Claiming Her (Keeping Her Series) by Kelly Lucille Read Free Book Online

start with
something easy,” he said.  “Why did you refuse the job offer at Deckland?”
    She snorted and leaned
back in her own chair, her arms crossing.  “Maybe because you arranged for me
to have it.”
    “So it was just pure
stubbornness on your part?”
    “Of course not,” she
scoffed, throwing up her hands again.  “Lucas you fired me for no reason and
with no notice.  I was not about to take a job where you had the power to do
the same thing on a whim, and for no good reason.”
    “I wouldn’t . . .”
    “You already did,”
Miley interrupted him before he could deny it.  “I was damn good at my job and
you fired me anyway.  If you could arrange for me to have a job at Deckland,
then you had the wherewithal to get me fired just as fast.  I was not going to
be in the same situation again.  So I took the large guilt compensation
package you awarded me and moved on.”
    She could see he was
grinding his teeth from the way that razor sharp jaw tightened and released. 
It made her want to lick it so she focused back on her French toast and started
eating again.
    “And then?” he asked
quietly.
    She chewed again,
swallowed, and since it tasted like ash on her tongue, she gave up on breakfast
and sighed, dropping her fork.  “Then I went to work for a friend of my
grandfather.  They gave me the job even though I was not considered pack, and
through the Minos pack I made the acquaintance of a visiting alpha.  He asked
me out and I said ‘yes’.”
    She felt the air around
her shift and really did not want to look up to see what mood he was fighting
that had a chill factor of -5 Fahrenheit.  “You said ‘yes’?”  His voice was low
and gruff, as if he was trying to speak through gravel.
    Miley finally couldn’t
take the suspense so she looked into his cold, cold cat eyes.  Not happy at
all, she thought, feeling adrenaline kick in just from meeting those pissed eyes.  “Is there some reason I should not have said ‘yes’?” she asked quietly. 
“Was I supposed to give up men just because the great Lucas Gibbs didn’t want
me?”
    “I wanted you,” he said
just as quietly, his eyes starting to glow golden with the change.  “I always
wanted you.”
    “You have a funny way
of showing it.”
    Miley watched him get
control of his inner beast, and it was a struggle, that much was obvious.  She
sat quietly while he did it, and wondered at her own perverted leanings.  She
should be scared of the dangerous predator that sat across from, her ready to
pounce; instead she was holding herself back, imagining diving across the small
table and biting him right where his shirt showed that ripped chest.
    “Tell me the rest,” he
finally spit out.  “What else?”
    His eyes were still cat;
his neck muscles still bulged with the strain of holding back his control so
she licked her lips and leaned back carefully.  “Maybe we should get into the
rest later.”
    “The rest, Miley,” he
growled and she took a deep breath and spoke, watching him like the dangerous
jungle cat that he was.
    “We dated, and it got
serious.  He was handsome and said all the right things.”  She bit her lip
looking down at her hands that twisted together in her lap.  “I wanted to
belong somewhere.  I almost had that at Lionsgate, but it was an illusion.”
    How did she explain to
this powerful man what it was like to grow up with a pack, but not a part of
it?  To finally find a place she felt she belonged and have that taken away?  To
know that all the work she did, all the friends she made and the time she spent
with Lucas had all been a fleeting fantasy?  She had been devastated by that.  “I
was in a bad place, and then . . . well, he played me, and I thought I had found
the real thing.  That I finally belonged to someone.  We talked about mating,
but I wasn’t ready.  We slept together.  He forced a mating against my expressed
wishes.”  She really did not want to look up but felt compelled