To Lie With Lions: A BBW Shifter Romance (Wolf Rock Shifters Book 4) (12 page)

“No attacks of any sort?” he asked.

“None.”

They shook on it.

Nash
gathered his shredded clothing and, holding it in front of himself, left the building with Fargo.

“Impressive,” said the scrawny man. “You’re proving your worth quickly.”

“I’ve been known to win every fight I’ve ever been in,” said Nash.

“I don’t doubt it. With a body like that…” said the man.

“Do me a favour and never, ever compliment me on my body,” snarled Nash. Fargo backed off immediately.

Over the next several days the pattern went something like this: Nash received a call in the morning and after he’d finished his chores he met up with Fargo and made the rounds. On a few occasions he was forced to shift, and by now he’d grown accustomed to bringing a change of clothes along.

Nash
didn’t hear from Cecile, though he heard through mutual acquaintances that she’d left town for a few days. His suspicion was that she was tired of dealing with her father, and that she’d come to understand how impossible their prospective relationship was. Nash thought of her daily, though, and if he was honest with himself, hourly. He couldn’t banish her from his thoughts regardless of how hard he tried.

A voice within him told him how much he wanted her, but what actually managed to frighten him was that it was the word ‘need’ that cropped into his mind again and again. He need
ed her. He’d been dealt a cruel hand by fate, and the beautiful creature he wanted to mate with, the woman he felt certain should bear his young, was inaccessible to him.

When he heard that she was gone he felt a sense of relief, as though the blood could return to his head, since it seemed to migrate in vicious waves to his cock when thoughts of her curves entered his mind. The recurring image was that of her luscious ass as she bent over in her jeans. He went off into moments of reverie, imagining his hands wrapped around her hips, thrusting himself into her, deep to the point where she cried out in pleasure and in pain. He wanted her to growl for him and to beg him to pound her harder.

But he also wanted to pleasure her. In his fantasies she sat atop a table, a counter, a fence even, her thighs spread apart and he devoured her pussy while her fingers wrapped themselves in his hair. He wished that his man had the mane that his lion did, so that she could pull his face into her and guide him with her fingers, showing him just how to make her come.

It was in letting these thoughts, these moments, go that he ached the most. As though someone had put a hot, rare steak in front of a starving person and then ripped it away. She should have been his.

***

Conrad Malcolm owned a house several hours from Wolf Rock and Cecile knew that it was sitting vacant. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to leave; in fact she wanted nothing more than to stay and to find a way to be close to Nash, but that was the issue, after all. In the short time she’d known him, during which she hadn’t gotten to know him deeply so much as to realize that she
wanted
to know him in every possible way, he’d become a sort of forbidden fruit. Everything in Cecile wanted to sink pointed canines into him. She wanted his juices to run into her awaiting mouth; to taste his savoury flesh over and over again.

If she’d never known what it was to be in heat, she knew now. Her body was fighting her with a violence that she’d never experienced, her tiger attempting repeatedly to emerge, ready to pounce; ready to claim her mate.

In Cecile’s mind, everything was backwards: it was the man, the male, who chose the mate. He was dominant. He was strong. Yet her cat told her that she had no choice, and therefore he had no choice either. He was to be inside her, and that was that.

But her human suffered the fate of considering actions and consequences. Was she willing to accept being cut off from her inheritance, let alone losing her father? She’d already lost her mother and would, for all intents and purpo
ses, be an orphan at twenty-three. Her father was misled, she knew, and had lost his tiger somewhere over the years. There was a pain in him. But she loved him still, and she knew that he loved her. She couldn’t bear to deprive him of another woman in his life. Her sister was an ocean away, and Cecile knew that she was all he had, whether he appreciated it or not.

So she got in the car and drove, hoping that a few days away would give her and her body some perspective.

Whether it would work or not was yet to be seen.

***

It was on the fourth day of working with the extortionists that Nash made a breakthrough. Until then he’d done his job satisfactorily, getting vicious when he was supposed to and remaining threateningly looming at other times. Fargo and Larry seemed pleased with him. But only when they came upon someone who recognized Nash did the trust begin to build.

It was a hardware store. By now, every shifter in Wolf Rock knew what was coming; they’d heard that a lion shifter would likely tear their throats out if they didn’t agree to what was now being cynically referred to as the “city tax.” Since the shifters didn’t pay national income tax, many of them went along with it, but in back rooms and pubs, there
was a lot of discussion of how to take down the syndicate. The lack of an organized wolf pack and of general teamwork that came alongside a town filled with independent shifters meant that nothing could yet be done.

In the hardware store, Nash heard his name.

“Nathaniel!”

It was an old man, standing behind the counter. Nash had known him when he was a child.

“Hello, Mr. Christensen,” he’d said politely.

“And what are you doing here? I haven’t see you in years.”

“To be honest with you, I’m…” Nash hesitated, eyeing Fargo, who was watching him for signs of breaking. “I’m here to ensure that you pay up.”

“Pay up? To whom do I owe money?”

Fargo spoke now. “To us. Technically, to our boss. For protection.”

“Ah. I suppose it was only a matter of time before you showed up,” said Christensen, his face contorted into a wrinkled expression of sadness and anger. He turned to Nash. “I’m surprised at you, son,” he said. “In all my years I would never have thought that you could turn on your townspeople.”

Nash’s instinct told him to come clean.
“I’m doing this for the town. I’m doing this for my family. For Cecile.”
But he couldn’t.

“It’s for the best,” he said instead. “You really need to pay up.”

Christensen, who was a puma shifter, knew that even as a young man he’d never have stood a chance against the lion before him.

“I will pay my percentage,” he said. “But I’m disappointed in you.”

The words were like a knife in Nash’s gut. Why was it that an old man expressing disappointment was like the worst punishment ever? “Act,” he told himself.

He walked up and towered over the man.

“I don’t give a flying fuck what you think of me,” he said. He took Christensen by the collar and pulled his face towards his own. “I only care about your money making its way out of your pocket and into ours.”

He could feel the man tremble as he let go. Nash was a protector. He wanted to steady Christensen, to calm him. But he couldn’t. He held his breath, waiting in hopes that the old guy didn’t have a heart condition.

When they left the store, Fargo turned to Nash and said, “I had my doubts about you, kid. But you’re a real asshole.”

“I’m learning from the best,” growled Nash. “You’re an excellent role model in the field of douche-baggery.”

“Well, keep it up and there’s a promotion in it for
ya.”

“I’m counting on it,” thought Nash.

Dinner at the ranch that night was difficult, to say the least.

“How could my son be roaming around with these…these thugs?” asked Mrs. Richardson, tears streaming down her face. This woman who’d once been so sleek, so vicious in her younger days, had become a simple mother of a boy who’d been steered wrong. “How is this possible? Christensen told us everything.”

“We raised you better than this, son. What’s this all about, anyhow?” Nash’s father asked. “I refuse to believe that my son, my heir, would be capable of this sort of derelict behaviour.”

“Really, dad? I’m a fucking lion. I get into fights. I’ve come close to killing humans. This is a surprise to you?”

“I don’t want your lip, boy. Now, are you going to stop this foolishness or do I need to kick you off my ranch? You’re putting people’s lives at risk.”

“I’m saving people’s lives,” said Nash as he stood, thrusting himself from the table. “You don’t see it, but I am. But don’t you worry. I’ll leave. The ranch is safe so you don’t need me here anyhow.”

That night he moved into
the motel where Fargo and Larry were staying. Though he hated to pain his parents, he knew that this was for the best; it would increase his new accomplices’ level of trust in him.

He went to sleep wondering how much more of this he’d have to endure. Nash could take all the physical brawls in the world, but disappointing the older generation seemed like a cruel and unusual punishment. He hoped that the shifters he’d conspired with had a plan for an endgame in action.

It was the next day that Zoe found him at the motel. Kyla had figured out where he was, and the tiny mouse who’d snuck into Nash’s room, found a large bath towel and
wrapped herself in it when she’d shifted startled Nash, who was still in bed, pondering the day ahead.

“Sorry to freak you out,” she said
as she walked out of the bathroom. “But I need to hear about your progress.”

“They trust me, mostly,” he replied. “I think maybe something’s in the works; Fargo mentioned a promotion. But I can’t take much more of this, Zoe. It’d be one thing to piss off a pile of strangers but this is my home, and the whole town now thinks I’ve betrayed them.”

“Well, you haven’t, and they’ll know it soon enough.”

“If they don’t kill me first.”

“They won’t. We have eyes on you.”

“I’m not even so worried about that as…” Nash’s voice trailed off. “I can’t take certain people hating me.”

“I suspect that you’re referring to a certain white tiger,” Zoe replied, sitting on the edge of Nash’s bed. “And I understand. She won’t hate you; not when she finds out what you’ve done.”

“It doesn’t matter anyhow. I can’t be with her.”

“You
have
to be with her, Nash. That’s your life. It’s your fate. I can see it in you. The criminal bastards won’t kill you, and the townspeople won’t kill you. But if you’re not with Cecile I suspect that that’s what’ll kill you.”

“I’ve never dealt with this. This…what is it? It’s like someone’s moved into my body and is controlling it.”

“It’s that you’ve found your mate. Everything in the world is conspiring to separate you two, but she’s yours and you’re hers. Now it’s just a question of logistics.”

“Fuck logistics. I just want her. Right fucking now.”

“You’ll have her. Patience. You have a job to do first. Look, there won’t be any you and her if this town becomes a hotbed of criminal activity. No one will feel safe and no one will have time for frivolous things like love and relationships.”

“You and Colson seem to be doing okay in the face of it.”

“Colson and I have our own issues to deal with, but we support each other. Trust me. Cecile will be a hundred percent in your corner when she finds out what you’re sacrificing.”

“I just wish I could tell her.”

“If you tell her, you put her at risk. I know you don’t want that, Nash.”

“No. I don’t. You’re right.”

“By the way, I heard she’s back.” Zoe seemed hesitant to convey the words. “Maddox saw her downtown.”

“Oh Jesus. She’s probably heard by now what I’ve been up to.”

“Probably. Remember, though. You’re protecting her.”

“I don’t imagine that’s where her mind will go when she finds out I’ve been threatening to rip old men’s arms off.”

“Well, I got nothin’. You’re right, I suppose. For a time she might not be too crazy about you. But she will still want you whether she likes it or not. That seems to be the fate of us shifters.”

“Well, I aim to give her reason to like me. To love me, even.”

“And you will.”

***

Cecile’s return wasn’t so much a result of her success at calming her body and her aches as an attempt to solve another issue: how to deal with her father. The one thing that had hit her while she was away was that she couldn’t be his to control anymore. At some point they’d need to have a talk.

She spoke to Susannah first.

“Honey, you just need to tell him how it is,” the voluptuous housekeeper had said. “He’s your daddy, not your leader or boss-man.”

“Well, he sort of is. He does provide me with a roof over my head and food and that sort of boring stuff.”