Jace: Everglade Brides, #1

Jace

Everglade Brides

Ava Benton

Contents

Everglades Brides: Jace

1. Jace

2. Jace

3. Gemma

4. Jace

5. Gemma

6. Jace

7. Gemma

8. Jace

9. Gemma

10. Gemma

11. Jace

12. Gemma

13. Jace

14. Gemma

15. Jace

Epilogue

Excerpt Levi

Chapter 1

Afterword

Everglades Brides: Jace

A lion shifter.

In a clan of shifters, the lions are considered most powerful and respected. Jace is headstrong, willful, has fun with women but doesn’t see the big rush to find a mate. His father lays it on the line: If he’s to head the clan one day, he needs to find his bride. He resents being told what to do.

A desperate hottie.

Gemma’s got her own set of problems, and saving Jace from a group that collects shifters for sport and research shouldn’t be one of those problems. So what made it her problem?

A mutual problem and raging hormones.

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1

Jace

The thing about being a lion was the constant hunger.

I mean complete, I can’t think of anything else but eating right now hunger. The sort of hunger that doesn’t go away. And that hunger was always tied in with the need to hunt, or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe hunting, stalking, preying was my true nature and hunger came along with that.

No matter the reason, it was a real pain in the ass. Or tail. Har, har. I’ll be here all week, folks.

I shook my head at my own joke as I tread lightly through the swamp. My domain. Other animals might think they were on top, and maybe they were when I wasn’t hunting, but once I stepped foot into the shadows beneath the low-hanging, mossy trees, it was mine. And everybody knew it.

I’d already eaten my fill for the night, even though the sound of smaller, weaker animals scampering off into the darkness stirred my need to chase, trap, kill. I had to control my impulses, as my dad regularly reminded me. So I let it go. I hated when his voice sounded in my head. I heard enough of him when he called me in to talk with him, which was more than I liked. Much more.

I let out a low growl, irritated. The trees seemed to quiver when I did that. Maybe it was just my imagination. That morning’s meeting with Dad still weighed heavy on my mind.

You’ve come of age. Actually, you were of age three years ago but refused to accept the responsibility on your shoulders. Dad had shaken his head at me, looking disappointed as always.

I don’t know what you want from me, I’d argued. It was an old argument. He’d been on my back for years. I can’t just force myself to find a lifelong mate. It’s not the kind of thing I can control. If I haven’t met her, I haven’t met her.

His irritation was obvious. Who’s to say you haven’t met her already? But you’re too busy living life the way you live it to settle down.

And what’s wrong with the way I live my life? I’d asked in a near-growl.

Don’t show me your temper, he’d warned, looking about as pissed as I’d felt. You might be an adult, but I’m still your father and the head of this clan. And you’ll take my place one day, and you need a mate. End of discussion.

End of discussion. It didn’t matter that I was way too young to settle down with just one mate for the rest of my life. What a ridiculous idea, incidentally. The thought that men and women had to pair off for the rest of their lives. And what did that have to do with the sort of leader I would be? It made no difference. None. I had been a leader my entire life. I never needed a woman by my side to convince others to follow me, to listen to my advice.

Besides, if a mate was a requirement for leadership, why wasn’t my father overthrown or forced out of his position when my mother died? I had a sneaking suspicion he just wanted to see me settle down and stop sleeping with anybody who looked good to me. Well, he could keep trying. Good luck to him.

I let out a roar—not the loudest I could get, by any means, but enough to cause even more scampering in the area. I let them go, all of them. I wasn’t hungry anymore—not for food, anyway.

My apartment complex sat just beyond the edge of the swamp. A pretty convenient arrangement, and exactly why my cousins and I had chosen to live there. The three of us took an entire floor, renovating it into three large apartments instead of the dozen that were once there. Sure, we each paid four times the rent we would have, but we wanted the space. We needed it.

I’d left my clothes in a shady spot by the edge of the tree line, and when I shifted back to human form I was quick to pull on the jeans and tee that sat there. How many wardrobes worth of clothes had I gone through in the early days, before I could control my shifting? A man didn’t shift into a lion without shredding his clothes, no matter how big he was. And I was always big—tall, broad, thick-muscled without even trying. It was a characteristic of the shifters. Even so, there was no comparison with the size I got to when I took on my lion form.

The sky was dark. Good. The closer to party time, the better. I needed to get out there and get my dick wet. Dad wanted me to find a mate? Well, I had to keep trying, didn’t I? It was only right.

I snickered as I walked across the parking lot, flip flops slapping against the pavement. I was alone out there, my sense of smell just as strong while in human form as it was in lion form. I didn’t smell any threats.

Even though the human world knew about the presence of shifters and had for the most part accepted us—mostly because they knew it was in their best interest to live side-by-side instead of as enemies—there were still outlying factions who refused to accept our presence.

They weren’t even the biggest threat, since most of them were all talk and no action. They could boast and brag all they wanted about what they’d do if they were in charge—namely, wiping shifters off the map. When faced with one like me, or a bear like my cousin Cord or a tiger like my cousin Levi, they backed off mighty quick. Usually with a big wet spot in the front of their pants.

No, I was more concerned with the Collectors. Even in my head, they got a capital-C in their name. Humans with enough money to pay hunters to gather us for their private collections. What they did with us once we were theirs, I had no idea. Rumors ranged from slavery to keeping us caged like zoo animals. I didn’t have any desire to find out.

Hey, Jace.

I couldn’t help smirking when I ran into Lola as she left for the night. She wore the white button-down and black pants so many servers wore. She waited until she got to work to put on the cheesy vest and tie. Chain restaurant.

Hey, Lola. Looking good tonight.

She rolled her eyes. Yeah, I’m a real sex bomb in this crap uniform.

Underneath it, more like.

Stop it. She pushed me, one hand on my chest. I didn’t move, of course. She was maybe a hundred pounds. Not like she was trying to move me, anyway. She just wanted an excuse to touch me. I could sense things like that. It was sort of uncanny.

I reminded myself of one of my many rules: don’t flirt with girls you already slept with. But I lived in Lola’s building. We ran into each other all the time. And if I didn’t flirt, she’d wonder what was wrong with me. She might think I was mad at her. I didn’t want that. Flirting was my nature—if I stopped, it would be like water not being wet anymore.

And she was on her way out, so I could wave her off and go up to my place without things getting sticky.

I heard music coming from behind Levi’s door, which I passed on the way to my own. He was always listening to his tunes at full-blast. His current obsession was 70s rock. He went through phases like some people went through significant others. He’d be super into it for weeks, even months, then drop it in favor of something else. Swing music, jazz, punk, Motown. They all came and went.

Cord was the quietest of the three of us. I almost never heard anything from his apartment, except when he was pissed. He had a hot temper, so when something or somebody provoked him all bets were off. If he got cut off in the parking lot or somebody pissed him off at the supermarket, he’d slam doors for hours. He’d already replaced the kitchen cabinets twice since moving in two years earlier.

And then there was me. I didn’t have anything about me that set me apart the way those two did—well, maybe the whole my father’s the clan leader thing. That could’ve been my one big trait. And since the Swampwater clan—of which my cousins and I were a part—was the biggest and most respected clan in Florida, I was sort of a big deal. Not like I gave a shit. It was all the same to me.

Though it