Lions' Pride Read online

  He kept making his gaze go back to the face so he didn’t stare too much at the great cock with its broad, plum-like head.

  Or at the woman’s pussy, open and pulsing and wet.

  He wanted to taste them both, really taste them, not the tantalizing hints this bizarre vicarious experience gave him.

  He could feel both cock and pussy, though, feel them as they joined, feel both the man’s pleasure at being inside her tight, gripping walls and the woman’s at being filled. Could feel her rippling, both from the inside and around a cock that wasn’t his own. Both sensations ripped through him, set his cock on fire, made him want to scream with the need to come.

  Despite being outside looking in the window, a back-alley Peeping Tom in uniform, Rafe tried to touch himself, or, failing that, to break away and give them privacy, which he belatedly realized he ought to do.

  He couldn’t do either.

  Couldn’t free his mind. Literally couldn’t move. Even though he could feel all kinds of wonderfully erotic things, his body and his consciousness were separated.

  All he could do was enjoy the wild ride.

  He experienced them both building toward orgasm as if he was the one doing the fucking. He touched her soft skin with hands bigger than his own and harder, with the calluses of manual labor and long, elegant fingers. He felt his dick buried deep inside that sweet, rippling sex. Felt himself penetrated.

  Even though he couldn’t touch himself or even say where his self was in this bizarre sexual vortex he’d slipped into, Rafe exploded. The orgasm started somewhere deep inside, tore out of his cock in a surge of pleasure that was almost pain. He felt himself opening behind its waves, as if his skin and bones rolled back and his heart flew out of his chest and soared toward the redhead and her leonine lover.

  He closed his eyes, lost in ecstasy, but that didn’t stop him from seeing.

  The man’s face contorted. Rafe felt the other man’s hot seed shooting the way he’d felt his own, giving Rafe a second orgasm, dry but just as powerful as the first, that kept his heart floating like a balloon.

  A balloon with two strings attached to the man and the woman. If he squinted, he saw those coppery strings as clearly as any of the other crazy visions.

  He’d think he was having a flashback, but he wasn’t even a big drinker, let alone into serious make-you-see-impossible-stuff drugs.

  Green and gold energy radiated from the woman as she shook and mewled with the waves of her orgasm.

  That was why the house had seemed to pulse. Duh. A witch lived there and for some reason he could feel the protections she’d put on the house.

  Protections she was now reinforcing.

  The bright energy wrapped the house, forming a barrier. It pushed hard at him. It was a happy, shiny feeling—she must be a good witch, if even her dismissal felt kind-hearted—but it definitely wanted him to leave.

  Rafe didn’t like being ordered around, especially not by something that, strictly speaking, he shouldn’t be able to see. Still muddled by orgasm, acting purely on instinct, his conscious mind shoved back.

  The energy twined around him, sniffed at him like a curious animal. He felt rather than heard the words: Home. Hearth. Heart.

  Or possibly he smelled them, sharp green herbs and animal musk, with a hint of something warm and delicious. Venison stew and fresh-baked bread, and everywhere the smell of sex, the man’s juices and the woman’s calling forth his own, a clean, hot, furry (furry?) smell that didn’t smell like him, but definitely was him. His senses were so confounded he couldn’t say what was real, what was imaginary.

  It all had to be imaginary. Only reasonable explanation. He couldn’t see magic any more than the next ordinary human could, so he had to be seeing things. Maybe he’d picked up that nasty flu that was going around and was running a fever, imagining craziness as he sat in the rain getting sicker.

  Or, God help him, maybe he was becoming resistant to Drozz after all these years. Unusual, but it happened sometimes. The long-suppressed dual senses ran amok for a while before you passed out from shock and overstimulation and had to be hauled off under careful, and usually armed, supervision.

  Stick with the fever option, he told himself, mentally trying to brush off the energy tendrils.

  Instead, there was a dizzying, sickening rush, a sensation of being sucked through time and space the way soda is sucked through a straw. It left him feeling sorry for soda. His body seemed to break down and reform. Bile filled his mouth and he barely kept from vomiting.

  A woman screamed.

  Chapter Four

  A solid punch hit him in the jaw around the same time a jolt of something that had to be magic glanced off his shoulder. If he hadn’t rocked back from the punch, the magic would have hit him square in the chest, with the possibility of real damage. As it was, it just seared, stung like hell.

  Ruined a perfectly good jacket, for that matter.

  White magic was fueled by sex and growth and happy, fuzzy things, but when it was used for defense, it could hurt you. Supposedly it couldn’t kill you, except by freak accident, but it could definitely put you in a world of pain.

  He fumbled for his gun and came away empty-handed.

  “Don’t bother,” the woman said. Her voice was deeper and richer than he would have guessed, and not as angry as she probably had a right to be, considering he’d invaded her kitchen at a moment most women would prefer to keep private. “Unauthorized weapons don’t pass the wards. It’ll be lying in the yard.”

  “Why are you talking to him, Elissa?” the big man demanded. To Rafe’s ears, the voice burred and roared. Rafe could imagine it purring, too, but not right now.

  The dual pushed between Rafe and the woman.

  Good. The big guy could probably beat the crap out of him, even if he didn’t bother to go lionside, but at least he could fight back against that. The woman, on the other hand, pulsed with magical energies. Against magic, he was screwed unless he wanted to hurt her, and he didn’t.

  He took a swift punch to the ribs, somehow managed, still breathing shallowly, to duck under a side kick aimed for his head. Great. Wasn’t it enough the guy could turn into a lion without him being a fucking black belt, too?

  Rafe shook his head, hoping to shake off the effects not only of the punch, but of the weird-ass journey, the whole weird-ass evening.

  No such simple luck.

  Instead, a secret door opened in his brain, as if one minute he stared at a blank featureless wall, the next minute at a treasure trove he’d never known existed.

  You’re a predator. You know what to do. Go for the center of mass to take him down, then go for the throat. From a crouch, he sprang forward, his muscles remembering things his conscious mind had never known.

  He crashed into the dual, who staggered back and hit the floor hard with Rafe on top of him. Rafe went for the throat, but instead of grabbing or punching, he instinctively slashed with his fingers, which ached to sprout claws trapped by Drozz. The big guy laughed, grabbed Rafe’s flailing hands, then got his feet under him and bucked up to throw Rafe off.

  Rafe twined his legs around the other guy’s, trying to dredge up high school wrestling, since the crazy instincts that guided him seemed to think he was a big cat, not, for all practical purposes, a human. The other man twisted. Rafe twisted with him and found himself riding the other man’s hips.

  Rafe became acutely aware the man under him was naked and handsome and well-hung and smelled of sex and snow and feline.

  They might be engaged in an all-out effort to hurt each other, but their dicks either didn’t know this or didn’t care. Despite his recent orgasm, Rafe was getting hard again, blood rushing to his cock, and damned if the dual wasn’t swelling against him.

  Maybe if he just kissed the guy, he could take advantage of the resulting confusion, in one sense of the word or another.

  Either it would work—though whether more like a porn film or a slapstick comedy he couldn’t say—or it wo
uld give the guy one more reason to beat the crap out of him.

  Just as he was thinking that, he was flipped over, the strong, solid body pressing into him, controlling him utterly.

  Pinned. Trapped.

  The smell of man and woman and animal—pure sex and pure adrenaline—filled his nostrils. Unable to resist its lure, he took a deep breath.

  A heady, fiery mix of desire and danger surged through him and he was electrified by the image of being bent over the table, fucked hard like the woman was earlier, while she watched, or helped…

  Or maybe doing the same to the guy.

  His body thought either sounded like a great idea.

  When they were done, they could take turns making the pretty redhead scream.

  The other man took advantage of his brief distraction to get his hands around Rafe’s throat.

  “Stop!” the woman commanded, and it was a command, because the air shimmered around her and grew thick, and suddenly Rafe couldn’t move. Luckily, the other guy couldn’t either.

  The woman stepped forward.

  My God, she was beautiful. Almost miniature, but lovely, everything in perfect proportion. Her eyes were light honey brown, her fair skin dusted with adorable freckles, her red hair a curly cloud, her nipples pale rose and perky…

  And she might be about to rip out his lungs, Rafe reminded himself hastily.

  Instead, she placed one hand over his heart as he lay on the floor. He braced for the unknown-but-probably-bad.

  Something shot through him. It didn’t hurt. It probed, rather like the twining energy earlier, but more intelligent and purposeful. Uncomfortable, yet almost friendly, like a nosy but well-intentioned neighbor.

  Finally, it exited where it had entered. It had been a matter of seconds, but it felt more like hours, leaving his nerves raw and his brain flayed.

  “Well?” The big man twitched, clearly waiting for the go-ahead to smack Rafe into next week.

  Not that Rafe blamed him. If some stranger materialized in his house while he was enjoying post-coital bliss with a beautiful redhead, Rafe would have gone postal on him.

  “Jude,” the woman said—no, once again commanded—“let him up.”

  The man called Jude obeyed with a sigh. Rafe rolled away and clambered to his feet with a muttered “thank you” the woman either didn’t hear or chose to ignore.

  “What the hell is going on?” Rafe and the other man asked almost simultaneously. Under other circumstances, it might have been funny.

  “I don’t understand,” the woman said slowly, her voice confused, incredulous, “but he belongs here. At least my magic thinks he does.”

  Chapter Five

  “What are you talking about, Elissa? I’ve never seen this guy before—and he’s a cop.” Jude spoke on a roar—not a human shout, but something deep and throaty that seemed to emanate from his lionside.

  Rafe wanted to put his hands over his ears. Even more than that, he wanted to bolt out the back door, but frankly he didn’t dare. He wasn’t convinced what he’d find outside the door would be the same muddy, snow-splattered backyard he’d left behind. It might look similar, but it might not be on the same planet, for all he knew. Even if it was the same Geneva backyard that ought to be there, he’d never see it the same way again.

  A niggling voice in his hindbrain suggested maybe the world had always been a stranger place than he’d thought, but the Drozz and his own determination to maintain the illusion of humanity had kept him from seeing it.

  He crushed the voice down. He’d worry about the larger implications when he wasn’t trapped in a kitchen with two naked strangers, one very large and righteously furious and able to turn himself into a lion and the other presenting an unknown level of magical threat.

  With that in mind, he raised his hands appeasingly. He just hoped they’d believe he was pretty close to harmless at the moment. “I have no idea,” he said earnestly, “how I got inside your house. I was approaching the house”—this didn’t seem like the time to get into the fact he’d been staking it out—“and suddenly things got strange. I saw things I shouldn’t have been able to see. Felt things, too. And then, alakazam, I’m in your kitchen. This kind of thing happen around here a lot?” he added, faking desperate bravado.

  “No.” Elissa sounded as confused as he was. Damn.

  “Then how did it happen?”

  He didn’t want to meet either of their eyes while he was still hot and half-hard. Too damn embarrassing. He wasn’t a voyeur at heart. Sure, he liked porn as well as the next guy, but those people knew they were on display. Elissa and Jude didn’t. It felt creepy, even though it was some kind of magical glitch and not him deliberately peeking in their window like someone he’d have to collar on a vice charge.

  Yet in some strange way, he felt connected to them both. Intimately connected. Looking away was painful, as if he’d just had abso-fucking-lutely incredible sex, the kind where you feel like you’ve seen into your partner’s heart, then got into a stupid argument with her. Him. Them. Whatever.

  Painful or not, he made himself stare at the floor.

  “The wards and protections,” the woman Elissa said, “are keyed to heart, to family—to me and you,” she clarified, looking at Jude. “Only our family should be able to get in and out without my explicit permission or yours. But they think he belongs here, that he’s part of the family. So much so that when he got caught in the magic and had to be pushed out or pulled in, they pulled him in.”

  “Your wards are fucked up,” Jude said firmly. “We’re the family, Elissa. Me and you. I don’t know who this clown is, but he doesn’t belong here.”

  “I’m Raphael—Rafe—Benedict. Geneva PD, obviously. And I’m sorry about the confusion.” Rafe put on his best good-cop-dealing-with-distraught-public voice, smiled at the pretty Elissa, since it was clear he’d get nowhere with Jude. Not that he could blame the man. Perfectly natural to get cranky when someone pops into your house through a locked door and has no rational explanation, or even an irrational one, for how he got there. “With all due respect, I’d have to agree with the gentleman. I’ve never seen you people before now, I’m pretty sure I’m not related to either of you, and this makes no sense.”

  “And what,” she said, sounding amazingly haughty for someone who was stark naked, “do either of you yahoos know about magic anyway? Just because you both happen to be furry part-time…”

  Her voice trailed off.

  Jude’s nostrils flared as he sniffed the air. Rafe backed toward the door, not caring anymore if the outside world wasn’t exactly the one he left as long as it was someplace he could find his gun, just in case things went even more weirdly south than they already had.

  Jude was on him before he could get his uncooperative hand around the doorknob. He took a defensive stance, prepared to fight back or better yet to kick him in the jimmy and bolt, then realized with a sinking feeling he couldn’t. He literally couldn’t move against Jude. Too bad the same didn’t apply to Jude, he thought, and braced for pain.

  Jude didn’t attack. Instead he sniffed delicately, wuffling like a great, curious cat at Rafe’s skin and hair.

  Rafe closed his eyes. This was too intimate, too invasive.

  Too arousing.

  He smelled Jude’s hot breath as the other man sniffed his face. Elissa’s juices and something way too much like fresh meat scented it. It should have disgusted him. Instead it stirred him, the blood as much as the female juices. He kept his eyes resolutely closed, suddenly grateful that he couldn’t move, that he couldn’t give in to the strong temptation to draw Jude into a devour-or-be-devoured kiss.

  Jude pulled back, leaving him aching.

  “Drozz,” Jude growled. “Dual, Drozzed and a goddamn cop. Agency whore.”

  “An Agency whore who’s risking his badge to warn you to be more careful, asshole. There are laws on the books we all know are stupid, but please don’t go around begging us to enforce them. That’ll be bad for everyone. Y
ou, your wife, other duals, the cops, the normies who’ll just have another reason to think duals are bad and scary and out of control…”

  “Duals? Not us? Interesting.” It was Elissa who noted that.

  “He’s an Agency whore. No more a dual than the damn president. He takes Drozz voluntarily.” He made it sound like giving cyanide lollipops to toddlers.

  Rafe didn’t need to defend himself to these strangers, didn’t need to explain his choices.

  But he’d been in their heads, shared their pleasure. He felt connected to both of them, far more than made sense.

  Trying hard to meet Elissa’s rich honey eyes and not stare at her body, he told the story as simply as he could. “I was adopted. I’m sure they did the usual DNA tests before I was put up for adoption, but the lab work must have been screwed up. I didn’t ping as Different. Boy, were my parents surprised when they came home one night my senior year of high school and found a cougar where their son was supposed to be.”

  Jude ventured a smile. He had a nice smile. Probably he was a great guy when he wasn’t trying to kick your accidentally home-invading ass. “Bet they wished you’d just thrown a beer bash instead. I remember the mess I made the first time I changed, and my parents expected it and had been hiding all the breakable stuff for a while.”

  Rafe shrugged, trying not to dwell on the memory of the shock and fear in his parents’ eyes. They’d gotten past it in the end. “I was a late bloomer. I’ve heard most dual kids meet their animalside around puberty. I was eighteen. I’d already been accepted into a criminal-justice program. All I’d ever wanted to be was a cop.”

  Elissa nodded as if to say it made sense. He glanced at Jude, saw his face, too, was a bit softer. “Damn it, I’d been human my entire life. I just wanted to stay that way. Still do, usually, although I can’t help wondering who I’d be if I’d been raised by duals. But I’m not going to put someone else in a position to be Parvaned into an early grave unless they’re doing something that’s endangering others. Really endangering, not just being dumb. So please be careful. I don’t want to be the one who has to haul you in—or the one who ends up having to spring you.”