“Because I couldn’t bear it if you were hurt,” she whispered.
Rage flared that she could doubt him. “I wouldn’t lose, Lila. I will tear any bastard to pieces who tries to keep me away from you, do you understand?”
“He’s so much bigger—”
“I would gut him,” he said ruthlessly. “You’re mine.” He prowled over to her, the jaguar riding him hard, and claimed her with a hard, fast kiss. “Understand?”
She braced her hands on his chest, right over the brutal thud of his heart. “I do, and I wasn’t lying when I said I was yours. Part of me—”
“You can’t offer your heart and soul in half measures,” Santiago snarled. “I love you.”
She gave a little gasp, as if she could actually be shocked by the words. How could she not know?
But he wasn’t done yet. He bent his head, pressing their foreheads together. “No one could ever love you the way I do. I was fine being alone, thought I always would be until I met you. You changed me. Brought me to life. Made me feel like I had a heart for the first time. I only know how to love because of you and I will never stop.”
Moisture sparkled on her eyelashes. “I should go.”
An angry growl ripped passage through his throat. “Tell me you really want me to let you go and I will.” His arms closed around her, drawing her into his body. “But we both know it would be a lie.” She wanted to be with him. He knew that down to his soul. But she was ruled by her fear. Too damn scared to take hold of the life she really wanted when it was staring her in the face. “I won’t make you rule the pride or be anything you don’t want to be. We can choose our own life together, whatever you want it to be, if you’re only brave enough to take it.”
“It isn’t bravery. Don’t you see? It’s selfishness.” She twisted out of his grip and moved around the room, gathering up her scattered clothing. “If I run away, it creates an appearance of weakness in the pride, a fault line in the power structure. My father or Roman could be challenged by one of the new lions—”
“If they can’t hold their own against the new lions then they don’t deserve to hold the pride.”
“So you want to see some stranger who doesn’t love this place take over and do whatever the hell he wants with it just because he’s good in a fight? You want all the non-lion shifters who have lived here for twenty years to be turned out because that isn’t the way the new Alpha wants it? You want some unknown nomad in charge of things right when it’s time to decide whether we’ll come out to the humans or whether we’ll fight back against this organization that’s hunting us?”
“I want you.”
“There are consequences!” she shouted. She sucked in a breath, seeming startled by her own volume. When she spoke again, it was with careful modulated softness. “I shouldn’t have come here. It was selfish of me to want you, even for a little while, but I thought if I could just have this one thing it would be easier to go back and do what I have to.”
“You won’t convince me that you have to. Roman can hold the pride. No one will challenge your father.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Have a little faith in them. Hell, have a little faith in me. I’ll take care of you—which means I’ll never let anyone hurt your father. I’ll fight right next to him if it comes to that, and so will half the pride. What about Hugo? You think anyone wants to tangle with an enraged bear-shifter after they slaughter his best friend?”
“That isn’t how things work. Challenges are one-on-one.”
He shook his head and stalked toward her. He’d given her enough space. “You can pretend this is about your father or the pride or Roman or your fucking duty, but the fact is you’re scared. So fucking scared of wanting me. Why is that, Lila? Why can’t you let yourself believe me when I say I will always be here for you?”
He caught her and she went unresisting into his arms, her protest whisper-soft. “Because I’m just a fantasy to you.”
“Does this feel like a fantasy?” His mouth swooped down on hers. The kiss started rough and dominating, but it gentled instantly. How could she not see how true this was? Couldn’t she feel it? How could she have doubts? He coaxed her with lips and tongue and teeth and she came up on her toes, clinging to his neck as a soft, yearning sound caught in her throat.
He swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed, sinking down onto it with her draped across his lap, the towel slipping loose beneath his hands at the first tug. The kiss stretched on and on, long and deep and achingly sweet as he tempted her to believe in this, to believe in them.
When he finally released her lips, she pressed her face against his neck and whispered, “Please.”
“Please what?” he growled, the words a dark rasp.
“More.”
He groaned and kissed her again, trying to keep himself in check, holding in mind how sore she must be, but when she straddled him, bare to the skin, and tugged at his jeans, begging so sweetly, he couldn’t deny her. He stroked his fingers into her slick folds, crooking one up inside her, but she twisted and clung and pleaded for more. Always more.
He tipped her back onto the bed and lifted her to his mouth, sucking on the sensitive nub of her clit as his fingers worked inside her. Lila released a high, gasping keen, but still that word came again. “More.”
He nipped the soft skin of her inner thigh and set his mouth to her center again, deliberate flicks of his tongue making her shudder and writhe. But when she threaded her fingers through his hair it wasn’t to hold him closer, but shove him away, pushing him onto his back and crawling up over him, spreading her thighs over his and reaching down to undo his jeans.
“You’re too tender,” he warned, and her eyes flashed.
“I’m a lioness. Don’t baby me. I’ll tell you when it’s more than I can take.”
God, she was gorgeous. Blonde hair falling over her shoulders, eyes flashing, breasts flushed and rising with each breath. Her fingers released him and he half-growled, half-purred at the first feather-light stroke of her hand. “Harder,” he urged.
“Like this?” She tugged him from base to tip in a long, firm stroke and his verbal center melted. He groaned incoherently and she repeated the gesture with a rub of her thumb over his slit at the end. “Or like this?”
“Where did you learn to do that?”
She bent and sucked the head into her mouth, laving it with her tongue and releasing it with a succulent pop. “I read a lot.” Then she set her lips to him again, drawing him deep with a mind-melting wet suction.
“Fuck.” He would buy her books. He would buy her every goddamn book in the world.
Her head bobbed up and down and he gathered her hair out of the way so he could watch himself sliding in and out of her mouth, the sight so fucking erotic he felt his balls drawing up tight.
“Lila.”
She ignored him, totally focused on her task. He was panting now, his vision starting to fade out around the edges until only she existed.
“Lila, I’m going to—”
“Hmmm?”
Her humming around his shaft almost killed him. His hips jerked and his eyes rolled back. It was starting. The next stroke…
She lifted her head. “Did you say something?”
“Minx.” He growled and lunged for her, flipping her to her stomach and pressing his chest to her back. He scraped his teeth over the place where her shoulder met her neck and she shivered. Notching the head of his cock against her entrance, he let her wetness coat him until he was slick with her scent. “Say please.”
Her claws flashed out, leaving little punctures in the sheets. “Make me.”