Zola's Pride Read Online Free PDF

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