Southern Shifters: Werelock (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read Online Free PDF Page B

have been. My cat senses yours.”
     
    *
     
    Hale shook his head, but her words rang true. The thing inside him would have been—was—a lion. He didn’t want to hear the words though, closed his mind off to them. Didn’t want to have her verbalize what he’d suspected for years and none of his family had ever wanted to talk about.
    The Hale family’s dirty little secret.
    Their muddy blood was something whispered about during his childhood, but no one would ever admit it aloud. Instead, they whittled and watched one another for signs of anything different. Always the elephant in the room, always the rumors. An uncle who had to cut his nails with an angle grinder, or a great-aunt who’d been committed to an asylum because she couldn’t control her magic.
    Then his cousin, Elizabeth, had disappeared abruptly when they were both eleven. Her magic had just started to manifest, and he’d been so jealous because they were the same age and his hadn’t come in. One day she’d been there, and the next gone, her mother’s eyes swollen from crying when she told him Elizabeth wouldn’t be playing again.
    When he’d asked at home, Hale had been told never to mention her name again, but he’d overheard his parents talking that night. Elizabeth had grown a tail during a simple spell, and her father had “taken care of it.”
    Even at eleven Hale didn’t need to be told what that meant.
    His cousin was dead for being different.
    So when he’d felt the new presence in his blood, he’d kept his damn fool mouth shut about it and hoped to hell he didn’t sneeze and pop a tail. He hadn’t, and he’d found a way not only to keep his different nature under wraps but also to use it to strengthen his magic. More than strengthen. He was the most powerful warlock in his family.
    His inner beast snarled. Let them try and “take care” of him now.
    Lion. He rolled the word around his mind and the creature rumbled in agreement of both her words and the female’s touch. It wanted to know more about her, wrap around her and beg for more of her touch.
    His familiar’s touch. He shut down the male needs raging in his body. She was his familiar and he shouldn’t have such thoughts about her. He certainly shouldn’t have kissed her. Warlocks didn’t have that kind of relationship with their familiars. They were a grounding mechanism for magic, leeching away any dangerous backlash that would otherwise have killed a magic-wielder. A vent, not a bed partner.
    She moved on the bed, the rustle of sheets accompanying the soft stroke of her fingers over his cheek, and down his jaw. The pad of her fingertips teased at the corners of his lips and it was all he could do not to turn his head and kiss them.
    But she wasn’t a normal familiar, was she? She was a shifter, not the domesticated or wild animal familiars normally were. He wasn’t a normal warlock either. He was a were lock. Apparently. Perhaps it was normal for werelocks to have shifter familiars?
    He hoped so, because all he wanted to do was kiss her again.
    Thinking about it opened the floodgates. The memory of her soft lips parting under his in sweet submission had him harder than a rock within a heartbeat. His cock pushed against the restraining denim of his jeans, the fit so tight he’d probably have zipper marks the whole length of his erection.
    His always vivid imagination fed him suggestions—all erotic—for the next couple of hours until dawn broke. Suggestions that involved the two of them with far less clothing and the bed they currently sat on. And the wall… and the shower… oh god, the shower.
    Temptation proved too much and he surged forward, hauling her against him as he claimed her lips again. This time he was prepared for the onslaught of need and lust as soon as he touched her and braced for it.
    Her lips parted instantly at the touch of his, but he took his time tasting her before sampling the delights beyond. He teased and tempted, not charging in like a