Lion's Hunt: BBW Lion Shifter Paranormal Romance Read online

  And she couldn’t explain it, but she felt something from Seth...some kind of connection, some sort of understanding. A feeling of rightness.

  And now she was sure that she was not just thinking with her pants.

  Although her pants did have a few things to say about Seth’s closeness right now. He hadn’t let go of her hands yet, and he was looking at her with an expression that seemed to say, We’re in this together now.

  “We do need to find out,” he said. “And you’re in a better position to do that than I am. Do you think you could get into the computer system, find out information that Dave’s been hiding? Maybe where the lab is? The location’s not in any of the company records.”

  “Oh,” said Cassie, feeling a smile pull at the corners of her mouth, “I know where it is.”

  Seth’s gaze instantly became more intent. “You do? How?”

  “There was an email chain I got copied on a while back, about one of the lab’s new hires. I got the email because the new hire had put in all of his employee data and I had to enter it...but a couple of emails back were directions that Dave had sent him. How to get to the lab on his first day.”

  She grinned a little sheepishly. “Since I thought it was something top-secret, it was always kind of fun to try and figure stuff out about it. Like I was in a spy movie or something. So I memorized the directions. I’ve been meaning to hike out there sometime and just take a look at it. I mean, it probably just looks like a warehouse or something—”

  “That’s exactly what I need to do.” Seth was starting to smile too. “You’ve just done half of my job for me.”

  Cassie shrugged, aware as she did it that Seth was still gripping her hands. His fingers were warm and strong, and she felt like she’d be happy if he kept holding on to her forever.

  “That’s what administrative assistants are best at,” she quipped.

  “Clearly. I’ve never had one, so I never realized the power they hold.”

  “We hold a lot of it.” But Cassie was distracted by something. “So what do you do? Obviously not work for your brother’s company. All that stuff you said about your father...”

  “That was all true,” Seth said immediately. “I’m so sorry for lying to you about my job, but I promise I haven’t lied to you about anything else. And as for what I do...” He shrugged, smiling a little. “I’m sort of a professional outdoorsman. I’m lucky enough with my family that I don’t ever have to worry about money. And since traveling is my passion, that’s what I do with my time.”

  Cassie sighed with envy. “That sounds amazing.”

  “It is. But I was also telling the truth about how I’m starting to get tired of doing it all by myself.” Seth hesitated, then tugged on her hands.

  Cassie came forward a step, and then another, until she was almost touching him. They were standing like they were in a picture: hands clasped together, standing inches apart, and staring deep into each other’s eyes.

  Those golden eyes seemed like they were looking right into her soul, somehow...

  “Cassie,” Seth said softly, “there’s something else I haven’t told you.”

  “What’s that?” she whispered.

  “I...” He leaned in.

  Cassie lifted up on her toes to meet the kiss. His lips were warm and sweet, and she tugged her hands out of his grip so that she could wrap her arms around him.

  He pulled her in to his body, and the kiss changed from sweet to hot in an instant. Seth’s tongue teased at her lips, and she opened her mouth to his, pressing against him and feeling a low moan building in her chest.

  She felt like she was surrounded by his masculine scent, like the kiss was bringing the two of them together...into one.

  He kissed her until she felt like she was going to melt into a puddle there on the path. When he eased away, it was slowly, with little kisses dropped onto her lips as he went.

  Finally they were separated, and Cassie had to take a minute to catch her breath. “Wow.”

  Seth looked dazed, his golden eyes warm and smoky. “Wow,” he agreed.

  “Was that what you had to tell me?” Cassie smiled. “If so, I don’t know if I heard it the first time. You might have to tell me again.”

  But his expression changed. “Oh, wait, no.”

  Cassie was taken aback. “No? What was it, then?”

  Seth took a deep breath and stepped back. Cassie felt abruptly cold without him there. “This will be easier if I just show you,” he said.

  “Show me what?” Cassie asked cautiously.

  Seth walked a few feet away. “There’s something unusual about my family.”

  “You mean apart from the fact that you own one of the wealthiest companies in the country?”

  Seth winced. “Yes, apart from that. This is going to seem weirder. A lot weirder. But I want to show you before we take...what just happened any further.”

  “Okay...” Cassie squared her shoulders. “I’ve braced myself. Show me.”

  Seth took a deep breath...and then, as she watched, he began to change.

  His whole body rippled, and before her astonished eyes, started to transform. In just a few seconds, where Seth had stood was an enormous lion.

  Cassie’s mouth fell open.

  A lion. Seth had just changed into a lion. She hadn’t taken her eyes off of him. There was no one and nothing around them. It couldn’t be a trick. He had actually just become a lion.

  Cautiously, she stepped forward towards him. He stayed completely still, waiting, as she stretched out a careful hand and laid it on his furred flank.

  He was warm and alive under her hand. She could feel him breathing, slow and deep. She ran her hand down his side and back up, and he leaned into her touch.

  A grin spread across her face. “You’re a lion.” It was so fantastical! And yet, very clearly concrete and real, right in front of her.

  He turned his head toward her, and she met his eyes. They were the same warm, golden eyes that he had as a human. She laughed delightedly.

  Seth stayed still for a few minutes while she petted his side, ran her fingers through his mane, and gently petted his cold nose. She stepped back after a few minutes and said, “Can you show me what you can do? Can you...I don’t know, run and pounce like a real lion?”

  Seth bared his teeth in what looked like a fierce grin, and bounded away so quickly Cassie jumped. He almost disappeared into the sparse trees in just a few minutes. Then, he came racing back and leapt into the air, landing with claws and teeth out on a small hummock of grass. He sat back on his haunches and looked at her as if to say, See?

  “That’s amazing!” Cassie shook her head in wonder. “How come you can do this? I guess you can’t answer me while you’re a lion. Or can you?”

  The lion’s body shimmered and rippled, and a minute later, Seth was standing there in his human form again. “No, I can’t talk while I’m in lion form,” he said. “To answer your first question: it’s hereditary. Shapeshifting families like mine exist all around the world.”

  “Wow.” Cassie thought about that. Magical creatures, living in secret from normal humans all over the world.

  When she was younger, Cassie had been fascinated by stories about Fairyland. The idea of hidden magic, of secret places where fantastical things were hiding, just waiting to be discovered...she’d loved it with all her heart.

  In fact, she thought that was what really propelled her desire to travel. She’d just taken her childish fantasy of walking through a portal into a magical land, and matured it into the desire to go to a foreign country and see all the new and different and wonderful things it had to offer.

  But now...it looked like the childhood fantasy was actually real. And it was standing right in front of her. Her smile grew so wide she wasn’t sure her face could hold it.

  “Where do all of the shapeshifters live, then?” she asked, wondering if there really was a Fairyland somewhere. “Just alongside normal people, or do they have places of their
own?”

  “Most of them are pretty insular, living in isolated communities far away from people,” Seth said. “But lions can be...different.”

  “King of the beasts,” Cassie murmured.

  “Exactly. Some of us just want to be in charge. My brother is a particularly strong example. He’s always had the ambition to rule over all he surveyed.”

  “But not you.” Seth gave off more of a sense of...independence. Cassie could very easily picture him off on his own in a jungle somewhere, tramping through the underbrush with only a pack and a pair of hiking boots to keep him company.

  Or, she guessed, padding along the forest floor in his lion form, or hopping up onto a sunny rock to survey the landscape. All of those remote places made even more sense now—he couldn’t very well turn into a lion right in the middle of a city street.

  “Not me,” Seth confirmed. “I only ever wanted to get away.”

  “So your entire family are lions?”

  Seth nodded. “Me, Max, our sister Alexandra, and our brother Reid. Our parents were as well.”

  “A whole family of lions,” Cassie marveled. “Your own pride!”

  “I...guess so,” Seth said slowly.

  Cassie remembered guiltily what he’d said about his father. “At least, it sounds like you’re supporting each other the way a pride should,” she said hastily. “Since you’re here helping out your brother.”

  “That’s true.” Seth’s voice was firmer now. “And actually, Max thinks that the secret lab’s purpose has something to do with shifters.”

  Cassie frowned. “Really? How can you know that?”

  “It started drawing an excessive amount of money and resources, and all the information on it disappeared, right after Max told Carl Hendricks our secret, that we’re shifters. So we think Hendricks started it in response to that information, although we don’t know what exactly he’s doing.”

  “Maybe he’s developing some kind of weapon to use against shifters?” Cassie offered.

  “That’s one of the possible options. But we can’t know until we can go out there and look.”

  “Well, we can’t go right away. Dave’s probably out there right now.” She bit her lip, thinking. “And we probably can’t just walk in the front door. They have passcodes, I bet. But...”

  “But Dave would know the passcodes,” Seth finished. “Would he have them written down?”

  Cassie nodded. “He always writes his passwords down. I can go into his office and look. No one thinks twice about me running in there while he’s gone.”

  Seth leaned in and kissed her. “Cassie, you have no idea how easy you’re making this for me.”

  She smiled. “Maybe you should just go back to New York and tell your brother I’m handling it.”

  “Mmm, I could...” He kissed her again. “But I don’t want to. Are you saying you want me to leave?”

  “Absolutely not.” She pulled him in and kissed him again. There was a warm feeling rising inside of her, filling her chest with something wonderful. No kisses had ever made her feel this good before.

  And that was even aside from the way her nipples were tightening, and her panties were starting to dampen.

  “I would never ask you to leave,” she murmured when he pulled away to breathe. And to her surprise, it was true.

  She’d never felt this way about any man before, let alone after just a few hours of knowing each other, and just a few kisses. But kisses that went right to her soul, that woke up a flame of desire inside of her...

  Maybe it was because she’d never kissed a lion before.

  “Me neither,” he said against her mouth. “Cassie—Cassie, I have to tell you—”

  She pulled back, exasperated. “What now?”

  He looked a little dazed, chasing after her mouth. She avoided him. “What?” he asked.

  “So far, you’ve had to tell me that you’re secretly a billionaire and you’re secretly a shapeshifting lion. What is it this time? If you’re secretly a Russian prince or secretly a Nobel Laureate or something, can you just tell me so that we can get back to—to this?” She gestured between them.

  Seth laughed, low and rich. “Nope, it’s not either of those. It’s just another thing about shifters.”

  “Oh. You’re all secretly ruling the world? You’re aliens from another planet?”

  He was still laughing. “No, it’s not something I am! It’s something you are.”

  She blinked. “I think if I was secretly ruling the world, I’d know about it already.”

  He let his head drop to her shoulder and laughed harder.

  She poked him. “Seth! Seriously!”

  Seth pulled back and caught his breath. “Sorry.” He chuckled again, then repeated. “Sorry. Shifters have this...it’s not really a custom, because it’s built into our DNA, it’s not something we can deny. We mate for life.”

  Cassie thought about Seth saying, “I think there’ll just be one person for me, when it comes.” She thought about the sudden certainty she’d felt, that it would be the same for her. She felt a warmth growing inside her. “How does that work?”

  “When we see our mate, we know. There’s something about them that fits with something about us. The one person that you’re meant to be with for the rest of your life...they resonate with you. You know them immediately.”

  “What are you telling me exactly?” she pressed him, wanting to hear him say the words that she knew were true.

  “It’s you, Cassie. You’re my mate.”

  The warm feeling swelled until it spilled over into a half-laugh, half-sob. “I knew there was something about you,” she said. It sounded accusatory, almost, but she pulled him in for another kiss at the same time, so she figured he got the message.

  When they separated, he stroked his fingers down her cheek. “This looks like a great place to go for a walk,” he said. “Let’s forget the passcodes and the lab for a little while, I want to get to know my mate.”

  Cassie’s heart was so full it felt like it would burst. “That sounds perfect.”

  Seth took her hand, and they walked slowly along the path. It wound up towards the mountains in a leisurely way, giving them a spectacular view.

  “So tell me, how did a nice girl like you end up in a place like this?” Seth swept his hand out to indicate the landscape.

  Cassie laughed a little. “I went to college in Boulder, and I got used to having the mountains right there. When I was looking for a job, I wanted something right up in the mountains, so I could go hiking whenever I wanted, and have this view to look at.” She copied his dramatic hand gesture.

  “So your family don’t live around here?”

  She shook her head. “They moved to California a while back. We...well, I love them, but it’s better for everyone if there’s some distance between us.”

  Seth squeezed her hand. “You don’t sound too happy about that.”

  Cassie sighed. This was an issue she’d thought about a lot, but there wasn’t really a solution for it. “I wish we could be closer. But I’m not happy when we’re closer. So really I wish I could be closer to different people, which makes me feel like a bad daughter.”

  “Hey.” Seth stopped, took her other hand, and met her eyes. “You’re not a bad daughter. From what you were saying earlier, it sounds like they’re not listening to you, which is their problem.”

  “Sure,” Cassie said, “but then it becomes my problem whenever I talk to them, and...” she shook her head. “I do my best. We love each other, and that’s what’s most important.”

  “I wish it was easier,” Seth murmured. He kissed her softly.

  Cassie leaned into the kiss. It warmed her down to her toes. She reflected on how quickly she was getting used to having Seth here, to listen and to support her.

  It was nice. It was really, really nice.

  The kiss ended gently, and Seth smiled at her, then turned back to the path. “What about friends?” he asked as they kept walking. �
�Am I going to have to go through a vetting process?”

  Cassie laughed, and shook her head. “No, no. I have a lot of good friends from college, but we all dispersed after graduation, and I haven’t had a chance to make any really solid connections here.” Too much overtime, which she’d gladly taken on for the chance at extra money to throw at her student loans.

  Well, she wouldn’t be worrying about overtime at the office any longer, it seemed.

  A thought struck her. “You know,” she said softly, “in college, I made a lot of friends, and I dated some guys...”

  She paused, and Seth growled in the back of his throat. “Yes?” he asked ominously.

  She laughed and kept going. “But I always felt like...something was missing. Like there was some deeper connection that I wanted, and couldn’t find.” Her laughter faded as she thought about it, that soft ache in her chest that had been there for as long as she could remember.

  But now it was gone.

  She smiled up at Seth. “I think I found it.”

  He pulled her in and kissed her hard. His hands felt huge, cupping her face and then starting to wander down her body. Cassie pressed up against him and started some exploring of her own.

  Seth’s body was solidly muscled, hard and strong under her hands. Cassie wanted very, very badly to get his clothes off and see what all that warm skin and rippling musculature looked like.

  She reminded herself that they were out in public. Still, it was hard to concentrate on that with his hot mouth on hers, his strong arms holding her close, his hardness pressing against her...

  He pulled back with a gasp. “Maybe we should head back.”

  Cassie caught her breath. “Before we commit an act of public indecency?”

  Seth nodded. “And we have things to do, anyway.”

  Cassie had almost forgotten. “The passcodes,” she agreed.

  “Yes. The passcodes.” Seth’s eyes were devouring her.

  “And then?” Cassie kissed him again, quickly, because she had to.

  “And then I think we’re done for the day.” Seth kissed her back. “Since we can’t go up to the lab until tonight, we’ll have to find...some other way to pass the time.”