Page 7 of Mafia Lion's Plus Size Obsession

I get to a point where I can see the boar. I’m amazed I’ve managed to get this close. I crouch and slide closer on my belly. The boar’s head comes up and he sniffs the air and grunts. His tail switches. I freeze. Seconds go by and neither of us moves.

And then I pounce.

My leap covers the distance between us easily, but this boar was already on the alert and it bolts to the side just in time to avoid my claws. I turn rapidly and start after him. He’s not far enough to make me expend much effort. He’s mine, if I want him.

I speed up a little and the distance closes. He decides to turn and fight. He's small in comparison to me, but he’s wily and he’s a fighter. He snorts and I can tell he’s actually going to run at me. The insanity of it makes me leap aside when he gets to me. I suddenly am not interested in taking his life. He’s brave and deserves to live.

I trot off into the forest, lengthening the distance between me and the boar very quickly. My heart races with the unspent adrenaline. I feel very alive and everything, every sense, is heightened. Isabella pops into my mind and I feel a thrill excite me. I run faster through a clearing and dive into the trees again.

It is strange still for us Leonis to be running through forest. America was not our first home. We originated from Africa, but around 1779, my ancestors decided to migrate to Italy. About a hundred years after that, along with so many others, another ancestor, my great-great grandfather, Agosto Leoni, came over to America with his wife and their three cubs…kids.

He was a bookkeeper in Italy, with a small shop of odds and ends on the side. His ability to understand numbers is what first gained the attention of his mafioso neighbor. That guy brought him to the boss at the time and, well, the rest is history.

Agosto was the first Leoni to work for the mob. He worked his way up and brought more lion shifters over, eventually, to form his own crime family. When I say he was wily, I mean it. He managed to outsmart quite a few tough guys. He knew numbers well enough and accounting, he could hide money he was skimming from the top. Not a great role model, but I understand why he did it.

Now, though, there isn’t the need for all of that illegal bullshit to continue. It’s a business that I want to end with me. I have no intention of entering into the illegal side of things, but my father is making that difficult.He wants me to take over whether or not the legitimization is complete.

And then there’s Isabella.

Her family have been involved with the business almost as long as my family. It would be just as hard for her to cut ties with it, but I remember how she seemed so certain that she wanted to leave it all behind. That is what helps me to believe she could be the one to help me legitimize things. She is the mate I’m looking for, the one who would understand. I sensed it the moment I saw her again.

I stop where I am and let the forest envelop me. Sounds and smells shift like the light, and I try to sink into my lion senses and forget, for just a moment, that I’m even a man. I have thestrongest urge to roar and let all my frustration pour out of me, but it would be heard for miles. It doesn’t sound like the lion at the start of movies. That’s a tiger.

As I head back, though, I realize I feel better. A shifter always feels more clarity after going wild. It’s especially needed in the times we’re living in. Free space to roam in is becoming in short supply. Thankfully, this land was available.

I make it back to the house, shifting back before I leave the cover of the woods. I slip on the stash of clothing I keep by the garden wall for these occasions, just a shirt and a pair of sweatpants. I get back into the house and I have the strongest urge to call Isabella to come out and meet me here.

I pick up my phone and stare at it like an idiot, and then I put it down.

All of this would be a little much for her to handle, I think. I know because it’s almost too much for me.

Chapter Five

Isabella

I open the door and he stands there in all his perfect glory. “Come with me,” he says.

It’s like a command.

I mean, it’s like he tells me to do it without even the slightest idea that I might ask anything or that I might refuse.

Of course, it only occurs to me to think about how he asked (well, told) me once he’s already opening his car door and I’m sitting in the passenger seat. He closes the door and goes to the passenger side. I still don’t say anything. When he pulls out of the driveway, though, I finally ask, “Where are we going?”

“To my place.”

“Dinner?” I ask.

“No. We can order something if you want or pick something up on the way but the whole point is that I don’t want anyone to interrupt us.”

I breathe out a sigh, and even though it’s a damned foolish thing to do, I unbuckle my seatbelt and lean over onto his lap. I’ve never done road head before. I have to be honest and tellyou that I never expected to do it in my whole life. But now, well, everything about now already defies expectations.

“Izzy?”

“Shh,” I say as I get his belt undone. “Me too. I don’t want to be interrupted, and I know as long as you’re driving nobody is going to open the door.” If he has anything else to say about it, he’s silent. I get his slacks unbuttoned and unzipped, and there it is right in front of me.

Holy crap, he’s big!

He’s really big.

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