Lion's Dangerous(Kings of the Jungle #1)(75)

"I like her," Lily said. "She's so sparkly and playful." 

"She's trouble," he replied mildly. "But when Cavin finally pulls the stick out of his ass, she'll be his trouble instead of ours."

"Ours." Lily inhaled, let the breath out slowly. "Jude? The Mating Moon was why you kept pushing for tonight, wasn't it? There's something important about tonight."

"Don't worry about it. There will be other-"

She gave him a look that was probably meant to be skeptical but pain softened the edges of it. "But you didn't want to wait for another one. I don't either."





21





Due to current security issues with the club and the nature of their lives as urban shifters, Jude explained during a slow, excruciating trip through the club-during which he carried her until she couldn't deal with the pressure on her back, and she walked until she was too dizzy to do it-he couldn't give her the same sort of wild, free, wind in her fur, bloody meat between her jaws turning that his African brothers and sisters enjoyed.

But he could give her moonlight and romance.

"This is … " She trailed off, awed, as he led her to one of the club's man-made wonders, a waterfall that spilled over a red-rock ledge into a pool surrounded by greenery.

But Jude didn't take her to the foot of the fall; they emerged at the very top of it, where … moonlight didn't exactly spill through the skylight cut into the ceiling overhead, because outside the fantasy of the Jungle, pollution choked everything. But she could see the full, round circle, and it looked close enough to touch.

Convex glass was responsible for the illusion of proximity but she pretended it was some shifter magic thing and turned to find Jude watching her. The shifter magic shimmering around him … that, she wholeheartedly believed, was real.

He didn't give her time to be nervous. Or the head space, because he had already started stripping. His shirt lay … somewhere. She couldn't be bothered to look away from the flex of muscle dampened by mist off the waterfall and sheened by the hazy light coming through that tricky overhead window.

While the light defined the planes of his body, shadows concealed the hollows. That was fine … warmth spread through her as she realized she knew enough about this man that she didn't need her eyes to see it. Same applied to the life he led, and all the details she should have asked about the life she would lead as a lioness at his side.

The last of his clothes hit the ground. He locked onto her eyes and all the air in her lungs left in a rush, pushed aside by the force of that thing that had reached out and snatched her right off her feet the first time their gazes collided.

"I thought I'd just imagined it," she said.

Jude had carefully draped a sheet around her before carrying her from the private room. Now he used just as much care to pull the fabric from her fist-although it cost him, she could see that in the tightness at the corners of his mouth and the way the muscle in his forearm jumped, as though the creature under his skin had grown tired of human niceties.

"You didn't." He released the sheet. Before it had even finished slithering down her legs, he was touching her, his big hand skimming up between her breasts to encircle her throat.

Her eyes fell to half-mast, lashes suddenly too heavy to hold them open as he brushed his thumb beneath her chin and urged her head back. She didn't even have time to feel bereft in the absence of eye contact because the moon was right there waiting for her. And then his lips were right there, tracing a hot path down the column of her throat.

He licked her, velvet-soft and hot, and then he growled. "If you fucking walk away from me like that again-"



       
         
       
        

"I didn't want to make you choose-"

"There is no choice, Lily. There hasn't been any other choice for me since the moment I saw you. It's the way my-our-kind works. And even if it wasn't … " Letting out a harsh breath, he palmed her ass and drew her up hard against him. His open mouth landed on that place where her shoulder met her neck and he swiped his tongue over her skin. It wasn't velvety anymore.

Before his lion fully escaped, she dug her hands into his hair and forced his head back. Held her own gathering languor at bay in order to meet his eyes. They were barely human, already tilting at the corners, pupils thinning to slits. Her breath caught but she pushed through because this had to happen. Now, before there could be any question that it was real and not some product of a shifter bond.

"Jude," she whispered, willing him to hold onto humanity long enough for her to get through it. Because she didn't want to rush. His hand tightened at her throat. She felt the prick of claws but it was the second sweetest pain she'd experienced in her entire life.