Serengeti Storm (3 page)

Brenna Delray’s bungalow stood on the outermost edges of the residential compound, secluded and dark. There were no lights on inside, but Shana knew better than to think that had anything to do with whether anyone was home.

She knocked on the door sharply. A small, cowardly part of herself she hated to admit even existed hoped Brenna wouldn’t be awake. Or had already passed out for the day, even though it was only mid-morning. Anything to keep her from having to walk through that door.

“Shana, honey? Is that you?” A thin, reedy voice floated through the door.

Shana closed her eyes for a second, slumping in on herself. She only allowed herself a heartbeat. Goddesses don’t wallow. Then she snapped her spine straight and pushed open the door. “Hello, Mother.”

All the shades were drawn, but Shana saw her mother clearly enough in the dim light.

Brenna never left the house, unless alcohol was being served in the dining hall. She hid behind her former position, using it as an excuse to ignore the unwritten rule that everyone contributed in the pride. The pride had its own doctor, carpenter, schoolteacher and mechanic, making it as self-sufficient as possible. Those who chose to worked in the nearby town or found opportunities to work online, like Shana did, to bring money into the pride. They weren’t work-obsessed—Shana had never met a lion who defined himself by his day job or cared more about fancy cars than his afternoon siesta—but everyone pitched in.

Except Brenna.

She sat in a threadbare armchair, curled in a ratty knit shawl, with both hands curled protectively around a tumbler glass filled with amber liquid.

If it’s Tuesday, it must be Scotch.

The air was musty and thick in Brenna’s bungalow, or Shana’s lungs were closing off, she never could quite determine which. She shoved a stack of Star magazines off a chair and perched on the edge. She was always on edge here. Her mother might be cheerfully buzzed now, sweet and docile as a lamb, but Shana knew better than to get comfortable. She knew what was coming at the bottom of bottle number two.

“How’ve you been, Mother?”

“Me?” Brenna batted her hand at Shana playfully. “Oh, you know me. Same old, same old. Did you hear about Brad and Jen? Breaking up like that? Isn’t that sad?”

“That was years ago, Mom.”

Brenna didn’t respond to Shana’s words. She just sipped her Scotch and sighed, shaking her head wistfully. “She was such a nice girl, that Jen. Not like that hussy, Angelina.”

Shana braced herself for the inevitable comparison. She must’ve heard a thousand over the years. “No one respects a trollop, no matter how many African babies she adopts.” “You know better than anyone how a slut like that thinks.” “A skank is as a skank does, wouldn’t you agree, Shana?”

But Brenna wasn’t quite that drunk yet. Still in her friendly first bottle of the day. Instead of the biting words Shana was braced for, she just shook her head and gave a misty smile. “So sad.”

“Yeah. Sad.” Shana said nothing more. Words weren’t power with her mother. They always seemed to become weapons that would boomerang back to her, slicing her open. So she said as little as possible as her mother finished her drink and poured herself another with hands that were surprisingly steady.

“You went away, Shana-bay,” her mother cooed. “You left me.”

Shana swallowed back the guilt that rose like bile, involuntary and unwelcome. “I thought you’d understand why. You were always talking about the proud tradition of the lions. You said without tradition we were nothing. That we had to honor Leonus as the Alpha, even though he killed…” She paused and cleared her throat. She knew better than to say her father’s name. She’d already said too many words. Too many weapons getting ready to spiral back on her. “I thought you’d hate the direction the new Alpha is taking the pride.”

“Of course I hate it,” Brenna said with a vacant smile. “That’s why you needed to stay. A strong mate can turn the Alpha’s head whichever way it needs to go. Why, when your father was Alpha, I don’t think he ever made a single decision without consulting me first.”

Except the decision to accept a younger, stronger lion’s challenge and get himself killed. He did that all on his own. And then the pride belonged to that bastard Leonus. The words itched to jump out of Shana’s mouth, but she kept them tight to her chest.

Now was not the time to speak out. Her mother’s nostalgic drunkenness came right after friendly drunkenness. And right before the worst part. At the rate her mother’s glass was emptying and refilling, the worst part wasn’t far away.

“You have the blood of kings in your veins, Shana,” her mother mumbled dreamily, downing the Scotch like it was apple juice. “You were born to be the Alpha’s mate.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“You’re the strongest, Shana-bay. No one can take anything from you that you don’t let them take. That’s the beauty of the pride.”

Shana studied the worn shag rug to keep from responding.

Strength was the curse of the pride. Nothing was sure unless you were the strongest. And not even then. Her mother had been the strongest and look what had become of her. She’d won the Alpha as her mate and fought hard to keep him, but it hadn’t lasted. Nothing did.

Lions rarely mated for life. The strong fought for the right to the best mates. In the pride, mating wasn’t just about procreation. It was about politics and dominance. Brenna’s position hadn’t been based on the Alpha’s love or devotion, but on her ability to dominate the other females.

In her prime, Brenna had proven over and over again that she deserved to be queen. She’d ruled. And she had wanted nothing less for her daughter. Glory. Power.

Choosing a mate wasn’t about love. It wasn’t marriage. It was survival of the species. The pride’s version of a divorce was more often than not a brutal brawl that left the unworthy without mating rights. The birth control shots the pride doctor provided could be a punishment for the weak just as easily as they could be prevention for lionesses like Shana.

For the first time in years, Shana found herself wondering whether her parents had loved one another. She could barely remember them together. And from the way Brenna spoke of the old days, love didn’t matter. Tradition mattered.

The same tradition that demanded Shana honor the man who had killed her father to become the new Alpha.

She’d been spoon-fed tradition from the cradle, but it seemed only recently she’d begun to hate the word.

“Why would you leave, Shana? Why would you walk away from the pride?” Brenna’s eyes locked on hers, the sudden eerie clarity in them warning Shana to brace herself. “How dare you run away?” The words lashed out like a whip, cracking in the air. “This is a proud family. We rule this pride. We. Do. Not. Run. How could you sully your father’s name that way?”

Shana locked down, pulling tight into herself. As a teenager, sometimes she would shout back. Scream that her mother had destroyed their father’s legacy more surely than she ever could, but the shouting only seemed to make Brenna’s rages that much worse.

She’d been young when Leonus killed her father and assumed control of the pride. Only seven. She barely remembered the proud legacy her mother had dangled over her head for decades. She barely remembered a mother who hadn’t crawled into a bottle each morning.

The drinking hadn’t been so bad at first. “Just something to take the edge off, Shana-bay.” But during Shana’s teen years, Brenna had fallen to the bottom of a well of booze and never found her way out again.

“Are you listening to me, Shana? Listen to me!”

The scream was close to her ear. Brenna had launched herself out of the armchair and stood, weaving, beside Shana’s chair.

“I’m listening, Mother.”

She always listened. The words pounded like spikes into her brain, bloodily embedded there forever, but she’d never been able to stop listening. No matter how hard she tried.

“You are the Alpha’s rightful mate. You are the queen of this pride. You should be ruling and what do you do? You run away!”

“I know, Mama. I’m sorry.”

“Apologies are for the weak! Lionesses do not apologize. Queens do not apologize. But you aren’t a queen, are you? You’re nothing more than a coward and a slut.”

Shana flinched. That word again, slashing at her viciously.

“Oh? It bothers you to be told the truth of what you are? Slut. Did you think I didn’t know you lifted your tail for every lion in the goddamn pride and half the nomads to pass through?”

No. She’d never thought her mother didn’t know. They’d had this conversation a thousand times, but she didn’t expect her mother’s alcohol-sodden brain to remember that. Any more than she expected her to remember that it was Brenna herself who had urged Shana to go after most of those men. “That one looks strong, Shana. He’ll be a good Alpha. He could challenge Leonus. He just needs a little push. The right kind of push.”

“Did it make you happy to shame your father and me with your promiscuity?”

A sarcastic smile curved Shana’s mouth. “Cats are promiscuous, Mother.”

Brenna’s hand snaked out, slapping her hard across the cheek. Her head turned with the blow.

Shana pulled deeper into herself, feeling the ties to her childhood mother, that sober memory from her early years, snapping painfully tight around her. Her mother had never hit her before. She loved her. That was why she pushed so hard.

“Queens are not promiscuous, Shana. Queens are virginal and pure.”

Queens were sluts who knew better than to get caught or had the power to behead the ones who spoke against them, but Shana kept her lips closed tight over that thought. She’d learned her lesson about disagreeing.

“Are you a queen, Shana?” Brenna hissed. “Because all I see is a pathetic little slut who couldn’t get a single lion to fight for her. Did they all see what I see? Did all those men you screwed, hoping to screw them right into the Alpha position, did they all see how pathetic you are? Did they all see a little slut who wasn’t worth fighting for? They did, didn’t they?”

Enough. Shana launched herself off the edge of the chair—don’t get too comfortable, Shay—and shoved past her mother.

“You made me spill!” Brenna wailed. “Shana, get back here!”

Shana blocked out the words, wishing she could wipe her memory of every word her mother had ever said to her. She ran blindly out of Brenna’s bungalow, down the muddy path, away from the rest of the residential compound. She ran until her legs ached and the icy air burned in her lungs. And then she kept running.

Her confrontations with her mother had been bad before, but this had been worse. So much worse. Evidently, Brenna had been saving up her acid for all the months Shana had been gone, building up her vitriol into a seething mass. Shana was a disappointment, Shana was a whore—she’d heard it all before, but this time had been so much worse. No dancing around the subject, just a swift verbal knife to the stomach and a vicious twist.

Why did it still hurt? Why hadn’t she learned not to hurt like she had with all the other things that used to pain her? Why couldn’t she be immune?

Only her mother and Caleb had ever been able to make her burn like this, acid eating at her from the inside out. But with Caleb, at least it was fair. At least she knew she could hurt him back.

Shana spun, breathing hard and running harder. But now, instead of away, she was running toward something. Someone.

She felt wild and unpredictable, a loose electrical cable whipping in the wind, ready to electrocute anyone who stumbled too close. If she couldn’t contain it, at least she could control who she zapped.

He was strong. He could take it.

He was the only one who’d ever been strong enough to take her.

Caleb shucked off sweaty clothes and stepped into the shower. Maybe the heat of the water could burn away the lingering scent of Shana in his nostrils. Nothing else seemed to.

He’d woken that morning on Shana’s deck with dried blood matted into his fur, but the cuts she’d given him had already closed up. He’d run back to his own place to shift back to human form and grab a change of clothes, not bothering to do more than wash the blood off.

As strong as the urge had been to return to Shana and force her to be good—whatever that meant for someone like her—Caleb busied himself instead with towing the broken-down jeep off the ranch road. When he’d checked back on her at mid-morning, she’d taken off. He could tell the bungalow was empty by the lack of her scent alone.

He’d dumped the contents of the jeep into her room, marveling at how much crap the woman traveled with. When he was done, she still hadn’t returned, so he found Michael, the youngest and most impulsive of his brothers, who was always up for a sparring match.

Caleb turned, letting the hard, hot spray of the water pound into the sore muscles of his shoulder. Michael was actually growing up enough to make besting him more of a challenge than it used to be. The cub had managed to get in a few good licks.

But even worn out and sweaty from wrestling with his brother, Caleb’s mind was saturated with Shana. And he was half-hard from thinking of her. And smelling her goddamn stuff as he put it inside her room.

Caleb considered taking his cock in his fist and getting what satisfaction he could, but he didn’t have any illusions that it would ease the bite of his lust for her. Lions were capable of sexual marathons that could last for days. His body had been designed by nature to take her over and over again. He wouldn’t find relief so easily.

Shutting off the water, he stepped out of the shower and quickly toweled himself dry. He whipped on a pair of jeans, leaving them half buttoned, and stalked barefoot out of the bathroom.

Landon had asked him to keep her out of trouble. Caleb snorted as he crossed the room and yanked open a drawer. He’d have as much luck domesticating a rabid tabby.

Landon couldn’t know about their history. Caleb wasn’t sure even Ava knew how much Shana had once meant to him. There weren’t very many members of the pride who remembered the way Caleb used to pant after Shana. Before she ripped out his heart and cut off his balls.

She’d been different then. Before she started sleeping with everyone and anyone who had a shot at the Alpha. Still crazy as a wildcat, but she’d laughed back then. Really laughed. Without the bitterness and ice that always tainted her voice now.

And he’d laughed too. God, he’d been gone for her. All she’d had to do was crook her little finger at him and he’d come running. But she hadn’t been a tease. Not Shana. She’d delivered on every fantasy his teenage mind could conjure and some he hadn’t even thought of yet.

He would have done anything for her. He would have died for her.

And nearly did. He’d nearly challenged Leonus. Nearly gotten his fool ass killed in his attempt to make Shana the Alpha’s mate she always talked about being. If Tyler hadn’t stopped him, Leonus would have easily defeated him and strung his internal organs up like party decorations. He’d been too young and too green for there to have been any other outcome.

But Shana hadn’t seen it that way. All she had heard was him saying no to her. And so she’d run straight from his bed into the bed of a man who wouldn’t say no. A series of beds, a series of men. Always trying to fuck her way to the top, but always picking the wrong pony. She’d gotten her lovers run off, maimed, and even killed in their attempts to please her.

Caleb was lucky he’d escaped with no visible scars. He’d just had to watch.

Over a decade of Shana screwing everyone in her path who might have a prayer of challenging Leonus. And then Landon had arrived. He’d arrived, challenged for, and won control of Three Rocks—doing what none of Shana’s fucktoys had been able to do.

And she hadn’t been able to get into his bed fast enough.

Landon hadn’t been monogamous—or even picky—before he met Ava. Caleb knew he’d slept with Shana, and half a dozen other lionesses, before he claimed Ava as his mate.

But somehow, even knowing Shana was as dirty and used as used goods could get, Caleb couldn’t make himself stop wanting her. Remembering her low laugh and the stroke of her body against his. The memories were burned into his brain like a brand.

The creaky second step to his porch complained loudly and Caleb’s attention snapped toward the door. That familiar scent hit his brain, clouding it with want.

She didn’t bother knocking.

Shana was the star attraction in so many of his fantasies, Caleb wondered if his imagination was playing games with him when she closed the door behind her and leaned against it with that familiar, hungry look in her eyes. Her gaze raked his bare chest and she licked her lips.

“Hello, Caleb.” Her voice was raw sex, breathless and rough.

She was panting for breath and a sheen of sweat coated her skin, in spite of the cold of the morning. She’d tried to outrun herself, but she never could. He recognized the signs. And the wildness in her eyes.

“How’s your mother?” he asked, knowing the words would be a slap in the face, but wanting her out and gone before his animal took over and he pinned her to the door and fucked her senseless.

Her eyes flashed as she pushed away from the door, stalking toward him. “Fuck you, too, sugarbear.”

“No thanks,” he growled, circling away from her. “I’ve lived this long without herpes and I’d just as soon keep it that way.” Shifters couldn’t transmit human diseases, but he needed to piss her off, get her the fuck out of his house.

“Ha-ha, look who’s funny.” Her fingers closed around the hem of her tank top and yanked it off over her head. The black bra contrasted against the pale silk of her skin, drawing his eyes. Her breasts rose and fell in their black-lace prison with the rapid tempo of her breath.

“What—” He didn’t know what he was going to ask. What was she doing? What did she want? He already knew the answer to both questions. He’d known since she walked in the door and he recognized the wildness in her eyes. Just as he’d known he wasn’t going to fight her, didn’t have a prayer of resisting.

He wanted her just as badly as she wanted him. More.

Moving inhumanly fast, she closed the distance between them and cut off the question with her mouth, slamming it hard against his, her fingers grabbing fistfuls of his hair to hold him tight. Her body pressed fully against him and Caleb lost himself inside the warm, sucking, eager heat of her mouth. The drugging suction of it as she worked her tongue against his, feeding the flame that never died between them into a flash fire of lust.

She released her vise-grip on his hair and went to work on the fastenings of his jeans. In her eagerness, her claws flexed in and out. When one vicious tip nicked the skin of his abdomen, the small, surprising flicker of pain brought him a brief moment of clarity.

He shoved her away so suddenly she stumbled backward until she hit the bed, falling back into the unmade mess of sheets.

“If you wanted me in bed, Cale, all you had to do was ask.” She gave a low laugh, her hands already unfastening the clasp on her bra and tossing it aside.

She quickly unzipped her jeans and began wriggling the tight denim over the smooth expanse of her hips. Caleb stepped forward and grabbed her wrists to stop her.

He knew he was squeezing too hard, but finesse was a thing of the past. Shana always burned straight through the reins he kept on his control. “What the fuck are you doing?”

She arched one auburn brow. “Undressing. It facilitates the fucking. Take off your pants.”

“I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole,” he snarled, wishing he knew how to make the words true.

His mind might resist, knowing the hell Shana could put him through, but his body was more than willing. Inside his jeans, he was already hard beyond the point of pain.

Shana’s eyes dropped to his erection and she slowly wet her lips. “Ten feet? That’s a bit of an exaggeration, isn’t it, big boy?”

“Stop it.”

Far from obeying, she seemed urged to action by his demand. He still held her wrists, but she writhed on the bed, the movement of her full breasts hypnotizing. His vision was so fogged by want, it took her kicking the jeans off her ankles before he realized she’d been wriggling out of them.

She lay pinned to the bed by his hands on her wrists, in nothing but a sheer, purple thong. She hooked her ankles behind his knees and tried to pull him down onto her. Caleb stumbled, but kept his feet—and his distance.

“Come on, Cale,” she purred, trying again to twine her legs around his. “You know what I need.”

“You need a straitjacket,” he growled. But then he met her eyes. Those wild, feverish eyes.

He’d seen her like this before, in a frenzy of need. She would run to him from her mother. Her face would be twisted as if she was crying, but her eyes would be dry. He’d never seen Shana shed a single tear, no matter how wretchedly she sobbed. He would try to hold her, but gentleness never soothed her. She needed the push and the heat. The frantic strain of her body against his.

And he always gave her what she needed, fucking her high and hard until she screamed in release, trying to absorb all that panic and frenzy into his body.

Looking into those wild eyes, he knew he would never be able to walk away from her.

When Caleb suddenly went still, looming above her, Shana squirmed under the intensity of his gaze. “Cale? Come on, baby.”

She was mostly naked on his bed with her blood boiling. Now was not the fucking time for soulful gazes.

She dropped her eyes to the ridge his cock made in his jeans. Oh, yeah. Caleb was ready to play, all right. So what the fuck was he waiting for?

She tried again to kick out his knees and force the weight of his body down on hers, but he just staggered and righted himself again, planting his feet. The rigid muscles across his chest and shoulders made her mouth water, her teeth aching to take a bite, but when she tried to push her shoulders up off the bed, he shoved her back down with her own wrists pressed against her collarbone. “Dammit, Caleb,” she snapped, squirming against his iron grip. The bastard was so damn strong. She couldn’t even seduce him properly if he wouldn’t let her touch him.

And she needed to seduce him. She needed the hard, fast slap of his body against hers. She needed it hot and wet and so damn good it hurt. She needed to feel like her brain was melting into a mass of instinct and need.

Then Caleb growled, “I must be out of my fucking mind,” a fraction of a second before his mouth hit hers and his weight landed hard against her, pressing her down into the mattress.

Yes. Goddess, it was perfection. Sensation swamped her. She moaned into his mouth as his tongue probed hers. She locked her legs around his waist. He was all muscle, everything firm and hot.

Caleb ground the rough denim covering his erection against her clit. Need spiked down Shana’s spine, dragging a small scream from her as it burst into wet heat, drenching her thong. Caleb tore his mouth away from hers and finally released her wrists, but only so he could rip her sheer thong into postage-stamp-size scraps.

He shoved himself off her to attack his jeans. Shana’s wildness was tempered by his sudden frenzy. She felt like the eye of a hurricane, an illusion of calm just waiting to explode into violent chaos. She squeezed her thighs together as Caleb ripped and swore at his jeans.

Her wrists held the imprint of his every finger. The bruises were going to be spectacular. He’d marked her.

Shana licked her lips, her canines sharpening to lethal points at the thought of marking her mate right back. And, that quickly, the eye passed and she was back in the hurricane.

He turned back toward her, shreds of denim hitting the floor. Naked, his body was glorious, a tapestry of strength. Muscle flowed into muscle. His erection stood out high and hard and straight. Maybe not ten feet, but just as thick as she remembered. Thick enough to stretch her just barely to the point of pain. Shana licked her lips. Come to mama.

She came up on her knees on the mattress and reached for him. He didn’t catch her hands or push her away this time. Shana wrapped both hands around his cock as she sank her teeth into the skin beneath his left nipple. Caleb hissed, and she didn’t particularly care whether it was from the bite of pleasure or pain. She worked her hands slowly up and down his shaft, simultaneously nibbling her way down, taking little bites across his flat stomach.

Then she was right where she wanted to be.

When she scraped her tongue across the head of his cock, he growled. Rolling it into her mouth elicited a hiss. She slid it deeper into her mouth, using her hands to slowly feed him to herself until his thickness threatened to choke her, knocking against the back of her throat.

“Fuck, Shay.”

She chuckled, letting him feel the vibration of her laugh, and slowly withdrew, only to slide him deeper again.

His fingers tangled in her hair, but he didn’t push her, just laced his fingers into the red mass, rubbing the heavy strands between his fingers. His head fell back on a groan as she found a rhythm she liked.

Shana felt like a goddess, luxuriating in her power over him. But it wasn’t enough.

She released him from her mouth with a little pop. Licking her lips to catch every lingering taste of his skin, she stretched up onto her knees again, running her hands up across his pecs and shoulders to twine around his neck. “C’mere,” she purred, hauling his head down to hers to slide her tongue into his mouth.

His hands gripped her ass. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing and she wrapped her legs around his waist. His erection bumped against her pussy, but the angle was wrong for anything more than a tease. But even the tease was enough to make her squirm.

Caleb turned and sat on the bed, keeping her thighs spread across his lap. His large hands petted her, gliding over the curves of her ass, over her hips, the curve of her waist, the planes of her back, across her shoulders, her collarbones, skating around her breasts without touching them to graze her ribs and the bones at the front of her hips. He teased the crease of her thighs, the backs of her knees, and along the outside of her thighs back up to her ass again, until she was ready to scream at him to get to the goddamn good stuff.