Zola's Pride (5 page)

Zola braced herself. “Why did
you let her drive me away? Why didn’t you follow me?”

She saw the moment he decided to
tell her, and she knew it would be the truth. His eyes shadowed, and
he sighed. “I couldn’t stop you, and I couldn’t
follow you. Not without putting you in danger.”

“
Because of my mother?”

“
Because of your mother’s
orders.”

She hadn’t realized hope still
lived until it fluttered weakly in her chest. “What would she
have done to you if you’d followed me?”

“
Tatienne said that if any of
us went with you, she’d have to assume we meant to start our
own pride. A rival pride.” He met her gaze. “She would
have killed you, Zola.”

Zola closed her eyes as pain rose,
bringing the sharpness of memory with it. Tatienne as a younger
woman, pale skin bronzed by the relentless sun, her auburn hair
streaked with gold. Zola had inherited her coloring from her father,
chocolate and twilight, but her mother had been all the colors of a
desert sunset. Power had sung in her mother’s veins, but so had
love. Love for her daughter, for her pride.

The Conclave’s Seer was
heavily pregnant. Would sweet little Michelle Peyton lose the
gentleness in her nature? Would the son she carried beneath her heart
turn someday to find his mother had vanished, lost to the ravages of
a power too great for one body to contain?

“
Hey.” Walker urged her
face up with gentle fingers under her chin. “I know it’s
horrible. That’s why I promised myself I wouldn’t do this
to you.”

Too late, she scented salt. Her
cheeks were wet with traitorous tears, revealing the depth of her
helpless vulnerability to the one man who’d always had the
power to lay her heart bare.

She recoiled, stumbling back two
steps before turning and scrubbing away all evidence of her lapse
from her cheeks with two shaking hands. “She loved me once. She
loved all of us. Whatever monster she became, whatever she did to the
people she had sworn to protect—it is not our fault. It is no
judgment on us. A Seer’s power consumes them.”

“
That’s all true.”
He cupped her shoulders, rubbed his cheek comfortingly against the
top of her head. “Doesn’t mean it can’t hurt.”

Tatienne had betrayed him too. Zola
leaned back and let his warmth and strength curl around her, along
with the wonderful
belonging
that came from being with one of her own kind. “If it had been
your choice? Would you have followed me?”

He released a long, slow breath that
stirred her hair and tickled her cheek. “In a heartbeat.
Nothing else could have kept me away.”

Truth had a scent. A feel. Bitter,
sometimes, but always solid and implacable. Tension that had lived
inside her for a decade slowly unknotted itself. “Then it’s
behind us. I like who I’ve become. I have my freedom.”

He stiffened, just a little. “I
wish I could say the same.”

Zola slid her hands up to cover his.
“The past is the past. You’re fighting to protect your
people. I like who you’ve become.”

“
You won’t if I have to
go.” His hands slipped down and tightened around her waist.
“I’d do it to protect you.”

He expected her to be shocked.
Perhaps she
should
have been, or outraged, or even angry. Some male shifters smothered
their mates with a blind protectiveness that carried an unpleasant
aura of chauvinism. But if Walker had such unsavory prejudices
against women, he wouldn’t have willingly followed Zola’s
mother.

Zola smoothed one hand up his arm
and shoulder, curling her fingers around the back of his neck. “I
would do the same to you. We protect the ones we—”
Love.
 “—care
about. Which is why I’ll take your people under my care. I’ll
call the Conclave tonight and declare them my pride, and the people
in New Orleans will help me keep them safe.”

A beat. “Where do I fit in?”

The warmth of his body made it so
easy to rock closer—and hard not to rub against him like a cat
in heat. “You can lead with me, or you can leave. I won’t
blackmail you into my bed by holding their safety over your head.”

His laugh vibrated against her skin,
less amused than wondering. “That’s the last thing you’d
have to do to get me in your bed.”

Instinct whispered that he wouldn’t
make the first advance, so she did, rocking up on her toes to close
the distance between them. His lips were warm and firm and tasted
like bitter coffee mixed with cinnamon from the pastry he’d had
for dessert, and underneath it all
Walker
.
Lion. Male.

Mine.

Her back hit the wall and Walker
pressed closer, lifting her a little as he eased between her thighs
and ground against her. “I won’t stop this time, honey.
Not until I’m inside you.”

She’d had plenty of men in her
bed, in her body. But never another lion. Nothing could have prepared
her for the satisfaction that roared up from the deepest place
inside, washing away reason in a wave of primal hunger. She got both
legs up around his hips, trusting him to hold her as she pulled at
his shirt.

With his hips bracing her weight, he
leaned back and yanked his T-shirt over his head. “You’re
positive?”

Such a foolish question. She
answered by working a hand between them until her fingers cupped the
hard weight of his cock. “I told you. I’m not an innocent
girl anymore. Can you keep up with me now?”

Walker hissed in a breath and bit
her, the sharp press of his teeth on her jaw just short of savage.
“Ask me again later, if you can still think.”

Thought already fought a hopeless
battle. She got her fingers around the button on his jeans and ripped
it off in her haste. “Hurry.”

“
No.” He slid his hands
under her ass and hoisted her up. “First door, yeah?”

She’d take him into her now
and glory in every thrust as he fucked her against the wall. Some
dangerous alchemy of lust and instinct turned her wild, and only the
promise of seeing him twisted in her sheets made it possible to find
her voice. “Yes.”

It took him only a few quick steps
to reach the bedroom—and the bed. He dropped her on it and
slipped his hand under her shirt, his eyes blazing. “I missed
you.”

Warm, callused fingers stroked over
her stomach. She arched into the touch, eyes falling shut. “You
don’t need to miss me anymore.”

“
No, I don’t.” He
palmed her breast through her sports bra. “Take off your
clothes.”

Easier said than done. Her T-shirt
tore under her frantic fingers. She let the cotton slip to the floor
and wiggled her way out of her pants more carefully.

By the time she lay in her bra and
underwear, Walker was watching her, his hands clenched by his sides.
“This is the first time,” he whispered. “You’ve
been mine for so long that it seems surreal, but this is the first
time.”

Their first time, and relief rose
that it wasn’t
her
first time. At fifteen, she’d fallen in girlish love with a
youth of twenty-one. At nineteen, she’d trembled beneath the
careful kisses of a man who’d held himself back, too aware of
her innocence.

At thirty, she was a woman who knew
what she wanted, and she took it, rising to her knees and sliding her
palms against the incredible heat of his strong chest. “The
first time. Not the last.”

“
No.” He slid his
fingers into her hair and tilted her head back. “What do you
like?”

Zola laughed and scraped her nails
down his arms, letting power rise in her, the best kind of challenge.
“Figure it out.”

“
Uh-huh.” He arched an
eyebrow. “You’re not naked yet.”

With the button from his jeans gone,
it was easy to slide the zipper down. “I’m distracted. If
it’s important to you, maybe you should help.”

He caught her wrists in an iron
grip, and it was only then that she realized how tenuous his control
was. “If you want me to take my time,” he rasped, “then
you’re going to have to
let
me.”

Wildness seethed just under the
surface, and she wanted it. Needed it. With her wrists pinned she
used her teeth to drive home her point, biting his shoulder with a
low growl. “Take your time later. Now, we fuck.”

Walker surged over her with a growl,
as if some leash holding him back had snapped. “Should have
just said so.” The stretchy fabric of her bra yielded under his
hands.

It was too fast to savor, but she
wouldn’t have been able to appreciate finesse with blood
pounding in her ears and hunger narrowing the room to his touch.
Callused fingers, fast and frantic until she revealed a weakness with
an arch or gasp, then so intense he had her panting as he toyed with
her breasts. She moaned when he added his mouth, his rough tongue and
sharp nips of his teeth.

He teased his thumb under the edge
of her panties. One gentle tug and then he ripped those off, as well,
baring her to his touch. He didn’t hesitate, just rocked the
heel of his hand against her and groaned when pleasure shattered
through her so hot that she cried out.

If he worked his fingers inside her
body, she’d come and he’d take her and it would be good,
but it wouldn’t be what she needed. Using all the strength in
her trembling limbs, she broke free and rolled to her stomach, then
came to her knees. “
Now
.”

Walker growled his pleasure, but he
didn’t touch her again until his bare skin brushed her ass and
the backs of her thighs. He leaned over her, strong arms braced
beside hers, and kissed the back of her shoulder. “Now.”

He drove into her, and the world
tumbled end over end in a dizzy spiral that tightened along with her
body. In ten years of running she’d never belonged anywhere as
much as she belonged here, beneath him, around him.

Part of him, as she’d been
since the first day she’d loved him.

Her fingers fisted in the blankets
as she rocked back, taking him deeper until pleasure gained a sharp
edge that sliced through her, laying everything bare. That edge cut
deeper as he nudged her hair off the back of her neck and bit her,
then began to move, slow and strong.

Perfect.

She wanted it to last forever, but
of course it couldn’t. Zola closed her eyes and reveled in the
slick thrust of his cock, the heat of his skin, the flex of his
muscles. Too soon, she was trembling.

He whispered one dark, quiet
entreaty. “Come.”

She did, with a helpless moan that
didn’t drown out the sweet sound of their bodies slamming
together as she tumbled into bliss. He bit her again, arms shaking as
his thrusts sped until he went rigid and followed her over the edge
with a choked sigh.

Her name.

I love you.
The words echoed in her mind, but she collapsed in a sweaty,
trembling tangle of limbs without giving them voice. Too fragile. Too
old
and
too new. So she pushed them down and ignored the lion’s unhappy
rumble.

Walker would be theirs soon enough.
She wouldn’t let him go a second time.

Chapter
Four

Walker woke with Zola draped over
him, a living dream that had haunted him for years. His third time
waking and reaching for her, and she came to him as readily as the
first, wrapping her legs around his hips.

“
Slow.” More than a
whispered promise to her, it was a pledge to himself. They’d
both waited so long, and they deserved to have each other in every
way imaginable.

He kept his pledge until she bit his
ear and whispered, “Mine.”

He lost himself then, surging deep.
Mine.
More than a word—a claim, one that matched the way her
body welcomed his. Pleasure overwhelmed him, pure instinctive
satisfaction.

Completion.

He belonged here, exactly where he
was.

Afterwards, he licked the sweat from
the hollow of her throat and smoothed her hair back. “Do you
have classes tomorrow?”