Serengeti Heat (6 page)

It doesn’t happen every time? That was it? No recognition of her superhuman control? No acknowledgement that she wasn’t useless and
unsuitable
and totally unworthy of his attention?

Ava shoved at his shoulder. “Let me down.”

Landon frowned, visibly perplexed, but he didn’t budge. “You’re mad.”

“Well spotted, Sherlock. You figure that one out all by yourself?” Big dumb alpha.

“How did we get from foreplay to mad? I’m confused.”

Ava resisted the urge to tell him for the thousandth time that she had not shifted. Didn’t he understand the significance? Did she have to spell everything out for him? “I’m not unsuitable.”

Landon blinked uncomprehendingly. “What?”

“I’m not unsuitable.” This repetition thing was really starting to get annoying. One would think the leader of the pride would need to be able to listen a little more closely.

He frowned. “I never said you were.”

This time when she smacked him, she put her weight behind it, really giving it all she had. “Yes, you
did
.”

“Ava.” He ducked, though she was hardly capable of bruising the big hulk, let alone doing real damage. “I would never say that about you.”

“You did!” she insisted. “In the jeep. You said I was unsuitable and should be kept away from the other lions when I’m in heat. You said the only reason you jumped me was because I broke the rules and wasn’t cloistered off like I’m supposed to be.”

Ava winced internally. She hadn’t meant to say quite so much. She didn’t really want to be reminding Landon that the only reason he was with her right now was the potent hormone cocktail they were both swilling. And she certainly didn’t want him to hear the disappointment in her voice that he only wanted her because she was in heat. The last thing she needed was him wondering why else
she
would want
him
. How mortifying if he suddenly realized she’d been secretly in love with him for months.

Fortunately, Landon was a masculine member of the species, and therefore incapable of deducing the origin of her emotional meltdown. Instead, he focused on her attack on his integrity.

“I didn’t say that!” His hands had long since dropped from her breasts to brace on the counter on either side of her. He loomed over her, his own temper snapping at its leash. “I was trying to explain why I attacked you that way in the jeep,” he protested. “I wasn’t talking about you being unsuitable. I completely lost control, Ava. I couldn’t even maintain my human form. You make me so crazy. All I can think about is getting inside you. I shouldn’t be allowed to want you like this. Your brothers have been among my few allies since I arrived here and how do I repay them? By banging their little sister.” The fight went out of him and he dropped his forehead down to rest on her shoulder. “God, what am I doing?”

Ava ran her hands from the base of his neck across the sculpted muscles of his back. “You told me I was unsuitable because I make you crazy?”

Landon groaned. “I didn’t say you were unsuitable, Ava. And if I did, it wasn’t what I was trying to say. I thought you wanted that fucking cowboy, that I was smelling your attraction to him and reacting to it. I was so sure you didn’t even
want
me and then I practically fucked you right there in the front seat. I needed there to be some reason for it. Some way to explain it. I’ve never reacted to another female’s heat the way I have to yours tonight. The scent is intoxicating, yes, but never so irresistible. But when you walked in here, I
couldn’t
let you leave. I think I would have broken down and sought you out even if you hadn’t come. I had to have you, Ava.”

He whispered this entire speech against her shoulder. Ava held herself perfectly still, afraid if she moved that he would remember she wasn’t the irresistible goddess his body had tricked him into believing she was.

“You drive me crazy too,” she confessed, resting her head against his shoulder as she continued to trace the lines of his back. “I wanted you. In the jeep. In the bar.”

He lifted his head, but Ava kept hers hidden. “You ran to Zoe’s.”

“I thought you didn’t want me.”

His fingers traced a trail from the base of her spine around her ribcage, reminding her that she was naked and wrapped around him. Her pulse kicked into high gear as he bent to press his face against her neck, inhaling deeply. His hands closed over her breasts. “Me not wanting you was never an option.”

The reprieve her body had granted her was over, all of the symptoms of her heat returning in a thundering rush at the touch of his hands. She writhed on the counter, her hips slipping off the cool surface, but Landon’s body was there to catch her, firm and immovable. He caught her against him, chuckling low at her lack of feline grace, and kicked the bathroom door shut. He spun to pin her against it, their entwined bodies hitting the door hard enough to rattle the frame.

Ava purred in her throat, locking her ankles more snugly at his back and bracing herself with a hand on the towel rod. Clearly Landon was taking her request that he not hold back this time very seriously. She loved a man who could take direction.

As Landon occupied her mouth, she ran her hands over every inch of him she could reach, basking in the breadth of his shoulders, the warmth of his skin, the firmness of his muscles against her fingers. He was a specimen in his prime and he was all hers. Ava ignored the niggling whisper in the back of her mind that tried to remind her that he was hers for a limited time only. Once he took a mate…

The thought spurred an aggressive jealous streak she didn’t know she had. Ava bracketed his head in her hands, holding him captive as she increased the pressure and urgency in the kiss. In this moment, he was
hers
and no one else’s.

Landon responded readily to her spike of need. His fingers, which had certainly not been idle, found their way to her wet, heated core and he speared one long digit high into her pussy. Ava jolted at the impact. Her head smacked back against the door, but she was mindless of the insubstantial blow, her entire being focused on his finger working inside her. She snagged his lower lip between her teeth, urging him on, inciting him to a frenzy. Landon growled against her mouth.

He hitched her higher against the door, and then guided the heavy arousal that had been wedged between them unerringly to her tight sheath. Ava grabbed for the towel bar again, her other arm locked around his shoulder as she braced for his delicious invasion.

“Make it hard.” She panted the reminder against his skin.

Landon bared his teeth in a silent snarl, locked his fingers on her hips and slammed her down onto his shaft, half-seating her in a single stroke. Before she could adjust to his sudden presence, he pulled out and drove home again, deeper, higher. It took three more strokes before her tight pussy could accommodate his full length. When he hilted against her, they moaned in unison. He held for a moment and Ava clenched her inner muscles around him to keep him there, drowning in the perfect sensation, the exquisite relief of his body thick and hard inside her.

“Oh God, it feels…” There were no words to describe the soul-searing perfection of the feeling. Landon didn’t wait for her vocabulary to return. Instead, he set a pace that quickly deprived her of her powers of speech. Ava was reduced to panting, gasping moans as Landon made good on his promise for a hard, rough ride. Attentive to the tenor of her cries, he adjusted his angle until each sure stroke was another stab of ecstasy.

Ava heard a high-pitched noise twining around the pounding against the door and realized it was her own high-pitched keening. The sounds Landon made were feral music to her ears. He drove into her until she was clinging to the precipice, so close to tumbling over the edge, holding desperately to her sanity, knowing that each second she held off her climax it grew in intensity. Landon shifted, his own face straining against the inevitable, shifted his hold on her, lifting her legs higher, changing the angle of her hips subtly before ramming home one last time.

Ava screamed, her back arching like a bow as white light exploded behind her eyes. Landon gave a ferocious roar and slammed her into the door. The sound of splintering wood was completely lost beneath their orgasmic cries as the door gave way, tumbling them back into the bedroom.

Landon landed hard on top of Ava, still seated deep within her, and his weight sent her off again, shooting toward the stars. Still caught in his own orgasm, his hips flexed hard into hers, pressing her down into the remains of the door.

She was still shuddering from aftershocks when he rolled off her, hauling her with him and draping her across his chest. Ava focused on the little things—breathing, the gradually steadying drumming of Landon’s heart against her ear—until she could make her eyes focus enough to realize she was gazing at the shrapnel of their lovemaking.

She snickered.

“What?” Landon grunted.

She laughed harder, tucking her face against his chest. Her hormones must be working overtime because he still smelled fantastic to her, even reeking of sweat and sex, man and beast.

He swatted her backside half-heartedly. “What are you laughing at?”

“I probably have splinters in unmentionable places.” She giggled, perversely delighted by the destruction they had wrought on his bathroom.

“Hm, we’d better check.”

Landon deftly flipped her over and began a
very
thorough investigation. Ava moaned through her laughter. She could definitely get used to this.

“How is it you managed to hide from me for the last three months?” Landon mumbled the question against her breast. They had finally made it to the bed after thoroughly christening the floor and her heat had subsided to a soft thrumming at the base of her spine, screwed into abeyance by Landon’s superhuman efforts. But he still couldn’t seem to stop touching her.

They curled around one another in a knot at the center of the bed, forming a private cocoon where the realities that kept them apart outside this room didn’t exist. Ava winced internally as his question threatened her ability to ignore those realities.

“I’m hardly the kind of girl to come to the Alpha’s notice.”

He frowned against her skin, even that subtle movement a caress. “What does that mean?”

“Landon,” she sighed. “You’ve seen my lion form—”

“I told you I could make you shift.” He chuckled smugly, the vibration carrying through her body.

She swatted him, unwilling to be distracted now that he had brought it up. “You know how small I am. I’m hardly the type of girl to attract the attention of the Alpha.”

“I like how small you are.” One long finger plunged inside her, leaving her no doubt as to his meaning.

Ava caught her breath and closed her eyes, letting sensation wash over her. “How can I still need you like this?” she gasped as he shifted his body over hers.

This time their mating was slow and sensual, each deliberate movement of his body wrenching at her heart. When he eased off her onto his side several minutes later, Ava twisted to fit her back against his front, tucking her chin to hide her face. Her emotions were too close to the surface, filling her eyes to glistening and threatening to betray her.

Landon threw a leg across hers and wrapped one heavy arm around her waist, holding her snug against him. His mouth traced patterns on the back of her neck, never still.

She needed distance. She needed to remind her heart that it could not get too attached to this passionate, surprisingly playful, intelligent, dynamic, honorable man. With her face still hidden, Ava made herself say the words that needed to be said.

“You’ll be taking a mate soon, I expect.” Her throat threatened to close off, but she choked out the next few words. “It will need to be someone strong. Someone who can lead the Hunt.” Even if they were only hunting the domesticated cattle on their own ranch, the ritual of it was essential to their culture.

Landon stilled at her first words, but then he made an agreeable noise and began kissing a line across her shoulder again.

Ava made herself go on. She needed to be clear. She would not be pitied. She wanted him to know she had no expectations to be his partner, no matter how much her heart might ache at the idea of anyone else taking her place in his arms. “Have you given any thought to which of them you will choose?”

This conversation was agony, but she
would
have it.

His mouth stopped against her shoulder blade. “I’ve wanted to learn a bit more about the pride before making an irrevocable decision,” he said, his voice frustratingly devoid of inflection. “Who would you have me choose, Ava?”

Now he wanted her to pick her own rival? “I couldn’t make such a choice for you. She must be strong and fast—”

“Tolerant, progressive in her way of thinking…” His mouth glided back to the nape of her neck.

Ava gritted her teeth. He was taunting her now. She knew as well as he what was required of the Alpha’s mate. “Firm enough to rule in your stead.”

“Wise enough to rule without violence…”

“Large enough that none of the other lionesses could physically threaten her to get their way…”

Landon suddenly grew very alert at her back. “Has someone been threatening you, Ava?”

She rolled her eyes, not caring that he couldn’t see the gesture. “I’m the runt of the pride, Landon. Everyone bullies me. It’s practically the national pastime.”

His arm tightened almost immeasurably against her stomach, the muscles suddenly iron hard. “Your brothers allow this?” he growled.

“My brothers can’t be everywhere and even if they could, a lioness should fight her own battles.” Ava smiled wryly. “Or be smart enough to give in when a battle with someone twice her size is imminent.”

“That isn’t how I want my pride to be.” Landon’s body was impossibly tense. It was like being in bed with a marble statue.

“We can’t always get what we want, Landon. Shifter prides have been a hierarchy of strength for as long as anyone can remember. I don’t think they’re going to suddenly start changing now.”

“We
will
change,” he vowed. “We may be animals, but that doesn’t mean we have to abandon all reason. The weaker ones should not be punished. No one should be allowed to decide who is eligible to breed and who isn’t.”