Broken Princess: A Dark Paranormal Romance (Feline Royals Book 1) Page 13

  Balam growled again, sucking my neck, licking the sweat from my skin as my orgasm faded. He withdrew his hand, hooking his thumbs in the top of my jeans and pushing them down over my hips. He rested his weight on his elbows and stroked my hair back.

  “Have you ever been licked by a feline shifter?” he asked, a smug grin on his face.

  I shook my head, my thighs still shaking with the aftershocks of my orgasm. Of course I hadn’t. Most shifters wouldn’t slum it with a common human, and I’d never craved the status that came from landing a shifter for a night. Yes, I knew that both men and women could have a “shifter kink,” but the thought had never appealed to me. I’d always found shifter groupies, who chased after shifter men like rock stars, kind of distasteful. And yet here I was, my whole lady business aflutter at the thought of his rough tongue tasting me.

  “You’re about to forget all about your little human boyfriend,” he said.

  “Don’t talk about Tadeu,” I said, pushing at his chest.

  He didn’t budge. “Then tell me you’re not thinking about him.” His smile dropped away, his eyes searching mine.

  I swallowed, my pulse rapid in my throat. “I’m not.”

  “Cats have very talented tongues,” he said, his smile returning as if he’d never asked for…what? Had this brutish man just asked a common human girl for reassurance?

  He gave me a quick kiss before sliding down my body and kneeling beside the bed. He spread my thighs and inhaled deeply. A tremor of self-consciousness went through me, and I tried to close my legs, but he held them apart, staring at my sex spread open before him.

  “Let me look at you,” he said. “You’re beautiful, Itzel. Your cunt is a fucking masterpiece.”

  I leaned back on my elbows, watching him gaze at me like I was something more than common, something incredible. Heat built in my core again as he looked without touching until I wanted him to touch me, couldn’t bear for him not to. I needed more than admiration. I needed to be possessed.

  “Fuck me again,” I whispered, dropping back onto the bed.

  “Oh, I will,” he said. “But I’m going to savor you this time. First, I’m going to lap up every drop of your cum, and then I’m going to make you do it again.”

  He leaned in, pressing his nose to my mound and inhaling long and slow. Then he began to lick me. His tongue rasped across my sensitive flesh, making me jerk with surprise. My clit was so sensitive I could hardly bear for him to touch it, and yet, he licked relentlessly until I didn’t know if I was crying out in pleasure or pain. His thick lips suctioned over my clit, my folds, my opening, until I was dizzy with it. I buried my fingers in his thick curls, pulling him deeper as his tongue probed my opening.

  “Yes,” I gasped, my thighs falling open as he pushed his tongue inside me. It went deeper and deeper as my walls clenched around it. He cradled my ass in his hands and buried his face in me, driving his tongue into me. I rocked against him in rhythm with his thrusting as he fucked me with his mouth until I came again, and again, and again.

  Nineteen

  Shadow

  Keeper, Panther Nation

  I was working on the rectifier on my bike when I heard the first wails. My head snapped up, and my panther pushed forward. I inhaled the scent of the swamp, looking for anything unusual. Nothing. After a minute, I stood on the little hill where my house was parked, looking out at the marshes and waiting. Sometimes it was just a fight, or a breakup, or an old lady who’d fallen. We had to notify each other somehow, and since none of us had phones, we used our lungs. Nothing could scream quite like a panther.

  But every time, the tight twist of dread started up again, just like it had the night the wails had announced the death of my parents. Five years later, I still had the nightmares. If someone screamed in the night, I was up and out of bed before you could say, “Shot on sight.” My panther took over for me on those nights, taking care of me and seeing me through, bearing the burdens I couldn’t as a human. Not alone.

  Another wail sounded, and I cursed under my breath, barely noticing the instinctual extension of my fingers into claws. I trusted my panther. He knew better than I did when he was needed.

  “We’d better go see what it’s about,” I whispered, my voice almost lost in the papery rustle of the grasses in the wind. I just wanted to be left alone with my panther, to live in the little trailer I’d dragged out here and fixed up the year after my parents died. But clan business was everyone’s business, and if someone was hurt, I needed to know about it. This wasn’t someone angry. This was the clan wailer, starting up her third long, lonesome shriek.

  I looked around at the mess I’d made in my yard. My bike was in pieces, the alternator on the ground beside me, wrenches everywhere. I opened my tool kit and lay each one in its proper place, the methodical work keeping me sane even as my heart and mind spun out like junkies fighting for a fix inside me. I held them in check, assuring my panther that he could take the reins as soon as I had everything put up. I wasn’t an animal. Not all the time.

  When my tool-kit was ordered as neatly as the day I’d gotten it—a gift from Gideon when my parents died—I set it in my little trailer. I took down a cup and poured myself a glass of water from the sink. Washed and dried the cup and replaced it. Everything had to be orderly. Neat. Clean. It was how I held onto my humanity even when I lost the will to retain anything human about myself.

  My panther pressed forward, gently this time, offering to shoulder the pain. I stepped out, closed the door, and let him. As we crossed the swamplands, weaving between collapsing trees, veils of hanging moss, and mucky marshes, I let my mind go fully panther. He knew how to move in this place. He never lost our footing.

  I knew I was weak. I should have been able to handle it on my own. But if I couldn’t find solace in my animal, why did I have him? Where else would I find comfort?

  When I arrived at the camp, it was already full. Others had come quickly or lived nearby. I slid onto the end of a log next to a young woman who sat nursing an infant on one breast and a toddler on the other. She smiled shyly at me, and I looked away, muttering an apology for staring. I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking at that kid, his big brown eyes roving around while his mouth moved. A kid. Fuck. How could people bring children into this world, this life?

  The wailer stopped, and two men stood before us.

  “We have been invaded,” one of them said. I remembered sleeping in his tent for a week during the long year when I’d been homeless, between losing my parents and finding the trailer.

  “Invaded?” someone asked. “Why would anyone invade us?”

  The question hung in the air a second too long. It was a good one, one that left unsaid all the meaning behind it. What could anyone possibly want from a people who had less than nothing?

  “What happened?” someone else asked.

  “Who’s missing?” an older woman demanded.

  We began to look around. I didn’t know who was absent. I didn’t have friends, not even in the camp. Plenty of people had stories like mine, but they’d somehow bonded, found solace in making liquor and babies. I wanted no part of that.

  “They took four lives,” the man said. He recited the names quickly, before the voices of the clan overtook his. “They got Cooter, Tucker, Swift, and Earl Ray.”

  My ears rang, and I pressed my palm to my temple. They wouldn’t be calling the names of my parents. Of course they wouldn’t. And yet, I always half-expected it, my heart going limp in my chest like a dead fish when he started listing the fallen.

  “You okay?” asked the girl beside me. I didn’t know if she was talking to me or one of her kids. I didn’t raise my head to see.

  Cries of despair and anger erupted around the clearing. I kept my head down. I had no one to lose. No reason to be here except to witness the grief of my clan, to acknowledge their loss. And I couldn’t even do that. Maybe not everyone wanted others to witness their pain. Maybe some people wanted to go someplace alone, not b
e hounded by pity while knowing it would soon turn to resentment when they had to feed another mouth.

  “Who attacked us?” someone yelled. “We got nothing.”

  Wasn’t that the question of the ages. I almost laughed. That’s what we’d been asking for ten years and more. Since the swamp flooded and we’d tried to escape in droves, only to be sent home. Who would attack refugees fleeing the loss of their homes and lands, sometimes with their children in the bottom of the boats?

  I knew exactly who.

  The man in the middle of the circle grimaced. “It was them,” he said. “The ocelots.”

  Of course it fucking was.

  Who else would attack us? The only other clan in North America was the Lynx Nation, and they didn’t bother anyone. They hadn’t even joined the International Council. They were the Switzerland of the cat clans.

  “What do they want?” The older woman who had spoken up before went on. “They want our territory now? Let ‘em have it. Nobody here wants it.”

  “I do,” I muttered, but no one heard me. I was no one worth of note, just another swamp kid with no parents. But I wasn’t about to give up the only home I’d ever known to a clan who had refused the Panther Nation not only asylum in their land, but mercy.

  When some of our clan got desperate, when they started ignoring the border patrols who tried to send them back, they were accused of invading the Ocelot Nation. Never mind that their only crime was a desperate hope for the survival of themselves and maybe their children. No, these tattered refugees were obviously there to murder and pillage.

  Shot on sight.

  My hands curled into fists. I wouldn’t give them the swamp. If I was the last holdout, so be it. I would hide in the trees and fight dirty, disappearing before they could see who had attacked.

  “We believe Princess Ocelot was with them,” the man said. Suddenly, they were looking at me.

  I didn’t like it. My panther growled low, wanting to slip away into the masking obscurity of the trees.

  “The amulet,” the woman said, her voice softer. I touched my necklace. There weren’t enough of us to hope we’d find our true mates. Nowadays, panthers opted to choose their own partners without magical interference. It hadn’t saved us from near extinction. Why think it could help us now?

  Of course it couldn’t. It had brought a curse with it instead. A curse that had taken the lives of four of our remaining people. Sober faces looked around the circle, their outrage forgotten.

  “They’re coming for this?” I asked, forcing my voice out. It had been so long since I’d spoken as a human that my raspy voice almost surprised me.

  The man nodded.

  “When they come asking, you come to us, and we’ll make them pay,” a younger guy said, his eyes gleaming with fury.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

  When the meeting was over, I returned to panther form and slipped into the swamp. The amulet had never done anything for me one way or another. I’d never cared about it. If it was any other nation, I might have told them to take it, I didn’t care about getting it back. But not the ocelots. I would fight them. If I lost, there would be no Keeper to take my place, to carry the amulet.

  It didn’t matter, though. I’d chosen the life I wanted. No one to love meant no one to lose.

  I moved across the logs and trees quickly, avoiding the pools of water when possible. The air was charged with an approaching storm, but I wasn’t worried. Even the worst floods didn’t rise as high as my trailer. I’d been smart, even at fourteen. I’d chosen a good spot for my home.

  I didn’t think I had much to worry about if the ocelots came looking. If they wanted to find me to get the amulet, let them try. They were used to living in some royal castle with luxuries I couldn’t even dream of. And now they were going to wade through a swamp in a storm to find an invisible man? Good fucking luck to them.

  Twenty

  Itzel

  Princess, Ocelot Nation

  “This is it,” I said, pointing out the windshield of our rattling sedan at a sign we’d missed at least three times in the past hour. Although it was night, and everything else on the block was closed, the two dozen cars in the lot said it was open.

  “This doesn’t look shady as shit,” Balam said, crushing the brake pedal and turning the wheel sharply. The car chugged a few times before lurching forward, lumbering over the curb, and promptly stalling.

  “We made it,” I said, holding out a hand for a fist bump.

  Balam gave me a little smile and bumped his fist against mine. Over the past week, we’d found Camila and her guards the nicest hotel in what remained of South Florida, bought an inconspicuous car, and started hunting the Panther Clan as discretely as possible. The strip club had obviously been Lord Balam’s idea, one that neither Camila nor I would ever have thought of. I was secretly proud of my new lover’s knowledge of the world.

  We climbed out of the car and headed inside the cinderblock building with blacked out windows. Only when we stepped through the door did it appear alive. A pulsing Latin rhythm filled the club, and spotlights lit the three stages where men watched nude women writhe and grind the polished silver poles.

  “What’s the point of this again?” I asked Balam, gesturing to a petite dancer with lily white skin and hair, red eyes, and a pair of glowing red heels that were smoking as she danced.

  “That’s the point,” he said with a grin.

  “But you can only look, right?” I asked. “You can’t even dance with them?”

  “Most clubs have a no touch policy,” he agreed. “Unless you pay extra for the boom-boom room.” As he spoke, his eyes stayed riveted on a woman with green scales along her thighs and hips, shimmering when she moved in a sultry rhythm to the pounding music. She swiveled her head and blinked at us with yellow eyes, the pupils like vertical slits, and flicked a long, forked tongue at Lord Balam. When he smiled, she grabbed the pole and swung her legs over her head, so she was hanging upside down, and then grinned at us, revealing a mouth full of sharp teeth as she spread her legs to execute a perfect splits position.

  “Wow,” I said. “So, that’s what floats your boat.”

  “You float my boat,” Balam said, his arm circling my waist from behind. He drew me back against his chest, his grip possessive.

  I smiled, glad he couldn’t see the satisfaction on my face. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

  “I don’t care what you call it as long as you keep doing it,” Balam said, moving his hips back and forth just enough to make his zipper skim across my ass. Since our sleepover in the seedy motel, I had floated his boat every few nights. I was starting to reconcile myself with the idea of being a “kitty chaser,” as feline fangirls were called. I didn’t care for the derogatory term, and I hadn’t gone after Lord Balam because he was a feline shifter, but I also didn’t intend to stop fucking him.

  We stood at the edge of the crowd, accepting two mugs of tepid, flat beer from a petite waitress. Balam gave her a toothy grin and a generous amount of bills tucked into her g-string. I rolled my eyes and elbowed him. “You can’t take her home.”

  “Are you jealous?” he asked, nuzzling my ear.

  “No-touch policy, right?”

  He slid his arm around my waist again, and we stood watching a vampire skim her teeth over a prostrate fae on the stage. I wondered if any of them ever lost control and just bit the shit out of each other. Or killed someone.

  The guys in the club hooted and hurled money all over the stage for that performance.

  “Seems kind of pointless,” I said. “At the clubs I’ve been to, people take off their shirts all the time, but you actually get to dance with them.”

  “You dance with shirtless strangers in clubs?”

  I twisted around to smile at him over my shoulder. “Now who’s jealous?”

  A man who was at least eight feet tall lumbered past, the whole place shaking with each step he took. “See anything you like?” Lord Bala
m murmured in my ear.

  “You’re more than big enough,” I said, reaching behind me to squeeze his cock through his jeans.

  “Don’t start what you can’t finish,” he said, pushing into my hand.

  “I can finish,” I said. “You just might have to wait a few hours.”

  Balam pinned me against him, growling into my ear. This was all an act, and yet, not an act. Tonight, we were an adventurous couple checking out the strip club. We might even ask around a little bit to see if we could find some panthers who could fulfill our fantasies.

  Lord Balam had been right—this looked like exactly the kind of place where we could ask that question. It looked more like a kinky circus for supernaturals than a place to see naked women. I didn’t see a single human among the dancers as the three left the stages and three more replaced them. Most of the crowd seemed to be human, though there were a handful of supernaturals among them, too.

  I tried not to stare as a squat, grey-skinned woman clomped onto the stage in a pair of heels made of the most delicate glass I’d ever seen. Maybe that was the appeal. Humans could come and gawk the way they weren’t supposed to on the street. They could indulge their fetishes and feed their fantasies about whatever supernatural turned them on. They could even see for themselves all the things they might have speculated about. Did werewolves really have hair on their thighs? Could a fae bend her body like a pretzel while you fucked her?

  “I’m buying you a lap dance,” Balam said after we’d observed for an hour or so. “Who do you want?”

  “I’m not really into girls,” I said.

  He gave me a playful slap on the ass. “You are tonight. Pick one.”

  “You pick,” I said, my eyes shooting him a challenge. “Who do you want to see naked in my lap?”