Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 (23 page)

About the Author

An Alaskan born and raised, award-winning paranormal romance author Vivi Andrews still lives in the frozen north when she isn’t indulging her travel addiction by bouncing around the globe. Whether at home or on the road, she’s always at work on her next happily-ever-after. For more about her books or the exploits of a nomadic author, please visit her website at
www.viviandrews.com
, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Look for these titles by Vivi Andrews

Now Available:

Reawakening Eden

Ghosts of Boyfriends Past

Superlovin’

Serengeti Shifters

Serengeti Heat

Serengeti Storm

Serengeti Lightning

Serengeti Sunrise

Karmic Consultants

The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant

The Ghost Exterminator: A Love Story

The Sexorcist

The Naked Detective

A Cop & A Feel

Finder’s Keeper

Naughty Karma

Lone Pine Pride

Jaguar’s Kiss

Taming the Lion

Hawk’s Revenge

Coming Soon:

Lone Pine Pride

Unbearable Desire

Tangling With the Tiger

When she’s in heat, there’s no cooling down…

Taming the Lion

© 2014 Vivi Andrews

Lone Pine Pride, Book 2

Wilderness guide and cougar-shifter Patricia “Patch” Fontaine has known the dangers of lone-shifter life since she was ten, when her parents mysteriously vanished. All grown up now, she thrives on her hard-won independence.

When rumors of a new rash of shifter abductions crop up, she’s forced to come home to the Lone Pine Pride for protection—right as the man she’s always secretly wanted is about to marry her best friend. And right as she’s going into heat.

Roman Jaeger values his role as Alpha heir apparent, but he isn’t thrilled about his arranged marriage to the Alpha’s daughter—especially when his bride is just as nonplussed as he is—but he’ll do his duty for the pride. Seeing Patch again challenges his noblest intentions. The wildness in her sets him on fire, and he can’t resist the chance for one last fling.

Both know a future together is impossible. But when chemistry and sowing wild oats grows into a need deeper than lust, their bond could threaten the very heart of the pride they both love.

Warning: This book contains a strong sexy Alpha-to-be, an independent cougar-shifter who knows her way around a lion’s heart, secret affairs, arranged marriages, politics, passion, and a pride full of lions and tigers and bears. Oh my.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Taming the Lion:

“I thought you were going back to the Den,” Patch snapped, not backing down and yielding the space to him as any less dominant cat should.

“I am.”

“So why are you still following me?” She stopped so abruptly Roman would have crashed into her if he hadn’t been acutely attuned to her every move. “I’m a big girl. You don’t have to protect me on the pride lands.”

He knew that. He was pretty sure Patch Fontaine didn’t need his protection anywhere—pride lands or no. But he wasn’t here to be her bodyguard. He was here because he literally couldn’t make himself walk away. There was fire in her and he wanted to warm himself against it. Cold for so long…

She’s in heat.

The thought was salvation, an explanation he could latch on to. Hormones, instinct, animalism. They were all reasonable excuses for this drive to chase her down and make her submit to him in the most basic way. It wasn’t insanity; it was instinct. Chemistry. A purely natural compulsion.

He reached out, catching a lock of hair that had gotten loose and bobbed next to her ear. Her breath caught and she went still, her eyes, dark stars in the night, widening just a millimeter.

“How close are you to the peak of your heat?” he asked, hearing the gravel roughness of arousal in his own voice.

Her lips parted. It was invitation enough.

Bad idea. Worst idea ever.
Epically
atrocious idea.

She shouldn’t be here with him. Roman.
Lila’s
Roman. She should have run back to the Den at top speed. She should have stopped walking the second she realized he was following her. It should never have gotten to this point. The two of them. Alone. In the dark. With his strong, callused hand raised almost as if to cup her face, one lock of her hair caught around his finger. With his body so close to hers she could just lean a little and fall against all that delicious, rock hard strength. With his gaze locked on hers—
Holy Hades
,
his
eyes.
No man should look at a woman like that unless she was beneath him and moaning. Which didn’t sound like a half bad place to be.

“Roman.” She was going to tell him no. Tell him to leave her alone. To walk away. Hell, she was going to walk away herself. She
was.
But then he lowered his head and her hands were suddenly, of their own volition, splayed on the glorious firmness of his chest, and she was kissing him.

Or she thought she was. It was so soft, so fleeting, so indescribably
inadequate
that it was hard to know for sure that she’d been properly kissed before he lifted his lips away from hers, and cool air washed away the fleeting sensation of warmth.

No.
If this was it, if this was what she’d been waiting for and dreaming about for the last decade it was
not
going to end like that. A peck. A brush. A tease.
Hell no.

A growl ripped out of Patch’s throat as she lurched up into his arms, nails raking into his hair, grasping his skull to hold him steady as she yanked his mouth to hers, their bodies colliding hard as she
devoured
his mouth. An answering growl rumbled against her body from Roman’s chest and the kiss caught fire—teeth and tongues and lips tangling wantonly. The iron bands of his arms pressed hard into her back, pulling her in closer than close, until she lost track of where she ended and he began. It was all heat and friction and a symphony of hungry growls.

Her feet left the ground and she barely noticed. Who needed the ground when she had
this?

One of his hands plunged into her hair, angling her head for better access, as the other gripped her hip and ground her harder against the long, delicious length of his erection.
Oh my.
Her thighs clenched involuntarily.
Yes, please.

His teeth found her lower lip, the bite just shy of too hard, and she heard herself making noises she’d never heard before—high, breathy and feminine pants of need. Then his teeth were skimming the side of her throat and she tipped her face back to stare up at the lattice of black branches above, exposing her neck to him in perfect submission. She who had never submitted to anyone but the Alpha. His teeth scored deeper at the junction of her neck and shoulder and a rough gasp wrenched between her lips.
Holy Hades,
that spot. It was like a one-way ticket to her G-spot. If she hadn’t already been wet and aching, that bite alone would have done it. She was ready, so unbelievably ready…

Then he was spinning them, pinning her back to the coarse bark of a nearby tree, the scent of crushed pine bark rising up to mix with the tangled scents of lust, Roman’s shaved-cedar-sunshine musk…

…and beneath it all the faintest echo of scent on his clothes, barely-there traces of a cloying, medicinal sweet-and-sour tang…

A tang that triggered something violent and terrified deep inside her.
No.

She threw out her hands, struggling with more panic than skill or finesse, but as soon as Roman sensed her resistance, he backed away, probably scenting the sudden surge of fear on her, his hands over his head in a gesture of innocence that was five minutes too late to be believable.

As soon as she wasn’t drowning in his scent, the panic fled—replaced by a heavy weight of realization.

Holy Hades. She’d kissed Roman. They’d almost done a lot more. If she hadn’t come to her senses, God only knew what they’d be doing now. What part of her he’d be nibbling on, caressing…

Not a helpful line of thinking, Patch
.

She didn’t know what had triggered her freak-out—that scent, the horrible wrongness of it—but she was damn glad
something
had woken her up to what she was doing. Sure, she’d wanted to kiss Roman since she’d discovered boys, but he was
Lila’s.
She would
never
betray her best friend like that.

Except for the fact that she just had.
Crap.

“Patch…” From the expression on Roman’s face, he was just as horrified by what they’d done as she was.

“The heat,” she blurted, insanely grateful for the excuse. It couldn’t have just been her wanting him like she wanted to keep breathing. Not if she ever wanted to be able to look her best friend’s husband in the eye. “It was just the heat. My bad. No hard feelings.”

He lowered his hands from his stick-em-up stance, shifting uncomfortably, and she realized he probably had some very
hard
feelings left over from their little bout of insanity.

Don’t look. Do. Not. Look.

She looked. And he was just as big as she’d felt. Just as deliciously hard.
Oh, have mercy.

“I—” She didn’t know what she would have said. I have to go? I-need-you-take-me-now? I can’t ever see you again? I want to lick you like a lollipop and swallow you whole? Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. The words clogged in her throat and she gave up on pushing them past the shame.

She couldn’t meet his eyes. Didn’t want to know what color they were when they were drenched in need.

Taking a page out of Lila’s book, Patch ran.

Do not pass Go. Do not look back. Do not shift because the cat will say yes, no matter how badly she needs to say no. Patch ran.

Thank God he didn’t follow her. She didn’t know what she would have done if he’d tried to come after her. To chase her down. If he’d caught her…

Images crashed against one another in her brain, half-baked fantasies springing instantly to life. Roman catching her, those muscled arms sweeping her off her feet, taking her to the ground, his weight riding her down, hands stripping away her clothing, caressing, always just on that perfect borderline of too rough. So strong. So dominant. Leaving no question of whom she belonged to, body and soul.

Holy Hades.

To get what he wants, he’ll have to rattle her cage…

Jaguar’s Kiss

© 2014 Vivi Andrews

Lone Pine Pride, Book 1

Lila Fallon, the Lone Pine Pride Alpha’s only daughter, has been betrothed since childhood to marry her father’s chosen successor. The match is designed to maintain peace by shoring up any cracks in pride solidarity.

She’s always known she would do her duty—she just never expected to meet a man who would tempt her to throw it all away.

As a black panther, Santiago Flores couldn’t be a less suitable mate for the Alpha’s purebred lioness daughter. But that doesn’t change the fact that for every one of the five years he’s been with the Lone Pine Pride, he’s been head-over-heels in love with her. And when the Alpha announces that Lila’s indefinite engagement is about to end in a very definite marriage, Santiago is through holding his peace.

From their very first kiss, Santiago rattles Lila’s neatly ordered world. But can a lioness who’s always lived to please everyone else risk everything to please herself?

Warning: This book contains tempting lone-wolf jaguars, lionesses who long for fairy tale endings, arranged marriages, tangled emotions and a pride full of trouble.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Jaguar’s Kiss:

Maybe Lila was a coward after all. There really wasn’t any other explanation for the fact that she was
fleeing
from her fiancé. She slowed to a walk, stumbling a little as the alcohol sloshed through her bloodstream. She was almost back to where she’d shattered the beer bottle. She was really having a bang up night. Temper tantrums, running away—

The thought evaporated as she saw the figure standing in the darkness next to the fence post with her hair ribbon tied around it, staring out over the elk enclosure. For a second she was terrified Roman had circled around them and she would have to face him after all, then she realized the form didn’t have the bulk to be the future Alpha. No, this shadow was all sleek strength, dark hair, and the smoky scent of a jaguar teasing her as the wind shifted.

Santiago.

Oh mercy. She wasn’t prepared to deal with him any more than she had been to face Roman with that hops-induced honesty in her bloodstream. But it was either talk to him, turn back and face Roman, or march on past, pretending not to notice him there—which would be just another cowardly, childish move in a night that had already proven her pathetic.

She refused to be a coward in front of him.

Lila marched over to the fence, trying to sway her hips but fairly certain her va-va-voom was more than a little alcohol impaired. “What are you doing here?”

He turned his head, looking at her for the first time, though he had to know who she was the second she came into range. In answer, he lifted his own bottle for her to see—tequila—and she saw he had the end of her hair ribbon curled around his little finger.

“Me too,” she said in response to the alcohol. The world dipped unexpectedly and she reached out to steady herself on the fence, hoping it looked like she had intended to lean against it shoulder-to-shoulder with him. “Patch and I ran out so I’m headed back for a refill.”

“Shouldn’t you be with your fiancé? Celebrating the upcoming nuptials?”

The growly quality in his voice made something warm stir low in her abdomen. She cleared her throat. “He’s out there with Patch.”

“Ah.”

The alcohol honesty chose that moment to rear its ugly head. “You aren’t much of a conversationalist, are you, Santiago Flores?” She wanted to hear more of that rumbly voice.

“You want conversation?” The words sounded like a threat. “Then by all means, let’s converse. Do you really want to marry Roman?”

This conversation again. Joy. Lila sighed, resigned. “It’s doesn’t matter what I want. It’s what I’m going to do.”

“Are you really such a martyr?” That lovely growl was back in his voice.

“It’s not martyrdom.” She was certain it wasn’t. She just couldn’t seem to think past all the alcohol to figure out why precisely.

“So you don’t think you’re giving anything up, is that it?”

That was it. No sacrifice. How helpful he was. “Exactly. What would I be giving up?”

“A thousand opportunities.” He spun to face her, dark eyes flashing in the night, all that contained ferocity suddenly erupting with startling intensity. “The chance to be something more than what others would make you.”

“So I can be what you would make me instead?” She turned to face him head on, throwing her chin back to growl up at him. “
Everyone
wants me to be their version of what I should be. Even you.”

“Then what do you want? Who do
you
want to be?”

“I don’t know! Don’t you see? If I wanted something more than this life, maybe I would go after it, maybe I would be
brave
, by your definition of the word, but I don’t. I never have. So what’s so terrible about what I’m doing? What am I giving up, Santiago Flores? What is supposed to stop me from doing what I’ve always known I would when the time came? What is it you think I’m supposed to want?”

“
Me
.”

He gripped the nape of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair as he pulled her toward him, his other hand cupping her jaw, tipping her face up to meet him as his lips closed over hers, firm and fierce and demanding and—
oh my God
, so exquisitely perfect.

She’d been kissed before. Of course she’d been kissed before. In twenty-three years as the pride’s resident flirt, she’d kissed dozens of guys in a sort of playful almost-platonic way that was all the other shifters would dare. She’d even gone a bit further with a few humans who didn’t know Roman to be afraid of him—until her instincts had reared up and put a stop to it.

She knew perfectly well what lips were for, thank you very much. But all those kisses. All those affectionate buses and eager lip locks. They had never been
this.

The rest of the world simply melted away until there was only Santiago. He nibbled, sucked, coaxed and teased until she opened for him and his tongue stroked into her mouth, a question she answered with her own, angling her head for more. She’d ceased to exist outside this kiss. There was only his heat, his strength, the pull of his body, and her need. God, her fierce, impossible need for more of him.

She wrapped an arm around his waist, pulling herself against him so their bodies aligned, a gasp escaping her mouth at the feel of all that delicious heat. Her other hand slid up his chest and around to palm the back of his neck, holding him there in case he had any rogue thoughts about pulling away. Away wasn’t allowed. Only
closer, harder, deeper
and
more
.

And he was very good at those words.