Serengeti Sunrise - By Vivi Andrews Page 0,9
stalked after him. Cutting through the garage was the fastest way to the main part of the compound, but they weren’t finished here yet and she was going to make sure he knew it.
She ran to the door, jerked it open and surged through, carried on a tide of indignant frustration.
“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