The Lion’s Forbidden Mate

“Do you like me?” he asked her after a moment of silence.

“I don’t like cheaters,” was all Lucy had to say to him. She turned and looked at him, wishing he’d been a different sort of man. She really could have liked him. She really could have liked him a lot.

“I don’t see it as cheating,” he said with a shrug. “I see it as a chance to live the life that I want to live. I see it as an opportunity to spend the time with a woman that I chose for myself. I don’t like to think of myself as a cheater any more than I like to think of myself as a caged man, but some would say that I’m both.”

“You are,” she said sternly. “If Violet or your parents found out about what you’ve done, then you’d be in serious trouble. They would throw me out and skin me alive if they knew that I was the one that you’d had an affair with last night.”

“I wouldn’t let them touch a hair on your head,” he smiled and shook his head. “Besides, you’re a little too confident in the power of The Pride if you think that they can do that. At best, they’d fire you and they’d give me a tongue lashing, there’d be a huge scandal and I’d end up single again and free to chase after you.”

“You’d forget about me the moment that I was gone,” she said, shaking her head and taking another drink.

“I could never forget about you,” he assured her.

She looked at him with a scrutinizing gaze that tried its hardest to cut through all the cuteness and all the bullsh*t he was throwing up at her. She didn’t want to believe him and she didn’t want to fall for lines like that, but she knew she would never forget him. He was a fantastic lover and he was an amazing kisser, not only that, he was truly intriguing. She wanted to know more about him and she wanted to have the courage to ask him. She wanted to have the chance to get to know the man behind the legend and she wanted to take advantage of every last second that she had. She took a deep breath and shook her head.

“You don’t know the first thing about me,” she said bluntly.

“I know your name,” he said with a smile. “I know that you have a little mole next to your—“

“Say another word and I’ll throw you over the balcony and I’ll tell everyone that you were drunk,” she vowed angrily. “I swear it.”

“Fine,” he laughed and held up his hands in surrender. “Then tell me about yourself. Let me know more about the woman that I’m obsessed with.”

“See, that’s the half of it there,” Lucy said firmly. “You’re obsessed with me. You don’t actually like me. You just like the idea of me and you want to have the idea of me around, that’s all.”

“That’s not true at all,” James said boldly.

“It is too,” she assured him. “You can’t have me and now you want me just for the thrill of the hunt. I know how men like you act.”

“I didn’t know I couldn’t have you until a few seconds ago,” he said with a furrowed brow. “Come on then, tell me something about Lucy. Where are you from?”

“Montana,” she answered bluntly.

“That’s a very big home that you have,” he grinned at her mischievously.

“Klinesdale, Montana,” she clarified for him. “It’s a small community of Shifters that keep to themselves. We’re all wolves, though we once had a few bear Shifters with us.”

“Bear Shifters are fun,” James said with a grin. “We have quite a few here.”

“Good for you,” Lucy said, not willing to explore that conversation with him.

“Well, give me some more,” he pressed, wanting to know as much as he could about her, but she was done. She wasn’t giving him anything beyond that.

“Nope,” she said, looking at him firmly. “It’s your turn.”

“Oh, well,” he made a frown and shrugged, leaning on the railing of the balcony as the soft breeze nipped at his hair, kicking it up slightly and she hated how handsome he looked in that moment.

She looked at the features on his face, how wonderfully they all blended together and how handsome he truly looked. She hated that she couldn’t have him.

“I first started playing the guitar when I was seven,” he said after a moment. “I can play the mandolin, the banjo, and the piano, but I’ve never been able to master the harmonica. It’s my Achilles Heel and my White Whale all rolled into one stupid instrument. My mother and my father first got me into playing music, but I think that my uncle was the one who really taught me to love it. I went to college for it and I formed the band out of a necessity to make money. Thankfully, the Shifter community has ins everywhere and we got a gig at the right spot at the right time and we went large.”

“Lucky break,” Lucy said to him, knowing that it was never like that for any other Shifters.

There were large groups of Shifters who ran similar to organized crime syndicates and then there were rich groups, like The Pride, who knew all the right people and all the right things to do in order to get things done. There were a thousand ways for Shifters to get ahead if they had the right pedigree or if they had the right people working with them to make things happen. No, people like Lucy understood that most Shifters had to tough it through life like a normal person. It su*ked and it was depressing, but that was the way of it. He could act grateful and pretend like most of this was an act of God, but she knew better.

“You hate me, don’t you?” he asked her after a moment of silence.

“No,” she admitted. “I just wish that Violet wasn’t in the picture. I wish that you hadn’t been a cheater. The usual self-pitying sort of thoughts that girls get caught up in when they find out that the guy they’re into is a useless liar.”