“Come on, Cale.” She shoved her hips back roughly against his unyielding hold.
Caleb drew back and slapped her ass hard a fraction of a second before he pistoned his hips forward.
“Jesus, yes!” Shana screamed. Her inner muscles clenched tight around the invasion of his cock. He drew back and rammed home again. She bit her lip hard to hold in her cries. Her head thrashed back and forth, whipping her hair across his stomach. Caleb fisted one hand in the thick red mass at the base of her skull, holding her steady with his other hand at her hip as he drove into her.
Shana dug her nails into the mattress, her entire being focused on his cock sliding into her, his body slapping rhythmically against hers. Short, keening cries burst from her throat in time to his movements. He ruled her, body and soul. Untamable Shana was a puppet to his will, drawing her pleasure—so tight and sweet and hot and hard—only as he allowed her.
The sharp sting of one last rough smack on her ass sent her careening into her release. She erupted into contractions of pleasure. Caleb’s body covered hers, slamming deep and high one last time. He sank his teeth into her shoulder and she came again with him. The lioness rippled under her skin, clawing to get out, and Shana didn’t have the will to hold it back. Her spine arched on another sharp wave of bliss as, together, they shifted form, the animal wildness claiming their joined bodies as the lion claimed his mate.
Chapter Eight
Caleb was really going to miss that little schoolgirl outfit. It was a real shame it had been demolished when they shifted. Shana had looked like a thousand kinds of sin in that getup.
She shifted restlessly in her sleep at his side before settling again. She’d always been an uneasy sleeper. Caleb stroked her hair, remembering the way it had flowed down her back, loose and wild and longer than that postage stamp of a skirt.
He’d buy her a new one.
Provided she stuck around long enough to try it on for him.
Caleb winced. Dawn was breaking through the storm after a night of the best sex of his life and he was already waiting for her to renege on her promise to stick with him this time.
So much for trust.
Shana stretched against him and gave a low purr. In the dim light, he saw her emerald eyes open and blink at him sleepily.
“Good morning, lover.” She kicked free of the sheets tangled around her ankles and flung one leg over his, draping herself across his chest, a blanket of warm, willing flesh.
Caleb combed his fingers through the disorderly mass of her hair. He longed to stay like this forever, in this quiet pocket of peace, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before the devil inside her spurred her to something they would both regret. A part of him was already braced for it. Waiting for the ax to fall.
Shana stacked her hands on his chest and propped her chin on them. “So, do you forgive me? I forgive you.”
Caleb frowned. So much for peace. “Forgive me for what? You told me to spank you.”
Shana rolled her eyes. “I liked the spanking. Obviously. I meant for before.” She gestured off into the distance, letting him know she didn’t mean the recent past.
“What before?” he asked warily, unsure what he was being forgiven for.
“For not challenging the Alpha. For not fighting for me.”
“Fighting for you would have gotten me killed. I was a kid.”
“You were strong enough,” Shana insisted. For a moment she fell silent, and he thought he might be able to drag her kicking and screaming back to that peaceful place. But then she spoke, her voice soft and sly. “You aren’t a kid now. You almost challenged Landon today. You could defeat him, Caleb. You could be Alpha.”
A veil of red fell over his vision as anger coursed through his veins. She was still trying to manipulate him. Still trying to turn him into her own personal mercenary. Will fight for sex.
Disappointment and frustration warred with anger, but it was the anger that won, tightening every muscle in his body.
She would never change. No matter what sweet words she gave him, no matter how many different ways she found to tell him she loved him, he would never be more than a tool to her. A means to an end. Her love would always be a lie.
Caleb felt like a thousand kinds of fool. He had almost believed her this time. She’d almost had him.
“Is that what this is about?” The words felt like jagged shards of glass leaving bloody tracks as they dragged themselves out of his throat. “You thought you could fuck me into challenging Landon?”
“What?” Shana blinked at him, wide-eyed and innocent. “No.”
He didn’t buy her act for a second. He shoved her off him and quickly stood, grabbing his discarded jeans and yanking them on. “I’m never gonna be Alpha, Shana,” he growled roughly. “I don’t want to be. I may be stronger than Landon, but we’ll never find out, because I’m never going to challenge him. Never. I’m not a leader. I never have been. You’ve always known that, but you could never get it through your thick head that I’m not going to change. I’m not going to become the perfect Alpha just because you have some twisted need to be the Alpha’s mate.”
Shana pulled the sheet up in front of her, the move modest and distinctly out of character. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it?” He held up his hand to stop her before she could reply. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to hear whatever lies you dig up.”
“I’m not lying!” She threw down the sheet, kneeling on his bed, wearing only her hair and her indignation.
“No? Then tell me you don’t want me to challenge Landon.”
Shana hesitated, her eyes flicking down to the mattress.
“You can’t say it, can you?” Caleb shook his head. “I should have known. It was always about finding someone strong enough to best the Alpha. You never wanted to be with me. And, you know what, Shay? The feeling’s mutual. I don’t want to be with you anymore. I’ve had enough.”
“Caleb, I did want you! I do!” she shouted, but the door had already slammed behind him.
Snow and ice covered every surface after the night’s storm, but Caleb didn’t feel the cold. He shifted into his lion form and ran, trying to outrun Shana’s hold on him. Fearing he never would.
Shana took her lioness form, needing the comfort of her fur wrapping around her.
He’d left her. Again.
She’d confessed her feelings, did the whole mushy Dr. Phil crap, and he’d fucked her brains out. But, at dawn, he’d still run out on her so fast, he’d practically left skid marks. What did a girl have to do to get a man to stick around past breakfast? One lousy little comment—one extremely true comment—about the fact that he could be Alpha any time he wanted to be and he completely lost his shit.
Shana slashed her claws through his sheets, but the tantrum did nothing for her mood. She still wanted to claw and bite and savage something until it was unrecognizable. Preferably something live and twitching.
He hadn’t really meant that. About being done with her. About having had enough. He couldn’t have meant it.
Her throat and eyes felt tight. Goddesses don’t cry.
Shana ran out of Caleb’s bungalow before the growing urge to destroy something overpowered her and she demolished his furniture. She ran across the compound on four paws, through the heavy snow that had fallen the night before. The Storm of the Century had finally hit.
She leapt onto the snowdrift-covered porch of her borrowed bungalow, freezing in her tracks when she scented a male lion waiting for her inside.