The Lion’s Hurricane (Golden Pride #2)

Chapter 1

Jason

Sunday afternoon, and I'm out in the lot washing my bike like I've got nothing better to do.

Which I don't. It's been a slow week—the kind of slow that makes my skin itch and my lion pace restless circles in my chest. The garage only had two jobs come in, both basic maintenance that Vaughn handled in a few hours.

Knox has been holed up in his apartment with Toby for three days straight, only coming down for food and water like some kind of feral honeymoon.

The rest of us have been pretending we can't hear them through the thin walls, which is a losing battle given shifter hearing.

Ezra's been sleeping at the garage most nights just to get some peace.

Silas hasn't complained, but he's been reading with noise-canceling headphones, which says enough.

Vaughn's taken to turning up the jukebox whenever things get particularly loud upstairs, which means we've all heard "Born to Be Wild" about forty times this week.

So here I am, shirtless in the September sun, detailing chrome that's already spotless. Sue me. A guy's allowed to enjoy his own bike.

She's a beauty, too. Harley Sportster S, but I've modified the hell out of her over the past two years.

Bored out the engine to 1250cc for better power-to-weight ratio—took me three weekends and a lot of swearing, but the difference in acceleration was worth every skinned knuckle.

Upgraded suspension because the stock setup couldn't handle the extra power without getting squirrelly on curves.

Hand-tooled the leather seat myself, a flame pattern that took forever to get right.

Aftermarket exhaust that purrs like—well, like a big cat, which always makes the guys laugh.

I'm bent over working on a spot near the exhaust when I hear it.

An engine. Not one of ours.

The sound hits me somewhere primal, makes my spine tingle and my lion's ears prick up.

It's a low, dangerous purr, the kind of engine that costs more than most people's houses.

Controlled power. Restrained violence. The exhaust note is too smooth for a Harley, too aggressive for a standard sport bike. Something exotic. Something expensive.

I straighten up just as the bike pulls into the lot.

Holy fuck.

It's a murdered-out Kawasaki Ninja H2R. Matte black everything, not a single chrome accent, looking like it could eat my Harley for breakfast and not even burp.

The supercharger whine is unmistakable—I've watched enough YouTube videos to recognize that sound.

I've seen pictures of these things. Read the specs obsessively during a late-night Wikipedia spiral.

Never seen one in person because they cost more than I make in two years and they're not even street legal without modifications.

This one's been modified. I can tell from the mirrors, the turn signals, the license plate bracket that shouldn't exist on a track-only machine. Someone spent serious money making this thing rideable on public roads.

But the bike isn't what makes my mouth go dry.

It's the rider.

He swings off the bike like liquid violence, all leashed power and deadly grace. Every movement precise, economical, not a single wasted motion—the kind of body awareness that comes from training or combat or both.

He's got to be six-four at least, built like someone who could break me in half without trying too hard.

Black t-shirt stretched across military-grade muscle—the kind you don't get from a gym membership, the kind that comes from actual use.

Shoulders broad enough to block out the sun.

Arms that strain the fabric of his sleeves.

Dark hair cut short, almost military. Bronze skin—Latino maybe, or Middle Eastern, or some combination that resulted in cheekbones that could cut glass.

Fuck me.

His face matches the rest of him. Sharp jawline shadowed with a day's worth of stubble.

A nose that's been broken at least once and healed slightly crooked, which somehow makes him hotter.

And his eyes—hazel, I think, though it's hard to tell from this distance—immediately scan the lot like he's marking threats and exits.

He moves like a predator. No animal smell, no hint of fur or fang beneath the skin—he's human. But there's something, some barely-contained violence that makes my lion want to either fight or submit, and I'm not sure which would be more embarrassing.

My dick apparently has no survival instinct whatsoever, because I'm instantly half-hard.

Great. Just great. Standing in a parking lot with a wet chamois in my hand, no shirt, and a growing erection because some stranger on an expensive bike looked vaguely threatening. This is exactly the kind of decision-making that Robin keeps warning me about.

He doesn't look at me. Walks straight to the Audi parked near the entrance—the one Robin drives, an A4 that's way nicer than anything Robin could afford on a catering salary—and circles it slowly.

His fingers trail along the panels like he's checking for damage, intimate and proprietary, the way I touch my own bike when I'm looking for imperfections.

He stops at the driver's side door, frowns at something, crouches down to look closer. His t-shirt rides up as he bends, revealing a strip of tan skin above his waistband.

I am absolutely not staring at a stranger's lower back. I am checking on my pride's territory. That's all.

"Nice bike," he says without glancing up.

His voice. Jesus Christ, his voice is gravel and whiskey, low and rough and doing absolutely nothing to help my situation. The kind of voice that would sound good saying anything—reading a grocery list, giving directions, telling me exactly what he wants to do to me—

Nope. Not going there. Not with a stranger who's currently examining someone else's car with an intensity that borders on obsessive.

"Thanks." I manage not to squeak. Barely. "Custom build. Did most of the work myself."

Now he looks at me. Those hazel eyes do a quick sweep—professional, thorough, sizing me up the same way he sized up the parking lot. His gaze catches on my bare chest, drops lower to my abs, lower still to where my jeans hang low on my hips, comes back up. The whole thing takes maybe two seconds.

I feel like I've been stripped naked and evaluated. Measured against some internal standard and found... something. I can't tell if I passed or failed.

Then he smirks.

"Cute."

And walks toward the bar like he owns it.

Cute. He thinks my bike is cute. Two years of custom work, hand-tooled leather, a bored-out engine that I did myself in this very garage with Vaughn swearing at me every time I dropped a bolt, and some asshole with a quarter-million-dollar machine calls it cute.

Dismissive. Condescending. Like I'm a kid with a tricycle who doesn't know real machinery when I see it.

I should be pissed. I am pissed. But I'm also watching him walk away, watching the way his shoulders move under that tight black shirt, watching his ass in those tactical pants that cling to thighs thick as tree trunks, and my lion is making sounds that have nothing to do with anger.

He doesn't knock. Just pushes through the front door like he has every right to be here, like he's walked through that door a hundred times before.

I follow, because apparently I'm a masochist with no self-preservation instincts.

Inside, the bar is quiet for a Sunday afternoon.

The usual smell hits me—beer and leather and the faint undertone of motor oil that never quite washes out of anything around here.

Robin's on one of the couches scrolling through his phone, still in the catering blacks he wore to last night's gig.

There's a stain on his sleeve that looks like balsamic reduction, which means the event didn't go as smoothly as he'd hoped.

Vaughn's behind the bar doing a crossword, reading glasses perched on his nose in a way he'd kill me for mentioning.

Ezra's in the back doing inventory, his voice occasionally drifting out as he counts bottles.

Silas is in his usual corner with a book—something thick with a dragon on the cover—barely visible in the dim light, exactly how he likes it.

Robin looks up when the door opens.

And goes completely still.

I've never seen Robin freeze like that. He's always in motion—talking, gesturing, bouncing from one thing to another like a hummingbird on espresso. But right now he's not moving at all. Not even breathing, as far as I can tell.

Shock. Disbelief. Hope. And then his expression breaks open into pure, radiant joy. His phone slips from his fingers and lands on the couch cushion, forgotten. His mouth opens, closes, opens again.

Then his expression breaks open into pure, radiant joy.

"ASH!"

Robin launches himself off the couch so fast he nearly trips over the coffee table. His knee catches the edge and he stumbles, but he doesn't slow down, doesn't stop—just crosses the room in three steps and throws himself at the stranger with the full force of his body.

The guy—Ash—catches him easily. No hesitation, no stumble backward, just arms coming up and wrapping around Robin like they've done this a thousand times before.

He lifts Robin right off his feet, holding him close, and Robin's arms are locked around his neck, face buried in his shoulder, holding on like he's afraid to let go.

"Missed you," Ash says, and his voice has gone soft in a way I wouldn't have thought possible from the man who called my bike cute thirty seconds ago. "Five years is too long."

"Whose fault is that?" Robin's voice is muffled against his shoulder, thick with something that might be tears. "You could have come home sooner."

"I'm here now. Retired. For good."

My stomach drops.