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.”