by Vivi Andrews
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.
Chapter Five
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.
As he touched her, Shana’s hands weren’t still. She wrapped them around his cock and guided him to her entrance. She rose up on her knees and angled herself to take the thick head into her pussy. He notched into her and just that much sent shockwaves of pleasure rippling across her nerve endings.
And they were just getting started.
She pressed down, taking another inch before the edge of pain stopped her. She waited for her body to stretch, to adjust, holding onto every drop of feeling.
Caleb chose that moment to flick her taut nipples with his fingers. Shana cried out and sank another inch. He flattened his large hands on her back, holding her steady as he bent and drew his teeth across her breast, missing the nipple this time.
Shana arched her back and sank de
eper still onto his shaft as Caleb followed the scrape of his teeth with a soothing swipe of his tongue. When he suddenly sucked one rigid nipple hard into his mouth, the accompanying flood of heat through Shana’s body seated her fully.
She felt his primal growl through every inch of her skin.
Bracing her fingers on his shoulders, claws recklessly out, she raised herself slowly. The wet drag of flesh fired a delicious friction. She dropped herself back down, hard. He released her breast on a rough expulsion of air that teased her sensitized skin. Shana drew up and slammed down again. His big hands tightened roughly on her back. He bent his head and sank his teeth into the flesh at the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
The soft bite of pain merged seamlessly with the tide of pleasure rippling up her spine. His strong arms wrapped all the way around her, holding her a little too tight. Shana reveled in the surety of his strength as she quickened her pace, lost in the wet, sucking draw and wild, slamming return.
Pleasure built, coiling deep inside her and yet just out of reach. A chaotic explosion that would be so good, so good, if she could just get there, reach it, find it, claim it. Every sense tightened—so close. Shana’s claws snapped out to full feline length and blooded themselves on Caleb’s shoulders. A predator’s teeth ripped like daggers through her gums as she threw back her head. Pleasure ripped through her body, her orgasm crashing through her in a destructive wave that was so damn good, wiping away every thought, every fear, every bit of her that was Shana and replacing it with bliss.
Caleb roared, his body pouring his need into hers in a bone-crushing rush. Shana felt her soul lock around his, holding on tight to this moment. She needed this moment. This goodness. He was the only thing in her life that had ever made her feel so good. She rode the wave of it, clinging hard.
Then she blacked out.
