Lowlander Silverback (Gorilla Shifter Royalty 1) by T. S. Joyce Page A

rearview mirror. “It’s now or never, woman. My detail will be circling back any minute.”
    Layla squeaked and high-kneed it around to the passenger side. When she shut the door behind her, Kong eased through the rest of the narrow alley and asked her, “Where to?”
    “Tender Care. It’s off Eckle.”
    He tossed her satchel a glance and asked, “What’s that?”
    Biting her lip to stifle the butterflies flapping around in her middle, Layla pulled out a thick book. “It’s a romance set on a pirate ship between a captain and a woman his crew kidnapped. Mac likes stories with adventure, but with romance too. They remind him of his wife. She used to read these kinds of books all the time.”
    Kong took it from her hand and studied the cover with a faint and curious smile before he handed it back to her and turned left. “You’re up early.”
    “I’m a morning person. I didn’t used to be, but Mac always made mornings before school fun, and I kind of like starting my day early. Lots to do before my shift at the bar tonight.”
    “You’re working tonight?”
    “I have a feeling you know my schedule.”
    Kong smiled again, just a ghost of one, there and gone. He didn’t respond, though, which was answer enough. He’d been watching her as she’d been watching him.
    “Sooo, ditching the detail to rub elbows with the human riffraff, are we? You’re so bad.”
    Kong chuckled and surprised her to her bones when he reached over and rested his oversize hand on her thigh. His knuckles were swollen and cut. From the fight last night? She was wearing jeans with holes in them, and he worked a frayed part just above her knee with his finger, brushing her skin and making her stomach turn molten. “I wanted to say I’m sorry for leaving like that last night.”
    “You freaked out.”
    “I didn’t freak out.”
    She gave him a pointed look, and he caved. “I freaked out. Look, I signed this contract. It’s why Rhett and Kirk are here. Their entire job is to follow me around and make sure I don’t break the contract.”
    “What aren’t you allowed to do?” she asked, hugging the crinkling bag of Mac’s breakfast tighter to her stomach.
    “Have sex. Really, I’m not allowed to do anything intimate with a women. They call it tainting the seed.”
    She inhaled deeply. “Wow.”
    “Yeah, pretty crazy.”
    “Why did you sign it?”
    “Didn’t have a choice. My mom knew what my birthmark meant the minute I was born, but she ran away from her family group. She was different. She felt things differently, wanted different things than the family group provided for her.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like love. She wanted a single mate. The group let her go because they thought she was a bad gorilla who would infect the others with her weakness. She didn’t want me to be the Kong. She wanted me to have a choice, so she raised me outside of our people. I went to school with humans as soon as I could control my shifts, and anytime she felt other gorillas got too close, we packed up and moved.”
    “How did they catch you?”
    “The nurse who delivered me had given me up when my mom had taken me from her family group. She told Fiona about my birthmark, and they let my mom think she was hiding me well enough all those years. Fiona tracked me down as soon as I hit breeding age though. I was twenty-three when she sicced a couple of mature silverbacks on me and hurt me until I signed it.”
    “How long did it take?”
    “Layla,” he warned.
    “I want to know it all, Kong.”
    “Three weeks. I was ready to die before I signed my life away like that, but they brought my mom in. They threatened her, and I was too weak by that point to put up enough of a fight to help her. I signed it to save her life.”
    “At the expense of your own,” she murmured, feeling nauseous.
    “At the expense of my own,” he repeated in agreement.
    “What happened to your mom?”
    “Fiona put her back in the family group she ran from. She