Lion In Wait (A Paranormal Alpha Lion Romance) (2 page)

*

O
nce the organs stopped grinding, and the music stopped playing; once the funnel cakes were gone and the rancid oil emptied, Cassiopeia settled back into her trailer. Lex stood up and gave her a purring growl of welcome when she opened the door and threw off the lingerie she’d been forced to prance around in front of a crowd of leering, sweaty, ruddy-faced men.

It wasn’t the dancing that bothered her, not the nudity or anything of the sort. It was the leering, the glares, the gropes that went too far before they were stopped. “Maybe you can go with me next time?” she asked the huge lion as she collapsed into her squeaking chair.

She crossed the small room, opened the door to the other half of it, and smiled as Lex got to his feet, and followed her out of the cage. A rough lick on the back of her hand immediately settled her slightly-frazzled nerves, and Cass set to absent-mindedly scratching her best friend’s neck.

“We gotta get out of here,” she said. “And I mean we. You and me. Although,” she cocked and eyebrow, “I’m not entirely sure about the legality of running away from a circus with a lion in tow.”

Lex purred, nuzzling her leg until she resumed the scratching. “You got any ideas, big guy?

“Maybe I could get a job at a zoo? I mean, I have no degree, got no real education, but I’ve read plenty. I can learn. And what the hell, I come with my very own lion.”

With a heavy thump, the lion collapsed onto the ground, then pulled up an arm under his head to use as a makeshift pillow. “And if that happened, you’d have all sorts of lion friends, a big place to run around. I mean, zoos might have their own problems, but anything’s better than living in this prison, huh?”

The noises outside were the same ones she heard every night. Every single night for the last seven years, she’d heard the howling laughter, the drunken screeching, and the increasingly rowdy crowd. It never lasted long though, before degrading into a few fights, and a few brief relationships that would be forgotten as soon as the morning sun drenched whatever nothing town they’d stopped in.

Tonight was a little different though. In the morning, the Bertram & Martin Carnival was moving. Business was so bad, so slow, that there was no point to staying.

Cass had always wondered if one of the reasons they never took direct routes, that they never got anywhere near a decent-sized city, was because if they did, people would hit the road on their own. If they had a way,
would
the people Lyle had conned into working for him try to get away? Or were they all just as broken and fragile as she was?

Shaking her head, Cass opened her desk drawer and got both her notebook and the bottle of rum she kept hidden there for special occasions. She turned the mostly-full bottle around in her hand, staring at the idyllic-looking estate on the front of the thing, before pouring a healthy slug into the tin cup that she also used for coffee, and sometimes soup.

After swallowing that measure, she took a deep breath, closing her eyes and sighing as the warmth spread from the back of her tongue through her belly. She poured another, larger drink, and sipped this one.

“You know,” she said to Lex, who looked up at her. “It’s funny. I live my whole life running from one thing or another. Live on a boat for a few years, tried my hand at ranch work, tried everything that came along. How the hell did I end up here?”

Another sweetly burning sip slid down her throat and warmed her nerves. “I dunno, Lex. I just don’t know. I never thought I’d end up here, not for this long anyway. I never thought when I was a little girl, dreaming of running off to join the circus – I never thought “yeah, that sounds good. I’ll do some coochie dancing, I’ll half-starve, I’ll drink way too much two or three times a week. That,” her voice grew bitter, “sounds like the life I’ve always dreamed to live.”

Lex let out a long, slow purr, stretching his back legs behind himself and twitching his tail against the floor.

“I thought I was just on a little adventure, you know?” She scratched his side with her bare toe. “Like when people take a road trip, and just decide to extend it a week or so. Or, I guess, seven years.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d had this conversation, either with herself or with Lex. He was everything to her – friend, confidant, therapist, and very frequently, protection. No one messed with her, at least until they were
really
drunk. After all, a seven hundred pound lion is a fairly good deterrent to funny business.

She went to take another sip and found her cup empty. “One more?” she asked Lex, who was snoring happily at her feet. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

After a few quiet minutes of scribbling in her notebook, and another healthy swig of sauce, Cass was sufficiently relaxed to climb over into her small but comfortable bed. These were the things of her life – the desk, the chair, the bed – all the things she owned were right here. Clothes too, but those were frequently ruined from traveling, so she didn’t bother with anything past the necessities, hence all the rough, khaki cargo pants.

She reclined, taking a deep breath and puffing her pillow up with a few quick punches. It was an old pillow, a really old one, but it was hers, and she wasn’t going to give it up. One small measure of control, one almost meaningless bit of power over her own life. Hell no, she wasn’t gonna give it up.

Not without a fight.

Or, without running.

As she closed her eyes, she felt the heaviness of Lex’s head settle beside her. He’d only jumped up on the bed once. The whole thing kinda heaved and creaked, and then collapsed. It took almost three months for her to pay for another bedframe, and somehow, it always seemed like he felt bad for what he did.

The big head nudged her hand, and she rested her arm on top of him, letting her arm fall around his neck as she relaxed to sleep.

That was every day for Cassiopeia Kalen, the lion tamer who never meant to be. With a few variables here and there, they were all about the same.

And just like every night, as soon as she fell unconscious, Lex shrugged her arm off his head slowly, so gently that he didn’t rouse her, and crept to the door before standing up, and becoming far, far more than just a lion.

“I’ll get us out of here,” he whispered to the woman he’d loved for seven years, but never revealed himself to. “Just a little longer. I’ll keep you safe.”

He let himself watch her for a time. Her hair, mussed and dark, in a massive heap on her pillow. Her slightly scrawny, naked body perfect in his eyes, radiant in the pool of quicksilver moonlight that came through the trailer’s lone window.

“Just a little longer. I won’t let them hurt you anymore.” Fire burned in his belly as he fantasized about swift, brutal revenge. “Not ever again.”

––––––––

C
ass’s eyes shot open, and she felt like she was floating through a river of Jell-O.

If the day before was the way her life went, this was how she dreamed. And she had, for as long as she could remember. Ultra-vivid, sometimes terrifying and sometimes amazing, the one thing her dreams had in common was that she remembered all of them.

Every single one. The bad ones, the good ones, the nightmares and the Brad Pitt sex dreams, she remembered all of them. The first one she recalled was a dream where she was being dissected on a table by a bunch of faceless creatures. The next was the aforementioned Brad Pitt sex dream that started around the time she hit puberty. After that, there were a long list of dreams Cass could bring back to mind, though the one she was having right then? This was her favorite.

The man in her dream, one she’d never known, was a head taller than her, and had broad, tanned shoulders. His eyes were strangely familiar, with a brown and gold twinkle to them, though no matter how hard she tried to figure out who it was, there was nothing that came to mind.

She’d been alone for so long, hiding and distant, that she knew it wasn’t anyone she met since going on the road with Bertram & Martin.

He pushed the hair back out of her face and kissed her neck. Cass’s hands went straight to the mystery man’s shoulders, grabbing at him as he slid his lips over her sweaty, arched neck.

The other thing about her dreams? They were all wildly lucid.

“Who are you?” she asked, for what must’ve been the thousandth time. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because,” he said in a voice at once gravelly and smooth, like stones worn in a river. “I’ll find you when the time is right.”

Cass hated that answer, but when he slid his fingers inside her and ground his palm against her clit, she barely cared. He whispered something in her ear. He sucked her earlobe, and then inhaled the scent of her hair, breathing her in, groaning as he did.

Every time he pulled a lungful of air, this beautiful near-stranger’s chest rose and fell against Cass’s naked body. His firm, tanned skin tickled her nipples, making them stiff and hard with every breath. The sweep of his skin against hers thrilled, and sent a surge of pleasure snaking down her chest to her sex.

In between urgent, shallow breaths, Cass ran her fingernails down the mystery man’s shoulders, along the curves of his biceps. He turned his fingers slowly inside her, letting his lips paint a hot trail from the hollow of her throat to the tuft of hair above her cleft. She couldn’t help but pull one of her knees up as she spread her legs, letting whoever this was closer.

He caressed her with his tongue, then with a hot, long exhale that dripped up her belly. Every time he touched her, everywhere he stroked, kissed, or moved, her muscles and nerves reacted with prickles and tugs. He buried another finger into her, curling them upward against her front wall. Cass shuddered and clutched the back of his head, riding the wave of pleasure that his tongue pushed against her clit.

Cass’s head fell backward against that well-worn, well-loved pillow. He drove his fingers deeper, and slid his tongue from between her legs back to her neck, kissing all the way and then removing his fingers and sliding into her with one smooth motion.

“Just lie back,” he whispered. It wasn’t a request. It was what Cass was
going
to do. She had no choice – not like she wanted one. “Relax.”

He drove into her, his hips meeting Cass’s, and pushed a groan out of her open mouth. A long, soft “yes” hissed from her lips, over clenched teeth. “More,” she begged, “more, more, more.”

With a smirk instead of an answer, Cass’s mystery man slid a hand up her body, cupping one of her breasts and brushing a nipple with his thumb in the instant before he pinched her. “Just breathe,” he demanded. “Breathe, and let me watch your face when you come.”

Cass took a long, deep, ragged breath, and as her muscles constricted on the cock inside her, she opened her eyes halfway—as much as she could.

She felt herself convulse, felt her whole body pull this man as deep as he could be. She arched against him, and gave up control.

The pulsing, crashing, desperate tugs of her body on his took Cass’s breath, and made her wish – as though she didn’t already – to find whoever this was, whoever this man was that was obviously meant for her, made for her, fated to be hers.

When her climax slowed, and her breathing did too, she kissed his throat and grabbed the sides of the man’s face, forcing him to look down at her. “When?” she asked again, almost begging for an answer.

He smiled. “Soon,” he whispered. That was the first time he gave her anything approaching a real answer. “Just be patient. Or at least, as patient as you can be. I ache for you, too, Cassiopeia, I long for you, yearn for you. Just wait. Can you do that for me?”

“For you?” she asked, curling her legs around his waist and nuzzling into his long, light brown hair. “For you? I’d do anything.”

*

“G
et up, goddamnit!”

Lyle’s thick, slurred voice pierced Cass’s sleep and drove a small bore drill through the side of her skull, startling her awake. She sat up, at once alarmed and confused – she remembered Lex’s head being right beside the bed, but when she awoke, he was nowhere to be seen. This wasn’t the first time he went out like this, but it was always alarming. After all, a giant lion going on about his business at night is a whole lot different from, say, a poodle chasing the neighbor’s shih-tzu.

Cass rolled over on her arm, which was momentarily numb up to the shoulder, and wiped the drool off her cheek that always seemed to appear there. She grunted a “huhn?” and got to her feet before hastily pulling on a close pair of jeans and a tee.

“Lex?” she called into the empty room, hoping the liquor haze had made her miss that he’d just gone back to his cage. “Lex? Oh great.”

She knew what was going to come through her door before she bothered opening it. Just like last time, she had one of three answers ready, depending on how upset her warthog of a boss was. If he was sorta irritated, she’d just say sorry. If he looked panicked, she’d tell him she knew where Lex went, and if he was furious, she’d just shoot him. Shoot him with a gun she didn’t have.

Okay, maybe she’d just pretend to be really upset.

Fact was, he ran a lot. He took off at least once a week, sometimes more. But he always came back, and he never hurt anyone. Worse still, the last time he’d run off, she had promised to keep him from doing it again. That, evidently, hadn’t happened.

Aside from all that, Cass had a rather sharp hangover, and seeing Lyle early in the morning was about the last thing in the world that helped cure that. A bowl of pho? Definitely. Some eggs and sausage? Yeah. But Lyle, already stinking even though it was barely past dawn?
Shoot me in the head
, she thought.

“What do you want?” Cass asked, rubbing her puffy eyes and pulling her shirt down to make sure Lyle didn’t see any midriff. “And what the hell time is it?”

Sweating already, somehow, Lyle wiped his wrist across his forehead. “Half past six. Your goddamn lion is gone.”

She rolled her eyes, although when they hit the apex of the roll, the rum struck hard. “Uh,” she started, very intelligently, “I know. He does this sometimes.”