The Lion's Arranged Mate: A Paranormal Lion Shifter Romance (5 page)

You can hit me, Elias, but you cannot make me love you
, she wanted to say, but it was enough to stand simply still, resolute against his anger. It said more than any words could. His hand never reached her. She opened her eyes slowly and saw the brute mass of Alan standing in front of her, could almost smell the sweat of his skin he was so close. His right arm was outstretched, and in it he was clutching Elias’ wrist.

The two men growled at each other, and Alan pushed him back lightly.

“Pussy-wretch!” Elias snarled, his knees bending low. The pack behind him, finally given the opportunity for action, crouched low as well, waiting for a command from their Alpha. “You think you can stand up against all of us? We’ll tear you apart.”

Alan had been in tight spots before. More than a few brawls where he’d been outnumbered like he was now. Whether or not it escalated into an all-out fight depended on the leader. If he acted, the rest would follow. Suddenly Anastasia burst forward, but he caught her by the arm. Her eyes said everything he was afraid to hear out loud.

Elias is too prideful. If you try to fight him, he’ll kill you. I can’t let that happen. Let me go with him. It’ll be all right. I’ll be all right.

“Bullshit,” he said, half to himself and half to Anastasia, and turned toward his enemy, “I can’t speak to her feelings,” he muttered, pushing his chest out, “but I know the Council’ edict. That is all
I
can act upon. According to the edict, any previous rendezvous she had is nullified. You have no right to her.”

“Unless you’re dead,” Elias grinned.

Anastasia tried to push past Alan again but he held out his arm. “Please, don’t do this Alan… you don’t know what he’s capable of. I lied to you… I should have told you everything. This is my fault, please just let me go. I won’t have any more blood on my conscience. Especially not yours.”

He looked at her and quailed. She had become a child – the confident adult had disappeared, withered into this fragile naked girl who had made a desperate choice in an attempt to liberate herself from some archaic laws. She’d only found her way into another set of ancient guidelines and the arms of a shifter who was her opposite.

“It won’t come to that,” he said, and brushed her cheek.

Alan took in a deep breath, turned, and gave the Wolf a reviling look, as if he were witnessing some child’s angry temper tantrum. “Well, you’ve got me outnumbered, about seven to one. I’ve had worse odds, but I’m quite tired from climbing that mountain behind me. Still,” as he took another step forward, he saw a sliver of uncertainty creep into Elias’ posture, “if Anastasia doesn’t want to go with you, then she’s not going anywhere.”

Elias and the other Stormfangs were balanced on a knife-edge. A single breath would tip them to the left or right, and Alan knew his next words would determine the outcome.

“As for killing me,” he mused nonchalantly, “that may well be. I swear to
god
I’ll take at least three of you motherfuckers with me. Starting with you.” He pointed a long cruel finger at Elias, and the man paused, just long enough for Alan to register his fear.

The stand-off seemed to last for an interminably long time. Alan kept his eyes on Elias, knowing that the slightest twinge of muscle, the flicker of a finger or a shoulder, would be enough to elicit the movement of his black-attired friends. If that happened, he intended to make good on his promise. It was a strange thing, this moment before the storm – the way events hovered on the edge of happening. Behind him, he could hear Anastasia’s breath, carefully measured.

“Wait,” she said, putting an arm on Alan’s shoulder, and stepped past him. This time he didn’t stop her; something was different in her voice. She looked at Elias sharply. “You really are pathetic, Elias. Why my father ever selected you as the Alpha hunter, I will never know. I’m not stupid, either… and I haven’t forgotten my duty as a noble. I won’t have blood shed on my account,” and she glanced at Alan as well, “by anyone. You will leave now, Elias.”

“Bloody hell I will, I-” Elias was cut short as she raised her hand.

“You will
leave
! Wait for us in the valley. Tomorrow morning I will come, but tonight… tonight, you have no claim on me. Tonight is mine.”

“What are you doing Anastasia?” Alan whispered.

She shook her head and focused on her fellow Wolves. “If the only way to avoid you being an idiot is to return to the Cloud, then… then I will. Not for
you
, Elias. I do it for the good of the Stormfangs, something you would never understand.”

“Anastas-” Alan leaped forward to protest, but she held up her hand again violently, and he resisted the urge to call out.

Elias snarled and pulled his hand through a black sheaf of long hair and slapped his vest. “Right, and when I leave the two of you will take off again. You coming back willingly? You expect me to take your word on that?”

“Yes,” she said, so dangerously even Elias shut up. “Now leave, and take your pets with you.”

Elias seemed to teeter on a decision again – he may have been reckless and prideful, but he wasn’t stupid. His head swiveled back and forth between the two naked lovers in front of him, and finally he spit viciously onto the gravel. “So be it,” he said, still obviously displeased with the fact she would be spending any more time with the naked Lion, but satisfied at least that he had broken her will.  “We’ll be waiting, Anna. Just remember, if you
don’t
show up… we’ll track you down. And when we do,
he’s
the first one we’ll gut.”

“Don’t call me, Anna,” she said, and he winked and turned. The posse of men behind him hesitantly followed suit, though more than a few gnashed their teeth in a poor imitation of their true forms.

Neither Alan nor Anastasia moved a muscle until the sounds of the two Jeeps had disappeared down the logging road, and even then, with sunset open on the horizon like a river of blood-red salmon, neither of them seemed to know what to do. Finally, Alan rubbed his face and took a step toward her – she was still staring down the open logging road when his hands touched her back.

The muscles responded like a pond, ripples netting outward from his fingertips. “Are you okay?” he asked, wishing there was a better way to phrase the question.

She shook her head. “No.”

CHAPTER FIVE

  “There has to be another way,” Alan said.

He stooped over the wood stove where the kettle was starting to whistle, and poured two cups of tea into old ceramic mugs. They were both dressed again, and the room was lit with candles – but somehow the coziness of it had been overshadowed by the appearance of her previous suitor. Anastasia had shut down and would carefully avoid eye contact now, and that hurt Alan more than anything.

“The Council will intervene. We’ll figure something out. But… why did you agree to meet him tomorrow? You’re not really going back, are you?” he asked, and she turned away from where she was crouched on the sofa. “You don’t… want to go back, do you?”

Her eyes lit up with the accusation. “No!” she exclaimed, then softer, “It doesn’t matter what I want, Alan. It never has. There are things in this world bigger than our desires.”

“That’s crap, and you know it,” he said sharply, and she looked at him with fire in her eyes. Once she realized that he was beyond reproach, she diffidently lowered them again. “You chose to run away… now, I’m not saying I’m any better a choice than Elias. I get it now. I was your escape plan, and that’s fine.”

“No!” she gasped again. “That’s not… that’s not true.”

“Yes it is,” he said, with a note of sadness. “You had a dilemma: marry that guy, or taking a risk on your own freedom and marry another guy. That’s not a fair choice. And I won’t make you choose a lesser evil.”

“Wh-what are you saying?”

“I mean, if you don’t want to go with Elias… then you won’t. We’ll bring this before the Council, I’m the liaison to Cedarhaven, I have a voice there. If the only way to ensure your freedom is to marry me, then we’ll marry… but it’ll be in name only. Afterwards…” he hesitated, “afterwards, I won’t hold you to your vows. We can dissolve the marriage, and you’ll still be free.”

He had pondered long and hard about positing this as a solution. Since Elias and his troupe had packed up and were waiting for them at the bottom of the valley, he’d gone through every custom he could remember in his brain. It had helped to focus him, to steer his thoughts away from his own feelings. He knew that if he gave into them now, it would destroy him.

And yet, there was a part of him that couldn’t escape it. He had feelings for Anastasia, even if she had used him, even if he had been nothing more than a convenient method of escaping her own manacles. He could only imagine what life as a noble or high born was like, and for once, he was glad to have been born into a lower caste, one in which he was free to choose his own destiny, his own mate.
Except somehow I got caught up in your world, Anastasia, and even that choice was taken from me
…
but,
he promised himself,
at least I have the freedom to choose now how to deal with this.

“I’ll set you free,” he whispered.

Anastasia was already marching toward him, and before he could say another word she threw her arms around his neck and buried her face into his chest. The heat of her breath burned through his T-shirt and he tenderly wrapped his own arms around the back of her head and her waist and drew her towards him. She sobbed silently for a moment, the only evidence of her emotional turmoil the occasional quaking of her sylphlike shoulders. Alan stroked her hair and held her closer, pressing the weight of his body into her, as if he might somehow protect her from the things she had already been exposed to, the choices she’d already made.
But never should have had to,
he remarked quietly to himself.

When she reclaimed her composure, her eyes were red and swollen with tears, and he brushed at the snail-tracks on her cheeks with the flat edge of his finger.

“Alan… why are you being so kind to me?” she asked, studying his face. “I lied to you. I’ve dragged you into all of this.”

He shrugged, and kept one hand on the bridge of her waist. “I was never good at staying out of trouble,” he mused, “but at least now I have a good reason.”

She almost burst into tears again but bit her lip. Her red hair framed her face like an orbit of flame as the candlelight caught it and diffracted it back at Alan. “I… it’s true, what Elias said. I am a coward. I thought I could escape my family by running away… but there was one thing both he and you were wrong about it,” she said, her hands pulling at the front of her T-shirt while she struggled to find the words.  “I don’t regret it. Maybe I didn’t think far enough ahead, I didn’t even know what sort of man the Council would pair me with, but then…”

“What?” he urged.

She seemed on the verge of breaking. “You weren’t anything like I expected,” she said, another sob shaking her. “You’ve always treated me kindly even… even when I was being difficult. You were patient with me. I don’t think anyone else would have been. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. But for the first time… oh, Alan…”

Her knees gave out and she collapsed. He reached out, falling to his knees and holding her as another insulated sob of grief wracked her, and the aggregate of all of her sadness that she had withheld until it had built itself like a wall against her true feelings finally was released.

“For the first time, there was something I could actually call home, that felt like home… even though it’s been such a short time, I want you to know… how grateful I am to you for that.”

Alan reached out and grabbed her hand. “You’re talking like you’ve already accepted your fate. I told you, we’ll figure something out, Anastasia. I promise-”

He was cut short as she leaned into him and kissed him hard on the mouth. “I know,” she said, “but for tonight. Just for tonight, I want to know what it’s like to be loved again.”

Her hands moved up under his shirt, tripping over the hard flesh of his abdomen, one hand moving down as it tested the rim of his pants. He let out a sigh as her hand went underneath, fumbling under his boxers, and found him half-erect. As her palm slid the foreskin back, it widened in her fingers, and she gave it a tasteful squeeze to encourage it even further.

“Anastasia, we need to… to think…”

“I’ve thought all my life, right now I just want you. Don’t you want me?”

He brought his hand up behind the arch of her neck and turned his head, planting his mouth against hers with such force she was taken aback for a moment. Gently, she opened her lips wider as his tongue penetrated, swishing against her cheeks, looking for her own prehensile organ. His saliva streamed into her mouth and she brought her other hand under her own panties, flexing her fingers upward as she continued to pull on his bulging member.

Alan grunted and his own hand pulled up on the front of her tank top until the crest of both pale breasts gleamed back. She sighed and stroked him harder as his mouth tickled her nipples, and in the skin-dusky glow of the candles, his tongue traced delicate circles around them.

“Unh, yes, like that,” she said, moving her fingers through his hair like a comb and pushing his head down against her soft pleading flesh.

He pulled her hand out of her panties and stuck her fingers in his mouth, sucking hard and causing her to croon with pleasure. The taste of her juices on her fingers was sensuous at worst, intoxicating at best, and he pulled flimsily at the zipper on her jeans. The V of the seams split as they opened, and she helped him dispose of her panties as well, until she was wearing only the tank-top, bunched at the top of her breasts.

Alan gave her a playful push as she landed back against the couch, her arms raised over her head and her vulva gleaming wet and ready for him behind a thin tuft of reddish pubic hair. She opened her legs wider to give him a look, pushed her own fingers down over her pussy, spreading the lips and caressing the base of her clitoris.

“I want you,” he breathed, “more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Does that make me as possessive as Elias?”

Anastasia shook her head. “You want
me
,” she said, “he only wanted this.” She moved her hands down her body, indicating the physical vessel that had so obsessed her other suitor.

Alan had to smile at her wit, even as he undid the button on his own pants and slid them to the floor, his erection already arched toward the ceiling as if having spotted something skyward.

He leaned forward on his knees, spreading her legs with his gentle fingers, and massaging her navel, his fingers raking over the flesh so that it excited all the nerves of her body at once. She toyed with her own breasts, tweaking the pink nipples. He grinned and licked her stomach. Then lower, eager as a soldier returning home, he moved his tongue over her navel and against the brush lands of her pubic region. She flinched, drawing in a breath between clenched teeth, as his chin rubbed over her clitoris and his tongue parted the swollen labial lips.

She was already wet with her own ejaculate, and it coated his chin and lips as he dove into her, licking at her with a pugnacious tenacity that caused her to squirm and flex her thighs together even tighter against his head. His hands moved up under her buttocks, cupping them firmly. Her inner thighs smelled like the dark cavern of a wild animal and were warm and sweaty against his face, and it drove him into an even stronger trance.

“Wait,” she breathed, touching his head, “I want to… I want to come together.”

Alan rubbed her belly again and lifted up one of her legs, folding it over his right thigh so that he was in the perfect position to engage her sideways. She relaxed and urged him closer as his penis ducked against the opening of her vagina. Another silent moan as he pushed readily against the pink lips, and a little shudder of delight as it opened for him. He gasped, plunging his member deep into her, and gripped her waist.

Anastasia’s upper body was bouncing as they rhythmically pumped together, crushing their moist sexes against one another. Each was a flower wilting into the other in a rainstorm. Anastasia let out a shriek and her eyes were clenched tightly as he repositioned himself, parting both her legs wide and injecting himself against her until his shaft was buried to the shaft. He felt a warm rush as she released another flood, her sharp nails digging into his shoulder flesh. Both of their groins were inundated with a sticky fluid and she wrapped her legs tighter around him.

“Harder,” she said.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” he countered, reaching around and holding her by the lower waist. He drove into her again and again, thumping against her groin, pounding himself deeper and deeper into her until it was almost unbearable for both of them.

She became half-catatonic, all she could do was hold onto his back, her mouth plastered against his neck, as he butted into her again and again, driving her into an orgasmic frenzy. Anastasia had never known such fiery passion, such gripping pleasure, and for her own reasons she held onto the moment for as long as she could. His penis swelled inside her, brushing against her G-spot until she felt like her bladder was ready to explode.

“I…I can’t,” she squeaked, “…cuh-oh god, uh... cumming.”

Her breath was a hoarse pulse against his neck as the experience overcame her. Alan lifted his hand under one leg even as she squeezed him with her thighs again, her whole body becoming an earthquake of sobs and overbearing pangs of pleasure. She choked, trying not to pass out as the orgasm rippled outward, flowing up her thighs and knees to the ends of her toes and warming her belly. Her arms shook, and her eyes clenched tightly as if she were experiencing a seizure.

At the same time, he came inside her and felt her vagina cramp around his stiff blood-glutted penis. He jetted inside her, coating her vagina with his hot seed, and Anastasia opened her eyes and screamed again, clutching him by the neck so hard he thought she might strangle him.

For long seconds they held each other, each feeling the after-effects of the shared climax, and began to rock gently against one another. Anastasia’s beautiful red hair was a mess of dark garnet plastered to her face with sweat, and her beautiful lips were open as she breathed, trying to steady her heart-rate. Her breasts glinted with the sheen of their lovemaking, their perfect angles manifesting roundness in all their abstract splendor.

He lifted her chin with his thumb and it took every effort for her to open her eyes, which had become sleepy and subdued. Her legs were still around his, but her knees had fallen to one side. His penis, half-deflated, slid easily out of her vagina and nestled against the warm folds of her labia. Both of their fluids had puddled beneath them, his semen smearing her inner legs and the top of her belly, but neither of them cared.

“Anastasia,” he whispered, “don’t go to sleep yet.”

She smiled wearily. “Why not? I want to sleep against you. I want to see you again when I dream. Why can’t I sleep?”

Alan felt another lump grow in his throat. He knew it was more than the blindness of pleasure, more than the disorientation of circumstances that had sealed something against the back of his eyes. Now as he gazed down at her, all he had to do was read what was written there. And yet, there was something unbearably terrifying about it, too.

“What is it?” she asked again.

“I’m trying to decide if I should tell you.”

“And why wouldn’t you tell me whatever it is you want to say?” she locked her arms around his neck and dabbed her forehead against his.

“Because I don’t know what’ll happen if I tell you that I love you.”