Page 57 of A Lion's Heart
Did he say that or was she thinking it?
Nisa didn’t know, but she went down again, taking him in, sucking him hard. Again and again, until she felt as if her cat were clawing against every part of her body. That woodsy scent was everywhere now. On the bed, on his skin, in her mind, in the sound of his voice, on her fingers, the tip of his cock. She couldn’t get away from it, nor could she get enough of it.
With a motion she hadn’t planned and that took her and Decan completely by surprise, she released him with a popping sound from her lips. Then she was coming over him once more, lowering her hips until she could sink her coated walls down over his thick length. He jerked only once and then he was pumping rhythmically. She moved with him, thrusting her hips and arching her back. When his hands came up to grab her breasts she bared her teeth and growled. And when he came, this time, in contrast to last night, she felt something different.
Her body trembled, thighs tightening around him. She could hear him roaring, a different sound than the man had made, this one all lion. The sound reached inside of her until she felt compelled to match it and when she did everything changed.
“What if we are mates? What if there is truth to thiscompanhieroconnectionhe was talking about?” Nisa asked her best friend as she dropped down into the chair the next day after lunch.
They were in her room after an eventful few hours and still, her mind circled back to early this morning and waking to find Decan gone. The sting of rejection had threatened to irritate her to the point of seeking him out and demanding a response. But she refrained. He wasn’t far. Somehow she knew that for a fact and as long as she could feel him near it was okay. Right?
Shya sat on the bed and folded her legs beneath her. Nisa’s best friend was a thin shifter with butter toned skin and a riot of black curls that framed her face. A thin silver hoop pierced the center of her nose and quiet brown eyes stared back at her.
“I think that’s a good thing if you’ve found your mate,” Shya said. “I mean, he’s definitely hot, so you don’t have to worry about being coupled with someone you’re not attracted to.”
“It doesn’t work that way, right?” Nisa asked again. Then she snapped her lips shut tight because she was asking too many questions and she’d decided somewhere in the middle of the night as she’d lay in his arms that she didn’t need all the answers, all the time. Of course that was in response to her growing curiosity of what had happened to his back and chest, not this mating thing.
“My mother says there’s no reasoning to the shifter mating. Once the cat recognizes its mate, nothing else matters. And as for thecompanhieroconnection, I’ve heard of it, but mostly from the elder shifters now staying with us. They say it used to happen a lot in the Gungi. Where the mated couple develop this sort of telepathy.”
“Wait,” she said trying to wrap her mind around what her friend had just said. “So now I’m a telepathanda shifter?”
Shya looked at her patiently before replying, “No. This power only exists between the mated couple. You said you thought you heard him say a name. He said he did not say the name aloud. Either he said it in his mind, or was reliving a memory or because of your connection to him, you were able to tap into that memory thereby experiencing it with him.”
Nisa ran her hands through her hair.
“And this only happens to one part of the couple? Because Decan doesn’t seem to be tapping into my thoughts,” she said, but then stopped herself.
How did he always know when she was about to sneak out to go above ground?
“It happens in varying degrees to each person. My mother said the old shaman Yuri, before he went berserk, used to come to the village and speak about all the different powers the Shadows could possess. The younger Shadows in the forest believed it was a bunch of nonsense but it seems, as time goes on, some of the nonsense turns out to be true,” Shya told her.
“Great,” Nisa quipped. “So it doesn’t matter that I’ve only known him for a week, even though he’s watched me for months.” She was now toying with the string that was used to tighten the sweatpants she wore.
“And it doesn’t matter that my father wanted to kill him just twenty-four hours ago. Because of our weird genetic make-up and some shaman from the forest’s legends, I’m now inside his head when I’m sure he doesn’t want me there. And what about love?”
Shya shook her head. “All of those things probably matter a lot. Probably so much that they create the whole.”
Of this duo Shya was definitely the more emotional one. She was the dreamer. The settled, calm, mature personality to Nisa’s adventurous, inquisitive one.
“You know this isn’t what was supposed to happen. It’s not my goal in life,” Nisa admitted.
“I don’t think we get to dictate what happens,” Shya said. “Besides, you are sort of doing what you wanted. You’re helping Jace with his holodeck and you’re showing your father that you can be valuable in other ways than just the computer.”
Nisa thought about that and she recalled her meeting right after breakfast with her father, Jace and Amelia. She’d been able to install the new equipment that had been shipped ahead of her arrival. And with the codes and new security measures that she’d come up with had managed to get the Central Zone’s upgraded holodeck running smoothly. She’d also gone over the specific documents that had been viewed by whoever had hacked into their system with them. Because Decan had assured her that Keller’s hacking had only been into the vehicle controls. They weren’t happy by the time she’d left them alone, but at least they all now knew exactly what they were dealing with.
“My father wants me to go back with you tomorrow,” she said letting her head fall back against the chair.
“What is Decan going to do? Is his assignment over?”
Nisa shook her head. “I don’t know. And that’s a huge problem for me. I don’t know what his plans are. Not for tonight or tomorrow or thirty years from now. I don’t know why he came to be here, now or what will happen if whatever his plan is doesn’t work. I don’t know anything about him.”
Shya slipped off the bed then. She moved to the dresser where she’d set the small pouch she always carried with her. Inside the pouch, Nisa knew, was the small disk that contained her daily medications. Shya had been very sick as a baby, as a result of a dangerous herb from the Gungi that her mother had ingested while pregnant with her. Nisa didn’t need to look to see that Shya would remove the disk and place the small frosted orb over the inside of her wrist. In seconds medication would be released from the disk to seep through her skin and into her bloodstream. It kept Shya from feeling too weak, even when she’d done no more than walk from one end of a room to the next.
“You know that you are feeling something you’ve never felt before. Things are changing for you, Nisa. That is what you wanted, it just wasn’t the way that you envisioned it,” her friend spoke moments after the medication had been administered.
“Is that your way of telling me to stop whining?” Nisa asked as she sat up straighter in the chair just in time to see Shya closing the pouch and turning to face her.
Shya smiled. It was always a slow smile but one that could easily brighten any room she stood in.
“It’s my way of telling you to for once in your life, go with it. Let the questions be answered when the time for the answer comes. To not push. To not try to control. To just be.”
It sounded so simple coming from her. For Nisa, as she clenched her hands, then forcefully released them and placed them on her knees, not so much.
“What if I can’t?” she asked, afraid of messing up, also for the first time in her life.
“You can do anything Nisa Reynolds. I’ve always known that and I believe your parents have too. It’s time for you to believe it and to accept what happens as a result.”
