Lion In Wait (A Paranormal Alpha Lion Romance) by Lynn Red

own face, and screamed, “what?” right at him, still squeezing. His fingers were almost completely sunk into Lyle’s fleshy neck. “What did you say?” he demanded again.
    “Lex,” Cass came to his side, placed a calming hand on his shoulder, and forced his head to turn toward her. When he looked, she shook hers, keeping his gaze with her eyes. “This isn’t you.”
    By this time, all the disheveled carnies were beginning to mill around, absolutely confused, completely perplexed. One of them, at some point, asked another one if the naked guy with all the muscles was the lion somehow. The one who he asked responded that he thought so, and that it was really impressive that he’d been shot with all those tranquilizers and not keeled over dead.
    Lex, though, wasn’t stopping. Not yet anyway.
    He focused on Lyle. “You were going to kill us. Kill her .”
    “No!” he squawked. “No I wasn’t! I’m,” he let out another moist sputter, then a cough. “I can’t...!”
    “Stop,” Cass said. “This isn’t you.”
    The fire, the hell-born hate, in Lex’s eyes, subsided for just a moment. He was still squeezing, but he relaxed enough that Lyle was able to suck a breath.
    Lex took a deep breath. “Are you sure? He was—”
    “Nothing,” Cass said. “He’s nothing. He’s the past. We don’t need him, and we don’t need this hanging over us forever and ever. It’s you and me, remember? Two misfits making our way?”
    A half smile crossed Lex’s lips that sent a trill running up Cass’s belly.
    His fingers relaxed. His muscles loosened. “Can I at least knock him out?” he asked. “Or is that too much?”
    “Well we can’t have him follow us, can we?” she asked with a grin. “I doubt these guys would mind.”
    She looked around, and to a man, each of them shook their heads.
    Lex drew back his hand, smiled, and from the way he grinned, Cass could tell he loved how it felt when he finally got to crack that son of a bitch in the face.

-8-
“Finally. You have no idea how hard it was to wait for this.”
-Cass
    ––––––––
    “I never, not once in my life, thought that I’d take a shower in a Motel 6 bathroom, and be as happy as I could be about it,” Cass said, flopping back onto the springy mattress with the slightly rough blanket over top. “Even this scratchy ass old blanket feels good.”
    “I got something for you!” Lex shouted, his deep baritone carrying over the sound of the running shower. She’d wanted him to just throw her across the mattress and have his way with her until dawn about four days from then, but he insisted that he wanted to shave and get to looking “good” for her. “Bag, by the door!”
    She rolled back and forth on the king-sized bed, loving the squeak of the mattress, loving the rasp of the mixed-fiber comforter, but most of all? Just loving the fact that she was there, with him, and they were safe.
    That was maybe most of it. She had him. She didn’t need to worry anymore about Lyle. Not since his workers came around, and marched him straight to the police in whatever the nearest town was. Turns out, he’d had them all picking pockets the whole time the show was running. All those circus peanuts and overpriced beers came with an extra tax. And that? Turns out, counts as theft. Since he’s the one who ended up with all the cash, he’s the one who got the brunt of the legal pain.
    And now, three weeks later, it was all over.
    The circus was a memory passed on to the workers who should have owned it in the first place. As part of the deal to keep it running, they’d gone through whatever was left of Lyle’s legally-gained accounts and paid what they could to the people who were owed. It wasn’t much, couple grand a piece, but that was enough to keep Cass and Lyle in a steady diet of all you can eat IHOP pancakes, and rooms at cheap motels all over the place. It was a really good thing about the IHOP deal because she couldn’t handle any more