Jaguar's Kiss (Lone Pine Pride) (4 page)

Patch looked at her, the gold of her eyes gleaming a little in the darkness. “You aren’t a coward, Lila. Where’s that coming from?”

Santiago
. “It’s nothing. Just something someone said.”

“Well,
someone
is an ass. It takes a brave woman to sign on to be the Alpha’s mate.”

Lila took another swig of beer. It was darker than she liked, the taste sharper than the fruity ales she preferred, but tonight she liked the bite. She didn’t feel brave. She didn’t know what she felt. Not how a bride was supposed to feel, that was for sure. “I don’t know why I’m not more excited. I get to plan a wedding. And force you to wear a dress loaded with ruffles and flounces.”

Patch ignored her attempt to goad her with bridesmaid dress hell. “You don’t love him.”

“I don’t see how that matters. My parents don’t love each other. It’s never been a problem for them.”

“You aren’t your mother.”

“No. More’s the pity.”

A white fence appeared out of the darkness beside them. The elk enclosure. They’d come farther than she thought.

“You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

No, Patch was her staunchest ally. She would never say what Lila always thought the pride elders were thinking. That Lila didn’t have her mother’s strength. That she didn’t have her poise and intellect and leadership ability. That Lila wasn’t Alpha’s mate material at all. That she was just a girly pleaser who could play the role when it was easy but would buckle under the first real threat.

“I just meant that you’ve always wanted to be in love,” Patch explained. “Ever since we were kids.”

She had. It was almost embarrassing to admit, since she’d known since birth that no fairy tale prince was going to sweep her off her feet. She had a role to play and falling in love wasn’t part of it. “Maybe I’ll fall in love with Roman. He’s very…” She couldn’t think of anything. He was handsome. He was smart. He was strong and powerful. He was everything a lion should be. “He’s a great man.”

He just never looked at her like she was even remotely special. He looked at her like a duty. She supposed there was affection there, but no interest. No passion. No heat. He didn’t look at her like…

Like Santiago looks at me.

Lila squashed the thought. That wasn’t lust. Santiago didn’t even like her. At least Roman felt affection for her. She could build on affection. Maybe she could even fall in love with him—though it was harder to imagine him falling in love with her.

That was it. The icy stone of fear lodged inside her heart. Her husband would never love her. No matter how many people she pleased or how pretty she was or how wonderful he was or how much she learned to adore him, Roman would never see her as worthy of love above all others.

Lila whirled and chucked her empty bottle as hard as she could toward a fence post. It struck dead center, shattering in a magnificent shower of glass. And her brief flash of rage instantly deflated. “Crap. I should clean that up.”

Patch caught her arm when she moved to set down the bucket. “You aren’t cleaning up broken glass at night with your bare hands. We’ll get it in the morning.” She reached up and gently removed a red ribbon from Lila’s hair and went to the fence, her hiking boots crunching in the glass, and tied the ribbon around the post. “There. X marks the spot.”

Patch picked up the bucket, handing her a fresh beer and they walked on, Patch giving her silence for several minutes, until Lila couldn’t take the quiet anymore.

“Sorry,” Lila murmured. “That was juvenile.”

“You’re allowed to be upset. And you know I won’t tell anyone.”

“I shouldn’t
be
upset,” Lila growled. “I’m just so annoyed with myself that I’m not excited. I’m supposed to be thrilled, damn it. This is what I’ve been waiting for all my life, isn’t it? For years I’ve been complaining that I’m going to be the oldest virgin in the world because none of the other members of the pride will so much as kiss me lest they offend Roman by getting their scent on me. I’m finally going to have someone who is obliged to sleep with me—”
Obliged to sleep with me
. That didn’t sound so good.

“You could always have gone the human route.”

“And always have to worry about whether or not I’m going to lose control and shift during sex? No, thank you. Just kissing humans is weird enough. They smell so…weird.”

“They don’t smell weird. You’re just a lion elitist. Admit it.”

“Lions smell right,” Lila argued.

Patch tipped her head back, her nostrils flaring. “Speaking of lions smelling right, is that Roman?”

Lila inhaled the wind in her face and the distinctive leonine musk it carried.
Shit
. Roman was the last person in the world she wanted to see right now. Tipsy and far too honest was not the best way to face the man who was going to be her husband. What the hell was he doing out here?

They couldn’t see or hear him yet, but the scent was strong enough that they should soon. Escape. She had to escape.

The bucket in Patch’s hand looked like salvation.

“Oh, would you look at that, we’re out of beer. What kind of fiancée would I be if I couldn’t offer him one? I’ll run back and grab another bucket.”

“Lila?” Patch wasn’t an idiot. She’d obviously picked up on Lila’s irrational panic at the idea of seeing her husband-to-be. “Do you want me to—?”

“No! No, I’ve got this. We’re good. You guys just, you know, talk or whatever and I’ll be right back with some more brewskies. Lickety split.”

Patch had always been the more athletic of the two of them, but there was one way in which she’d never been able to compete with Lila. The lioness was
fast
when she wanted to be. And tonight she wanted to be.

Lila ran.

Chapter Four

Maybe she was a coward after all. There really wasn’t any other explanation for the fact that she was
fleeing
from her fiancé. Lila 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.

He deepened the kiss, stroking the hand at her nape slowly down her spine, pressing her even more tightly into his body. He palmed her bottom and jerked her up against him, onto her toes, twisting to pin her to the fence and grind his hips to hers.

She gasped in a breath at the feel of his hardness against her clit and his scent flooded her–Christ, no man should smell so good. Smoke and cinnamon. It was an aphrodisiac all its own. Not that she needed an aphrodisiac. She clenched her thighs together to keep from wrapping them around his waist, wet and wanting.

She’d lost her mind. He tasted of tequila and temptation, dark and spicy and right. She didn’t care that anyone could come walking up and see them. Didn’t care that anyone downwind would know exactly what they were doing. Didn’t care that her best friend and her fiancé—

Lila jerked away, shoving Santiago hard enough that he was three feet away before he caught his balance and growled, rocking instantly back toward her.

“No!”

The word froze him in his tracks. It took a minute, but something human gradually surfaced in his eyes, though he didn’t stop staring at her, watching her as they both breathed too fast. His gaze darted down to her chest, rising and falling rapidly, and she fought the urge to cover herself.

Jesus, what had they been doing? One second they were arguing and the next she’d been ready to crawl on top of him and stay there for a good long while.

She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, trying to get rid of his taste, the branded-into-the-flesh feel of him. “Why did you do that?”

“Because I’ve wanted to for five goddamn years,” he growled, the cat in his voice.

Lila felt her eyes go round. He had? Five years? That was the entire time he’d been with the pride. He’d wanted her? “Why didn’t you say anything?” When he just looked at her, a strange cousin to anger sliced through her. “Why didn’t you do anything? Why now? Why wait until I have to be with him?”

“You think I could have had you for five years and then let you go to another?”