Hometown Pride, page 6
Angelica was silhouetted at the edge of his patio – his embarrassingly cracked patio, since he was a contractor, but he didn’t have the time or inclination to dig it up – her head back with the yellow evening sunbeams on her face, her legs in shadow from the trees.
I could see her every day like this.
I could see her naked in the sun on my back patio.
She turned and her smile was softer and sweeter than he’d ever seen on her except when she was looking at sleeping cubs. “It’s still kind of hot, but could we eat out here?”
“Mosquitoes,” he replied. “But not too many this time of year.”
She smiled again and came in to get a cloth to wipe the cheap plastic table and chairs.
Thirty minutes later and Tremaine was apologizing again for not getting wine even though she assured him again that she liked the beer she was finishing. The sun was not only behind the trees, but below the horizon, judging by the pink and orange glow of the top of the forest and the deep shadows where they sat. She had her sandals off and was gently rubbing her feet on the smooth warmth of the concrete.
“So, this is really nice,” she said into a lull in the conversation.
The rice was bland and the lettuce topped with bottled ranch dressing, but she wasn’t as picky as he seemed to think, especially since the steak had been butter soft, perfectly spiced, and as rare as a lioness could want. The conversation was sparse as they listened to the night creatures come awake and the breeze pick up, rustling leaves and grass. She wished they were sitting next to each other, but on the other hand, it was good they hadn’t, since arousal was strong in the air already.
Tremaine sighed and tore his eyes away from the forest, only for his gaze to fixate on her mouth when she set down her empty glass and dabbed at her lips with a paper napkin. “I’m glad you’re here,” he growled. He cleared his throat, leaned forward with both elbows on the wobbly table, and grumbled, “Did you hear about the job yet?”
She sighed and grabbed her napkin as it almost blew away. “I had been so nicely not thinking about that for an hour.”
A slight frown from him. “Sorry.”
“But no. They had a couple more interviews tomorrow, then if they liked me, there’s a second round with someone from the central library, because the county-wide system is the official employer.”
Another quick smirk. “I’ll be patient.”
She laughed. “I’m not known for my patience. I’m not good at stalking, really. Or any kind of hunting. I’d rather buy a steak than catch a fluffy bunny. It’s probably my human half that doesn’t like blood and guts.”
He tipped his head, considering her. “I’m patient about most things. Long-term strategy and tactics. Changing things from the inside out.” He flattened his lips together and looked away. “Sometimes it looks hopeless, though. Can’t get the strategy to work out in my head without more help. A thousand more things crop up and I look at them and wonder if it’s worth it.”
“Is the business…?” She didn’t go on. They didn’t know each other well enough for her to stick her nose into his money.
“Nah. That’s OK. Too many people want to hire me for less than it costs to work, of course. Guy today seemed to think I didn’t need to be paid for my time. Once I pay my workers and put gas in the truck, I still need to eat.” He grinned and glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. “I mean, the fluffy bunny diet gets old. Most of them steer clear of my house, anyway.”
She laughed and felt his answering chuckle resonate in her chest.
“I’m cutting back on the free work I do for the pride, though. I’ll still do the books pro bono and will probably give them a reduced price for construction because we don’t have a big budget, but they know I’m good now and I need to pay my mortgage.”
“Yeah.” She paused. “Ella called me this evening and asked if I would volunteer at the library just for story time. I guess the parents complained. I asked if Lyssa still worked there, and then told her no, I was no longer doing Lyssa’s work for her.” She winced. “I sounded like a brat, I know. I have to learn to be sweeter to people who have my life in their hands.”
His plastic chair squeaked ominously as he leaned back and folded his hands on his belly, his gaze still intent, but more like he was figuring something out. “Life in their hands?”
“I don’t think they would literally kill me.” She shrugged. “But still, they have a lot of control over my life. I lost my job because Ella wouldn’t listen when Carol said not to hire Lyssa when she returned to town and mated with Bradley. I lost my house because it was part of the payment for the job and because Lipstick wanted it. Ella can make my life uncomfortable and make me want to leave.”
Freiburg had always meant safety to her. It was where she and her mom came when Dad died and they lost everything. It’s where they came when her mom got sick. But now she wanted to leave Freiburg, if only to move the few miles to Middleton. The job in the library had been the main thing holding her, but on the same day it was gone, she’d started developing this…relationship or whatever with Tremaine. She wondered if she could leave now without Tremaine. If she got pregnant with his cub, she might end up trapped. Her ovaries were singing with excitement at the idea of a cub, but her brain was worried about trapped.
“She doesn’t like half-breeds,” Tremaine growled.
She winced at the word, thirty-some years of snide remarks filling her ears. “Part-humans,” she corrected. “Half-breed is derogatory for us and for any person of mixed race.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “I know. I heard it growing up, too. It’s part of why my parents moved away.”
“Mine too, I think. I forgot for a moment you’re half-human, too.” His head swung toward her quickly, his body stilling, which seemed an odd reaction. “Only we came back sooner than you, when my mom got sick ten, twelve years ago. It doesn’t seem like that long.”
“She was sick for all that time? She died what, two years ago?”
“Just over one year. She had cancer. She got treatment and got better and we moved away again, but she relapsed a couple of times. The last time…” Angel’s gut clenched with the grief. Not as sharp as it had been, but still powerful. “She was my best friend as well as my mother. Ella had already chased Macey away by the time my mom died.”
“Macey in Vermont?”
She smiled behind the napkin she was using to wipe her eyes. “Macey in Vermont.”
“Ella drove her away, too?”
“Macey got a degree as a nurse’s aide, is now studying to be a physician’s assistant, and working three jobs to pay for it. The pride could use someone like her, but she’s a lesbian and therefore a bad role model. And she’s a powerful dominant.”
Tremaine grunted and she realized it was only because of her lion night vision that she could see his smile. He sounded as grumpy as when he first came into the library a few months before. “Bad role model.”
“She’s full-blooded lioness, or as close as anyone can be, but she didn’t fit into the little box and she looked like she would be able to challenge Ella someday, so out she went. She also asked for help paying for school, so that probably counted against her.”
“Yeah.” He paused, staring into the trees. “Funny how the pride doesn’t have enough money except for the people Ella likes best. But with more lions moving away, there are fewer paying taxes, so it’s a vicious cycle.”
She sighed. The property taxes in Freiburg were steep and went straight to the pride for things like police and roads. Even the library survived partly on local tax, though a good chunk of the budget came from the county and state. And scholarships and pride events and assistance to the poor were funded by the pride. Unemployment was nearly zero and positions sometimes went empty because so many people had left. The local police were running on fumes and the streets were cracked and potholed.
He sat up again, elbows on the table, eyes intent on her. “So we’re trying to change things.”
She narrowed her eyes. “We?”
“Some of us think it’s time for new leadership.” His voice was barely a murmur.
Her heart was beating hard in her ears. “Some of us? Who? Who outranks Ella?” She ran through everyone close to the top of the hierarchy, even considered some of the men, but couldn’t think of anyone.
“People who are outside, mostly. Doesn’t matter right now. I’m sort of the advance guard, or a, uh, spy, gathering proof.”
“So someone who doesn’t live here right now? Some pride member who has moved away? Recently?”
He sighed deeply. “Some recent, some long ago. Some just want the power, some want to make the pride better. It’s a small group, but I don’t trust all of them.”
She sat back, mind racing. There was an actual movement, not just her and Carol. She wondered what that takeover would look like if it ever happened. She wondered if Carol knew.
“So anyway, that’s the main reason I wanted to have dinner with you.” He sat back again.
Her heart sank. “The main reason?” She was repeating him again, but he’d just told her he was more interested in his shadowy movement than in her, hadn’t he?
“To tell you my secrets. Some of my secrets. You can’t have all of them yet.”
That was a partial relief. “So I passed the test?”
He chuckled, but she was not amused. “You passed the test a long time ago. I’m more worried if I passed the test. Are we going to have a relationship? Am I an eligible sperm donor?”
A relationship? She hadn’t dared hope. “If I get pregnant, I hope you will help take care of the cub.”
“Absolutely.” His answer was firm and final.
“Assuming you don’t get yourself killed or run out of town.”
He scratched his chin. “I don’t think I’ll die. Might have to move away again, though.”
She snorted softly. “That’s not exactly a deal-breaker. I’ve considered moving to Vermont because Macey’s there. Sadly, she’s working on moving back here. Or closer to here. I don’t have any other family. My dad was an only child and I don’t really know any of his family or anything.”
Humans mating into the pride often lost touch with their birth families. Who would believe it if he went home for Thanksgiving and announced his new wife was a lioness? And small children didn’t know to control their shifting, so hauling an actual cub into a human house was dicey, which meant she’d been six before she’d met her paternal grandparents, who had already given up on any closeness with her dad.
“But you have cousins here, right?”
She sighed. “Not many of them. They all moved away and didn’t like that my dad was human. We aren’t close.”
“Right.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, her thinking about how the pride wasn’t much of a family to her.
“Right.” He slapped his hands on his thighs and stood up. “You want to go for a run in the woods with me?”
“What?” She was hoping he’d invite her to his bedroom. She’d caught a glimpse of it when carrying boxes upstairs to his empty guest room and it had smelled good, but looked like a mess.
“In the woods.” He gestured vaguely toward the forest behind his house. “Shift to our lions and run around for a bit. Stalk some fluffy bunnies if you want. It’s been a while since I shifted and I’m antsy.”
Chapter six
“For those with a prurient interest in such things, I’ll summarize: Lion-shifters do not mate up to 50 times a day like wild lions, but they are rumored to have strong libidos when first in a relationship or when trying to get pregnant.” Renard et al, 2025, p133-157.
They watched each other undress in the faint light from a crescent moon and she realized it was the first time he was seeing her completely naked in all her extra weight and lack of muscle. She kept her skirt on and held her blouse to her chest until he held his hands out for them, then crossed her arms protectively over her boobs. He tossed the clothes inside and closed the patio door and did something to a discreet keypad that beeped and flashed red.
“You have an alarm system? Out here?”
He shrugged, his broad chest even broader without clothes, his dark chest hair glinting, his semi-erection waving. “Beats carrying a key, since we don’t have pockets.”
She didn’t know where to look and skittered to the other side of the table from him. “True. Not like anyone’s going to break into a lion’s den.”
“Except other lions.” His voice was grim.
“You think Ella knows about this secret insurrection?”
His eyes shifted away and she thought he was either lying or giving her a half-truth. “She knows I’m not happy with her. I’m just saying that only other lions would dare walk in.”
“Or burglars who don’t know about lion shifters.”
“Yeah. That’s what the alarm is for, right?”
She nodded and turned away when his eyes darted down to her breasts.
The shift was always slow and hard for her. In full lions, she’d been told it was usually a short, sharp electrical pain as bones and skin reformed and mass was gained or lost. But she was only half lion and this was one place where her genes didn’t cooperate fully.
It fucking hurt. She knew the magic would get her through it, but sometimes she wanted to give up halfway through.
She shook herself with a gasp, settling fur over her aching bones and turned to find Tremaine towering over her as a huge, magnificent lion. She hadn’t seen him this close up before and she cowered back. He shook his impressive dark mane and grunted at her before nuzzling her behind the ear and rubbing his face across her neck and shoulders, marking her with his scent. She let him do it as she sniffed the air and her brain adjusted to monochromatic night vision, all those rods taking over from the cones in her eyes.
Tremaine got bolder and closed his massive jaws over the back of her neck. That was certainly presuming an awful lot about her submissiveness, so she shook him off with a snarl and snapped at his nose. She settled her fur and trotted toward the trees, Tremaine sniffing along right behind.
He eventually gave up nipping at her butt, trying to get her to run so he could chase her, and instead took the lead as they wandered through the dark forest, his powerful muscles rippling under his tawny pelt. And, her inner critic noted, his belly swaying. Even in this form, he was showing age and easy living. Like her.
Nighttime animals shrieked warnings, then fell silent as they passed. Mice and rabbits sprinted away through the undergrowth.
He led her to a creek bed that was nothing more than rocks and cracking, dried mud, since it hadn’t rained for a couple of months, then to a dense part of the woods where he pointed out what must have been his hiding spot or hunting blind. She’d never spent much time in this section of the woods and certainly hadn’t done so lately, so was basically lost and sighed with relief when they circled back on their own trail and she knew where she was again, near the edge of his yard.
Tremaine paused at the edge of the forest and blocked the path, head turned toward his house, ears pricked up.
She froze too, sniffing the air. She didn’t know the scent of the person – definitely a male lion shifter, old but still powerful – who was sitting in Tremaine’s chair, feet up on the patio table. He turned his head toward them, another hint that he was a shifter, because most humans wouldn't have heard, seen, or smelled them.
Tremaine shifted in a quick, easy flow of flesh and bone, whispered, “Wait here, OK?” and walked out of the woods and across his untamed lawn, leaving behind the scent of anger, but not fear. In her lioness form, she didn’t appreciate his ass as much as her human self would, but she still recognized him as strong and desirable. She shook her head, ears flapping. She crouched down, ready to intervene if a fight broke out.
“Who’s the lioness?” she heard the man ask. She was probably meant to hear. If he were anyone from the pride, he would have known her scent, which only solidified that he was a stranger. So what the hell was he doing here? Part of this shadowy conspiracy?
Tremaine sauntered up to the guy and shoved his feet off the table, almost pitching him off his chair, but the guy laughed as he recovered. Angel noticed that Tremaine didn’t answer the question. “What are you doing here?”
“Here, precisely? Your doors are locked. I didn’t want to piss you off by bypassing your alarm system again.”
“Probably best not to piss me off.”
Still no names. Tremaine walked past the older lion and beeped his way into his house, dragging his jeans on before turning and carrying something – her clothes – back across the lawn to her. He crouched in front of her and waited as she shifted – which was embarrassing because she was so slow – before setting the clothing in her hands. “Wait here and I’ll get rid of him.”
He stood so she did, too, pride and anger flaring. “Ashamed to know me?”
Tremaine grunted. “Ashamed to know him. I don’t feel like introducing you to him tonight, before I explain him to you.”
“You don’t feel like it? Maybe I don’t feel like—”
He cut her off by stepping into her space, clamping his hands on her bare hips, and kissing her, a brief, hard claiming of her mouth that ended in a sharp nip on her lower lip, leaving her swaying as he stepped back. His teeth flashed as he grinned, which didn’t piss her off half as much as it should. “I got ice cream for dessert. And I have secrets to tell you. And we have cubs to make, right?”
He turned and swaggered away, which her human side did in fact appreciate a great deal more, in spite of the jeans covering his muscular butt.
The lion at the table stood and the two of them argued in whispers and mutters for a minute before the older man threw back his head and laughed. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “Have a good night, ma’am,” and this time she heard a definite southern lilt to his voice. He sauntered away and around the outside of the house.
She heard a car start out front and pull away down the gravel before she left the woods, trying not to snag her skirt on anything, picking her way across the grass in her bare feet, because Tremaine hadn’t brought her shoes to her. Probably making sure she didn’t leave.
