––––––––
Morning broke, and almost immediately, so did a rainstorm that rolled over the desert and cracked the sky with thunder with surprising quickness.
“Good thing we found this place to hide,” she said to Lex, who she was convinced could understand her. And, in her confused terror, Cass had started to believe he was responding to her. “That’s a hell of a storm.”
With a grunt, Lex got to his feet and moved to the opening of the small, copper-colored, rocky outcropping that they’d settled into after a few hours of running. He’d stayed there all night, watching the horizon for any sign of activity. Cass caught a few hours of sleep, and nothing more had happened. No one was chasing them – then again, if Lyle’s plan was to convince everyone it was part of the show, then sending a bunch of pissed off people chasing the performers would make that seem slightly suspect.
She shot him a sidelong glance, and frowned slightly. “Well, here we are, old friend,” Cass said, feeling a little like Yoda as she looked across the desert. In one direction there was something resembling a shanty town of trailers, and then in the other, absolutely nothing. Nothing, not a house, not a car, no road or water, just open desert that stretched so far it became open sky.
“What in the hell do we do? He’s gonna come after us before too long.”
Lex sidled up to her and growled softly, laying his head in her lap. “We stay ahead of them, one step at a time.”
It took about four seconds for Cass to process that the lion just talked to her, at which point she jumped to her feet, eyes bugged out of her skull, and stared at him as he laughed.
“I was going to wait, but... well, now we’re fugitives.”
She just stared at him, pointed for a while, and wondered what in the hot hell was going on. “I’m nuts, right? I’m crazy. I ran into the desert with a lion and now I think he’s talking to me. I’m one hundred percent certifiable. Holy shit I went nuts. Right?” she asked. “I’m nuts, right?”
The talking went silent. The voice was gone, the soulful looks went blank, like Lex was about to reveal something to her, and then got scared off at the last second. He stood, stared at her face for a moment, and then shook his head. She watched him, he turned and retreated further back into the rocky outcropping where they’d spent the night. He paced back and forth before settling.
“Well sorry,” Cass offered, looking out over the desert and wondering what she’d done to scare him off from whatever kind of revelation he was going to make. “I didn’t mean to upset you. And I certainly didn’t want to scare you or whatever I actually managed to do.”
Lex growled a soft, slightly relaxed, but pleasant sound, and rested his huge head on his paws.
“Look,” Cass said, standing up as a cloud of dust. “The hell is that?”
She pointed at the cloud that stretched up from the desert, up into the sky. “That isn’t what I think, is it?”
She felt the lion under the palm of her hand. He had somehow come right to her side, against her, warm and growling and powerful. Somehow, just his being there made her feel better, made her feel more safe and secure. But there was still the issue of the truck, or the jeep, or whatever it was, making its way across the flat, open desert.
“It is, isn’t it?” her voice was flat, unsurprised, but still terrified. “We gotta run, don’t we?”
At that, Lex finally reacted. With a snarl, he flexed his shoulders, lowered his head. Something about the way he reacted told her that there weren’t going to be any long runs. There wasn’t going to be any hiding.
“What are we going to do?”
She shot a glance back at Lex, who was yawning sleepily, then shook his head and relaxed on his paws. Seeing him completely nonplussed about the jeep or whatever it was zooming around the cracked, rocky ground, Cass trotted over to the lion, and shook him until he opened one of huge eyes, then slowly closed it again.
She blew a puff of air between her lips, flipping a fallen tendril of hair back on top of her head. “Really?” she said, standing up and driving her fists into her hips. “So this is the grand plan, then? You shoot me a couple of sidelong glances, you either talk to me, or I go crazy enough to think a lion is chatting me up, and then you go to sleep? That’s it?”
Cass started pacing. “We’re alone, unarmed, and sitting in the middle of the damn desert. In the only land form anywhere around. Huge rocky thing?” she used a mocking voice. “Yep! That’s where we are, the single place for what seems like a hundred miles that’s safe from rain. And we’re in it, and there’s a damn jeep coming our way and you’re sleeping.”
“I’m tired,” Lex said, simply and flatly. “So I’m sleeping.”
Her eyes shot open and she spun on her heel. “So you are talking?”
“You’re not gonna let me sleep, are you?” The lion’s lips didn’t curl in quite the right way for the words to all come out in perfect English. There was a little twist to some of the words, and a strange lift to his voice, even though it was somewhat gravelly and hard. “I’m tired.”
“Okay,” Cass said, more to herself than to Lex, who had closed his eyes again. “So, good, talking lion. I’m living in a Disney movie, and I’ve got a pissed off carnie chasing me. What could be better? Oh right, the only way this could be better is if I was in the middle of the desert. Oh! Good! Check again!”
She hadn’t gotten this huffed up in a long time. When she finally looked back at Lex, his eyes were closed, but his shoulders were shaking slightly. “And now you’re laughing at me?” Cass felt her cheeks burn. The flush went all the way down the sides of her neck. She’d had plenty of occasions to be angry in the past several years, but she never was. For a second, the thought clicked in her head that the only other time she did get this irritated was with her dad, who she loved dearly, despite his shortcomings.
Loved dearly, she thought, at once chewing on her lip and pinching the bridge of her nose. “In love with a lion?” Cass shook her head. “More like just used to one. Oh my God and here I am talking to the lion again. Maybe Lyle grabbing me will be a good thing. I can flip out and get committed.”
“That isn’t him,” Lex rolled onto his back, stretched, and then hopped to his feet.
Something about him – some kind of scent, or feeling, Cass wasn’t sure enough to say what it was – called to her. She watched the muscles in his shoulders flex and immediately felt comfortable again, just like she had when he protected her for all those years from all those lusty men and angry women.
“Wait, what?” Cass asked. “How do you know?”
Twisting his neck from side to side, Lex snuffled and yawned again. “See how far your eyes let you see? I can see three times further. And your ears? Mine are five times as good.”
Distracted, Cass looked back out at the desert. Sure enough, the jeep spun a doughnut, then another, and a third, before darting off in the opposite direction. “How do you know?” she asked. “I mean, how do you know what it’s like to see as a person? To hear as one?”
She watched the Jeep bounce over a rocky patch of desert and disappear behind a patch of mesquites.
“Because,” Lex said, his voice deeper, rounder, and infinitely less uncomfortable sounding. Before the fact that there was a warm palm radiating heat through her shoulder could register, Cass turned around, promptly let her mouth fall open at the sight of the man from her dreams, from her visions, whatever they were. She looked him up, and down, shamelessly staring at the thing hanging between his legs.
And then, she went white, and fell in a heap onto the floor.
*
“That didn’t take long,” Lex said, smiling gently and sweeping the back of his hand against the side of Cass’s face.
She blinked heavily, and moved her eyes around, taking in the scene. “Shallow cave,” she said, her voice hollow and crackling. “Shallow cave, weird sandstone floor. Yep, not in my trailer, ran away, still safe.”
Lex cleared his throat. She lifted her eyebrow, but didn’t look his direction. Even though her head was resting in his lap, and he was stroking her face with those warm, soft fingertips, she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the face.
“This is real, isn’t it?” she asked.
He saw that her eyes moved underneath her closed lids. When she opened them, she’d be staring straight at him. He ran his thumb along her full bottom lip, and trickled a brush down the front of her neck. “I can pretend it isn’t,” he whispered. “If you can’t deal with what I am, what I really am, I’ll get you to safety and you never have to think about me again.”
With her eyes still closed, though they were fluttering as though she was really having to fight herself not to open them, Cass’s lip began to shake. “Why... why would I want that?” she asked. “Tell me this is real. Tell me I’m not going to open my eyes and find out I’m in a hospital bed, or back at home and the whole last chunk of my life was a long, protracted dream-slash-nightmare.”
She laid her hand on top of his for a moment before intertwining her fingers with Lex’s. Somehow, they perfectly fit together, like they were always meant to be. She took a deep breath, held it in for a few moments, and let it out with a long, shuddering exhale. “Why aren’t you answering me?”
“I don’t know how,” Lex said softly. “I don’t have the words, not all of them. I haven’t let myself be like this around another person for... well, since before I was caught.”
Cass sniffed, and nodded lightly. Her hair stuck to the sides of her face – she must’ve been sweating while she was knocked out, which wasn’t all that surprising – and when she squeezed her eyes tight again, a tear rolled down the side of her face. She swallowed hard and parted her lips to speak, but no sound came out of her moving mouth.
The next second, Cass’s nose filled with that familiar scent of man, of sweat dust. In the next breath, Lex’s lips enveloped hers, his tongue sliding along the surface and behind hers, tasting deeply. For a brief, wonderful moment, he pushed his tongue between her teeth, against hers, and then pulled away with a soft suck. As he sat back, Cass’s deep blue eyes opened.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she whispered. “You never kissed me like that in my dreams.”
“That’s because you were imagining me,” he said. “Our souls were so close, but so far apart. I dreamed of you, I ached for you, yearned to have you, but... I couldn’t, not then. Not until—”
“Why didn’t you show me... you? I mean, you saw me in all sorts of ways. What was so bad about me knowing what was really under that fur?”
“You’re taking this surprisingly well,” Lex said. “I mean, I am a shape shifting lion, after all. I thought maybe you’d be a little more shocked.”
“I passed out at first,” she said. Her eyes were locked on his, and then studied his face.
She sat up, spun around and in one smooth, fluid motion, straddled Lex’s lap, settling down until his face was only inches away from hers. Between her legs, she felt a stir, and remembered snatches of the dreams, bits and pieces of those fuzzy, warm, long-forgotten memories.
“I guess I was ready for,” she gulped. “Well, I mean, the dreams. If you’d been any different, or if it hadn’t been you, I don’t... ugh, brain getting fuzzy again. Maybe I’m not accepting this as effortlessly as I thought. I better...”
As she lay back, Lex followed her down, looping his muscled arm underneath her head, and gathering up the jacket she’d been wearing as part of her lion taming get-up for cover. Her breathing grew slower, more even, as she relaxed. But then instead of staying closed, she opened one of her eyes, looking up at him.
“Just checking,” she said. “I’m still not entirely convinced I’m awake. Still not totally convinced I’m not—”
When Lex slid his hand down her chest and underneath the waistband of her jeans, Cass finally decided that yeah, she was totally not sleeping.
Every nerve in her body, every pore and follicle, prickled to life. She felt a rush, first of excitement, then fear, then anticipation, and finally relief. “This is right, isn’t it?” she asked with her eyes closed. His finger stroked her the way she’d dreamed of so many times, but it was so much sweeter when Lex’s fingertip bounced over her not-too-recently-trimmed sex, and he sucked a deep breath through his nose.
“You had your dreams,” he said. “I only had my fantasies to keep me company. I only had that I could be near you, that I could smell you and protect you, and keep you safe. That’s all I could do to keep myself sane until this could...”
He trailed off, pressing the tip of his finger into Cass’s soft, silky-wet entrance. A soft moan escaped her lips as Lex bent to kiss each of her eyelids. “So gentle,” she whispered. “So soft and careful, I—I didn’t expect this sorta... mmm...”
“Shh.” His voice slid in silken strands against Cass’s ears. So much, so long, so many dreams and confused hopes and mixed up feelings caressed her as he pushed deeper with that slowly rotating finger. “I’ve kept you safe all this time, let me take care of you now.”
Another tear rolled down the side of her face, even as Cass started smiling. When she sucked another breath she smelled their scents, mixed, on the air. Her sweet, sticky sex and his hard, leathery sweat were enough to get her pushing her hips against his hand. He curled his palm around her body, grinding hard against her clit.
“I,” she gasped, having to work very hard to keep from screaming with pleasure. “I did some safekeeping too,” she finally managed.
Lex growled his appreciation for her scent as he kissed her neck, then her mouth, with hungry urgency. With his lips an inch from Cass’s throat, he whispered, “I know. I owe you,” and drove another finger in beside the first.
She arched her back, letting out a soft whimper and biting down on her lip. Those fingers inside her stirred up a tight, body-teasing passion she’d never felt, never experienced, not even in her wildest dreams. Every inch of her was alive and yearning. The muscles between her legs pulled at Lex’s fingers as he pumped, as he ground against her, and once again she let out a soft, desperate gasp.
“I’m—” she dragged her short fingernails down his muscled forearm, and grabbed Lex’s hair with the other hand, pulling his face to hers, sucking a kiss on those beautiful lips, as her climax shook her to the core.
That time when she started blinking, she was sure enough of reality to look straight at him. When those gold and brown eyes fixed on hers, and Lex tasted the sex she’d left on his hand, Cass felt another surge of wet sweetness stir deep inside. Then, she felt her lion’s stirring.
With her eyes fixed on his, Cass kissed Lex’s neck, then his collarbones, then the hollow between them. He leaned his head back, running his fingertips down her back, fingers rasping over the fabric of her shirt. She kissed his chest, his naked belly. She went lower, lower, and then nuzzled his base, growling just like he had when he smelled her on the air.
“You’re not the only animal here,” she said with a soft giggle and a mischievous grin. She scratched up his chest, circling his cock with her other hand. Fingers wove through close-cropped hair, and her fingers barely touched when she squeezed him. Sliding her tongue over him, then around, Cass’s entire body ached with her hot burning as she took him in her mouth.
She’d heard Lex growl more than a few times over the years, sure. In anger, in fear, sometimes even for fun.
But when she sucked a kiss on his tip, then ran her tongue along him before filling her mouth with as much of him as she could?
She hadn’t ever heard a growl like that.