Serengeti Sunrise: Serengeti Shifters, Book 4 (3 page)

She tipped her head and the cowboy hat slid back farther. “I get that you aren’t power crazy, but my impression is that pride life was pretty much hell under Leonus. I’m surprised you wouldn’t take him out just to improve living conditions. Seems like that kind of noble shit would be right up your alley.”

He could have explained. He could have told her that he was Alpha of his own pride: Caleb, Kane, Michael and Ava. Protecting his younger siblings had been his top priority since his father left. Being Alpha of Three Rocks would have made him responsible for ten times as many lions. He couldn’t care for that many and still look after his four the way he needed to, so he had ruthlessly suppressed his frustration at the way the pride was run under Leonus. His family came first. Always.

“I never claimed to be noble.”

Zoe hummed her agreement. “Tricky thing, nobility. The more claims you make to it, the less you have.”

“So I must be noble because I told you I’m not?”

She shook her head and the cowboy hat gave up the fight, tumbling down over her shoulder. She caught it one-handed and tucked it into her lap, running her long, slim fingers over the brim. “It doesn’t work in reverse,” she explained. “But if you’d said you were noble, I’d have known you were full of shit. Denial is a good sign.”

He flicked her a glance out of the corner of his eye and had trouble looking away. They were on the ranch drive now, so he didn’t really need to pay much attention to the road, but looking at it was safer than watching her. Zoe King was a hazard to his senses.

Curled in the passenger seat like the cat she was, her green-gold eyes never wavered from him as her fingers stroked patterns in the hat, teasing him with thoughts of those same fingers branding patterns into his skin with a touch.

God, she was gorgeous. Tall and strong like a Viking goddess, with curves just where he wanted them. Her face was so actively expressive it was easy to miss the sheer beauty of it—the high cheekbones and lush, inviting fullness of her mouth. Tyler often found himself captivated by her constantly changing expressions. He could sit and watch her for hours, sucked in by the way each thought and emotion tracked across her face.

He yanked his gaze away and locked it back on the road.

She was quicksand. She’d suck him in and trap him here so he’d never be free. He just needed to keep reminding himself of that.

“Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to be gallant and noble.” Her voice was low and smooth, a purring invitation to sin. “Virtue is so overrated. I like my knights rough with their armor a little tarnished around the edges.”

The scent of her twined around him in the cab, the tang of ginger mixed with something dark and rich. Tyler rolled down the window, taking a deep breath of the dry, dusty air in an attempt to get some more blood flowing to his brain instead of diverting to his crotch.

Her knees inched closer again, brushing against the side of his leg. With every bounce along the rutted dirt drive, she edged toward him. If not for the seat belt keeping her back, she probably would have crawled onto his lap. Tyler’s brain began to melt at the thought of her straddling his lap, her lush curves rising above him.

Zoe’d never made any secret of the fact that she wanted him—she wasn’t exactly the coy type—but he’d ignored every hint and passed up every not-so-subtle invitation. If he acknowledged that she wanted him, if he gave her any clue that it was the thought of her he jacked off to in the shower every night, she would never give up.

And he needed her to give up. He couldn’t take much more temptation from Zoe King.

He didn’t need another rock tying him to the ranch. He’d played Atlas too long to want to shoulder any more responsibilities. And Zoe would be a massive weight on his life if he let her in.

You didn’t jilt the Alpha’s sister. Especially when the Alpha was married to your own sister. If Zoe got her hooks into him, Tyler would stay here, trapped on the ranch. Forever.

Shit, if Zoe got her hooks in him, he might not even mind the life sentence.

“Tyler?” Her voice was a throaty rasp that did nothing for his calm.

He realized his knuckles had gone white from his grip on the steering wheel and forced them to loosen as he drove the truck through the main gates and toward the garage.

The ranch had gone through several incarnations before it had ended up as the headquarters for the largest shape-shifter pride in West Texas. Since its first life as a summer bible camp, it had undergone substantial changes, but the clusters of cabins surrounding the communal dining hall had suited the lions perfectly. Another previous owner had added the requisite outbuildings and fencing to turn it into a cattle ranch—though the Three Rocks pride owned just enough cattle to provide their own game on the traditional semi-annual hunts.

With the addition of their own schoolhouse, medical clinic, his garage and a massive greenhouse, they’d done what they could to become their own community, independent of the outside world. Everyone contributed in the pride. Many of their members had telecommuted or worked in town to bring in additional cash, but most of those with jobs in town had lost them in the last month.

In spite of the unwritten rule that everyone work for the good of the pride, the pace of life was slower here. Like their feline cousins, the lion-shifters were sensualists who valued their indulgences and relaxation with a European appreciation. They felt safe enough to reveal their true natures here—in spite of the concerns about the town.

This afternoon was no exception, perfect for a hammock and a cold beer. Shifters basked in the sun in both lion form and human.

And Tyler didn’t see any of it. Zoe consumed every one of his senses as he threaded the tow truck along the service road that twisted through the maintenance buildings, toward his garage.

The cab had begun to feel like a cage. His lion chafed at the restriction, pressing against the inside of his skin.

God, the scent of her. It was killing him. How could she tease him to a frenzy with just a brush of her leg and the heady intoxication of her scent?

“Are you in heat?” His voice lashed across the cab, whip-crack sharp.

The unmated pride females were tucked away during their heat for a damn good reason. The scent of them made the males crazed with lust. It was chemical, uncontrollable. A biological imperative for a sexual marathon. He was hard to the point of pain, but it wasn’t his fault. She had to be in heat. There was no other explanation.

Zoe made a small choked sound in her throat. It was her uncharacteristic lack of a response that lured his eyes from the road. Her constantly changing expression had stilled, her body tense and motionless. “You can’t tell the difference,” she whispered, almost to herself.

Too late Tyler realized what he’d just disclosed if she
wasn’t
in heat.
Shit
. He’d just admitted she drove him wild. He might as well have told her he wanted to fuck her until she couldn’t stand. Which, God help him, he did.

A year of denying himself. A year of unrelenting sacrifice. A year of keeping his damn hands to himself to convince her he didn’t want her and he’d just ruined it in one fell swoop.

Give her an inch and she’ll take your whole life.
He felt like he was trying to put the sand back into a shattered hourglass—like every grain was a piece of his freedom he’d never get back.

“The way you’re acting. It’s like you’re in heat,” he said in a fast, desperate attempt to repair the damage.

One of Zoe’s brows slid up toward her hairline. “What gave me away? Was it the striptease while you were hooking the car to the tow hitch or my attempts to give you a blowjob while you drove?”

His jean tightened like a vise in Pavlovian response as her lips formed the words
blowjob
and
striptease
. Tyler winced, drowning in lust and a sensation that wasn’t unlike blind panic. His brain was short-circuiting, but he just needed to focus on the task at hand. Turn Zoe over to her brother. End of story.

His judgment was in shreds. He couldn’t be alone with her right now.

And he sure as hell couldn’t tell her he’d gone hard from just the scent of her and her knee bumping his thigh. It had happened only because he’d been living like a goddamn monk for the last few months, and he’d be damned before he defended himself to her. Zoe might be able to talk circles around him, but he could control the silence.

He’d built a stable environment for his siblings growing up, even when things were shitty and chaotic in the pride, and he did it by always keeping a level head. Always rising above attempts to bait him, always pushing down his own desires for the good of his family. Restraint, control, sacrifice. He’d lived those words until they’d become who he was.

What was it about Zoe that threatened all that?

He spun the wheel, pulling the truck around behind his garage and slamming it into park.

“Tyler—”

“The Alpha’s expecting us.” He cut her off, killing the engine and jerking the key free of the ignition. He was out of the car and halfway to the back door of the garage before the truck’s engine stopped wheezing and rattling.

Tyler didn’t wait to see if she was following. He didn’t need to. Zoe wouldn’t give up so easily. She didn’t know how.

Zoe King, gorgeous and unstoppable. His own personal silver bullet.

Chapter Three

Bastard
. Tyler was six feet away, the cab still shuddering from the slam of the door, when all of Zoe’s year-long frustration crashed over her like a wave.

No way. He was
not
walking away from her. Not this time.

Zoe had wanted Tyler from the first second she’d laid eyes on him and when she wanted something, she went after it with everything she had. So there was no reason why she shouldn’t have him by now.

The entire drive back to the ranch she’d been tempted to crawl into his lap. The urge to break through his reserve and stir up the banked heat beneath taunted her. When he’d asked if she was in heat, it had spun her world like a top. It was all the proof she needed. Tyler Minor wanted her. Unequivocal, no two ways about it, sweet, hot
lust
.

And she’d hesitated. For a nanosecond there in the cab, for the first time in her life, nervous uncertainty had spiraled through her chest. And he just left. When the creaking slam of the car door jolted her, the uncertainty flashed into hurt and quickly twisted into its cousin, anger.

This wasn’t over. He didn’t get to just pretend nothing had happened. Not today.

Zoe launched herself out of the truck. “Tyler!” His only response was the clang of the heavy metal door to the garage slamming behind him after he ducked inside. “
Dammit
.” She stalked after him. Cutting through the garage was the fastest way to the main part of the compound, but they weren’t finished here yet and she was going to make sure he knew it.

She ran to the door, jerked it open and surged through, carried on a tide of indignant frustration.

“Tyler!” Her shout echoed in the garage bay along with the ringing clang of the heavy door banging shut behind her. “Stop running and face me, you coward!”

Two yards from the front exit, Tyler’s feet took root on the concrete floor. She could hear a growl rumbling in his chest. His lion must not have liked being called a coward. Well, hers didn’t much like him running away from her.

Her lioness was ready for this fight, had been itching for it for months.

He turned to face her, his eyes narrowed and hands loose around his hips like a gunslinger. As they faced one another across the length of the garage, she felt that high-noon feeling herself. Tension snapped in the air, the unavoidable sense that
something
was coming. Something that had been bearing down on them for a while now.

Love or war. Whichever it was, there wasn’t any middle ground. They’d burned it all away with the friction of the last year.

“Coward?” he asked, his voice a soft, dark rumble.

“You have another word you’d prefer?” She strolled across the concrete floor, adding an extra sway to her hips as she came to stand directly in front of him. “Chicken? Pussy, perhaps?”

“Don’t push me, Zoe.” He rumbled the warning.

“Or what? You gonna show me who’s boss? Or are you just gonna run away like you always do? Like a coward.”

His lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl and he loomed over her. She could practically feel his lion pushing against his skin, burning with the need to prove to her, once and for all, which one of them would end up on top if it ever came down to a battle for dominance. He might play at being civilized, but Tyler wanted to make her submit. She could see it in the luminous feline gold of his eyes.

“Are you going to kiss me or throttle me?” Zoe tipped her chin back, meeting his eyes with a blatant challenge. “Whichever you’re going to do, do it now. Because I’m sick of waiting for you to make up your mind.”

“What makes you think I didn’t make up my mind months ago and you just can’t take a hint?”

“What hint was that? The way you stare at me when you think I’m not looking? How you take the longest possible path between your bungalow and the garage each evening just so you can go past my house? Or maybe the fact that you can’t tell when I’m in heat because you
always
want me?”

He turned away, striding toward the door. “That’s quite a healthy ego you have there.”

“It’s all in my head, is that it?” He put his hand on the door and Zoe felt her composure fracture. “Dammit, Tyler! What the fuck is your deal?” He didn’t turn back to her, but he didn’t open the door either. She shouted at his back. “You want me. I’ve made it embarrassingly obvious I want you too. So what is the big problem?”

“Your brother…”

“I’m twenty-seven years old. I don’t have to ask his permission to fuck whoever the hell I want.”

He turned, leaning his shoulders against the door, one hand still resting on the knob. “He’s the Alpha—”

“So what? This has nothing to do with him. He doesn’t even have to know.”

“He’ll know.”

“Who the fuck cares? Because I’m the Alpha’s sister, I’m not allowed to get any?”