Seduced By The Lion Alpha Read Online Free PDF

beams in the cabin. It was painted so thickly that I couldn’t see the walls in places. Entire expanses of wooden and stone were covered in thick murals and overlapping patterns. Birds flew from desert to enormous flower. Lions leaped from a stone wall to a jungle floor. The entire cabin was an overlapping mural.
     
    In the middle of it all stood an enormous grey stone fireplace. The open concept room was covered in paintings except for the stone. Not one drop of paint touched the flagstone. It was crackling with a small fire which filled the room with a woodsy and smoky smell. That must have been what I smelled earlier.
     
    “This is amazing,” I said. But that didn’t even begin to cover how I felt about this cabin. It was like living in another world – a world where animals dominated and flowers grew as tall as people. A world where nothing was what it seemed. I was reminded of a more animalistic Alice in Wonderland , and it made me grin. That had always been a favorite story of mine growing up.
     
    “I’ve been painting for about fifteen years now,” said Leon. He gestured to the kitchen cabinets. They were painted with a thousand different colors of leaves. “Those are my favorite.” The intricate details in the leaves made me frown and pause. They didn’t match the sweeping style of the rest of the room.
     
    “They aren’t the same,” I said, echoing my thoughts. And they truly weren’t. Leon’s paintings were filled with sweeping lines and action. Life and death, combat and movement, destruction and creation. The despites on the kitchen cabinets were filled with tiny details. Golden lines dancing around the edges of painted leaves. Tiny bugs touching the leaves and pressing themselves into the very depths of the cabinets. The trees looked like they would lift off the cabinets at any given time. They were more out of place in the cabin than the pale unpainted expanse of the fireplace.
     
    “They shouldn’t be,” said Leon. “My mother painted them.” He walked over to the kitchen and ran his fingers over the island. It was big for a cabin, I thought, but I liked it. The size of the kitchen dominated the open concept space, but the pillars kept it from being more of a center point. “She got me into painting.”
     
    “My grandfather started me on drawing,” I said by way of conversation. “I never painted though, just sketched. He wasn’t my inspiration, though.” It was not that I never wanted to paint – I’d tried it for over a year. But discouragement and lack of portability had brought me back to my sketchbook. I didn’t mind. It was nice to have something portable to record my thoughts in when a simple journal wouldn’t capture the scope of what I wanted to do. I didn’t know why I mentioned that he wasn’t my inspiration. My grandfather had only started me on drawing once I’d asked. I remembered seeing him draw portraits for most of my childhood. The family always got a new hand-drawn portrait each year at Christmas.
     
    “Yeah?” Leon looked over his shoulder to me and smiled. “I was always the opposite. Couldn’t draw to save my life, but when you gave me a paintbrush…” He trailed off and gestured to the cabin around him. It spoke for itself. I wondered at that. I wondered how he could paint without being able to draw. I wondered if it was odd, or if it meant he had a talent I didn’t.
     
    My sketchpad suddenly felt very, very inadequate. I held my bag a bit tighter to my side, willing it to disappear before Leon asked to see what I drew. “Who sparked your love for art?” asked Leon. He gestured for the two of us to sit on the couch, and I reluctantly followed. My hands were shaking a bit, though I couldn’t place why, and my gaze kept darting to the too-tight shirt he wore over his impressive physique.
     
    “My older brother,” I said, leaning against the kitchen counter. He circled around it and pulled two bottles of water from the fridge. I took one.