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Lion's Dangerous(Kings of the Jungle #1)(4)

By:Storm, Emma


Ignoring the high-pitched beep of the alarm and the ringing phone, he followed his flashlight beam and carefully selected blue, black and purple skeins. As he reached for a display above his head, sharp pain lanced through him.

Swearing, he gritted his teeth and breathed through his nose until the hot knife lost its edge, and then he collected the rest of his materials.

Planning his weapon, fantasizing about how he would use it, pushed his balls to a painful state of arousal.

The phone stopped ringing, reminding him of where he was. That time was up. He stuffed the yarn into his backpack and climbed through the frame of the front door, carefully avoiding the jagged shards of glass jutting from the frame like eager teeth.



* * *

Lily jolted from a deep sleep with a gasp, ears ringing with the sound of sirens. For a panicked instant in the dark, she wasn't in her bed. She was trapped in the twisted hunk of metal that had been her car, choking on smoke, burning up in the heat of the fire that already licked out from under the mangled hood.

It was a familiar nightmare. Too fucking familiar, and she knew she was dreaming, but the memories were so vivid, she threw out her hand anyway, reaching for the passenger seat. Just in case she could do something for Rhys. 

Just in case she'd pissed off the universe so bad, it had decided she deserved to live through this again. Maybe a different outcome this time, one where Rhys died instead of merely losing the use of his legs.

Instead of her brother's solid shoulder, his shirt sticky with blood, the back of her hand smacked into her bedside lamp, which fell to the carpeted floor with a dull thud.

"Lily!" The wall behind her bed shook as a fist hammered twice. "Answer your damn phone."

Shit, her phone.

The siren-sound of the ringtone she'd assigned to her security company wailed from the cheap pay-as-you-go phone she'd left in the side pocket of her knitting bag. She stumbled out of bed and snatched it up, still in a daze as she pressed it to her ear.

"Burke Security Monitoring," identified the caller. "Is this Lily Bristol?"

His voice was rough and ragged as if he'd recently come from his own bed. Or maybe from the arms of a lover. Holy smokes, that voice. It lit her up.

Suddenly wide awake, she cleared her throat of its own huskiness. "Yes, speaking. Did the alarm go off?"

"Yeah. Cameras show evidence of an intruder. Police are on their way. They'll want access to the video footage."

Her breath started coming in shallow pants. "I'm twenty minutes away."

A beat of silence, then his voice deepened into this calm, steady timbre. "Take a breath."

The command hit her with the force of, well, a command. Her lungs reacted before her brain could process the fact he'd given her an order.

"Good, another one. This is urgent but it's not an emergency."

The break-in wasn't what had her staring down the barrel of a panic attack. But she tried not to think about that. Or about the absurdity of sitting in the dark, doing breathing exercises over the phone with a strange man.

"You good now?" he asked.

Yes, but she had to force herself to answer. His disembodied presence was just that good, shoring her up with strength that had been sapped first by the dream, then by the idea of getting behind the wheel.

And that just pissed her off because she didn't need a man's strength anymore. She'd worked her ass off the past year in order to develop her own.

"Fine. I'm actually going to be closer to half an hour." Self-care, she reminded herself. She was valuable enough to make the police wait the few extra minutes.

"Do what you need to do. I'll meet the police." He killed the connection without saying good-bye.

For a moment, she just sat there, back hunched and elbows on her knees. Just breathing, wondering why she'd needed Jude Burke's permission to collect herself. And why she wasn't angry that he'd given it.

Why she wasn't angry with him, but was giving herself such a hard time for surrendering to the moment.

In the other bedroom, Rhys's bed frame creaked and he let out a pained grunt. The sound shook her loose from the past and she hurriedly pulled a pair of wrinkled jeans and hand-knitted cardigan over the shortie pajama set she'd worn to bed. On her way downstairs, she stopped in front of her brother's bedroom door.

"I have to go to the shop," she called, not even bothering to try the knob-it would be locked. The little boy who'd ruined her pre-teen life by streaking naked everywhere he could was gone now, replaced by a broken man who let no one in.

But he surprised her by shoving open the door. She jumped back just in time to avoid being smacked in the face.

"Sorry," he muttered from where he loomed in the dark doorway, shoulders and biceps straining with the effort to hold himself up on the handrails that ran along the walls of nearly every room in the house.