopping at an apartment building. He let them in, and they went up creaky wooden stairs and into a warmly-lit, spacious apartment.

“This is beautiful,” Sam said, a little startled. In her experience, single guys were not the best at decorating.

“It’s mostly family stuff.” Dale gestured at the carved wooden furnishings and the pictures on the walls. “I got the plant myself.”

“Oh?” she asked, sensing a story.

“Lynn said I needed a friend,” he said seriously.

Sam burst out laughing. She had a feeling that most people thought Dale was always serious and responsible, but there was a wonderful sense of humor hiding under the responsibility.

“It looks friendly,” she said when she’d recovered. It did, kind of, with pointed green leaves and a sort of a jaunty tilt to the stem.

“It’s very friendly,” he said. “Hasn’t bitten me once.”

She laughed again, and reached up to pull him down into a kiss.

And she forgot about laughing right away, because his hands slid down her sides to cup her hips and pull her in to him, and his mouth was insistent against hers, and warmth flushed her cheeks and burned in the pit of her stomach.

God, she wanted him.

“Come on,” he whispered into her mouth, and tugged her along through a short hallway into his bedroom.

He laid her easily down on the bed, and pulled off her shoes, one by one. And then they were back in the same position they’d been at the studio, with him looking down at her.

“Can you turn on a light?” she murmured. “I want to see you.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” He flipped on a bedside lamp.

His eyes immediately took on the golden glow of the light. Lion’s eyes.

She reached up to trace the line of his cheek, cup his jaw, and leaned up to kiss him again. “You’re gorgeous,” she said.

“
I’m
gorgeous?” He looked almost offended. “Have you seen yourself? Have you ever looked in a mirror? You’re beautiful.” His eyes traced down from her face to her collarbone, and he bent down to place a kiss right in the center of her breastbone.

“Beautiful,” he murmured again, right into her skin. He went further down, kissing along the line of her shirt.

“Take it off,” she whispered, unable to stand it any longer.

He looked up at her, and his eyes were on fire. “My pleasure.”

He stripped the shirt upward, half-lifted her with one hand on her back and pulled it over her head. Her sports bra followed—
not
getting tangled up in her face on the way; how did he do that?

But she forgot to wonder as he leaned down to nuzzle her breast, and his hot, wet mouth closed over her nipple.

“
Ah
,” she moaned as he sucked gently, and then, “
Aaah!”
going up in pitch, as he gave her just a hint of teeth.

He lifted his head, and she held back a protest. “Just so you know, unlike my plant,
I
do like to bite. It’s okay if you don’t like it—”

“No,” she said quickly, “no, no. It’s fine. Please do.”

He grinned—God, he was attractive when he did that—and bent his head again. He flicked his tongue over her nipple again, bit down very lightly, and then just a little harder, and at her strangled moan, backed off to kiss the skin between her breasts and move his attention to the other one.

He was so good with his mouth, she thought, as he slowly worked his way down from her breasts to her stomach. He liked to linger on sensitive spots with his soft, soft tongue, making her twitch and press up into his mouth, and only after he’d sucked kisses into her skin did he bite down.

It was careful and sharp and intensely loving, and it was driving her out of her
mind
.

His fingers teased the waistband of her pants, dipping down to stroke underneath her panties, against the line of her pubic hair. She lifted her hips, hinting, and he hooked his fingers under her pants and her panties and pulled them both down at once, stripping them off over her feet in one go. He tugged off her socks, and then she was naked.

“Your turn,” she said, looking at him at the foot of the bed. “I refuse to be the only naked one.”

“I won’t argue with that,” he said, and stripped off his workout clothes in no time flat.

His chest and abs were almost unreal, and she reached out as he crawled up over her again, spreading her hands over his pecs and down to his stomach. His chest hair was just as blond as his head.

He kissed her softly. “I think I was just about to do something.”

“Wh—” Sam started, and then he was laying kisses down on the inside of one hip, and then the other, licking across her lower stomach and making the muscles jerk and pleasure flare inside of her. “Oh,” she said, her head falling back to the pillow.

“Yes, ‘oh,’” he said, laughter filling his voice.

He ran his fingers slowly down her slit, and she gasped and squirmed as he touched her clit, rubbing lightly. He went further down, until he was rubbing just around the outside of her pussy, and she moaned.

“I like that noise,” he said in a low, rough voice, and then bent his head and started to lick her.

He kept his fingers rubbing just around the rim of her pussy as he licked. No man had ever done that for her before—normally they plunged right in, and it usually took her a minute to adjust and start to enjoy it.

This was different. With his tongue running over her clit in quick, soft licks, and his fingers pressing all over the base of her clit, the outer edge of her pussy, the thin skin just behind it, she was gasping and pushing her hips up in no time.

Then he sucked on her clit,
hard
, and she let out a strangled shriek. Her pussy felt open and aching, and all she wanted was something inside her.

“Please—” she said, “
please—
” but she couldn’t get anything more out.

He understood, though, because he pushed two fingers inside,
just exactly
where she wanted them, right as he set his teeth so, so gently against her clit, barely even a bite at all, and pressed down.

Sam came harder than she ever had in her life.

She knew she was being loud, but she couldn’t make herself quiet down—her pussy was clenching around Dale’s fingers, and he was licking her through it, pushing each spasm out longer and longer with his tongue.

Finally, it started to recede, until her pussy was just twitching a little bit, and she was panting and smiling up at the ceiling.

Dale was laying soft kisses on her thigh, his fingers still inside her. “More?” he asked her, when she’d mostly stopped panting.

“
More
?” Sam asked, incredulous. “That was already more than I was expecting.”