Taming The Lion: BBW Paranormal Lion Shifter Romance (Gray Bears Book 5) by Natalie Kristen

CHAPTER
ONE

    Kaylee Wright stood at the
doorway of her bedroom with a cardboard box in her hands. The box
contained a large coffee mug, two packs of tissues, a pencil case,
some paper clips and a framed photograph of two happy faces.
    The photo was taken not too
long ago. Kaylee glanced down at the photo of her and Beckett, and
felt as though she were staring at a photograph of two strangers. I
look happy in the photo , Kaylee mused dispassionately and
disconnectedly.
    She raised her eyes back up
to the bed. Beckett was going at it like a turbo thruster. The bed
creaked as the headboard hammered the wall in time to the action.
Beckett was grunting and groaning as he nailed the skinny brunette
from behind. The woman was the exact opposite of her. Thin, tanned
and dark-haired. Kaylee was curvy, pale and blond.
    Kaylee couldn't see the
woman's face from under her thick tangle of hair, but from the noise
she was making, she was enjoying what Beckett was doing to her.
Either that or she was really good at faking it.
    Kaylee watched the fucking
couple for another half a minute. Then she simply let the box in her
hands drop to the floor with a deafening crash.
    The noise and movement
stopped immediately. Beckett and the woman froze and twisted towards
the door with identical open-mouthed expressions.
    It was almost comical, if
Kaylee had been in the mood to laugh. But she didn't feel like
laughing. She felt like crying, but now wasn't the time.
    It was the wrong time, wrong
place, and wrong...life.
    “Don't mind me,”
Kaylee said in a numb, nonchalant voice as she went to the side of
the cupboard and pulled out her suitcase. Opening the cupboard, she
began to throw her clothes into the suitcase.
    “K-Kaylee...”
    She didn't even turn around.
She pulled out the drawer and upended it, emptying the contents into
her suitcase. “Please, don't stop on my account,” she
muttered, as she snapped her suitcase shut and turned to glance at
the cardboard box lying on its side at the foot of the bed.
    She had just cleared her
little cubicle out this morning. The company was downsizing and the
data entry clerks were the first to go.
    This was the mother of all
Mondays.
    She had gone to work as
usual this morning, and before noon, she was walking out of the
office with a small cardboard box and her last paycheck. She thought
she would go home, put away her things and go down to Beckett's
office. She would just surprise him and see if he was free to have
lunch with her. He was a financial adviser and he told her that he
had many client meetings and lunches. But she thought maybe, just
maybe, he could spare half an hour to have lunch with her today.
    Kaylee stood and dusted off
her hands. She surprised herself when she managed to smile as she
turned to face the bed.
    Beckett had wrapped the
covers around his waist and was kneeling on the mattress, staring at
her with a mixture of disbelief, shock, shame and outrage.
    Kaylee stared coolly at her
boyfriend. Beckett hadn't even bothered to jump out of bed and come
to her. The woman was huddled at the far corner of the bed, her face
turned away and partially hidden by a pillow. Kaylee didn't bother
with her. She was just a faceless, nameless female, someone her
boyfriend was screwing behind her back. She was probably not the
only one. Maybe this woman was just one of Beckett's many “clients”
who needed “personal financial advice”.
    Kaylee put the house keys on
the bedside table and pulled her suitcase to the door. She stepped
over the spilled contents of the cardboard box and stumbled out of
the bedroom. A spiderweb of cracks appeared on the glass of the
photo frame when her suitcase rolled over it.
    “Kaylee! What the
hell…!”
    She didn't look back. There
was no point in looking back.
    Kaylee thumped her suitcase
down the front steps of Beckett's single-story house and stuffed her
worldly belongings into the backseat of her small, second-hand
Nissan.
    The little car shuddered