attention to her other breast, to begin the
process all over again. Her cries
became his name and something in the
tone of her voice cranked up the dial on
his need for her. His control became a
memory.
Landon growled, his claws tearing at her
jeans. He needed her naked. Now. But
though the denim shredded, it did not
melt away and the tattered ribbons of her
clothing still bound her. She made an
alarmed noise in her throat and Landon’s
head snapped up to meet her eyes. He
was too desperate to be ashamed of his
frenzy, but he managed to grunt, “Did I hurt you?”
Vivi Andrews
Ava blinked at him, her clear gray eyes
fogged over with want. “No…yes…”
She shook her head as if trying to clear it
and reached out a hand to him, almost as
if she would stroke his face, but instead
she ran a fingernail across his nipple.
“You startled me.”
Landon blinked at her
uncomprehendingly. There was not
enough blood flowing to his brain to
work out what she wanted him to do.
“Stop?”
She laughed and his cock jumped like a puppet on a string. “No. More.”
Thank you, God. Crying defeat for the
moment on the wreck he’d made of her
jeans, Landon attacked the fastenings on
his own. He struggled with them, his
hands refusing to stay in full-human form
long enough to work the button fly.
Ava brushed his hands away. “Let me.”
The backs of her fingers rubbing against
his shaft as she slowly, carefully worked
the buttons was a new kind of torture in
itself. Landon braced his hands on the
seat and closed his eyes, determined to
let her work and not fall on her like a
ravening beast until she had freed his
cock. Then he could be an animal. He
just had to hang onto humanity for a few more seconds.
She shoved his jeans and underwear
down over his hips. As soon as it was
free, his cock sprang up, pointing due
north like a fucking compass. Landon
hissed as Ava wrapped her small soft
hand around it.
Lights exploded in his brain. Landon
wondered idly if he was having a
seizure as Ava’s hand worked slowly
down to the base of his shaft, giving him
a little squeeze and then a slow, tugging
pull up his shaft to the head. He was
going to die. That much was clear. But
what a way to go.
He let her have two more torturous strokes before closing his hand around
her wrist and squeezing gently.
“Enough.” His voice didn’t sound
human, which was fine by him. He didn’t
feel particularly human.
She released his cock, but he didn’t
release her wrist. He pulled her hand
away from him, pinning it against the
seat near her head. He lowered himself
to take her mouth again as his free hand
probed between the shredded remains of
her jeans, seeking the source of the
musky moisture between her thighs. He
brushed one spot and her entire body
jolted. Bingo.
Landon eased her—amazingly still intact
—panties aside and pushed one finger inside her slick heat.
Her hips pushed up against his hand and
moisture swamped his finger. He
worked his mouth against hers as he
worked a second finger inside her,
stretching her. She was so tight. Her
pussy was going to feel like a goddamn
vise on his cock.
Landon released her mouth as he
removed his fingers, pressing his face
against her neck to breathe in the
intoxicating scent of her as he positioned
himself between her legs.
“What’s that sound?” Her voice was
breathless.
Landon stiffened, trying to hear beyond the blood rushing in his ears. It took him
a moment to identify the tinny ring-tone
rendition of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”,
his sister’s idea of a great joke. “Shit.
It’s Zoe.
She wouldn’t call unless it’s an
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Serengeti Heat
She’d better not have. He was about
fifteen seconds away from the fucking
promised land. If someone wasn’t dying,
someone was about to be.
He found his cell phone in the pocket of
his jeans, tangled near his knees.
“What?”
“Ava’s missing!”
Landon blinked, startled by the depth of
panic in Zoe’s voice. He wasn’t aware
his sister had formed any strong
attachments since their arrival in the
pride three months ago, but her concern
for Ava was unfeigned.
“I’ve got her.” At least, he’d been about
to have her, a few seconds before Zoe
had decided she needed rescuing. “I’m
bringing her back to the ranch now.”
“Oh thank God,” Zoe whispered. “I’ll tell her brothers we can call off the
search. Where was she? Is she okay?”
The mention of Ava’s brothers searching
—Jesus, they wouldn’t search the ranch
road, would they?—
not to mention his sister’s barrage of
questions, had the effect of a bucket of
cold water. Landon shifted off Ava,
ignoring the small sound of protest she
made, and retreated back to his own
seat. He braced himself against the door,
as far away from her as he could get, and
tried to tug up his jeans one-handed
without much success.
“We’ll be back at the ranch in—” he
glanced around, looking for a landmark through the darkness outside the jeep,
“—five minutes. You can ask her all the
questions you want, then.”
Ava groaned from the passenger seat,
pulling herself into a more traditional
seated position, rather than her I’m-
about-to-have-my-brains-fucked-out-on-
a-bucket-seat sprawl.
“But she’s okay?” Zoe pressed.
Landon looked at Ava out of the corner
of his eye. She was a sight. Rumpled,
sweaty, trying to get her top back into
place over her breasts with her jeans in
useless tatters from her upper-thighs to
her waist. She looked gorgeous. Fan-
fucking-tastic. “She’s fine. See you in five.”
He disconnected before Zoe could lob
another question at him, mentally
crossing his fingers that his ornery sister
didn’t keep calling him back every five
seconds until they arrived at the ranch.
Although, given his current control—or
lack thereof—that might not be a bad
idea.
Dropping the phone, he yanked his jeans
back up over his hips and tried to shove
his uncooperati
ve cock back inside. He
winced as each button closed, but
managed to keep his hands from half-
morphing into claws long enough to get
his jeans fastened. Thank God. If Ava
laid one finger on his fly, he was a goner.
Shit, if her brothers ever found out he’d
come about five seconds away from
fucking their baby sister in the front seat
of a jeep, he’d be lucky to see his next
birthday.
Landon started the jeep and punched the
gas pedal. The vehicle jumped forward
obediently, punishing them with a rough
ride the last three miles to the ranch.
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17
Vivi Andrews
They were closer to the main compound than Landon had thought—though, to be
honest, he hadn’t been doing much
thinking. Anyone out for a run tonight
could have seen them, groping in the car
like teenagers.
How had he let things get so far out of
control? He’d never even noticed Ava
Minor before tonight, but the second
she’d walked into the bar, he’d wanted
her. The scent of her, the way she pushed
her ass back at him as she stood at the
bar, the reckless challenge in her voice
as she argued with him in the jeep, all of
it seemed calculated to drive him wild.
The truth smacked him between the eyes,
making him feel like a prize idiot for not
realizing earlier.
He should have realized it as soon as
she walked into the bar, but his
hormones had short-circuited his brain.
It was so damn obvious.
Ava was in heat.
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Chapter Four
She needed to say something. They
couldn’t have been driving for more than
a few seconds, but the oppressive
silence coming from the driver’s seat
made it feel like a millennia. He wouldn’t even look at her.
“I take it they discovered my absence,”
Ava said, her tone a pathetic attempt at
lightness.
Landon sounded about as light as a
midnight hunt on the Serengeti. “Didn’t
you even leave a fucking note so your
brothers wouldn’t panic?”
Ava snorted. “Saying what exactly?
‘Gone to get some nookie. Back by
noon.’ That’d go over real well.”
“Better than not saying anything at all,”
he snapped. “They’re searching the
ranch for you, Ava.”
Ava looked out the window, realizing they were on ranch land and had been
for a while. In fact, they’d been on ranch
land when they’d… “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
Ava tipped her chin defiantly. She
wasn’t going to cower. She didn’t have
anything to be ashamed of, dammit. “So
what? I deserve to get out just as much
as the next girl.”
“Ava.” Her name sound like a curse on
his lips. “There are reasons why we do
things the way we do,”
he said as if explaining the facts of life
to a simpleton and hanging onto this
patience by the thinnest of threads.
“Yeah, well, maybe your reasons are
stupid.” Keeping a healthy, attractive
young woman with the libido of a cat
cooped up on a secluded ranch with a
bunch of men she couldn’t have was
downright cruel and unusual. Ava had
seen Lifetime movies about religious
cults that did the same and things always
ended badly for the misogynistic pigs
running the show.
“Valuing human life is stupid, now?”
They hit a particularly nasty bump and
Landon was forced to slow to a
reasonable speed.
Ava frowned. “What does human life have to with a—”
“Ava,” Landon interrupted, her name
sharp this time. “You’re in heat.”
“No, I’m no…” Her denial was
automatic, but her voice trailed off as
she mentally did the math.
“Shit.”
The shape-shifters who traded shapes
between human and lion form didn’t
possess the exact physiological traits of
either. A shifter lioness would go into
heat only three times a year, lasting
anywhere Vivi Andrews
from a few hours to several days. And like their feline cousins, they wanted sex
almost constantly during that period.
Even the birth control shots she received
to suppress ovulation couldn’t combat
the hormonal demands her body made
during her heat.
“I don’t see what that has to do with
anything.” Ava folded her arms across
her still-sensitive breasts, knowing she
looked like a petulant child, but feeling
like one giant exposed nerve.
“You don’t s—” Landon cut himself off,
his hands fisting on the steering wheel.
He bit out his next words with careful
precision. “Have you ever had sex while
you were in heat?”
A blush rose up her already warm face until she felt like her cheeks were on
fire. “No.” She left her answer at that.
He didn’t need to know that her entire
sexual history consisted of a few
bumbling encounters in dorm rooms the
one semester of college when her family
had eased up on the reins enough to
allow her to live on campus.
She’d been embarrassingly celibate ever
since she’d moved back to the ranch. As
if it wasn’t bad enough having four
ridiculously over-protective older
brothers lurking around every corner, the
lionesses who weren’t old enough or
genetically desirable enough to mate
were cloistered while they were in heat to avoid unwanted pregnancies. So her
opportunities for sex in heat were
severely limited.
“When a shifter is in heat, everything is
amplified,” Landon explained, his tone
carefully blank.
“Many females, particularly the younger,
less experienced ones, will shift
uncontrollably when they climax.
That is why we have rules against
seducing humans during heat. It isn’t safe
to be with someone who can’t defend
himself, or understand what the fuck just
happened when he finds himself in bed
with a several-hundred-pound lioness.”
Ava’s blush was getting downright uncomfortable. “I’m sorry,” she muttered
in the direction of her lap. “I didn’t
realize.” But then her remorse faded and
she frowned at the Roman gladiator
driving the jeep.
“It still doesn’t seem fair. You guys get
to go around screwing anything that
moves and we have to be virgin
priestesses.”
“I’m not telling you not to get fucked,”
Landon snapped. “I’m telling you not to
fuck a huma
n.”
Ava bit her lip on the complaint that was
poised to jump out of her mouth and
mortify her—that the only lion she had
ever wanted was him. She was afraid he already knew. The way she had reacted
to him, wordlessly begging him to take
her, had made her feelings for him
pathetically clear.
She had wanted him since the second she
saw him walking through the compound
the first day he arrived, wary and worn
from his travels. Even before he was
Alpha. She had felt desire tightening her
body when he was just another reckless
nomad, a lion without a pride. She’d had
more of a shot with him then.
The second he became Alpha was the
instant he rose out of her reach.
To a nomad, any lioness was a prize,
even a small, abnormal one. But the Alpha? He would mate with the
strongest and fastest among them, and
Ava would never even come close.
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Serengeti Heat
So why had he leapt on her in the jeep?
Was it possible he could really want
her? Or was the truth much more awful
than that? Could he have somehow
learned of her infatuation? Was he
taunting her?
Playing some horrible game? Was that
why he had stopped just short of taking her?
Ava glanced over, her eyes locking
hungrily on the impressive bulge beneath
his fly. No, he wanted her all right.
There was no doubt about that.
Landon looked over at her—just in time
to see her staring at his crotch. Ava’s
blush reached terminal levels as he
shifted uncomfortably in the seat.
“That’s another reason unsuitable
females are sequestered when in heat.”
Ava flinched back from the words like
he’d slapped her. Unsuitable?
As they pulled into the compound, he
went on relentlessly. “Any male coming into contact with you, looking and
smelling and acting the way you did
tonight would have lost control and
climbed all over you.
That’s why there are rules, Ava.”
She averted her face as he slowed the
jeep, rolling slowly between the low-
lying bungalows that made up the ranch
compound where the pride lived. She
was not going to cry in front of him.
Even if he was telling her that the
electric, soul-searing almost-tryst they
had shared not ten minutes ago was
nothing more than a forced chemical
reaction.
Ava felt an ominous tightness behind her eyes and swallowed thickly, fighting to
keep it together. So what if he didn’t