Lion In Wait (A Paranormal Alpha Lion Romance) (3 page)

Cass immediately regretted saying that, but wasn’t sure why she
had
. Something had driven her to make that pronouncement that she didn’t quite understand. But, somehow, her playing it completely cool worked. “What’s the big deal? He goes out like twice a week. Never hurts anyone.”

“You can’t be serious,” Lyle said. “We gotta move, we gotta make some tracks, and you’re telling me that goddamn lion is
still
running away a couple times a week? I thought you said you’d stop him? I thought you promised, Cass.” His voice was a fermented hiss that turned her stomach.

“He’ll catch up. He always does.”

She didn’t know how she knew that, but there it was. The warm feeling in her chest, a remnant of her dream, was still upon her. “It’s fine.”

Cass grabbed her head, pinching her temples with her thumb and her middle finger. “Can I get a shower and get ready to go without you letching all over me?”

“You,” Lyle had started shaking, alongside the incessant sweating. “You’re a wreck. You’re lost. Without me, you have absolutely nothing! You know that.”

She paused for a second, trying to understand exactly what Lyle was saying. “Uh, yeah well, thanks for that. For someone who owes everything to you, you listen to me an awful lot. I wonder why that is? Oh right, the lion taming thing is the only part of this shitty dirt circus that makes any money. What a fucking surprise.”

Lyle hissed and drew back like he was going to backhand Cass, but her eyes were closed and she didn’t notice his attempt to intimidate her. When he realized that, he stuffed his hand back in the pocket of his filthy coveralls. That’s when the smell of him really hit.

“Are you gonna leave me alone?” Cass asked. “Or are you going to stand there while I get ready to go?”

The leer on Lyle’s face made her stomach wrench just as much as his unexpected appearance had.

“Yeah, I’m leavin’. If that lion ain’t back, I’m sending two guys to hunt him. I can’t have some stupid cat getting me sued for lettin’ him go.”

If her stomach was churning at Lyle existing, the idea that he’d gleefully murder Lex just to save himself some trouble made her wish she really
did
have that gun she kept telling herself she’d buy. For a moment, the two of them just stared at one another, and then, Cass’s hangover got the best of her.

“What do you want from me? Making me dance like last night, threatening Lex? What can I do to get you to leave me the fuck alone?”

Her short, angry, curt question put Lyle aback. Although, a moment later, he cracked a smile. “You want the truth?”

Cass just stared at him, cold-eyed and wishing she could sleep for another four hours or so.

“It isn’t
what I want
from you,” he cracked a greasy, moist-lipped smile. “It’s that I want
you
.”

With that, Lyle wiped at his face again, turned on his heel, and shambled down the steps. He froze again, as though something just occurred to him. “You got one more chance to keep that lion under control, kid, and this is only because I like you. I can’t have the show getting the reputation of letting animals escape and terrorize the population. So you got one shot. Next time? I get the lion, and you’re gonna go back to being my full time dancer. Get it? Only way you’re gonna change my mind after that... well...”

His disgusting demand was very clear. Her stomach turned, but she didn’t make a move one way or another. Silence seemed like the best option just then.

“Don’t disappoint me,” Lyle grumbled, with his back still facing Cass. “Or do. I win either way.”

Chewing her lip, Cass watched her lumpy, toady, wretched boss-cum-master shuffle off down the dirt path to another trailer, where he banged on the door and leaned his forehead on the doorjamb while he waited.

She folded her arms across her chest as a dust devil kicked up, swirled for a moment and disappeared into memory. This wasn’t the first time Lyle had made threats like that one. Not anywhere near. Every time though, they never came to much more than just some passive aggressive whining and a few harsh words.

Of course, the sweaty old letch hadn’t ever come right out and almost licked Cass, either, so maybe things around the old Bertram & Martin show were changing. Maybe the desperation, the chronic almost-going-broke, and the string of workers who just up and ran instead of sticking around—even in the wretched deserts they worked—were getting to him.

Maybe he’s starting to go crazy. All this time out here in the dirt and the sand and the loneliness sure as shit would have broken me if it weren’t for Lex. Maybe that’s what’s going on.

On the other hand, Cass was well aware that she may have just been telling herself that so she could avoid the horrible possibility that Lyle had been serious with his lecherous request. It’s one thing to avoid leers and gropes from a bunch of drunk carnies, but it’s something completely different to try to avoid those things from a guy with a key to your house. Hell, he’s the guy who
owns
the house.

She turned back into her trailer, running her hand through her mussed up, early-morning-tragic hair and stopped. Dead silent, full stop.

“Lex?”

He greeted her with a slow purr that would have been a southern drawl if he were speaking. Cass squinted her eyes, rubbed them with her balled up fists, and expected him to be gone when she opened them again.

Instead, the huge golden lion let out that noise she could only describe as chuckling. “Where the hell did you go? And how,” she shook her head, “actually you know what? It doesn’t even matter. I’m just glad you’re back.”

She settled down on the floor beside him, stroking his ears. “Although you have to stop. He made one of his threats, Lyle did. Said if you ran away again he was going to take you away, whatever that means.”

The lion lifted an eyebrow, or at least that’s what it looked like.

“Do you understand me? Why does it always look like you know what I’m saying?”

Cass stared at him for a second, and then laughed at herself. “Thank God I have the excuse that it’s barely past dawn and I’m hung-over. Otherwise I’d be certifiably batshit, sitting here and talking to a lion.”

Lex licked her hand, his sandpaper tongue tugging slightly on her skin.

“Anyway, it’s just as well he woke me up and you magically reappeared or whatever you did. We gotta get packed, get going. We’re supposed to hit the road before too long and I’d rather not have all the stuff fall off my shelves again.”

*

I
t hadn’t been three hours before the noise outside her trailer got Cass thinking maybe something wasn’t quite normal. And then about thirty seconds after that, she realized that things were
really
out of hand when a brick came through her window.

“Dick!” she snarled, climbing up on the bookcase she had bolted to the wall and looking out at a handful of sour looking, red-cheeked faces. “The hell do you think you’re doing?”

“We’re gettin’ that lion,” one of them – she couldn’t remember the name that went with the face, but he was the largest of the men, wearing an unbuttoned plaid work shirt and loose-fitting Dickies. “I ain’t gonna have him roaming around at night, getting my kids or anything.”

“Maybe you should send them to school?” Cass snarled back. “He never hurts anyone. Just mind your own way.”

The problem though, was that she knew it was bad to have him getting out. Lyle
was
right, loathe as she was to admit it. It couldn’t possibly be good for business to have rumors of an escapee lion prowling the carnival grounds. So, she did the only thing she could – lie.

“Lyle said if I kept him in from now on, nothing would happen. You gonna go against him?”

As she watched the crowd, which had become a group of about seven by that point, she realized their faces were vacant, almost blank. “Lyle don’t like it when people go against his orders,” she said. Cass hated that when she got really mad, really drunk, or she panicked, her South came out when she spoke. Thankfully, none of those things happened very often.

Another brick came, but this one thunked harmlessly off the matte green aluminum trailer and to the ground. “We’re takin’ him,” another of the faces said, in a weird, detached, placid sort of way. The taste of dirt and grit between her clenched teeth made Cass pull back into her trailer. She turned to Lex, who had stood and was creeping toward the trailer door, his head low and menacing, a growl deep in his chest.

“Calm down,” Cass whispered. “I doubt killing them is going to be the best way to convince anyone you’re not dangerous.”

At her words, Lex’s shoulders relaxed, though he stayed on his feet, alert and ready for whatever came his way.

“Is he in there?” It was Lyle’s voice that time, cold and sober. “Nobody’s found him yet, so he must be. You come out first, Cass, and you won’t get hurt. Neither will he, unless he puts up a fight.”

She opened the door, but left the screen with the chain lock in place. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The grin on Lyle’s face sickened her, just like his brown teeth and red cheeks. “Bad for business. Don’t you remember givin’ up your pay this week to feed the animals? Come on, little girl, don’t be stupid. People are scared of this cat. I’ll take him off, you can—”

“Wait, hold on.” She put her feet solidly square on the ground. “You said if I found him first you’d leave him alone.”

“Changed my mind. Get out of there or I’ll do it for you.”

Squaring her jaw and leveling her shoulders, Cass put her hand out behind her, trying to calm Lex’s increasingly irritated growls. “This is a really, really bad idea, Lyle. This isn’t a threat or anything, it’s just... no!”

The first of Lyle’s goons kicked her screen in, letting himself and two others inside. “Lex! No! Don’t hurt them!” she cried out, begging the cat not to do anything to get himself killed. As much as being separated from him was going to hurt, having him hurt or killed would have broken her.

Lex curled up his lips in a silent snarl, tensed his massive shoulders and neck, and bared his teeth.

“Calm him down, Cass,” Lyle said. “You’re the trainer, right?”

With a soft pat on the back of his head, Cass curled her fingers in the lion’s mane and tugged. He was pulling against her, straining to get at one of the idiots who had invaded, if only one of them chose to try something stupid.

When the one in the front – the big one with the vacant look on his face – decided to get a little closer, Lex snapped his jaws in a warning that could have easily taken the guy’s hand if he were a half inch closer, or if Lex were just a little less careful with where he snapped.

“See that? He’s crazy! He’s nuts! He’ll kill me, or some kid, or some damn hick farmer or something, and then where will we be?”

“I didn’t want to do this, Cass,” Lyle said, pulling something that looked like a rough facsimile of a gun out of his coveralls. “He ain’t gonna go easy though, and you don’t seem like you’re gonna be much help.”

He inserted a canister into the back, and a dart into the barrel. “Now listen, I told ya I ain’t gonna hurt him.”

The tears were already running down Cass’s face. She took a swing at Lyle’s lumpy head at exactly the same time that he fired the dart. It sunk into Lex’s chest just as her fist slammed into Lyle’s chin, sending a tooth flying. Even with the drugs coursing through him, Lex tightened his chest and let out a half-growl, half-roar that shook the windows. He lunged straight for the nearest idiot, with a rage that was going to take at least part of a head should he choose. She saw that he kept his claws back, but smacked the absolute hell out of the closest man.

Flying backward like a hurled potato sack, the leering, vacant-eyed man hit the wall, flattened somewhat, and slid to the floor. Lex lurched, but kept his paws under himself, at least long enough to send another of the panicked workers sprawling to the floor when he tried to grab Lex’s fur.

Lyle shouted some kind of incoherent profanity and loaded a second dart. He fired it straight into the side of the lion’s neck. “God damn idiot girl,” he whined, clutching his broken lip and sore chin. “This coulda been so much easier.”

The lion was lurching, heaving from one side to the other, obviously slipping unconscious. Lex was fighting, as hard as he could, to keep from succumbing to the drug. He looked to Cass, who was watching him, her pale blue eyes flashing between unadulterated rage, and terror for her friend. She ran toward him, but Lyle grabbed her shirt, yanking her backwards and keeping her from getting where she wanted to be.

“Now calm down, you damn fool,” he said, spittle collecting in the corners of his mouth. “Nobody else gotta get hurt if you just
stop
.”

Lex blinked twice, and Cass thought she saw him nod at her, in a way that said everything would be fine, there was nothing to worry about.

She screamed out, kicked backward at Lyle and tried to twist away, but he held his grip tight with those warty, knotted hands. “Calm down!”

Lex took a deep breath and sighed as he finally collapsed. Cass shook, trembling, quaking with anger. She spun around, slapped Lyle directly in the face once, though he caught her other hand when she tried to repeat. “I swear to God, if you hurt him—”

“Why’n hell would I do that? He’s expensive, you idiot! Where am I gonna get another damn lion? I just can’t have him in a trailer with a cage that’s open all the goddamn time! As attached to that stupid cat as you are, surely you can see how that might concern some folks?”

“It didn’t have to be this way,” Cass said, her words hitching in her swollen throat. If she thought she could have killed every one of them, Cass would have done it without a second thought. How
dare
they invade her place, take her friend? How
dare
they?

“If you hurt him,” she said between gritted teeth, “I’ll—”

“Sit there and watch, whine a little bit, maybe? Then what? You gonna hurt me? You gonna sneak in at night and kill me? Fuckin’ idiot girl. Come on you buncha rubes, get the cat, let’s get going.”

Cass stared at the bulbous roll on the back of Lyle’s head as he ordered the men around, and the group finally managed to heft Lex’s huge body up and out of the trailer. When they were gone, and she was alone with Lyle once again, he turned to her, jabbing one of his sausage-like fingers in her face.