The Leopard King Read Online Free PDF

fucking long. Shuddering, he took himself in hand as Pru started talking.
    “It’s strange how life never works out like you expect.”
    Surreal.
    Her chattering outside the bathroom should’ve slowed him down, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t have stopped if she’d opened the door. He used rough strokes, just wanting to quell the beast, and she kept talking, telling some story about how she’d gotten lost on the way to visit the Burnt Amber clan. He remembered that, actually. His father had been pride leader back then. Golgoth raiders had been sighted just beyond the borders, and they’d feared she had been taken. In particular, Slay had been frantic, though once rescuers located Pru, he’d acted like he didn’t give a shit.
    For some reason, Pru’s monologue made him tug harder. Her words blurred into aural ribbons, warm and sweet; he couldn’t focus on what she was saying, but he knew she was safe, and he relaxed a fraction. The feeling built in his lower back, spiraling outward, and the hot water stung his sensitized skin in a good way. His hand moved faster. Almost there. Need to —he huffed out an urgent sound, and she heard him—she must have—because she paused.
    And said, “Dom?” in a tender, quizzical tone.
    He came.
    Immediately, shame overwhelmed him, and he crouched beneath the warm water to wash it away. Such a visceral reaction, it was inexplicable. Somehow he struggled upright and switched off the tap. In the aftermath, he braced on the wall, unable to steady his breath.
    “Yeah?”
    “You okay?”
    “Fine,” he got out.
    Actually, he was dizzy as fuck and oddly grateful. There were no bad pictures in his head, nothing but a kind of fuzzy stillness, and that was so much better than it had been that he throttled the impulse to hug her as soon as he put on his clothes and opened the door. Her smile made him look away.
    “Feeling better?”
    There are so many ways I could answer that.
    “Let’s talk about sleeping arrangements.”
    Her brows shot up; they were darker than her hair, nearly black, and their pride mates used to tease her about dyeing them. Russet hair, eyes like a winter sky, so many freckles that nobody had ever counted them. Her nose was short and tilted; like an ass, Slay had once said that if Pru ever shifted, it would probably be into a Persian house cat. Dalena didn’t stop hitting him for like five minutes.
    Pru cried, he remembered then.
    Though she’d forced a smile, Dom caught her later, curled up in tears. She never did it where anyone could see, not that he knew of anyway. Until today. He didn’t know why that mattered, or if it did. Suddenly he kind of wanted to punch Slay.
    But that would mean returning to Ash Valley.
    “I’m listening,” she said.
    “We’re both bunking in your room for two reasons. It has the only surviving mattress, and you might wander off somewhere. For the record, I’m tying you to me with a length of string. I’ll sleep closest to the door, and if you try to get past me—”
    “World of hurt, I know. I’m familiar with your rhetoric.”
    “My what ?”
    “Bombast. Grandiloquence. Orotundity.”
    “You’re just making up words now.” Dom smiled, despite the fact that she was clearly insulting him. Normally, the pride didn’t give him shit like this, part of being the exalted leader.
    He didn’t hate it.
    “False. I’d tell you to get a dictionary, but I’m sure you shredded all the books here and then burned them in a fit of rage.”
    “I… don’t remember.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” she said gently. “Things are replaceable. You are not.”
    He had no words.
    It wasn’t late enough for bed, so Pru found a deck of cards and made him play some ridiculous game. She told him the rules, then changed them to suit her, but she had a terrible poker face. They gambled with matchsticks, and she pouted when he collected all of them.
    It was only when they headed to her room that he realized he hadn’t taken a