She has the answers. Amara. Beautiful, curvy, dangerous. She will turn his world upside down, and also make it whole. If he can only find the strength to let go of his past and embrace his future. To become who he is supposed to be.
After a bitter war, the world is split, shifters live on one side of the border, humans on the other. Any shifter who enters the human world must where a collar, silver threaded with copper, to stop the chemical reaction triggering the change. They can own no property, and can never be treated as equals.
This is the world Amara finds herself in when she has to pay off her father’s debt. Despite having to wear the collar that keeps her lioness a shadow in her mind, she counts herself lucky, when her contract is bought by Darius Reinier. Her job working in his mansion is easy enough … until the moon beckons and she is thrust into the life of Kane Reinier.
But as she learns about Kane, she knows she has to help him, not least because it means she will be able to go back home to Shifters Prime, but because he happens to be her mate. Although he has no idea.
Can these two strangers learn to live together, will Kane master the beast that lives within him, and can he find the strength to avenge his past? Find out in Living a Lion.
1
Kane glanced up at the moon. It was full, a thing that stirred his blood more often these days. Each month, the pull of it grew stronger, irresistible to the blood that pumped through his veins. It was why he was out here now, letting the silver rays caress his skin. It shone down on his face and bare forearms, leaving him with the desire to strip his clothes off and let it bathe his whole body in its luminescent beams.
He chuckled to himself. Wouldn’t that give the paparazzi a picture to sell to the papers?
As the nephew, and heir, of one of the most powerful businessmen in the human world, he would be plastered all over the front pages of the daily papers, and the Internet too. It would certainly make him trend on social media, for all the wrong reasons.
Instead he had contented himself with coming out here, to the far side of the ornamental lake which stood in front of his uncle’s mansion, and sit in solitude. Here he could allow the moon’s pull to consume him, away from the scrutiny of the staff who worked at the house. This was his time, and he didn’t want to share it with anyone, because it was only at times like this that he felt truly alive.
However, it also saddened him. As the pull got stronger, he had given up all thoughts of ever settling down with a woman. How could he explain disappearing off for one or two nights a month to sit under the open skies?
No, he had made up his mind: he was going to live his life a bachelor. He would take women to his bed, but never let them in his heart. A family trait, it seemed; the same blood pumped through his uncle’s veins. His uncle, Darius, the man who had raised his nephew on his own.
Kane had never been able to work out why he had never married. Rich, good looking and with a charismatic smile, Darius was an eligible bachelor many women had tried to ensnare, and yet none had been able to. Was the moon to blame for his uncle’s solitary life too? Or was it Kane’s fault, the responsibility of raising his brother’s child having weighed too heavily on his shoulders.
He pushed away his melancholy thoughts. Tonight the air was warm, and the breeze on his face was soft as a woman’s touch. If only he could find a woman who felt the same as him, it would be the perfect time to lay her down on the grass and make love to her with the moon’s rays shining its light on her pale skin.
His rising pulse made his cock harden. Damn, he was going to have to stop thinking like that or he would end up driving into the city and picking up a woman and taking her to the nearest hotel so he could indulge himself in the most base of carnal pleasures.
Just because he had decided on no relationships, didn’t mean he was about to become a monk.
A muffled sound caught his attention. There was someone else here. Maybe he had disturbed someone. A member of staff, or maybe two, who had the same idea as him and come out here to make out under the stars.
“Who’s there?” he called.
Silence. He lifted his head and breathed in. All his senses were heightened when the moon was full, it was something he couldn’t explain. Now he used it to his advantage.
Perfume. A woman. He took another draw of the air and couldn’t scent a man’s cologne. Opening his mouth slightly, he drew the scent in over his taste buds, not knowing why, but it helped. Unusually, he recognised the scent, but couldn’t work out why his brain had even registered the woman.
She was one of the shifters who lived in Shifters Prime, on the other side of the border. His uncle sometimes took them on to do work around the mansion. Darius had employed her on contract, meaning her family owed money and she was here to work it off.