Embracing Her Lion: BBW Lion Shifter Paranormal Romance (Carver City Shifters Book 2)
Embracing Her Lion
Carver City Shifters #2
Lyra Valentine
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Copyright © 2016 by Lyra Valentine
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Embracing Her Lion: Carver City Shifters #2 by Lyra Valentine June 2016
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
After
About the Author
Embracing Her Lion: Carver City Shifters #2
It should have been a match made in heaven.
Jessa Atkins is a nurse capable of fixing everyone but herself. Sam Levesque, powerful mogul and the Alpha’s second, has scars he works hard to keep hidden. Sam can’t ignore the fated connection he feels with Jessa, but she’s stubborn as a mule and plays a mean game of keep away.
There’s no denying he’s blisteringly sexy, or that he wants to sink his fangs into her lush curves. Jessa has one, giant problem. She’s a cursed shifter, and can’t make heads or tails of the instincts telling her to mark him as hers.
Her game of avoidance is going peachy keen until the warlock that cursed Jessa comes looking for her. Cenek Cipris, warlock extraordinaire, offers to help track down the hunters threatening Jessa and the pride. But his appearance promises to disturb the delicate balance in Jessa’s life and make Sam question his desire to claim her as his mate.
Caught between the man her furry side says to love and the man who put that side there in the first place, can Jessa find peace with her inner animal and survive the blasted hunter attacks?
Chapter One
Sam was waiting for her after her shift, just like he’d waited every shift since she and Lena had almost been kidnapped.
Jessa’s ears still rang from the last screeching childbirth she assisted, but she recognized the sound of his steps as soon as he emerged from the shadows. She rolled her shoulders and slowly turned. He was bathed in the harsh light of the red and white Doctor’s Hospital sign mounted to the side of the building. He’d changed from his usual business suit attire into what she thought of as his “off-hours” getup: jeans that hugged his backside, and a tight-fitting shirt that made her wonder how he squeezed into it. His face was still shaded under his ridiculous cowboy hat.
She wanted to stomp on the damn thing every time she saw it. Which, she admitted, had been too many times to count since The Incident at Ethan Sanford’s estate. She relished the thought of snatching the black hat off Sam’s head and jumping until it was flat. He was a city man, and worked in one of the most successful development firms in the city. He served as pride second to Ethan Sanford, the de facto leader of the city’s otherworld coalitions. The lack of cows needing wrangling and hours after sunset rendered the hat useless.
Plus, the wide brim hid his face. She was not a fan of sexy men hiding under hats. Especially men with strong, chiseled jaws and cheekbones that could cut glass. Or men with dazzling dark eyes framed by unfairly long eyelashes. If dudes got to make suggestions about how she displayed her body for them, then they could take some suggestions right back.
“Levesque,” she greeted him gruffly. She had to put up with the bodyguard, but she hadn’t signed anything that said she needed to be nice.
“Evening, Atkins.”
She could barely see the curl of his lips under the shadow from his hat. He’d taken to using her last name as soon as it became clear she’d only use his. It irritated her to no end that he turned the distance she tried to place between them into some sort of game. She was determined that he break first and use her first name.
Inside his truck—another thing that made Jessa roll her eyes: boys and their toys—Sam rubbed at his nose. “You smell like babies and blood.”
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she snapped. Now he was complaining about her job? Of course she smelled like that. She was a freaking labor and delivery nurse. Babies didn’t come out pristine and perfect like they did in the movies.
He tipped his head, and she could almost see his fingers itching to touch the brim of his cowboy hat. “Sorry, ma’am. Queen’s orders.”
That gave her pause. Jessa knew Lena was upset with her. Still, Jessa smiled. Lena wouldn’t return her calls, but she made sure Jessa would be safe.
It softened her to her guard, in fact. If Lena trusted Sam with her life, then maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. He’d certainly been concerned with her safety when he pulled her from the hunter’s van and worked his hoodoo on her. He gave her a piece of his strength to help recover from her injuries.
Her body responded to the memory of how his arms felt around her. She’d woken countless times to her limbs thrumming with the memory of his magic coursing through her. She remembered clinging to the man and being completely blitzed out of her head from a concussion and mad science injection that kept her to her human shape. It was certainly what damsels in distress would drool over, but it made Jessa want to retch.
Mostly.
She sighed, and turned her cheek into the seat. Maybe the ride would go faster if she pretended to sleep. A tear leaked out of her eye. She missed blowing off steam with Lena. They had been best friends since senior year in high school and rarely went more than a few days without speaking. Everything had been different since they’d been taken captive by hunters determined to eradicate shifters and otherworlders alike.
The hunters had taken her along with Lena because she, too, was a shifter. Humans aligning themselves with the otherworld didn’t usually get such an option. The hunters didn’t need anything from humans, while they could experiment on otherworlders to find the best ways to kill them. Human captives were just dead weight that needed to be cast off.
And now Lena was upset that Jessa had kept something so monstrously large as her shifter nature to herself. After the initial rush of joy of being rescued and alive, Lena snapped. They shared everything, but Jessa hadn’t shared the existence of an entire society hiding in plain sight. She couldn’t have predicted that Lena would find her way into the arms of a lion alpha. Even Ethan had intervened on her behalf, telling his feisty new mate that such secrets were best kept quiet.
Jessa knew her best friend’s anger was sharpened by her new shape shifter emotions. She always wondered if lions called themselves a pride because of their enormously big egos, but didn’t think she should mention it. Ethan suggested she stay quiet until Lena had a chance to settle herself and her new lioness side.
Which brought her back to the tall drink of water in the driver’s seat. He was more than a mere lion shifter, but she hadn’t asked where he learned his magic. Lena still wasn’t on speaking terms with her, but she was more than willing to order the pride second to cart her around. She thought he was just an extremely persistent
suitor. She shoved aside the brief flash of disappointment.
The animal part of her brain had sat up in attention when their head cleared enough to sort through the scents assaulting their nose. Jessa couldn’t trust that part of herself, and kept it at bay. She’d made it the majority of her life without a supernatural lie detector, and she was determined to rely on her own emotions rather than the primal ones telling her to stop the damn truck and jump Sam’s bones.
Being a shape shifter had only brought her a kidnapping and a rift with her closest friend. No good could come of her animal’s instincts.
The turn to her townhouse passed by, and Sam didn’t slow. Jessa sat up from her fake sleep and glared at him. “You passed my street.”
Sam grunted.
She glared harder. “Where are we going?”
“Pride house.”
She paled. She didn’t want to reintroduce herself to a bunch of lions in clothes rumpled from being stored in her work locker. Or smelling like babies and blood, as Sam so nicely pointed out. She didn’t intend to be a snack for anyone. A nervous part of her mind even objected to seeing Lena. It was easier to avoid their fight when they weren’t in the same room.
“Take me home. I don’t want any part of whatever this is.”
Sam tipped his hat. “Alpha’s orders.”
Jessa narrowed her eyes. They neared a stop sign. Action movies made it seem so easy to tuck and roll out of a moving vehicle. What good was quick healing shifter powers if she didn’t use them once in a blue moon? Her fingers fluttered over the seat belt release.
Sam’s large arm swung over her right before she clicked the release and pushed open the truck door. Her nipples tightened against the slight rub of his skin against her shirt. Balls, it’d been too long since she’d been laid. Even with the stupid hat, he was a blisteringly sexy man.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Oh yeah? What are you going to do to stop me?” She raised her eyebrow in a challenge.
Sam eyed her from under the brim. “Don’t make me tie you up and put you over my knee.”
***
Sam would have sworn, if his mother hadn’t instilled in him a sense of never using that sort of language in front of a lady. Jessa was not only a lady, but she was his lady, even if she wouldn’t admit it. His lion growled miserably. He wanted to stroke the beast’s big head and scratch his ears in comfort.
He worried the threat brought her right back to her attempted kidnapping. He didn’t want to cause her any harm. Even giving her the smallest amount of mental anguish made him fidget uncomfortably. Then he caught the faint scent of her arousal, and it made his cock ache. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and she slumped back against her seat without any more protests. It seemed his kitten liked the idea, but she wasn’t willing to test him at the moment.
His lion had identified Jessa as their mate as soon as he saw her helpless in the back of a van. Sam was happy his Alpha had reunited with his Queen, of course, but the lion inside zeroed in on the woman passed out at Lena’s side.
All born lions hoped they would find their fated mate, just as they all grew up knowing it wasn’t sunshine and rainbows. The chance of rejection still existed, as did the risk of the relationship going sour. He knew first hand how it tore apart the person and beast left behind. He didn’t want to turn into an empty shell of himself like his father had when his mother left her family for good.
But before he faced even that possibility, he needed Jessa to see they were fated for each other. She diverted the conversation every time he tried bringing it up, something that both infuriated and impressed him. She was a firmly closed book that he couldn’t pry open.
Jessa was an anomaly. He almost always picked up on the type of animal lurking beneath a shifter’s human form, but Jessa remained a mystery. She smelled soft and docile one moment, then hard and prickly the next. Though, he mused, his father would probably say that’s just how women were made.
Jessa hadn’t offered up an explanation, and he certainly wouldn’t risk his nose being ripped off if he asked Lena. The Queen pretended she didn’t care about her friend, but she grilled Sam every time he dropped Jessa off at work or her home. It’d gotten so predictable that he dug his phone out of his pocket as soon as the passenger door closed on Jessa.
The lack of cohesion drove him crazy. The pride faced betrayal in their ranks and threats from hunters. They needed to close their ranks, not act like sulky children. He knew Ethan did his best to keep the situation from erupting, but Ethan had admitted to being clueless at solving the rift between Lena and Jessa.
Lena had done the pride a favor by putting down Emily. Emily had tried to clear her path to Ethan and a better position by making a deal with hunters to hand over Lena. Jessa, unfortunately, had stumbled into the plot and been taken as a bonus.
Hunters were a dangerous bunch. Most were backwoods, uneducated swine that feared the unknown. But some had organized, and one of those groups was responsible for outing werewolves to the general public. They’d also created a special serum that locked a shifter in their human form. Sam hadn’t believed it until he saw it used first hand on Lena and Jessa. It still made his skin crawl and his fists clench that someone had poisoned his mate and tried to make off with her.
One hunter had been taken when the kidnapping attempt went south. The pride enforcers weren’t able to get any information out of him before he bit his own tongue off. Sam wondered about the sanity of people willing to cripple themselves just to keep on hurting others.
His call to update on Jessa had come earlier than expected while he idled in the hospital parking lot, and from Ethan instead of Lena. They had a visitor at the pride house that claimed to have more information on the attack. The pride was still raw over the events, and desperate for any leads.
Sam and Jessa rode in silence until he turned up the long driveway. The Sanford estate served as the pride house, and he wasn’t surprised to see a good many vehicles already there. He didn’t know if the entire pride was invited to the meeting, or if they had flocked there knowing their Alpha and Queen were in residence for the night.
“I’m not going inside.” Jessa’s scent turned to prickly anger that made his nose itch.
“You were asked for.” He eyed her out of the corner of his eye. A frown turned down her full lips. She drew her blonde hair over her shoulder and combed her fingers through the thick mass. What he wouldn’t give to drive his fingers into those strands and inhale deeply.
“Summoned, you mean.”
She sighed deeply. His lion mewled. The beast was in a miserable state, not being able to claim their mate or make her happy.
“You could have at least explained it to me. Before we passed my house.”
Sam opened his mouth, only to snap it shut again when he saw her glare. So she wanted to be angry. He was just doing his job, and he was more than willing to keep doing it if it meant he kept her safe. She was his mate, after all. And according to Ethan, mates needed saving from themselves more often than not.
Sam chuckled to himself, and wondered how often Lena said the same thing about Ethan. Then he sobered. He wanted to share those jokes with Jessa. Knowing what threats lurked in the darkness just made him all the more willing to take the risk his mother never did and drove his father to the bottle. He needed to convince Jessa he was the mate for her.
Chapter Two
Jessa continued her pout in silence. Sam wasn’t going to let her escape her summons to the pride house. She didn’t know how Lena had been completely unperturbed moving in after Emily lured her into a trap. The thought of it still made Jessa’s blood boil.
No, that wasn’t true. She knew why Lena had done it, but she didn’t understand it. Shifter instincts were strong and downright weird. She was determined not to be ruled by them.
She hopped out of the truck before Sam could rush to her side and open the door for her. Her inner animal snapped at her control, but she held it at bay. She ne
eded a chivalrous bodyguard even less than she needed shifter instincts.
Sam beat her to the front door and pulled it open for her. She ignored him as best she could. Trying to pretend he was a bellhop helped until she caught a whiff of his scent as she passed. She’d been prepared for it in the truck and steeled herself against it. The accidental whiff still made her core tighten and her animal purr.
She caught her breath. Big mistake. She already had a lungful of him, and holding her breath only kept him in her senses. He was dark chocolate and firelight, sweetness with a tang of something dark. She stepped quickly past, and let out a long exhale. Her next breath in cleared her of Sam’s scent, but overwhelmed her with the pride. It surrounded her and rolled over her, and put her animal’s back up. The scent of their lion mate was one thing, but an entire pride could mean danger.
The entire estate was overwhelming. She’d never visited during high school, preferring to maintain solidarity with Lena than agree to schmooze with her parents. Even when Lena invited her after she’d mated with Ethan, she didn’t make it past the front door before being drugged and knocked out by the bimbo traitor, Emily.
Just the front foyer was impressive. The ceiling was high, and she imagined it spanned the entire height of that part of the mansion. The wood floors were lit by the bright light spilling from one of the side rooms.
She was accustomed to wealth, though not at the level Ethan Sanford operated. She was a military brat, and her parents always managed to weasel their way into the highest social circle wherever her father was stationed. Even so, the richness of the hardwood floors, the grand table, and the tiered chandelier dangling from the ceiling took her breath away.
Luckily, it seemed to be a private meeting. The scent of the pride was faint once she entered the formal room, and she was able to pick out the three individual scents of the lions present. Her nose tingled at the fourth scent, and she stiffened in recognition at the magic it carried.