Taming the Lion Page 20

  God, she wanted him so badly it hurt.

  She would go. Look for her mother. And if her mother wasn’t there, she would get a list of other Organization facilities from Mateo and keep looking. She wouldn’t stop looking until she had salvaged what was left of her family. Like she should have done years ago.

  Tears pricked in her eyes and she blinked them back. She wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to Lila or Santiago. Lila wouldn’t keep this secret—not if she thought it was in Patch’s best interest that she stay. All her other friends, Kye and Whiskey and Kelly and, hell, she’d even miss Xander. But no goodbyes.

  Maybe it was better that way.

  Patch stopped at her bungalow only long enough to collect a few things—she didn’t have much, had never really cared that much about acquiring pretty possessions. It didn’t take long to gather up the few photos and mementos which would be her only reminders of her time at Lone Pine. Roman had left a shirt at her place one night and she inhaled his scent off it before shoving it into her bag along with a few changes of clothes.

  She wished she’d had time to go back out to her little cabin in the mountains one more time—not to collect anything, just to memorize the details of the place. But she contented herself with one long moment on her porch, looking out over the pride lands.

  She’d make another home. With her mother.

  Patch jumped off the porch and headed toward Mateo’s bunker.

  The familiar tentative scratch came on his office door right on schedule—but Roman didn’t have anything on his schedule.

  “Come in.” He stood up as Lila entered, coming around his desk to greet her. “Lila. How are you? I didn’t realize we were still doing this. Keeping up appearances.” He waved a hand to indicate their forced dating ritual.

  “Actually, I’m not here for that. It’s Patch.”

  Something in her tone stopped him cold. “Is she all right? Did something happen? I should have told you, she just learned what happened to her parents—”

  “I know. Mateo told Santiago. He also said she’s gone after her mom.”

  “Shit.” He should have known she wouldn’t just drop it. Yes, sir. Damn it. As if she’d let it go at yes, sir.

  He grabbed his jacket off the wall. The fall days had turned cold and he’d need it if he didn’t want people spotting a male African lion in the Montana mountains.

  Lila gawked at him. “Where are you going?”

  “After her.”

  Greg would probably disinherit him for openly defying him, but he didn’t care.

  The pride’s perfect princess surprised him by breaking into a broad smile. The first real smile he’d probably ever gotten from her. “Good.”

  “I thought you’d be on Patch’s side.”

  “I am. I’m just not so sure she’s on her own side right now.” Lila stopped him with a hand on his arm when he would have brushed past her. “Patch doesn’t let people in easily. I think she thinks if she doesn’t let herself care about people then she can’t be hurt. But somehow you got her to care about you.”

  “It was a miracle.”

  “Well, you might need another one. She’s trying to protect you. She doesn’t want anything to happen to you, especially if it could be because of her. Understand? The idea of letting herself be with you scares her senseless because she loves you.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  Which meant no.

  Roman’s every instinct, down to his very soul, told him she loved him as much as he loved her. That she was his. His mate. But there was still that chance that he was wrong. That it really had been just a fling. Just fun.

  Either way, he had to know. And he couldn’t leave her out there, stalking the shifters’ predators by herself.

  He studied her best friend, the woman he was relieved he’d never have to marry, but who might actually be a good friend someday. “While I’m gone, you and Santiago had better find a way to make some kind of announcement to the pride. Because if Patch loves me even a fraction as much as I love her, when we get back, we won’t be hiding anymore.”

  Lila smiled. “Deal. Now go get her.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  He was in a reasonable frame of mind for the first fifty miles. He was relatively calm for the next two after that, when he parked the car he’d commandeered from the pride motor pool next to Patch’s Subaru and the three SUVs taken by the incursion team and continued on foot. The scents were easy to follow and Patch seemed to be staying on the trail of the team. She’d been in these mountains a thousand times before. He told himself she was safe. Fine.

  Then it started to rain.

  Rain was too gentle a word. The dark clouds opened up and sheets of icy water crashed from the sky, bending branches under the weight of their descent. It was the kind of storm that could turn to sleet or baseball-sized hail in a second and she was out there in it. Alone.

  The incursion team had tarps. They had all-weather gear. They were prepared for everything.

  Roman had the clothes on his back—now slicked down to his back with the force of the frigid water—and no way of knowing if Patch was any more protected than he was.

  He took shelter under a tree, pressing his back to the bark and flicking handfuls of water from his hair as the thick branches above took the worst of the beating from the sky. He clenched his teeth to stop them chattering. He’d be warmer if he shifted—but he hadn’t brought a bag for his clothes that he could carry in his teeth, so the second he shifted he’d lose all inconspicuousness, going from being an idiot hiker caught in the storm to either a naked man or an African lion who had no business being in this part of the world. Patch, at least, could fade into the wild as a cougar.

  He hoped she’d shifted. Maybe found a cave somewhere to wait out the storm. She’d probably been out in worse before. He tried to keep reminding himself of that, but he couldn’t seem to stop picturing her alone, cold and scared, slipping on a rain-slicked rock and falling, breaking her leg, torrents of icy water pouring down on her that she couldn’t defend against, helpless and broken on the ground.

  And the more he saw her there in his imagination, terrified and battered, the angrier he got.

  How dare she endanger herself? If she was all right when he found her—please God, she had to be all right, he would shatter if anything happened to her—she was in for the lecture of her life.

  The storm departed as quickly as it had arrived, the thunderheads rolling off into the distance and leaving in their wake only the trickle of water from the branches above and a drizzle that was so light it was almost mist. The sun had set during the storm, leaving the mountainside in shades of gray. Roman wrung out his clothes and hair as best he could, shivering so hard his bones ached, and started up the trail.

  All traces of scent had been washed away by the deluge but luckily he had been part of the planning process. He knew the exact route the incursion team would take.

  Roman froze as realization pierced him. He knew the route.

  Patch didn’t.

  She’d intentionally been kept out of the planning meetings. They’d brought her in to discuss options, the best places to park and go in by foot, but after she’d shown them the trailhead, they had been careful—at Roman’s insistence—that she didn’t learn any more details about the mission. Because Roman had known she would follow them if she could.

  She would have no way of following the incursion team’s trail now.

  Roman’s blood pounded with the twin fiery pulses of anger and determination. His mate was lost, alone and unprotected in the home territory of their kind’s greatest enemy. Succumbing to instinct, he ran.

  Patch realized she was an idiot about five second after it started to rain.

  She had her poncho and she’d seen the storm coming early enough that she’d been able to find a reasonably sheltered spot to wait out the worst of it, but her boots were soaked through almost instantly and the longer
the rainfall, the lower her chances were she’d be able to track the others down.

  As soon as it let up, she unfolded herself from her crouch in the wedge of two fallen trees and hurried back to the last place where she’d caught the scent of the hunting party. Nothing.

  She could go on to the valley where she knew the Organization facility was located—but she hadn’t been in on the mission planning. She ran the risk bungling the entire operation by stumbling in where she didn’t belong.

  Patch silently cursed the rain. She’d have to head back now. If she waited at the cars, she might be able to help them when they got back there with the captives. If her mother was among them, they could leave straight from there without ever going back to Lone Pine.

  She’d never have to see Roman…

  But when she turned back on the long trail toward the parking lot, there he was, a hulking figure charging out of the mist, his expression more animal than man even though he was in fully human form.

  She knew the moment he saw her.

  His eyes flashed from desperation to relief to searing rage, but his stride never faltered. His pace never slowed. Instinct told her to run for her life, but her feet stayed rooted to the ground. Her pack fell from numb fingers, splatting wetly on the soggy ground.

  He slammed into her and the force of the collision would have driven her to the ground if he hadn’t lifted her off her feet, his arms steel around her as his mouth crashed down on hers.

  The kiss was too rough and fast to qualify as a caress before his hand gripped the hair at the base of her skull and he pulled her head back, growling, “I don’t care how mad you are at me, you don’t endanger yourself, do you understand me? You don’t endanger my mate.”

  A smart woman would pacify the half-rabid beast barely holding it together. A smart woman would soothe him, calm him with the reminder that she wasn’t in danger, that she was, in fact, heading back to her car and leaving the attack to the professionals.

  But Patch had already established she was an idiot.

  “I don’t want to be your mate.”

  “Liar.” He snarled and spun them, pinning her back to the bark of a nearby tree. Only then did she realize she’d wrapped her legs around his waist—which somewhat diminished the impact of her I don’t want to be your mate declaration.

  “Fine,” she admitted, as his mouth blazed a line of fire down her throat. “I want you.” Understatement of the century. “But I can’t be your mate.”

  “Coward,” he growled, nipping once at her collarbone before he lifted his head to meet her eyes, his own smoldering with a thousand emotions she couldn’t begin to read. “You didn’t even give us a chance. You ran. Because you didn’t have the guts to even try. Come back. Trust me to be strong enough. Trust the pride to be flexible enough. We can change things. Bring this discrimination to an end. But you have to try.”

  She shook her head, her damp ponytail catching on the rough bark of the tree. “I’m no good at the hierarchy stuff. I’m not dominant like you, but neither am I submissive. I’m independent. I don’t fit anywhere in the pride. I’d be terrible as queen of all I survey. That just isn’t me.”

  “You think Lila would have been better? Who just wanted to make the whole world pretty?”

  “Don’t dismiss her,” Patch snapped, hackles rising. “She would have been wonderful once she grew into it.”

  “I never wanted her to grow into it. Not with me. I don’t want Holly or Jasmine or any other goddamn lioness. I don’t want any of it if you aren’t mine.”

  “Don’t say that,” she groaned, but her hands gripped the muscles of his shoulders through his chilled, plastered-down shirt. “You think you mean it now, but you’ll resent me later. When you can’t be Alpha because of me, you’ll hate me for that. It won’t be worth the sacrifice then.”

  “You aren’t a sacrifice.” He wrestled with the material of her poncho, trying to find his way beneath it to touch her skin.

  “I am,” she protested. “You’re just too blinded by lust to see it.”

  His hands paused in their frantic attempt to get to her. “Your heat is over,” he said with cool deliberation. “This hasn’t been about blind lust since that first night—if it ever was. I don’t think this was ever only lust. This is us.”

  He kissed her hard, his teeth nipping and dragging at her lower lip, just on the tender side of too rough. She moaned, forcing herself to pull away.

  “I’m bad for you,” she panted.

  “Let me be the judge of that.” This time he found his way beneath the poncho without a hitch, his hands smoothing along her stomach beneath her shirt and deftly unfastening her jeans to sneak inside and—

  “You don’t get to be the judge of everything,” she gasped as he touched her, her body already slick and ready. “You don’t get to rule over the world and make it all bend to fit your will.”

  “Of course I do,” he purred against the skin beneath her ear. “That’s what it is to be Alpha.”

  She slugged him on the arm because she knew he didn’t mean that—but it was half-hearted at best as the rest of her clothes were methodically peeled away and his own wet clothing quickly discarded. When they were both skin to skin, his body was chilled to the touch, but rapidly warming as she pressed her own overheated flesh against every inch of him she could reach. Hard against soft, she shuddered at the perfection of their contrast.

  “Being with you isn’t weakness,” he said as his fingers found her nipple and rolled it to taut attention. “It isn’t an invitation to challenge me. It’s strength. You are my strength, Patch. You’re what makes all this worth fighting for. So fight with me. Make things better with me. Fight for me, damn it. Don’t you love me enough for that?”

  She couldn’t fight it anymore. Couldn’t fight him. Time to start fighting with him. “God yes, Roman. I love you so damn much.”

  His mouth cut off the last word—as if he was afraid she would take it back if he let her keep talking. But she was in it now. She’d fallen over the cliff with him. There was no climbing back up now. It was all freefall until they hit the ground and all she could do was hold onto him—the only fixed point in a world that was flying past her at the speed of gravity.

  He drove into her and she gasped into his mouth as he filled her, over and over, driving her up to the point of madness and taking her back to that point where only he had even been able to bring her—absolute completion.

  Roman knelt on the ground, Patch straddling his thighs, her arms wound around his neck, her breasts mashed against his chest, clinging close as the last aftershocks rippled through them. He didn’t want to do anything to disrupt this moment, but he had to know.

  “Did you mean it? When you said you loved me?”

  She leaned back just enough to look him in the eye. “Do you want me to say it again?”

  “Yes,” he said before she could finish speaking. “Fuck yes. Say it a thousand times.”

  “You still haven’t said it.”

  “Because you kept telling me to shut up when I tried.” He dropped his forehead against hers. “I love you, Patch Fontaine.” God, that felt good. “Now say it back.”

  “Does it count if it’s said on command?”

  He growled.

  “I love you,” she whispered, squirming a little as she did—which, considering they were still connected, did very interesting things. “So what now?”

  “You’re in this?” He didn’t want to tempt fate, but he needed to hear her say it. “You ran from me.”

  “I ran from myself.”

  “Don’t run again. Not without me. Okay?”

  She reached down and laced her fingers with his, palm to palm. “Deal.” She was wrapped completely around him, but somehow that twining of their hands was the last puzzle piece completing his peace of mind. She was his. “I still think you’re out of your mind, but I guess so am I.”

  “Good.” He smiled, more relieved than anything else, but also strangely free,
as if he’d been bound by obligation his entire life at Lone Pine. Maybe losing his place as Alpha’s heir wouldn’t be such a tragedy. “Since we’re already disobeying the Alpha, what do you say we go join an incursion team?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  There were no cars in the parking lot, no warm bodies on the infrared scan, but still the team advanced with caution. It didn’t take long to determine that every scrap of paper had been cleared out, every computer removed, and even any useful scents had been scrubbed away until all that remained was the nostril-stinging scent of bleach.

  The hawk took it hardest, though it was Dominec who put his fist through a wall.

  “We were too slow,” the tiger snarled.

  “We’ll try the other locations. They can’t evacuate them all,” Kye said, though they all knew the Organization could evacuate them all, if they didn’t move quickly.

  “We aren’t giving up,” Roman affirmed. “This is just the beginning.”

  Patch stood, staring at the empty rooms that locked from the outside, wondering if one of them had been her mother’s cell.

  Roman’s hand gently cupped her nape. “We aren’t giving up,” he said again, just for her. “We’ll find her.”

  She nodded. Her mother was out there. Alive. It was more than she’d known a month ago. For now it would have to be enough.

  He stroked his hand down her spine, and then moved away to triple check the rest of the small facility for clues that may have been left behind.

  He’d been doing that a lot for the last couple days. Touching her. Marking his place. Making his claim. She’d thought they would wait until they were back at the pride and some sort of official announcement had been made before he started acting like her mate, but she should have known better. Roman wasn’t giving up an inch of the ground he’d gained.