Free The Lion Kings (novel): a BBW Werelion Menage Romance by Renee George

ran.

 
 
 
 
 
8

    THE pleasure Maddie felt in Cage’s arms was no match for the pain of his departure. Her lips swelled from his bruising kiss, and her cheeks burned from the friction of his beard. She touched her fingers to her mouth, trying to remember every detail. He had wanted her. Maddie had felt it in his kiss. Cage could make a thousand denials. He could scream from the top of the big top how much he didn’t want Maddie, but the proof of desire had been prominently evident.
    Okay. She had followed him. The harder Cage pushed her away, the more she wanted to be near him. Tracking him from the midway hadn’t been easy. Maddie had been so pleased with herself when she caught up to him. When he’d taken the little girl into his arms, a swell of emotion akin to pride and love washed over her. Cage had looked so natural with the child. After the initial feelings, though, a different emotion crested... jealousy. Was the child Cage’s? Was the mother his as well?
    The smile on his face when he’d walked with her into the tent, had something deep inside Maddie demanding the same attention. To her shame, she’d walked around the outside of the tent until she found—or so she thought—the perfect place to hide.
    Maddie observed the woman in the pale dress walk through the steps of a dance routine with a mechanical precision. She was blonde, her glossy locks falling over her slender shoulders. Her dress accented every curve of her figure, and her midnight blue eyes shined like two polished obsidian stones in the low torchlight. Her easy glide across the stage hypnotized. And the familiar way in which Cage had talked and teased with the woman—Adelaide, he called her—made Maddie’s teeth grind.
    She’d been upset enough that when the little girl jumped in her mother’s arms, it looked like she’d changed into an animal. Of course, that couldn’t have been what happened. Maddie had never had her dreams interfere with her waking life, but she suspected they were having a larger effect on her than she’d ever experienced before.
    Then Cage had caught her in the narrow space between the tent and trailer.
    A sharp barking sob tore from Maddie’s lips. She pressed her hand over her mouth, not willing to give her shame more voice. With as much courage as she could muster, Maddie drew herself up from the ground, and dusted the dirt from her dress while helpless anger forced tears to her eyes.
    Cage’s passionate rages were almost as bad as Adam’s cold control. Both men wanted her, she could feel it to the depths of her soul, but neither of them seemed willing to risk their hearts. Maybe she should leave. Go back home. The feelings she had for Adam and Cage threatened to overwhelm her. She feared if she stayed longer, the fire she carried for them both would burn her to ashes.
    She hadn’t thought about her car or her clothes or anything since she’d arrived a week earlier. Would they still be at the motel? She’d hidden money in the door panel of the Woody—what little she had left. Would it still be there? If not, she might not be able to leave if she wanted. If her car was gone, she could get a job in the nearby town as a waitress or something until she could make enough to get her a bus ticket. What she really wanted was to call her mom. Adam kept throwing up walls, and Cage kept pushing her away. She needed to talk to someone who wouldn’t do either.
    “You all right?” a soft, feminine voice asked.
    Maddie jerked her head. It was the woman from the tent, Adelaide. “What?”
    “Are you all right?” she asked more slowly, and let her poignant gaze travel from Maddie’s head to her toes.
    Maddie flushed. She imagined she looked disheveled mess. Her cheeks flamed. Had this woman observed her and Cage? He she watched Maddie’s self-abasement in his arms? Her willingness to give everything over to man who loathed her? Had this woman then witnessed her humiliation?
    Maddie couldn’t meet the