Page 13 of A Lion's Heart
She shouldn’t. That was a given. Decan Canter was a lion and mixed joinings were frowned upon by some in the shifter community. Most commonly opposed was the shifter and human mating, but when her father met her mother while working at the law firm he used to own, neither of them had known that Kalina was a shifter. Ezra, Lead Enforcer, had joined with Dana, a human. Sebastian “Bas” Perry, the Mountain Zone Faction Leader, had joined with Priya, also a human. And there were countless others, she’d seen their names as she’d helped enter them all into ViceSecure. So the shifters as a whole had been moving toward accepting that union. As for the interspecies joinings, well, they were still a bit away from totally accepting that. Part of the reason was that Shadow Shifters themselves were a sort of anomaly. Half man and half cat, they had a complex DNA to start with. Mixing the half man, half cat, with a different variety of cat, was another level of the unknown. In the event of an offspring, what would it be? Which cat would dominate and how would the human half respond to such a mixture? It was something, that, to date, had not been answered because the different tribes had remained separate when it came to pairings.
Tonight, however, a jaguar was so turned on by a lion, she thought she might actually jump out of her human and cat skin if she did not receive some relief from these urgings.
She wanted to believe they’d come on quickly, but that wasn’t totally true. She’d been feeling restless and needing release more frequently in the past few months. Tonight, the need had morphed into an all-out hunger. One that seemed to be battering her senses. Why else would she allow herself to stay here without calling her father to intervene? Why hadn’t she blasted Decan with questions and more forcefully demanded the answers required when he decided to bring that cheetah along with them? Why…? The cat hissed and Nisa bit her bottom lip as she, finally pressed a finger into her center. The warmth immediately sucked the first digit in deeper and she let her head fall back against the gray marble walls of the shower. Her legs were already shaking slightly in anticipation as she pressed another finger alongside the first one.
Yes, her mind screamed.
As she began to pump her fingers into herself slowly, her chest heaved with each breath and she lifted another hand to grip her breast. It felt heavy in her palm, her nipple already tightened. She squeezed that nipple until her creamy walls clenched her fingers. With her eyes closed, Nisa’s breaths quickened and she continued working her hands and fingers in an effort to reach her pinnacle soon.
Her cat growled then because it was not enough. Nisa knew it too.
She thought about him, let his image form in her mind as she moaned.
He was so tall, even taller than X’s six-foot four-inch stature. And he was broad, his shoulders wide, arms thick and muscled. No, she hadn’t seen him naked, but she hadn’t needed to, his enforcer’s jacket did nothing to hide his build or the strength she suspected he and his cat carried. There was power in his hands, strength in the fingers with the blunt-tipped nails. Even his face was sort of rugged. The beard that was neatly trimmed, the thick curls atop his head and those eyes. Like glass dyed the lightest hue of blue. Cool and slick like a glacier. He was older than her, there was no doubt, and not just because of the mixture of black and white hair, because shifters rarely showed physical signs of aging. No, she guessed it was because he could not be a Lead Enforcer at her age.
Nisa pulled her fingers out and circled them over her clit as she thought of his hands moving over her now wet body. He would know how to touch her in just the right way, there was no doubt. He was worldlier, she guessed because she’d never heard his name mentioned in Oasis. She hadn’t seen it on the ViceSecure and there were no whispers about him. There was no doubt that a shifter that was this hot and this decorated on the STT would be sought after by men in leadership and females in need. She didn’t know where he’d been in all her years or why he was suddenly here now. And while she wondered, the question of how good it would feel to have him over her, sinking deep inside of her, was one she was most curious about at the moment.
With that thought her fingers slipped into her warm, wet pussy once more, pumping fiercely in and out until she was gasping, her cat growling. It was getting hungrier and she was only whetting its appetite with her futile attempts at release. Her body felt tight, as if she were just on the precipice of relief, but couldn’t quite get there. She wasn’t going to get there. Not like this. Not this time.
With her curse she let her leg fall from the bench and pulled her hands away from her body. It wasn’t going to work. She needed more.
It only took another few minutes for her to wash and slip on sweat pants, a t-shirt and tennis shoes. Then Nisa was slipping out of the room that Decan had escorted her to a half hour ago. This was the third floor, from the elevator control board she saw there were nine floors to this bunker. What she sought was up there. Pressing the appropriate button she eased further back into a corner of the car, keeping her head down while it took her to her destination.
Security would be tighter on the highest floor and hopefully—if this bunker was designed like the majority of them in Oasis—the security systems would give her some idea of who lived here and why this place was off the Oasis grid.
She stepped out of the elevator after the door quietly opened on the ninth floor. These halls were dimly lit and painted a muted gray. That was the first difference. Within all the Oasis bunker plans, the only floors kept without much light were for storage only. They could afford to conserve energy on those floors. Storage was never kept on the top floor of a bunker because that’s where the shifters housed their weapons. In this one, if a human or rogue happened upon the doorway above ground that lead to Oasis, they would enter on this floor. She wondered why.
Nisa kept moving, going to the right and keeping close to the wall. She looked up in search of the square of green dots which traveled across the ceiling from one end of the wall to the other. This was the signal for an operational security line, one that could be monitored by guards at the holodeck. There was none. There were also no doors, at least, she hadn’t come across any as of yet. Another thing that was missing on this level was a scent…any scent at all.
It smelled sterile, as if any trace of an aroma had been studiously washed away. She kept moving watching straight ahead as she walked, turning back every few minutes to be sure she wasn’t being followed. But who would even know she was up here if there weren’t any security monitors engaged?
When it felt like she could have possibly walked at least half the floor, Nisa thought about turning back. She didn’t think there was a doorway here, but she couldn’t actually believe that. There had to be a way for a shifter to get above ground. Just because they’d designed this underground hideaway to keep protected from the humans didn’t mean that no shifter ever went above ground. They did, even though the Faction Leaders were required to approve above ground missions or travel. Nisa knew this for a fact because she often went above ground without approval.
She’d never liked running on the indoor tracks or in the park sectors that had been built to mimic the conditions in the Gungi. Since her mother had taken her above ground for her first run as a jaguar, Nisa had craved the scent of fresh air. She loved the rainy nights best, when there was just a hint of a chill and the rain fell against her thick yellow-brownish coat. She was certain that was what her cat needed right now. So she continued to move down what seemed like an endless hallway.
There were still no doorways in sight, but there was a sound. It was faint, but it was there, like someone tapping. Nisa followed it, hoping it would lead to either an answer of where she was or a way out.
The rubber soles of her shoes were perfect as they kept her approach quiet, while the tapping grew louder. She moved faster, her heart beating wildly as she began to feel the noise was being made specifically for her. Did someone know she was here? Were they sending her a message? Maybe that she shouldn’t be here or that someone else was coming? It didn’t matter, Nisa wasn’t afraid. She was curious. As she’d always been.
She was getting closer. Not just because the sound was louder but because a scent slowly began to creep into the air. It was a fresh scent, like rain or morning dew. She kept going, dragging her hand along the wall as she’d been doing in search of the seams to a doorway. Dozens of steps later, none came. Yet she stopped anyway because the tapping had also ceased. A flash of light caught her eye across the hallway and Nisa pounced, following the tiny white dot until her entire body was pressed against the opposite wall, the vibrations from the resumed tapping rippling through her.
“Who are you?” she whispered because she knew there was someone on the other side of this wall.
She could feel them, another shifter, even though she still could not see it. The tapping continued, growing louder and faster until it almost matched the beat of her heart. Nisa turned and pressed her ear to the wall in the hopes of hearing more even though the tapping was getting to the point where her eardrums quivered in overdrive. Her fingers trembled and the sense that something was horribly wrong began to suffocate her. Nisa tried to push away from the wall, but she could not move. It was as if a magnet had drawn her there and was now holding on for her life.
There was a loud thumping and when Nisa was finally able to pull her face away from the wall a cone of light showed the distorted face of a cat on a naked human male’s body. She opened her mouth to scream but the sound died as a blast of cold air slammed against her back. The invisible force that had been holding her to the wall finally released her completely and she stumbled back, just as the thing that was on the other side of the wall disappeared. Nisa turned to see where it could have gone and where this frigid air was coming from. That’s when she saw it…the doorway.
She ran to it, jumping through the narrow passageway without a second thought.
