“Tyler!” Her shout echoed in the garage bay along with the ringing clang of the heavy door banging shut behind her. “Stop running and face me, you coward!”
Two yards from the front exit, Tyler’s feet took root on the concrete floor. She could hear a growl rumbling in his chest. His lion must not have liked being called a coward. Well, hers didn’t much like him running away from her.
Her lioness was ready for this fight, had been itching for it for months.
He turned to face her, his eyes narrowed and hands loose around his hips like a gunslinger. As they faced one another across the length of the garage, she felt that high-noon feeling herself. Tension snapped in the air, the unavoidable sense that something was coming. Something that had been bearing down on them for a while now.
Love or war. Whichever it was, there wasn’t any middle ground. They’d burned it all away with the friction of the last year.
“Coward?” he asked, his voice a soft, dark rumble.
“You have another word you’d prefer?” She strolled across the concrete floor, adding an extra sway to her hips as she came to stand directly in front of him. “Chicken? Pussy, perhaps?”
“Don’t push me, Zoe.” He rumbled the warning.
“Or what? You gonna show me who’s boss? Or are you just gonna run away like you always do? Like a coward.”
His lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl and he loomed over her. She could practically feel his lion pushing against his skin, burning with the need to prove to her, once and for all, which one of them would end up on top if it ever came down to a battle for dominance. He might play at being civilized, but Tyler wanted to make her submit. She could see it in the luminous feline gold of his eyes.
“Are you going to kiss me or throttle me?” Zoe tipped her chin back, meeting his eyes with a blatant challenge. “Whichever you’re going to do, do it now. Because I’m sick of waiting for you to make up your mind.”
“What makes you think I didn’t make up my mind months ago and you just can’t take a hint?”
“What hint was that? The way you stare at me when you think I’m not looking? How you take the longest possible path between your bungalow and the garage each evening just so you can go past my house? Or maybe the fact that you can’t tell when I’m in heat because you always want me?”
He turned away, striding toward the door. “That’s quite a healthy ego you have there.”
“It’s all in my head, is that it?” He put his hand on the door and Zoe felt her composure fracture. “Dammit, Tyler! What the fuck is your deal?” He didn’t turn back to her, but he didn’t open the door either. She shouted at his back. “You want me. I’ve made it embarrassingly obvious I want you too. So what is the big problem?”
“Your brother…”
“I’m twenty-seven years old. I don’t have to ask his permission to fuck whoever the hell I want.”
He turned, leaning his shoulders against the door, one hand still resting on the knob. “He’s the Alpha—”
“So what? This has nothing to do with him. He doesn’t even have to know.”
“He’ll know.”
“Who the fuck cares? Because I’m the Alpha’s sister, I’m not allowed to get any?”
“I don’t want any more commitments in my life. I’m sick of being responsible for everyone.”
“Who’s talking about a commitment? I’m talking about sex. Fucking. Screwing. Banging our brains out. No strings attached. I never asked you for a fucking commitment, dumbass.”
“It’s never going to be no strings. Not with the Alpha’s sister.”
“God, I am so sick of being the Alpha’s sister. I’m Zoe. Can we just have one conversation that doesn’t include Landon?”
Tyler thunked his head back against the door. “Look, Zoe, if I wanted to stay here at the pride for the rest of my life and mate with a little lioness who’d give me lots of fat babies, you’d be the first person I’d-”
She cut him off with a solid punch to his shoulder that made him wince. “You asshole. Would you listen to me for five seconds? I don’t want to marry you. I’m not Mara the fucking baby-making machine. If you tried to give me a picket fence, I would rip up the posts and shove them up your ass. So stop trying to put me in that box.” She slapped her palms flat on his chest, baring her teeth up at him. “I want sex. And I want it from you. So do you want me or not? Because I’m done waiting. We’re deciding this, once and for all. Are you a man or what? Because for someone with the teeth of an alpha lion, you’re awfully fucking scared of me.”
He grabbed her so fast her back was slamming against the door before she even realized his hands were on her waist. Her hat went flying, landing somewhere on the dirty floor. “Scared, am I?” He gripped her jaw and forced her face up to his. “Does this look like fear to you?”
His expression was harsh and unforgiving, the animal running close to the surface. There was nothing contained or distant about the heat in his eyes. Who is this man and what has he done with Tyler Minor? Zoe’s breathing quickened.
His claws flexed against her side. Zoe wet her lips. She’d goaded him to this.
A little flicker of misgiving flared in her chest.
“Hasn’t anyone told you not to bait lions?” he growled, palming her nape.
Zoe’s heart stopped then restarted and accelerated. The nervous sensation got lost in a flood of heat as he took command. Finally. This was it. After a year of foreplay, it was finally happening. Quick, rough, one and done. At last, she’d get over this stupid obsession.
Tyler Minor had her pinned between hard and harder, leaving no doubt in her mind exactly how much he wanted her. Then he leaned in and sealed his mouth over hers, and Zoe forgot everything but the taste of him. This wasn’t just a quickie to get him out of her system. This was everything.
He hadn’t expected her to taste so good.
The tang of her went straight to his brain and shut it down. He didn’t need it anyway—for the first time in his life, pure animal instinct took control. His lion clamored to claim her completely. After a year of buildup, he craved her, needing nothing more than to dive in and drown in her.
Zoe made a jagged, needy sound and stabbed her fingers through his hair, tilting her head to invite him deeper. She hooked her legs around his waist and he stepped closer, notching his hardness at the apex of her thighs, crushing her against the door. She clutched his shoulders, purring throatily, and Tyler realized, with the distant part of his brain that was still running on auxiliary power, that Zoe wasn’t going to stop him.
Dimly, he recalled his master plan. Something about teaching her not to tease him? But this wasn’t a tease. This was a full-body erotic invitation.
Tyler caught her ponytail in his fist, holding her steady as he devoured her mouth. Her scent swamped him, clouding his senses until he felt savage, feeling nothing more keenly than the throbbing need to make her submit. Where was his famous self-control?
He shoved her thin T-shirt up above her breasts, barely managing to keep from shredding it with his claws. She released him long enough to yank the shirt over her head and fling it aside, then her hands were fumbling with the buttons of his shirt, her own claws extending and retracting.
Tyler reached over his shoulder with one hand, the other palming her ass. He grabbed a fistful of fabric and jerked the shirt off over his head, sending a couple buttons plinging against the concrete. Zoe made a hungry sound and her hands stroked his chest, petting and kneading until he leaned into her and she had to move them or get them caught between their bodies. The feel of her, pressed hot against his skin, was sheer perfection. He ground his erection into her heat and she cried out as the friction hit her clit, her green-gold eyes dark with need.