Fierce Player (Sierra Pride Book 4)

Fierce Player

The Sierra Pride, Book 4

By Liza Street

Description

Kate Ahrens has a problem—she keeps imagining creepy men following her while she walks to and from her college campus. It’s the result of too much time spent developing games, and not enough time talking to actual people. But when she meets the hot librarian with amazing eyes, she starts to think maybe she just hadn’t found the right person to talk to.

As the fourth brother in the shapeshifting Sierra Pride, Maverick Fournier isn’t intimidated by much. Kate, though, with her hot pink hair and sexy piercings, makes him completely lose his cool. He wants to protect her, smell her, and mate her—maybe not in that order. Unfortunately, there are some other men interested in Kate, and their interest isn’t at all romantic. Even though protecting her means revealing his animal side, Maverick is determined to keep her safe
and
win her love.

Content warning: This sexy shapeshifter novelette includes a happily-ever-after, as well as explicit love scenes and naughty language. It is intended for adults. The ending leads into the next book (
Fierce Dancer
, out in September 2016), but the main story line is resolved and this can be read as a stand-alone.

Copyright 2016 Liza Street. All rights reserved.

Discover more at Liza Street’s
website
.

An exclusive short story featuring Ava and Jude from
Fierce Heartbreaker
is now available! Visit
Liza's free book page
for details: https://lizastreet.wordpress.com/free-book/

The Sierra Pride Series:

Fierce Wanderer

Fierce Heartbreaker

Fierce Protector

Fierce Player

Fierce Dancer (September 2016)

Fierce Informer (October 2016)

Fierce Survivor (November 2016)

Fierce Lover (December 2016)

Chapter One

Shelves and shelves of books and information. They smelled like knowledge and possibility. The weak November sunlight arced through high windows, illuminating the large room. Maverick could hardly believe he’d finally gotten here. It had taken some arguments and the help of his new sister-in-law, Miranda, to convince his brothers that he deserved a chance at college. But now that he’d been here for a couple of months, Maverick couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

The location was ideal, too, and probably the only reason his brothers had agreed to let him go. NCCAS, the Northern California College of Arts and Sciences, was located east of Sacramento, far into the foothills, only three hours from his small hometown of Findley.

Better than the location was the library. This library. It was majestic. The bookcases stretched for what looked like miles, and if he’d been in his mountain lion form, he’d have paced the length of them, rubbing his cheek up against the worn spines, marking this territory as his.

His brothers would laugh at him now, if they saw him getting all wistful in the NCCAS library. He imagined he wore the same look on his face that he saw Gabriel, Jude, and Blake wear when they were with their mates. Love, and a constant yearning. They seemed to yearn for their mates even when they were right there next to them, and that was how Maverick felt about knowledge. He wanted it, he wanted all of it, and he knew he’d never get enough.

Almost three months into the semester, and he was working his dream job in the library. He could shelve books all day long and never get bored. Especially when there were girls like the one who currently sat in the Clark room, not too far from where he was working. Her hair practically yelled for attention, with the dark pink highlights a shocking contrast to the white blond.

She was also talking on her phone. In his library. It was as close to sacrilege as he could imagine. He frowned. Normally he’d tell someone to put their phone away, but he felt strangely intimidated by this woman, and he couldn’t even see her face.

He searched his book cart for anything that belonged in the Clark room.
Theories of Gaming
and
Game Developing for N00bs
. Good. Now he had an excuse to go in there and take a closer look at her.

Pushing his cart forward, he paused a few feet behind her. She smelled like the wilderness in springtime, like fresh pine and sweet blooms. He shook his head, trying to minimize her scent in his nostrils, because it made him want to get closer to her.

Hell’s balls, his sister-in-law Miranda would say.

She continued talking on her phone, oblivious to his entrance, all the while swiping text around on her tablet. “He’s after me, though,” she said, her voice hushed. “There’s no way, when I come around the corner, he’s always waiting.”

Maverick looked around the room, searching for the danger. Surely she’d ask for help if she needed it, but she didn’t know help was so close.

He angled the cart toward the shelves and slid
Theories of Gaming
into its spot.

The girl barely glanced at him, and instead focused on her tablet. Her voice sounded higher in pitch, and he could detect notes of stress in it. Something wasn’t right. He stood, staring at her, until she finally glanced up and gave him a dirty look, scrunching her tiny nose. If her fingers hadn’t been so busy on the tablet, she’d probably be flipping him off.

He shrugged and moved the cart down the bookcase, and that was when he saw the guy. He was the size of a football player, and he looked about forty. The guy sat rigidly on one of the window seats just beyond the bookcases, and Maverick would’ve bet his cherished Star Wars action figure collection that the guy had a clear line of sight to the pink-haired girl.

So maybe she
was
in danger.

Maverick wasn’t sure what to do. His first impulse was to tackle the guy and punch his face in, but Maverick didn’t take after his brother Gabriel. Maverick usually asked questions first, and puzzled out a problem before resorting to violence.

Something about this girl, though, made him feel irrational.

And maybe that irrationality had him reading things into situations that weren’t even situations. Maybe the nontraditional student was seriously browsing a copy of
Useless Inventions of the Twenty-first Century
. Maybe the nontraditional student wasn’t sending occasional glances toward the girl. Maybe he wasn’t twitching every time her chair squeaked, as if he planned to follow her as soon as she left.

Maverick pretended to be hunting for a place for
Game Developing for N00bs
, even though he’d already passed its spot five minutes ago. The girl continued to talk, worrying over things like danger, and attacks, and people waiting in alleys.

Other than her scent of springtime, he couldn’t detect any fear, but the ceilings were high and the room was large—if she was mildly afraid, he wouldn’t be able to smell her fear until he got much closer to her.

Damn, she was beautiful. Her face was nicer-looking when she didn’t have her nose wrinkled at him, and he liked her piercings—on the ear he could see beneath her mop of pink and white hair, she had a tiny gauge in the bottom and a series of studs going all the way to the top. He wanted to nibble on those earrings.

He caught himself staring and looked once more to the bookcase. He didn’t want her to catch him ogling her. Bad enough that he was already a freak among humans; it made no sense whatsoever to call extra attention to himself.

Plus, she was already paranoid about something—the last thing he wanted to do was add to her stress.

Chapter Two

It wasn’t always easy finding a semi-public place to work on her games, and it was getting harder and harder when jerk-offs like the handsome asshole librarian came in to spoil Kate’s fun.

He’d been looking at her off and on for the past five minutes, as if working up the nerve to tell her to end her call. She didn’t have the patience for him or his damn fine blue eyes and cute, spiky brown hair. It was Friday night, and next week there were no classes because of Thanksgiving. The library was nearly empty. There was no one else in the room until
he
came along—who could she possibly be bothering by being on the phone?

He was facing her, but still across the room, so Kate whispered, “Great, the hot librarian is going to shut me down.”

Trina laughed. Encouraged, Kate continued, “It’s fucking Gamergate, library edition.”

Then she froze in horror when he turned slightly to look at her. He seemed to be fighting off a frown.

He couldn’t possibly have heard her.

She waited while he went back to shelving books, feeling bad about the Gamergate comment. Probably he only wanted her to be quiet. In the library. Because people were supposed to be quiet in the library—there were even signs posted about no cell phone usage. She didn’t need to be such a jerk about it.

Trina chattered about the platform horror game she was working on, and Kate mostly listened, watching the librarian from the corner of her eye. He straightened, his gaze going back beyond the bookcase he stood at, and for once it seemed like his attention wasn’t on Kate.

She took the moment to check him out more closely. He was hot—super hot. Lanky, yes, and his limbs looked almost too long for his body. It wasn’t usually her style in a guy, but he was well-muscled, and for a second she imagined running her fingers over those muscles while standing up on tiptoe for a kiss.

Maybe she could write his character into her game. The hero—or maybe the king at the end that the heroine was trying to save. That might work.

Ha. She was checking out the librarian. Maybe it was time for her to move past her last break-up. Stupid Cory, as Trina called him. Sure, Cory wasn’t super intelligent, and that had made his attempt to cover up his cheating laughable, at best. She’d kicked him to the curb as quickly as possible, but unfortunately, he’d taken some of her self-confidence and trust with him.

Swiping her fingers across her tablet, she watched the simulation as the hulking monster character jumped out at her. The game itself was coming along great, and now she was finessing some of the timing. She wanted the monster to scare the heroine, but somehow, no matter when or how he popped up around a wall, Kate herself was surprised. It was a game, dammit. Unfortunately, she’d been having weird feelings of being followed in real life.

She probably should lay off the gaming a little bit.

Sighing, she jotted down a note and said to Trina, “The monster needs to be moved.”

“Hmm,” Trina said. “Tell me why each time we move that corner and that monster, you move it again.”

“I can’t help it,” Kate said. “I’m scared—”

Chapter Three

“I can’t help it,” she said, her voice a whisper. It was almost too quiet for his ears. “I’m scared—”

Unable to wait another second, he rushed over to her.

She looked up, her dark blue eyes wide with shock, which then turned to anger.

He skidded to a stop next to her. She didn’t look scared—she looked pissed.

“You want me to get off the phone, right?” she said.

“What?” he sputtered. “I—no, I thought—”

She muttered into the phone, “Gotta go,” and ended the call. Glaring up at Maverick, she said, “There. I’m off, okay?”

“Are you all right?”

“Seriously?” She shook her head, and those tempting earrings glittered. “You come over here, interrupt my phone call, and then stand there like you’re doing me a favor. Why do I need to get off the phone? Until you came in, this room was empty except for me.”

Wow, she talked fast. Maverick tried to piece it all together. Did she not realize that other guy was over there, just beyond the cases? Turning, he saw that the man was out of sight from this angle. He didn’t want to argue with her about that, though, and put her even more on the defensive. “But I heard you say you were scared.”

“It’s a
game
,” she said.

“What?”

“A game? Like, that people play? I’m developing one. Or haven’t you heard of girl gamers before? And how could you hear me anyway?”

“I—”

“Forget it.” She powered down her tablet and zipped it into its case before throwing that, a notebook, and her phone into her messenger bag. There was a tiny tattoo on the inside of her wrist, and he tried to see what it was, but she moved too quickly. “I’ll go somewhere else.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

She sighed, and a blush crept up from her neck to her cheeks. “Yeah, I do. Look, I know I broke the rules, I just didn’t think anyone would care on a Friday night when no one was around.”

No, no no. He didn’t want her to be unhappy, and he definitely didn’t want her to leave. “You can stay,” he said.

“Right, if I stay off the phone. I have to get some work done, and I’ll find a coffee shop or something.”

She yanked her hair into a sloppy bun and slung her messenger bag over her shoulder. Then she rushed out of the room, taking springtime with her.