Taming The Lion: BBW Paranormal Lion Shifter Romance (Gray Bears Book 5)

TAMING
THE LION

By

Natalie Kristen

BEAR HEAT series

Bear's Bride (Book 1)

Bear's Kiss (Book 2)

Bear's Claim (Book 3)

Bear's Baby (Book 4)

Bear's Heart (Book 5)

GRAY BEARS series

Marrying The Bear (Book 1)

Loving The Bear (Book 2)

Mating The Bear (Book 3)

Tempting The Bear (Book 4)

Taming The Lion (Book 5)

Copyright
© 201
5
Natalie Kristen

ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED

No
part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without the author's written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
used fictitiously or are the products of the author's imagination.
Any resemblance to actual locales, events, establishments or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

About
this Book

Winston
Knight is a lion shifter and the Sheriff of Shadow Point. He serves
and protects the small town, and he has his life in order. A strong,
sexy man in uniform has his share of female admirers but his lion has
never wanted to claim a mate.

But
when a brave, beautiful woman careens into his life, Winston realizes
that he has found his mate in this curvy, lion-hearted human.

Kaylee
Wright has just crashed out of another disastrous relationship. She
is moving on, moving away, again. Driving headlong into danger to
save a woman's life, Kaylee never imagined that the near-fatal crash
would be the turning point in her life.

For
so long, Kaylee has been looking for love in all the wrong places.

But
here in this small town, Kaylee feels that she has finally come home.

Happily-ever-after
might just happen to her after all.

She
just has to stay and fight for it…

*
* * * *

CHAPTER
ONE

Kaylee Wright stood at the
doorway of her bedroom with a cardboard box in her hands. The box
contained a large coffee mug, two packs of tissues, a pencil case,
some paper clips and a framed photograph of two happy faces.

The photo was taken not too
long ago. Kaylee glanced down at the photo of her and Beckett, and
felt as though she were staring at a photograph of two strangers.
I
look happy in the photo
, Kaylee mused dispassionately and
disconnectedly.

She raised her eyes back up
to the bed. Beckett was going at it like a turbo thruster. The bed
creaked as the headboard hammered the wall in time to the action.
Beckett was grunting and groaning as he nailed the skinny brunette
from behind. The woman was the exact opposite of her. Thin, tanned
and dark-haired. Kaylee was curvy, pale and blond.

Kaylee couldn't see the
woman's face from under her thick tangle of hair, but from the noise
she was making, she was enjoying what Beckett was doing to her.
Either that or she was really good at faking it.

Kaylee watched the fucking
couple for another half a minute. Then she simply let the box in her
hands drop to the floor with a deafening crash.

The noise and movement
stopped immediately. Beckett and the woman froze and twisted towards
the door with identical open-mouthed expressions.

It was almost comical, if
Kaylee had been in the mood to laugh. But she didn't feel like
laughing. She felt like crying, but now wasn't the time.

It was the wrong time, wrong
place, and wrong...life.

“Don't mind me,”
Kaylee said in a numb, nonchalant voice as she went to the side of
the cupboard and pulled out her suitcase. Opening the cupboard, she
began to throw her clothes into the suitcase.

“K-Kaylee...”

She didn't even turn around.
She pulled out the drawer and upended it, emptying the contents into
her suitcase. “Please, don't stop on my account,” she
muttered, as she snapped her suitcase shut and turned to glance at
the cardboard box lying on its side at the foot of the bed.

She had just cleared her
little cubicle out this morning. The company was downsizing and the
data entry clerks were the first to go.

This was the mother of all
Mondays.

She had gone to work as
usual this morning, and before noon, she was walking out of the
office with a small cardboard box and her last paycheck. She thought
she would go home, put away her things and go down to Beckett's
office. She would just surprise him and see if he was free to have
lunch with her. He was a financial adviser and he told her that he
had many client meetings and lunches. But she thought maybe, just
maybe, he could spare half an hour to have lunch with her today.

Kaylee stood and dusted off
her hands. She surprised herself when she managed to smile as she
turned to face the bed.

Beckett had wrapped the
covers around his waist and was kneeling on the mattress, staring at
her with a mixture of disbelief, shock, shame and outrage.

Kaylee stared coolly at her
boyfriend. Beckett hadn't even bothered to jump out of bed and come
to her. The woman was huddled at the far corner of the bed, her face
turned away and partially hidden by a pillow. Kaylee didn't bother
with her. She was just a faceless, nameless female, someone her
boyfriend was screwing behind her back. She was probably not the
only one. Maybe this woman was just one of Beckett's many “clients”
who needed “personal financial advice”.

Kaylee put the house keys on
the bedside table and pulled her suitcase to the door. She stepped
over the spilled contents of the cardboard box and stumbled out of
the bedroom. A spiderweb of cracks appeared on the glass of the
photo frame when her suitcase rolled over it.

“Kaylee! What the
hell…!”

She didn't look back. There
was no point in looking back.

Kaylee thumped her suitcase
down the front steps of Beckett's single-story house and stuffed her
worldly belongings into the backseat of her small, second-hand
Nissan.

The little car shuddered as
she got in and slammed the door. She had to turn the ignition thrice
before the engine finally spluttered to life.

Kaylee glanced in the rear
view mirror as she drove away. She saw Beckett running down the
front steps in his sweatpants. But that was as far as he got.

He didn't run down the street
after her. He didn't run hard after her car. Beckett didn't chase
her at all.

He simply stood in front of
his house and watched her go.

CHAPTER
TWO

Kaylee forced herself to
relax her grip on the steering wheel. Strangling the steering wheel
wasn't going to make her feel better.

As she drove on, she found
herself growing angrier and angrier. But her anger at Beckett didn't
last all that long. Her anger kept growing, but the person she was
really angry at was herself.

She had made some bad choices
and he was just the last douchebag in a long string of bad
boyfriends.

How could she be so stupid
and blind? And why did she keeping getting into relationships which
were bad for her heart, her sanity and her self-esteem? Her parents
would be so ashamed of her.

Her parents had passed away
when she was eighteen. They were loving and kind, and they sheltered
and indulged her perhaps a little too much. She missed them so much.

After they died, she just
lost her focus and direction. She flitted from job to job, and from
one disastrous relationship to another.

Just what the hell was she
doing with her life?

She was twenty-nine years
old, jobless, currently homeless and driving aimlessly along the
highway of her life.

Kaylee choked out a mirthless
laugh.

Yeah, this highway did remind
her of her life. It was lonely and deserted, with unwieldy weeds
growing along the sides. She was just zooming purposelessly down the
road, with no specific destination in mind. She just wanted to get
away, but she had no idea where she was going.

Kaylee blew out a breath.
She shouldn't have allowed herself to drift after her parents died.
She was lonely and depressed, and she just kept jumping into
pointless, unfulfilling relationships. She had to break out of this
vicious circle. No more bad relationships for her. She seemed to
attract bad boys and cheaters into her life.

No more, Kaylee told herself.
She wasn't a sucker for heartbreak and pain.

“I wish I could meet a
good man and live happily ever after with him,” Kaylee said to
her reflection. She laughed out loud. Her wish sounded silly and
ridiculous even to her own ears.

She was too old to believe in
fairy tales. She was no princess and she sure wasn't riding into the
sunset with her white knight.

Kaylee squinted at the road
sign at the side of the highway. The next town that was coming up
was Shadow Point.

She gasped. Just how far had
she driven?

Gulping, she eased her foot
off the pedal and slowed down.

Shadow Point. The name of
the town sounded familiar.

Was this where her grandaunt
Neveah lived?

She had lost touch with her
grandaunt over the years. She had moved so much, so often, never
staying in a place, a job or a relationship for more than a year.
She'd thought that she and Beckett were going to make it. They had
just made it past the one year mark, but she realized now that he had
probably been cheating on her for the past six months. The signs had
been there, but she just didn't want to see the truth.

Kaylee shook her head and
tried to focus.

The last time she saw her
grandaunt was at her parents' funeral. Grandaunt Neveah had wanted
Kaylee to come live with her, but Kaylee had refused. At that time,
she was living with someone, someone she thought she would eventually
marry and have kids with. But that relationship had gone up in
smoke. So had all the others that came after that.

Gradually she'd lost touch
with her grandaunt.

Kaylee winced and released a
long, slow sigh.

The truth was, she had lost
touch with herself. She felt so empty and sad after her parents
died, and she kept looking for something, someone to fill the void in
her heart.

She was looking for love, she
realized, but she kept looking in all the wrong places.

Well, it was time to stop
looking. She would stop looking and start living. She would look
for her grandaunt and try to reconnect with her. Her grandaunt
Neveah was family yet she had pushed her out of her life. Kaylee
swallowed hard. She had a lot to make up for.

Kaylee wondered if her
grandaunt would remember or recognize her.

If she remembered correctly,
Grandaunt Neveah ran a small inn in Shadow Point. Now what was the
name of the inn?

Boomerang Inn? Baseball Bat
Inn?

The name had something to do
with a wooden item or a household item…

Broomstick Inn!

Yes, that's right. Kaylee
let out a short laugh as she slapped her palm to her forehead. “Of
course! Broomsticks and witches!”

Her grandaunt was a witch.
Kaylee's great-grandmother was a witch, but magic was only passed
down to the daughters, not the sons, of a witch. Kaylee's
grandfather, who was Neveah's elder brother, married a human woman,
and their only son also married a human woman. Kaylee was thus fully
human, with not a trace of magic in her blood.