Serengeti Lightning (8 page)

She slid down, impaling herself on him then giving a sinuous roll of her hips. Michael groaned and his hands gripped her waist. She flexed her fingers against his pectoral muscles and executed another slow roll. It was sensual and delicious, but tonight she needed more. She needed what only Michael could give her. He was the love of her life. The only man she’d ever trusted to take her to the edge of control and beyond. She needed him to set her free.

Mara released her claws and lightly scored his chest. Michael growled, his own claws unsheathing in response. When she felt their bite against her skin, Mara smiled. When he tried to push up and roll her beneath him, Mara shoved back, pressing his shoulders down. This time it was her turn to pin him down and drive him wild. She was a priestess tonight and Aphrodite’s handmaidens got to be on top.

Mara picked up her pace, taking her cue from the driving force of the rain. Her eyes locked on Michael’s. His expression was naked and hungry, and completely open to her. She watched for the signs that he liked that swivel and she ought to repeat that grind just so.

Lightning flashed on the plain, illuminating the stark lines of Michael’s face, straining and urgent. Thunder boomed, too close for caution, but Mara didn’t care. Lightning couldn’t hurt them. They were electricity. Pure, wild heat.

Michael thrust up into her as Mara drove down. Lightning cracked, near enough for Mara to feel the static in the air, its bright striations flashing across the sky. Michael arched beneath her, his muscles straining as he came. Mara watched him in the strobes of light, captivated by the primal beauty of her lover’s pleasure, needing nothing more in that moment than his satisfaction.

Then he reached between them and flicked her clit. That was all it took to send her into an explosion of her own.

Michael groaned and made a halfhearted move to get up, but Mara’s body draped over his torso kept him down. “We’d better go tell Landon about the shitstorm I’ve brought down on our heads.”

“The humans?” Mara licked the rain off Michael’s neck with a slow sweep of her tongue. The storm had passed, leaving only a lingering dampness in the air. “Do you think they know what they saw?”

“Whether they did or not, we have to be ready.”

Michael rubbed his hand in a circle against the small of her back, and she closed her eyes to live in the touch. Even the sobering thought of exposure to the human world couldn’t completely dampen Mara’s spirits. “Will they come after us, do you think?”

Her head was pillowed on his shoulder and she felt him shrug. “I doubt it. It was a bar. People were drinking. By tomorrow they’ll all be rationalizing away what they thought they saw.”

Mara sat up so she could look into his eyes. The impossibly blue eyes. “How can you be sure?”

His lips curved in a familiar lazy grin, melting her from the inside out. “The Fates must love me,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

Epilogue

Landon curled around his wife, breathing in her scent. “As glad as I am that your brother has landed his dream girl, it would have been nice if he could have managed it without the public display,” he muttered against her skin.

Ava shifted restlessly in his arms. “You don’t seem worried.”

“No sense borrowing trouble. The humans will come or they won’t. Only time will tell.” Landon soothed his mate, stroking her hair. “We’ll deal with the next crisis as it comes.”

For several moments, only soft rustling sounds disturbed the quiet of the Alpha’s bungalow. Then, “Do you think they’ll be happy, Landon? Michael is so much younger than she is.”

A soft growl rumbled in the Alpha’s throat. “Is your brother older than you?”

“A year.”

“Are you unhappy with your old mate?”

“You aren’t old. And you know I couldn’t be happier.”

“Is your brother fickle?”

“Michael? God, no.”

“Then stop worrying about him. If you want to worry about someone, try my sister.”

“Zoe?” A soft laugh. “She can take care of herself.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” the Alpha grumbled.

Silence fell again, broken only by Ava’s soft sigh, as both the Alpha of the Three Rocks pride and his mate took a moment to forget their worries. Until the next crisis arose.

About the Author

Look for these titles by Vivi Andrews

It’s not smart to piss off a poltergeist…

A
Karmic Consultants
Story

It’s bad enough to be sexually frustrated. But as a medium, it means until Lucy Cartwright gets some, she’s doomed. Oh no, not to death. Worse. To nightly visitations by recently deceased, wanna-be Cassanovas without the bodies to back it up. Then a living, breathing fantasy arrives on her doorstep, and Lucy thinks her dry spell is at an end.

Much as he would like to be Lucy’s personal gigolo, PI Jake Cox has a job to do. He’s been sent to prevent her from getting laid until a particular horny phantom—and key witness in his mob investigation—pays her a visit. The real challenge? Keeping his own hands off Lucy long enough to get the job done.

Or the lonely, geeky ghost of a murdered mob accountant could rip a hole in the fabric of the universe…

Warning:
This book contains cheesy pick-up lines, amateur stripteases, and voyeuristic intentions—all by dead men. And the living behave just as badly…

Lucy looked down at the loaded muffin tray—baking was supposed to
relax
her, dammit—and mentally tried to navigate a path to the oven that did not put her in the line of fire, so to speak. He seemed to be everywhere. Long legs, massive shoulders, fantastic ass—every time she turned around, she saw something else to be tempted by.

And, oh boy, was she tempted.

Even if he was her boss’s brother. And so far out of her league, she had no business even fantasizing about him.

Lucy knew what she was, and more importantly, she knew what she wasn’t.

Lucy Cartwright was no sex goddess. When men described her, they used words like
cute
and
sweet
. She was
adorable
and
domestic
. And she had long since learned that the bad boys she lusted after took one look at her good-girl dimples and ran for the hills.

When she tried to be sexy, she looked and felt ridiculous, so she giggled. Sexy women did not giggle. They had throaty, sexy voices and throaty, sexy laughs. They probably had sexily scarred vocal chords from all the post-coital cigarettes they were smoking. Lucy was not a smoker—which seemed to mean both no lung cancer and no sex.

Some women were Aphrodite and some women were Martha Stewart. Unfortunately, Martha Stewart never got laid. Please God,
why
wasn’t Jake Cox a gigolo?

Lucy slipped past the eye-candy in her kitchen, set the timer and shoved the muffin tray into the oven. Then she heard him breathing.
He’s allowed to breathe, dammit
, she told her hormones, but they weren’t listening. They were already summoning up fantasies involving breathing. And panting. And gasping.

So Lucy gasped, and swore, as her hand brushed the hot oven rack. She snatched her hand out of the oven, mentally cursing her stupidity, and slammed the door closed.

“Did you burn yourself?” Jake demanded, stepping forward and immediately taking control.

He caught her wrist and held it up for inspection. Seeing the vivid red welt rising on the back her hand, he tugged her over to the sink and turned on the faucet with a single-minded economy of movement that was somehow indescribably hot.

Dear God, I’m doomed. Even his first aid is sexy.

He temperature-tested the tap with his own hand before thrusting her burn beneath the cool, running water. “Keep it there,” he ordered, already on his way to the freezer. He was back a moment later, a clean dishtowel wrapped around a bundle of ice. “Here, let me see.”

He gently took her wrist and drew her hand out of the water, cautiously inspecting the burn. His attention was so focused, so intent, as he brushed the soft skin around the burn with his fingertips, careful not to touch the wound itself. He bent and blew cool air on her hand before gently pressing the ice pack over it, his concentration complete. Lucy couldn’t help but wonder if he would bring that focus and intensity to everything he did. A delicious shiver ran down her spine.

“I know it’s cold,” he said, and Lucy was relieved he didn’t suspect the real reason for her shivering—she was embarrassed enough already. “You need to keep it on there for twenty minutes or so.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Jake shook his head abruptly, rejecting her gratitude. “My fault. I shouldn’t have been distracting you while you were cooking.”

“You weren’t distracting me,” Lucy lied, knowing she was blushing. Again.

“No?” He arched his eyebrows skeptically then reached up to brush the back of one finger against her cheek. “You have flour all over your face.”

Lucy winced internally. Great. Now, not only was she as red as a turnip, she had the distinction of being a blotchy, flour-coated turnip with a propensity for burning herself. Oh yeah, he wasn’t going to be able to keep his hands off her now.

She waited for him to laugh at her. She waited for him to turn away, writing her off as ridiculous. She waited…until he tipped her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes. Eyes that didn’t look mocking or superior, but rather curiously intent.

Oh my.

He brushed at the clinging flour on her cheeks, his calloused hands tentatively caressing. Lucy gazed up at him, trying to remember how to breathe, or think, or do anything other than stare at him with her heart in her throat and her stomach down around her toes. They were standing near the oven, but Lucy had a feeling the burning sensation rippling along her skin had more to do with the mountain of solid muscle in front of her than the oven behind. He smiled gently, his hands still cradling her face. “Even without the flour, you look pretty damn edible,” he murmured, his voice low and intimate.

The world slowed and tightened until they were the only two people in it, and time was frozen in that thick moment when she
knew
he was about to kiss her. She stood paralyzed, hopeful, but not allowing herself to hope.

He bent toward her slowly, his gorgeous black eyes shuttered by thick black lashes. Lucy’s eyes fell closed and she held herself perfectly still, desperate, waiting. When his lips finally touched hers, it was like putting a spark to a fast-burning fuse. A fuse attached to a stick of dynamite.

Lucy dove recklessly into the kiss, arching against him shamelessly. The first tentative brush of his mouth instantly became an urgent, open-mouthed exchange. She wound her arms around his shoulders and he gripped her butt in both hands, lifting her to get a better angle on her mouth, a better angle of her body pressed against his.

As soon as her feet left the floor, Lucy looped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles at the small of his back. Jake took two steps across the kitchen and pinned her against the refrigerator, the cool, smooth surface teasing her exposed shoulder blades where the spaghetti straps of her sundress left them bare. Lucy gave a little groan of pure, unadulterated lust, her hormones throwing an orgiastic party when Jake immediately echoed it.
Now,
this
is how a gigolo behaves.

Jake grabbed the knees squeezing his waist with both hands and shifted her slightly for better access. The combination of his fingers teasing the sensitive skin at the backs of her knees and the sudden, grinding friction of his jeans where she wanted it the most was nearly enough to send her off right there. Lucy let her head fall back against the refrigerator, her eyes closing in anticipation of bliss as she sent a little prayer of thanks to the gods of nookie.