Read Fierce Protector (Sierra Pride Book 3) Online
Authors: Liza Street
Fierce Protector (Sierra Pride Book 3) (7 page)
“I was thinking about that time you walked away from me,” she said, nudging him.
“What?” he said. “I never did that.”
“Yes, you did. When you thought we couldn’t be together, because of Gutierrez.”
He remembered the moment exactly, but she was adorable when she was indignant. “I don’t think so.”
She brandished the flimsy metal poker at him. “Pretend all you want, but if you ever,
ever
walk away from me again, Gabriel, I will
end
you.”
He looked down at her in amusement. “With a marshmallow stick?”
“Or my bare hands. Whichever is most effective.”
He angled down for a kiss, ignoring Maverick’s catcalls from across the porch. “I’ll never walk away from you again, Miranda. All of me, all of you.”
“All of me, all of you,” she replied, and met his lips with her own.
Excerpt from Fierce Player
Book 4 of The Sierra Pride series, due out August 2016!
Chapter One
Shelves and shelves of books and information. They smelled like knowledge and possibility. The weak November sunlight arced through high windows, illuminating the large room. Maverick could hardly believe he’d finally gotten here. It had taken some arguments and the help of his new sister-in-law, Miranda, to convince his brothers that he deserved a chance at college. But now that he’d been here for a couple of months, Maverick couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
The location was ideal, too, and probably the only reason his brothers had agreed to let him go. NCCAS, the Northern California College of Arts and Sciences, was located east of Sacramento, far into the foothills, only three hours from his small hometown of Findley.
Better than the location was the library. This library. It was majestic. The bookcases stretched for what looked like miles, and if he’d been in his mountain lion form, he’d have paced the length of them, rubbing his cheek up against the worn spines, marking this territory as his.
His brothers would laugh at him now, if they saw him getting all wistful in the NCCAS library. He imagined he wore the same look on his face that he saw Gabriel, Jude, and Blake wear when they were with their mates. Love, and a constant yearning. They seemed to yearn for their mates even when they were right there next to them, and that was how Maverick felt about knowledge. He wanted it, he wanted all of it, and he knew he’d never get enough.
Almost three months into the semester, and he was working his dream job in the library. He could shelve books all day long and never get bored. Especially when there were girls like the one who currently sat in the Clark room, not too far from where he was working. Her hair practically yelled for attention, with the dark pink highlights a shocking contrast to the white blond.
She was also talking on her phone. In his library. It was as close to sacrilege as he could imagine. He frowned. Normally he’d tell someone to put their phone away, but he felt strangely intimidated by this woman, and he couldn’t even see her face.
He searched his book cart for anything that belonged in the Clark room.
Theories of Gaming
and
Game Developing for N00bs
. Good. Now he had an excuse to go in there and take a closer look at her.
Pushing his cart forward, he paused a few feet behind her. She smelled like the wilderness in springtime, like fresh pine and sweet blooms. He shook his head, trying to minimize her scent in his nostrils, because it made him want to get closer to her.
Hell’s balls, his sister-in-law Miranda would say.
She continued talking on her phone, oblivious to his entrance, all the while swiping text around on her tablet. “He’s after me, though,” she said, her voice hushed. “There’s no way, when I come around the corner, he’s always waiting.”
Maverick looked around the room, searching for the danger. Surely she’d ask for help if she needed it, but she didn’t know help was so close.
He angled the cart toward the shelves and slid
Theories of Gaming
into its spot.
The girl barely glanced at him, and instead focused on her tablet. Her voice sounded higher in pitch, and he could detect notes of stress in it. Something wasn’t right. He stood, staring at her, until she finally glanced up and gave him a dirty look, scrunching her tiny nose. If her fingers hadn’t been so busy on the tablet, she’d probably be flipping him off.
He shrugged and moved the cart down the bookcase, and that was when he saw the guy. He was the size of a football player, and he looked about forty. The guy sat rigidly on one of the window seats just beyond the bookcases, and Maverick would’ve bet his cherished Star Wars action figure collection that the guy had a clear line of sight to the pink-haired girl.
So maybe she
was
in danger.
Maverick wasn’t sure what to do. His first impulse was to tackle the guy and punch his face in, but Maverick didn’t take after his brother Gabriel. Maverick usually asked questions first, and puzzled out a problem before resorting to violence.
Something about this girl, though, made him feel irrational.
And maybe that irrationality had him reading things into situations that weren’t even situations. Maybe the nontraditional student was seriously browsing a copy of
Useless Inventions of the Twenty-first Century
. Maybe the nontraditional student wasn’t sending occasional glances toward the girl. Maybe he wasn’t twitching every time her chair squeaked, as if he planned to follow her as soon as she left.
Maverick pretended to be hunting for a place for
Game Developing for N00bs
, even though he’d already passed its spot five minutes ago. The girl continued to talk, worrying over things like danger, and attacks, and people waiting in alleys.
Other than her scent of springtime, he couldn’t detect any fear, but the ceilings were high and the room was large—if she was mildly afraid, he wouldn’t be able to smell her fear until he got much closer to her.
Damn, she was beautiful. Her face was nicer-looking when she didn’t have her nose wrinkled at him, and he liked her piercings—on the ear he could see beneath her mop of pink and white hair, she had a tiny gauge in the bottom and a series of studs going all the way to the top. He wanted to nibble on those earrings.
The Sierra Pride Series
Fierce Protector
Fierce Player (due out August 2016)
Fierce Dancer (due out September 2016)
Fierce Informer (due out October 2016)
Fierce Survivor (due out November 2016)
Fierce Lover (due out December 2016)
About Liza
Join
Liza’s mailing list
and receive updates of new releases and exclusive excerpts from her shapeshifter series! Right now, Liza is giving away a short story featuring Ava and Jude, the main characters from
Fierce Heartbreaker
. It takes place six years prior to
Fierce Heartbreaker
, when they first get together in high school.
Liza got her start in romance by sneak-reading her grandma’s paperbacks. Years later, she tried her own hand as a ghostwriter of romance. It wasn’t long before she heard the call of the wild—the call of shapeshifters, to be exact—and she couldn’t resist developing her own series. Now she divides her time between freelance editing, ghostwriting, and the mountain lion shifters in the Sierra Pride.
A Note from Liza
Thank you soooo much for reading Fierce Protector! One thing I’ve learned in this business is that reviews help authors a whole lot. If you loved Fierce Protector (and even if you didn’t!), an honest review would be an immense favor.
If reviews aren’t your thing, I thank you anyway for doing me the honor of reading my book.
Love,
Liza
Acknowledgments
The Sierra Pride series would not have been possible without the loving guidance and spot-on feedback given by my critique partners: Tori, Dana, Pat, Kary, Shyla, Alex, Alythia, and Rochelle. Thank you! You awesome women have helped my dream come true! Special thanks goes to my friends and family for listening to me obsess about these characters for months. And to J—thank you for your understanding and your encouragement. I couldn’t do this without you.
Copyright page
Fierce Protector, Book 3 of the Sierra Pride
by Liza Street
Copyright 2016 Liza Street. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental or used fictitiously.
Table of Contents