Craving Her

By Kelly Lucille

Cleo is a lioness that knows how to take care of herself. Growing up in the military trained motley crew of the Lionsgate pack has seen to that.
Shawn is a hawk shifter x-Navy SEAL who has done his best over the years to ignore his craving for his Alpha's much younger daughter.
Only now she is all grown up and knows exactly what she wants from Shawn, and its not another overprotective pack mate.
Can this honorable warrior ever see her as anything but her fathers daughter?
When a blast from her father's past puts Cleo in the cross-hairs, they may not get the chance to find out.

This is fourth in the Keeping Her Series. It is a stand alone, but is better enjoyed if read with the rest of the series.

This book most definitely has strong adult content. Strong language, violence of the bad-ass variety, and explicit sex are just a few of the things you can enjoy in this series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kelly Lucille
• Release date: Oct 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310525407

Kelly Lucille

Kelly Lucille was born in Bremerton, Washington. April 9th, 1974.She has a B.A. Degree in Creative Writing and Literature from Naropa University.Her first book "Keeping Her" published in July of 2013."The Dragon's Mage" was release August 2013"Loving Her" (Mac and Ben's story in the Keeping Her Series) just released on August 31st,2013.Still to come: "At Ones Pleasure." and "Web of Bones" the second in the Dragon Mage series.Also in the works:Two Fantasy/Paranormal Romance novels: "The Journeys End" and "Claiming Her"and a Contemporary Romance "Beatrice and Douglas."On a more personal note- I read my first romance novel: "Shanna" by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss when I was 13 years old. I still read it every year or so just to remember how amazing a really good romance novel can make you feel.Check out more of what's coming next at kellylucille.com

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CRAVING HER

by Kelly Lucille

Published by Kelly Lucille

Smashwords edition

Text Copyright Kelly Lucille 2015

All Rights Reserved

Table Of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

CHAPTER ONE

Leaning against her helicopter, Cleo slapped another bug away from her neck and wondered at the insects here in Columbia. You would think even in the dense wet jungles of the Amazon they would have better sense than to try and bite a lion-shifter. She squashed another mosquito before it could land and then had to flick off the dead mosquito gunk from her hand. Apparently not.

She wiped what was left on her green cargo pants and glared at the dense foliage surrounding her. The humidity during the second rainy season of the area had her clothes sticking to her skin. Twice now while she was waiting it had rained, cooling it off for about a minute, and making the heat that followed feel ten times worse. She was out of the direct rain, but it didn’t seem to matter when she was sweating so much her socks were squishing in her combat boots.

There’s a reason lions stick to the grass lands of Africa, she thought, at least it’s a dry heat.

Not that she wouldn’t welcome a shift and run here in the wild primitive jungles of the Amazon, but she had a job to do. Her first official paying combat gig for Lionsgate, so stripping down her weapons and clothes and going for a jaunt would be a bad idea. Of course, if those monkeys kept screaming at her and throwing disgusting things, she might do it just for the satisfaction of eating the little bastards. They never got close enough to actually hit her, but still . . . it annoyed.

Sigh. It had been an exciting idea, a real combat position, a chance to use all of her extensive training, until they arrived and she was told to stay with her helo. Even then there was the slim possibility that she would be challenged to fly them out under fire. But after six miserable hours of boredom and flying monkey excrement, she was ready to get back home, where at least something was always happening.

Helo, you copy? The com blared and she threw herself through to the cockpit, grabbing for it like the lifeline it was.

Her slick thumb slid off the button but she got it depressed. This is helo, over.

We’re coming in on foot with the target. FARC passed us by and may be bearing down on your position. They have anti-aircraft, recommend you take off and we will hump it to the secondary location.

Logan McCord was a tall, rangy, broad shouldered, 6’ 2" cowboy. Normally he talked slow and smooth. Right now she could hear the tension in his voice. He might have been recommending an action, but what he meant was move your ass out of here. There was little chance the guerrillas would not find her either. This was one of the few places with open space for a chopper. It was slowly being reclaimed by the encroaching jungle attesting to its lack of recent use, but they would still be aware of its existence, since they were the ones who likely cleared the space for their drug planes to begin with.

And since he was an ex-Navy SEAL team captain, wolf-shifter, when Logan said something she listened.

She opened her mouth to agree, already hopping into the pilot seat and buckling in. Then she heard the motor in the distance and cursed. Looks like it’s too late for that. If they have anti-aircraft they will be on me before I can get out of range.

She heard quite a bit of colorful cursing on the line, before Logan spoke again. We’re on the way. Shift and hide in the jungle until we get there, over. There were two things wrong with that scenario. One was that her modified Black Hawk, one of three she regarded as close members of the family, may or may not be here and in one piece when she shifted back; and two, the chopper was on a small patch of high ground, and they would not shift with the human rescue they brought with them. They would be at a disadvantage in a fire fight. Not that Cleo had any doubts they could handle it. Even if it was just Logan on his own, he could handle more than a car load of drug runners, but with Shawn Ryan with him, she almost felt sorry for the rabble. But again, her Black Hawk would be at the mercy of drug running thugs for however long it took them to get here, and they would be shooting towards it when they arrived.

She unbuckled her belt and pressed the com. I’m heading into the jungle. Maintain radio silence. I’ll lead them away from the helo until you arrive. Don’t shoot me when you get here. Over and out.

There was more cursing on the line, this time the whiskey warm voice of Shawn Ryan could be heard as well. As always, the sound of that seldom heard voice sent shivers to all her girly places, and as always, she ignored them. She didn’t plan on sticking around to argue, but she imagined they would be moving fast. Right now she had heavily armed drug runners from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia to deal with, also known as FARC. The angry overprotective shifters would have to wait.

Cleo pulled her HK P30 and checked the clip. Snapping it back into place, she pushed in the code to disable the weapons and navigations on the Black Hawk. It was an Eli modification that ensured no one used their own equipment against them. Their computer guy, Eli Ramsey, was something of a genius with computers. Someone with his know-how might be able to hack it, in a month or so, but the FARC guerrillas coming this way, in the small window they had? Not a chance.

She grabbed her rifle, canteen, and emergency pack and headed for the jungle. She made the dense foliage and found a tree that looked likely. She climbed it nimbly, finding a high perch and setting up her rifle. Then she waited, watching the sorry excuse for a road and what was left of the landing strip. She didn’t have a long wait.

The Jeep Rubicon came into sight kicking up dust. She counted eight armed fighters with everything from automatic weapons to machetes bristling out the windows. They stopped at a distance from the Black Hawk, but with her keen hearing, she could hear the smattering of conversation in Spanish. They were expressing curiosity and avarice at the sight of the shiny black copter. Along with a whole smattering of curse words, some she had heard before, some were brand new. They also discussed all the ways they were going to kill the men who flew it. They were graphic and spoken with relish, making her lion want to chuff in irritation at their threats to her pack. They left the Jeep, fanning out across the landing strip. One in particular was fingering his knife and talking loudly in Spanish about how he was going to destripar ellos como un pez. Roughly translated: Gut them like a fish. He had more to say but she was through listening. Sighting carefully, she took him out with one shot between the eyes.

Everybody scattered. She took out three more likely looking sociopaths the same way before the rest frantically found cover, and then she pushed her rifle behind her across her pack, and jumped from her high perch to the ground. If she had been a normal human she would have broken bones. Since she wasn’t a normal human, she was running almost before her feet hit the ground. She heard the yelling and the weapons firing behind her, but even in human form, she was fast and light on her feet. She was deep in the jungle long before they sent a missile into the trees, raining fire that could be seen for miles.

With only four guerrillas still alive, tracking her through the jungle, no one was left to bother the Black Hawk. From a new hiding place significantly farther than where they were looking, Cleo waited and smiled. She buried her pack and rifle in the hollow under a fallen tree where she could find them later. Four down, four to go. Cleo went hunting.

***

Shawn Ryan heard the explosion and felt every muscle in his body lock up. If he considered the situation, chances that Cleo would be caught in it were slim to none. She might be twenty-one and green where combat was concerned, but she was a lion-shifter and smart, not to mention she had been trained by the whole of the Lionsgate pack since birth in weapons and tactics, among other things. But, while his head was telling him she was fine, he could not seem to convince his body, which had been trying to shift ever since he heard the vehicle pass and knew the drug runners would get to Cleo before them. He looked at Logan, and what he was feeling must have been clear in his eyes because Logan reached around him to take his pack.

Go, he said, I’ll stay with the target. Come back when Cleo is safe. Logan dropped the heavy gear along with his own and the two-hundred-plus-pound rescued hostage to the ground with equal care. He pulled his gun and checked the clip, chambering a round.

Shawn didn’t ask him if he was sure. He removed the gear he needed to and shifted, leaving the rest of his camo and weapons to float away from his smaller hawk form. He wasted no time flying towards the gun fight he could hear in the distance, leaving their target passed out on the ground and bleeding from multiple torture wounds with only one to watch him. It was unprofessional as hell, but right at the moment he did not give a fuck, and neither apparently did Logan — not when it was Cleo under fire. They would deal with her anger at the special treatment when they had her safe and headed back home to Napa. Why the hell her father would send her on this mission in the first place, he had no fucking clue. She may be the best natural born pilot any of them had ever seen but she was not a soldier.

***

Cleo took out one of the guerrilla’s from above. Before he could react other than to grunt at her weight dropping on him, she had slit his throat and rolled away. The last three were a little trickier as they were clearly better trained, keeping cover and sticking close together. She was contemplating her choices when she heard one of them scream. She moved up in time to see his legs disappearing into the thick jungle brush overhead.

Classic Shawn move. Other shifter types made the mistake of thinking a bird was not predator enough to frighten. She had seen him lift fully-grown wolf-shifters in those razor sharp talons, carrying them struggling to panic-inducing altitudes and then dropping them from heights guaranteed to leave them broken and bloody on the pavement. Humans didn’t stand a chance.

The other two were shouting and firing above their heads at their disappearing friend, so Cleo took the time to take out the one not obscured by brush with a quick pistol shot to the throat. He gurgled his next scream and grabbed for his throat. Cleo turned to see his friend had disappeared.

Before she could move her position, a large freshly-shifted, and therefore, naked male dropped down on her just when a shot came her way from the brush. The bullet thunked uselessly into the tree behind where her shoulder had been moments ago. Unfortunately, she forgot all about the gunman in the jungle when faced with being crushed to the ground under a very naked and ripped Shawn Ryan.

Three inches taller than her at a whipcord and lean six feet; when she wore heels, which was rare, they were eye to eye. Right now, with his hard body pressed along the deceptive softness of hers, she felt at a distinct disadvantage. Especially when her nipples beaded so that he had to feel it through the thin lace of her bra and t-shirt. His eyes shifted to raptor gold even as she thought it. Eye to eye, chest to chest, and groin to groin, neither of them moved, and it was not long before she was aware of just how happy he was to be right where he was.

Cleo dragged in a ragged breath and watched as his eyes glued themselves to her lips. In a moment, she would be perfuming the jungle with her need, and wouldn’t that be as embarrassing as all the years she spent mooning over this particular man from a distance. There was a gunman escaping about ten yards away, Logan was around somewhere with the target, and all she could think about was those hard lips so close to her own. She wanted so badly to taste them; she had since she knew what kissing was, but he had made it abundantly clear he considered her too young, and nothing to him but her father’s daughter.

Cleo couldn’t care less if he was 37 to her 21. She needed him to make a move. Had needed him for so long. Having that hard erection and hot skin pressed to her most girly of places was making her yearn to rub all over him like a cat in heat.

Are you going to do something sailor, or keep pretending you don’t want me? she said, her voice breathy beneath the challenge.

He narrowed those heated eyes and growled just a little. Big words for a little girl.

That voice. Smooth, low, and dark, every word out of his mouth was like prolonged foreplay. If he didn’t speak so rarely, she probably would have jumped him as a teenager. She purred without thinking, and he cursed, starting to push himself off. She wrapped her legs around his lean hips, wrapping him up tight. Even with all her weapons in the way, she could feel the size and heat of him through her cargo pants. She might as well be naked. He cursed and she leaned up and nipped his lower lip in retaliation, licking her own to get the small taste of Shawn it afforded her.

Whatever had been holding back the tide broke, because as soon as she licked across her lips he was right there, taking her mouth, every part of it. With tongue and lip and teeth. The taste of him was hot and smooth. His hands fisting in her hair held her in place and made her want to purr again. That quickly, he took everything that she had to give and then demanded more, grinding his hips against her softness with no thought to the hard ground or weapons he bruised them against. He savaged her, and Cleo reveled in it.

Then he was gone, all that heat, and fire, and need ripped away to leave her laying on the hard ground alone, trying to relearn how to breathe.

***

Shawn wretched himself away from Cleo and shifted before the look of all that golden beauty laid out before him like a sultry feast distracted him from what he had to do. He flew off after the fleeing gunman, determined to end him as violently as possible, and get back to Logan. He would do his job and get out, before he did something else as monumentally stupid as kissing Cleo Gibbs had been. Unfortunately, even in shifted form, he could still remember the taste he had discovered. And his hawk liked giving it up even less than he did.

CHAPTER TWO

Landing on the Lionsgate helo pad aboard the Sahara was less of a