Zola's Pride

Chapter Three

Lunch turned into a mess. Zola tried to remain casual while lion and woman fought a fierce battle inside her. Walker seemed willing to stick to safe topics, telling her about those who remained in the pride as she crashed about in the kitchen. She tried to listen, but her gaze caught too often on the strong line of his shoulders or the firm curve of his full lips. Desire had settled to a low simmer, one that flared at the most inopportune moments.

She burned their meal while imagining his hands on her skin, his mouth on her throat, his hard body between her legs. Even abandoning the meal and dragging him out to a local cafe didn’t help. With their future so uncertain, the lion judged every woman who smiled at him to be a threat, and Walker’s beautiful eyes and sharp cheekbones attracted a good deal of feminine appreciation.

Mate. Such a foolish word, one with which the wolves were endlessly obsessed. Her mother had not allowed formalized matings amongst the pride, too concerned that loyalty to a mate would supersede the loyalty she thought her due.

Mate. A foolish word, but one that plagued her, tickled her mind and wiggled under skin until tension had her strung tighter than the finest bow.

If she didn’t take Walker to bed soon, it might be the death of her sanity.

Assuming he’d accept such an invitation. That he wanted her was not in question. She’d felt proof of that fact hard and hot between her thighs on the practice room floor, so good she could have rocked up against him and driven herself to bliss without his assistance. But oh, how good his assistance would be...

Unfortunately, business could only wait so long. Zola showered while Walker made calls to wherever he’d stashed his people, some place in Mexico where a witch enhanced the spells woven into a charm Zola’s mother had given them. The last gift of her fractured mind, magic that hid their presence from the Scions.

Magic that wouldn’t last forever. Zola braided her hair and gathered her willpower. They’d spent precious hours circling. Stalking. Neither ready to commit to the one conversation they needed to have.

It was time to stop playing.

Zola stepped from her bedroom and found Walker in the living room studying the framed photos on her walls. “You studied with DeSilva?”

“Four months.” Her gaze drifted over the rest of the wall, over a dozen framed photographs of her with her many teachers, some of her most prized possessions. She’d honed her craft under the greatest masters who would teach her, flitting from country to country for six years after her mother had driven her from her pride.

She stepped forward and lifted her hand to brush the frame of a photograph of her standing next to a man who barely came to her shoulder. “I stayed longest in Okinawa. With Nakamura. He’s a psychic. Precognitive. Just a few seconds, but that’s all he needs. I’ve seen him take down shifters twice his size.”

Walker laughed. “You don’t need bulk when you know what the tank coming at you plans to do.”

Her preternatural speed had been of no use against Nakamura, who had left her with her fair share of humility—and a healthy respect for psychics and spell casters. “I’ve only been in New Orleans for a few years. It didn’t feel safe to settle in one place at first. I didn’t know if my mother might change her mind and come after me. Or if her enemies might.”

He didn’t argue with that. “Did you enjoy your travels?”

She gave him the truth, because she’d be demanding plenty of it from him soon enough. “Not at first. I was young. Scared. But my teachers gave me confidence, and I grew.”

His voice roughened. “You did all right.”

“Yes. I did.” No turning back now. She pivoted to face him, and worked to keep her voice even. “I will take your people under my protection. I will reform the pride. But, in return, you will tell me the truth.”

Walker stepped back, such a small movement that she wondered if he realized he’d done it. Retreat had never been in his nature, any more than it was in her own. Nor was the wariness in his voice. “The truth about what?”

Zola braced herself. “Why did you let her drive me away? Why didn’t you follow me?”

She saw the moment he decided to tell her, and she knew it would be the truth. His eyes shadowed, and he sighed. “I couldn’t stop you, and I couldn’t follow you. Not without putting you in danger.”

“Because of my mother?”

“Because of your mother’s orders.”

She hadn’t realized hope still lived until it fluttered weakly in her chest. “What would she have done to you if you’d followed me?”

“Tatienne said that if any of us went with you, she’d have to assume we meant to start our own pride. A rival pride.” He met her gaze. “She would have killed you, Zola.”

Zola closed her eyes as pain rose, bringing the sharpness of memory with it. Tatienne as a younger woman, pale skin bronzed by the relentless sun, her auburn hair streaked with gold. Zola had inherited her coloring from her father, chocolate and twilight, but her mother had been all the colors of a desert sunset. Power had sung in her mother’s veins, but so had love. Love for her daughter, for her pride.

The Conclave’s Seer was heavily pregnant. Would sweet little Michelle Peyton lose the gentleness in her nature? Would the son she carried beneath her heart turn someday to find his mother had vanished, lost to the ravages of a power too great for one body to contain?

“Hey.” Walker urged her face up with gentle fingers under her chin. “I know it’s horrible. That’s why I promised myself I wouldn’t do this to you.”

Too late, she scented salt. Her cheeks were wet with traitorous tears, revealing the depth of her helpless vulnerability to the one man who’d always had the power to lay her heart bare.

She recoiled, stumbling back two steps before turning and scrubbing away all evidence of her lapse from her cheeks with two shaking hands. “She loved me once. She loved all of us. Whatever monster she became, whatever she did to the people she had sworn to protect—it is not our fault. It is no judgment on us. A Seer’s power consumes them.”

“That’s all true.” He cupped her shoulders, rubbed his cheek comfortingly against the top of her head. “Doesn’t mean it can’t hurt.”

Tatienne had betrayed him too. Zola leaned back and let his warmth and strength curl around her, along with the wonderful belonging that came from being with one of her own kind. “If it had been your choice? Would you have followed me?”

He released a long, slow breath that stirred her hair and tickled her cheek. “In a heartbeat. Nothing else could have kept me away.”

Truth had a scent. A feel. Bitter, sometimes, but always solid and implacable. Tension that had lived inside her for a decade slowly unknotted itself. “Then it’s behind us. I like who I’ve become. I have my freedom.”

He stiffened, just a little. “I wish I could say the same.”

Zola slid her hands up to cover his. “The past is the past. You’re fighting to protect your people. I like who you’ve become.”

“You won’t if I have to go.” His hands slipped down and tightened around her waist. “I’d do it to protect you.”

He expected her to be shocked. Perhaps she should have been, or outraged, or even angry. Some male shifters smothered their mates with a blind protectiveness that carried an unpleasant aura of chauvinism. But if Walker had such unsavory prejudices against women, he wouldn’t have willingly followed Zola’s mother.

Zola smoothed one hand up his arm and shoulder, curling her fingers around the back of his neck. “I would do the same to you. We protect the ones we—” Love. “—care about. Which is why I’ll take your people under my care. I’ll call the Conclave tonight and declare them my pride, and the people in New Orleans will help me keep them safe.”

A beat. “Where do I fit in?”

The warmth of his body made it so easy to rock closer—and hard not to rub against him like a cat in heat. “You can lead with me, or you can leave. I won’t blackmail you into my bed by holding their safety over your head.”

His laugh vibrated against her skin, less amused than wondering. “That’s the last thing you’d have to do to get me in your bed.”

Instinct whispered that he wouldn’t make the first advance, so she did, rocking up on her toes to close the distance between them. His lips were warm and firm and tasted like bitter coffee mixed with cinnamon from the pastry he’d had for dessert, and underneath it all Walker. Lion. Male.

Mine.

Her back hit the wall and Walker pressed closer, lifting her a little as he eased between her thighs and ground against her. “I won’t stop this time, honey. Not until I’m inside you.”

She’d had plenty of men in her bed, in her body. But never another lion. Nothing could have prepared her for the satisfaction that roared up from the deepest place inside, washing away reason in a wave of primal hunger. She got both legs up around his hips, trusting him to hold her as she pulled at his shirt.

With his hips bracing her weight, he leaned back and yanked his T-shirt over his head. “You’re positive?”

Such a foolish question. She answered by working a hand between them until her fingers cupped the hard weight of his cock. “I told you. I’m not an innocent girl anymore. Can you keep up with me now?”

Walker hissed in a breath and bit her, the sharp press of his teeth on her jaw just short of savage. “Ask me again later, if you can still think.”

Thought already fought a hopeless battle. She got her fingers around the button on his jeans and ripped it off in her haste. “Hurry.”

“No.” He slid his hands under her ass and hoisted her up. “First door, yeah?”

She’d take him into her now and glory in every thrust as he fucked her against the wall. Some dangerous alchemy of lust and instinct turned her wild, and only the promise of seeing him twisted in her sheets made it possible to find her voice. “Yes.”

It took him only a few quick steps to reach the bedroom—and the bed. He dropped her on it and slipped his hand under her shirt, his eyes blazing. “I missed you.”

Warm, callused fingers stroked over her stomach. She arched into the touch, eyes falling shut. “You don’t need to miss me anymore.”

“No, I don’t.” He palmed her breast through her sports bra. “Take off your clothes.”

Easier said than done. Her T-shirt tore under her frantic fingers. She let the cotton slip to the floor and wiggled her way out of her pants more carefully.

By the time she lay in her bra and underwear, Walker was watching her, his hands clenched by his sides. “This is the first time,” he whispered. “You’ve been mine for so long that it seems surreal, but this is the first time.”

Their first time, and relief rose that it wasn’t her first time. At fifteen, she’d fallen in girlish love with a youth of twenty-one. At nineteen, she’d trembled beneath the careful kisses of a man who’d held himself back, too aware of her innocence.

At thirty, she was a woman who knew what she wanted, and she took it, rising to her knees and sliding her palms against the incredible heat of his strong chest. “The first time. Not the last.”

“No.” He slid his fingers into her hair and tilted her head back. “What do you like?”

Zola laughed and scraped her nails down his arms, letting power rise in her, the best kind of challenge. “Figure it out.”

“Uh-huh.” He arched an eyebrow. “You’re not naked yet.”

With the button from his jeans gone, it was easy to slide the zipper down. “I’m distracted. If it’s important to you, maybe you should help.”

He caught her wrists in an iron grip, and it was only then that she realized how tenuous his control was. “If you want me to take my time,” he rasped, “then you’re going to have to let me.”

Wildness seethed just under the surface, and she wanted it. Needed it. With her wrists pinned she used her teeth to drive home her point, biting his shoulder with a low growl. “Take your time later. Now, we fuck.”

Walker surged over her with a growl, as if some leash holding him back had snapped. “Should have just said so.” The stretchy fabric of her bra yielded under his hands.

It was too fast to savor, but she wouldn’t have been able to appreciate finesse with blood pounding in her ears and hunger narrowing the room to his touch. Callused fingers, fast and frantic until she revealed a weakness with an arch or gasp, then so intense he had her panting as he toyed with her breasts. She moaned when he added his mouth, his rough tongue and sharp nips of his teeth.

He teased his thumb under the edge of her panties. One gentle tug and then he ripped those off, as well, baring her to his touch. He didn’t hesitate, just rocked the heel of his hand against her and groaned when pleasure shattered through her so hot that she cried out.

If he worked his fingers inside her body, she’d come and he’d take her and it would be good, but it wouldn’t be what she needed. Using all the strength in her trembling limbs, she broke free and rolled to her stomach, then came to her knees. “Now.”

Walker growled his pleasure, but he didn’t touch her again until his bare skin brushed her ass and the backs of her thighs. He leaned over her, strong arms braced beside hers, and kissed the back of her shoulder. “Now.”

He drove into her, and the world tumbled end over end in a dizzy spiral that tightened along with her body. In ten years of running she’d never belonged anywhere as much as she belonged here, beneath him, around him.

Part of him, as she’d been since the first day she’d loved him.

Her fingers fisted in the blankets as she rocked back, taking him deeper until pleasure gained a sharp edge that sliced through her, laying everything bare. That edge cut deeper as he nudged her hair off the back of her neck and bit her, then began to move, slow and strong.

Perfect.

She wanted it to last forever, but of course it couldn’t. Zola closed her eyes and reveled in the slick thrust of his cock, the heat of his skin, the flex of his muscles. Too soon, she was trembling.

He whispered one dark, quiet entreaty. “Come.”

She did, with a helpless moan that didn’t drown out the sweet sound of their bodies slamming together as she tumbled into bliss. He bit her again, arms shaking as his thrusts sped until he went rigid and followed her over the edge with a choked sigh.

Her name.

I love you. The words echoed in her mind, but she collapsed in a sweaty, trembling tangle of limbs without giving them voice. Too fragile. Too old and too new. So she pushed them down and ignored the lion’s unhappy rumble.

Walker would be theirs soon enough. She wouldn’t let him go a second time.