Read Grayslake: Lion to Get Her (Alpha Lion Shifter Romance) (Kindle Worlds Novella) (The Jamesburg Shifters Book 8) for Free Online Page B

compulsion. She always put her clothes, no matter how big of a hurry she was in to get out of them, away neatly.
    Suddenly, it hit her. “I must’ve been really into that dream. But why now? And...”
    Her voice trailed off when her eyes fell on the folded note on the table, tucked between her lamp and the wine bottle. She could almost hear the mysterious lion’s words from the day before, and when she imagined his voice, she burned for him.
    Your smile , he had said, I love your smile .
    She shivered, but it wasn’t the sort of shiver that comes when you’re outside pumping gas and didn’t bother to get your coat.
    It was the sort of shiver she hardly recognized.
    The sort that only comes when you realize the worst thing in the world that’s also the best thing at the same time; the sort you get when you figure out you’re in love, and there’s no damn reason at all for it.
    Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, Laney walked over to the bay window that looked out over the pond in her back yard and drew the curtains until the streaks of crimson from the breaking down settled across her naked body. She closed her eyes, trying to remember her dream, but it was already gone except for a vague memory of blue eyes.
    They weren’t just blue eyes though, that wouldn’t be memorable at all—they were deep and so blue they were almost violet. And there was danger behind them, or power. Whatever it was, it was something she couldn’t describe exactly, but at the same time, she smiled every time she thought of it.
    “It was him ,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest as a squirrel trotted across a tree branch in front of her and turned his head in Laney’s direction. She wasn’t paranoid enough to think that it might be one of her neighbors getting an eye full, but... well in a place like Redby Township, you just never knew.
    Before she could put too much thought to whether or not any of her nearby neighbors were squirrel shifters, and if they were, which one was a dirty enough old man to actually play peeping tom, the phone she’d choked into submission moments ago buzzed violently on the tabletop.
    “Hello?” she asked, and was surprised when instead of a voice in her ear, she got another nasty buzzing, right in her eardrum. “Oh damn it.” She held the phone at arm’s length, and squinted at the screen. Some things about getting older are great: more experience, more money, more time to travel. Failing eyesight though, really not one of Laney’s favorite parts of aging. “Oh,” she said as she swiped. “Hey Elaine.”
    Her friend yawned, deeply and loudly. “You called me?” she asked.
    “Er, no?” Laney said. “Wait, what the hell are you talking about? Why did you call me at quarter to six?”
    “I did? That can’t be. I don’t wake up until ten minutes before the library opens and I have to be at work.”
    “I realize that,” Laney said, laughing softly, despite the exhaustion. “My phone rang, and when I answered, you were on the other line.”
    “No I wasn’t,” Elaine said.
    A low growl from Laney warned her that maybe, just maybe, the pre-dawn hour wasn’t the best time to play ‘who-called-who’ with a sleepy lioness.
    “All right, all right. Jeez, it’s like somebody always wakes up on the wrong side of the man. Er, the bed.” She laughed at her own joke. “Anyway, listen, Gilligan just called me and he’s having a root canal done at ten, so—”
    “He told you just now that he’s having a root canal today?”
    “Something about biting a frozen Snicker’s bar when he woke up and... you know what? Okay fine he told me like a week ago, but I forgot until just now.”
    Laney blinked, hard, against the sun that had just begun to peek over the tree line. Pale yellow light stung her sleepy eyes, but she loved the way the colors looked. To her leonine eyes, the red and orange of dawn wasn’t static; instead, the colors swirled around each other like water in an eddy.