Serengeti Lightning

Chapter Three

Mara had lost her mind. There was no other explanation. How did Michael always manage to fry her connection with the rational, thinking part of her brain? She’d just had sex in a parking lot, for crying out loud.

And it was the best goddamn sex of your life.

Mara ignored the smug, feline voice in her head. Bad enough she’d had sex in a public place, with people standing only twenty yards away. Add to her moral tally the fact she was supposed to be breaking up with Michael and finding her stable Mr. Forever…

Oh God, what would her Mr. Forever think if he found out she’d just come like a rocket while pinned to the side of a car in a dusty parking lot?

She shuddered at the thought and wrapped her arms tight around herself, staring out the window at the night-kissed scenery flying by. Michael, seeing her shiver, reached out and adjusted the air conditioner.

Did he have to do that? Did he have to be so damned considerate? She was trying to break up with him and here he was giving her rock-the-very-foundations-of-my-soul sex and making sure she didn’t catch a chill afterward. How was she supposed to break up with that?

“I’m leaving the pride.”

The words jumped out of her mouth, in direct defiance of all her carefully laid plans to ease him into the idea slowly.

The SUV swerved toward the double yellow line running down the middle of the country highway. “What did you say?”

She looked at him. His muscles were rigid, his hands locked so tight around the steering wheel it looked like the bones of his knuckles were about to bust right through the skin. He’d heard her. She was sure of it. But he was going to make her say it again.

Mara ignored the little voice inside her wailing in protest, and set her jaw. She wasn’t going to back down. “I’m leaving the pride. It’s already arranged.”

Michael didn’t move a muscle, but she heard a sound like joints popping. “No.”

She gave a breathless laugh, any guilt she may have had startled out of her by his cheek. “I wasn’t asking permission, Michael. This was my decision.”

“Why?” he ground out through clenched teeth, apparently reduced to monosyllables.

“Why not?” she replied, keeping her tone light and easy. He didn’t look like he was in danger of shifting, but he also wasn’t responding to her announcement the way she’d anticipated. “I thought you’d be okay with this. Sure, we had fun, but that was all it was. You’re a great lover. You’ll have no trouble finding someone closer to your own age to keep you company while I’m gone.” The words left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth.

“How long will that be?”

Mara shrugged, feigning a casual air she didn’t feel. “Months, years. Who knows? Until I find what I’m looking for, I guess. And when I find it, I’ll probably stay there…indefinitely.”

The Jeep swerved toward the ditch. Michael corrected it quickly, clearing his throat with a rough cough. “What is it you’re looking for?”

He wasn’t taking this like she’d predicted. Why was he asking her all the wrong questions? This wasn’t how she’d planned this conversation to go at all. Mara folded her hands in her lap, trying to project a calm she no longer felt.

“I need a mate.”

The car didn’t jerk this time. There was no reaction at all from the cat gone eerily still in the driver’s seat. “You can’t find one here?”

“It’s not like I haven’t looked,” Mara said irritably. “Three Rocks is my home. It’s not like I want to leave the pride, or the cubs…” Her throat closed off and she had to pause.

For the last decade, the pride’s one-room schoolhouse had been her world. She’d taught the little ones, practically raising them, until they were old enough and had enough control of their shifting to be sent to the high school in town. They were hers, and even knowing her teaching assistant was more than capable of taking over for her, she still felt like she was abandoning them by going to another pride.

But she didn’t have a choice. Not if she ever wanted to have a family of her own. The desire for a mate and a family had grown in her until it was a constant ache, pressing harder against her heart every day.

“I want the kind of mating my parents have. I want someone who is going to be with me for the rest of my life, not just until someone with a tighter ass comes along. Lions don’t normally mate for life, I know that, but my parents—hell, look at your sister and your brother. Landon didn’t just mate with Ava, he married her. And Caleb and Shana—that woman is the biggest bitch in five counties, but Caleb would never think of leaving her.”

“Not unless he wants his testicles removed with a melon baller.”

“For whatever reason. They’re together for life. That’s what I want.”

“A life sentence.”

“Someone who doesn’t think spending the rest of their life with me would be a life sentence,” Mara snapped. “Someone who is steady and stable and grounded. A good father to our cubs, a partner through thick and thin—”

Michael shook his head stubbornly. “There are plenty of men here—”

“Show me one who isn’t rubbing up against a different lioness every night of the week—and don’t say Tyler, because unless I grow four inches, bleach my hair and start calling myself Zoe, we both know your brother isn’t going to even look in my direction.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest you hook up with my older brother, Mara. For fuck’s sake.”

She cut him off as all of her frustration came pouring out, her anger fueled by a decade trapped in a pride where disloyalty was accepted as part of their natures. “One, Michael. One lion who isn’t going to fuck around on me. One who is going to love me for me and not just want to screw me because I’m a handy piece of ass. I am so sick of—”

“What about me?”

“You?” The laugh ripped out of her throat, abrasive and disparaging. It was a terrible sound. Mara regretted it the instant it came out, but it was too late to take it back.

His rage filled the car like a physical presence, a fog of anger. She heard the bones in his back snapping against one another as they tried to force his body into a feline shape. His claws sliced out and a ragged growl ripped from his throat. As his body contorted, his foot must have punched down on the accelerator. The SUV shot forward, careening toward the midline.

“Michael!” Mara lunged across the middle and yanked the steering wheel. The SUV straightened with a jerk but was still racing down the highway at deadly speed. She grabbed his shoulder with her free hand. There was no way she could prevent him from completing the shift, but she dug her fingers into the muscle of his shoulder anyway, trying to hold onto something human in him.

She didn’t know if it was her touch, her voice, or their impending death by fiery gasoline explosion in the ditch, but Michael caught the shift midway and jerked himself back to full human form. He panted like he’d just run a mile as the SUV dropped below death-and-dismemberment speed.

Mara kept her voice icy cool, the same tone she used in the classroom when the cubs were out of control and needed to be reined in. “Pull over, Michael. I’m driving the rest of the way.”

He hissed at her, baring teeth that had suddenly gone feline. “The day I can’t drive my own car—”

“You can’t,” she snarled, all traces of soothing calm drowning under the tide of her own anger.

She never lost her cool. Keep your head when all around are losing theirs, that was her M.O., but Michael could get under her skin and bring out a violence in her she’d never known was there. She stopped thinking and reverted to just reacting, feeling. And what she felt was anger. Bright, vivid anger.

“Look at you. You can’t even control the shift for five minutes. You nearly got us both killed!”

Michael slammed the brake and wrenched the steering wheel to the right. Mara gripped the doorframe, relieved he was obeying her demand, though a small, irrational part of her would have preferred he scream back at her. She didn’t want him to give in. Some wild, foreign part of her wanted a fight.

Then Michael punched the accelerator. The SUV jumped forward along a rutted dirt road and Mara realized he hadn’t pulled over. He’d just pulled off onto the ranch road. They were on pride land now. The wildness inside urged her to shift and run the rest of the way home on four feet—even if they were still too close to the outer perimeter, close enough to make being seen in feline form a danger.

She wanted the danger. “Stop the car.”

“Shut up, Mara. I’m driving you home. Deal with it.” Michael didn’t even glance in her direction. His eyes stayed trained straight ahead, locked on the unlit dirt road.

“What is your problem?” The rational part of her brain was completely submerged in stupidity, apparently. She was goading a man on the verge of losing control. She actually hoped he would. What the hell was wrong with her?

“What’s my problem?” he repeated incredulously, though he appeared no closer to shifting than he had five seconds earlier. “Half an hour ago I fuck my girlfriend’s brains out and fifteen minutes later she tells me she’s leaving me and never coming back. And why is she leaving me? Because she wants to find a real man who can give her what she really needs. What is my fucking problem? What the fuck do you think it is?”

“So my timing was bad. Sue me. You had to know this was coming.”

“Did I? What was my first clue? The way you got wet for me the second I walked in the bar? Your scent was so damn strong I couldn’t smell anything else. Or maybe I should have caught on when you were telling me not to stop and digging your claws into my back. That was a big fucking red flag right there.”

“You can’t honestly have expected us to live happily ever after. Our little fuckfest couldn’t last forever. I’m going to be thirty-five next month, Michael. I can’t waste my time fucking around—”

“With guys like me. Nice to know where I stand. Tell me, which was the bigger issue—the fact that I’m only twenty-four or the fact that I make you lose control?”

“I notice you don’t mention the fact that you nearly killed us both a few miles back.”

“You gonna answer me?”

Mara clenched her fists in her lap, trying to find some memory of calm. “This isn’t about us.”

“The fuck it isn’t.”

“It’s about me. What I want. Everything is arranged. I’ve already talked to Landon about it.”

Michael snarled. “My brother-in-law knew about this?”

“By this time next month, I’ll be visiting a pride in Florida. I need to have time to meet the lions in the other pride and gauge our compatibility before I go into heat in six weeks. I’ll need to be off the birth-control shots and on a prenatal vitamin regimen by then if I want to have any shot of conceiving. I only have a certain number of viable breeding years left.”

The lion in the driver’s seat hissed. “Nice to know it’s all about practicality and your viable breeding years. God forbid emotion should get involved in anything as messy as who you choose to spend the rest of your life with.”

“This is emotion,” she said, practicality pushing down the tide of irrational feelings and putting her back in control. “I want a family and I need to know I can rely on the father of my children. This is the best way to go about finding the happiness I want. The stable, abiding relationship I’ve always wanted.” She swallowed around a thickness in her throat, trying to think how she could make him understand. “You know my parents, Michael. You’ve seen how deep their love for one another runs. It’s not a passionate flame that only burns on the surface and vanishes with time. It’s built on companionship and friendship and compatibility. I won’t settle for less than that.”

He pulled the car to a stop in the middle of the ranch compound. Normally he would have driven her around to the front door of her bungalow, but Mara was glad he hadn’t. She didn’t want to have to tell him he couldn’t come in. It was better to leave it like this. To leave him like this. On neutral territory.

He cut the engine and turned to her, resting his arm along the back of her seat but not touching her.

“What if there could be more?” he asked in a low rumble.

Mara shook her head. “For me, there isn’t anything more important than that. I’m sorry, Michael.”

He started to reach for her, as if he would touch her face. She ducked away from his hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. Mara jerked open the passenger door and jumped out.

She shifted immediately, not caring that the change would destroy her eye-candy dress. She could run faster on four feet than two and she needed to get away, as far and as fast as she could. Mara ran, ignoring the roar of a wounded lion behind her.