A Serengeti Christmas by Vivi Andrews Page B

he was honest with himself, he wanted her to
stay. He wanted to wake up with her on Christmas morning, when
everything was so hopeful and new and there was that chance, no
matter how slight, that this time she might stay.
    He could let her in the bungalow. He just had
to keep her out of his heart. No falling in love this time. Just
sex. They were good at sex.
    He pushed the door open wider and Shana
smiled a feline smile with just enough triumph to make him nervous.
Then she ducked under his arm and into the room, brushing against
his body as she passed.
    He somehow resisted the urge to chase her
heat, to pin her between him and the nearest flat surface. Instead,
he flipped the door closed and pressed his palm against it, the
contact with the wood his only link to a reality that didn‘t
revolve around her.
    This was a bad idea. He needed to remember
all the reasons he was angry with her—all the guys she‘d been with
when she should have been with him, all the times she‘d nearly
gotten him killed with her goddamn ambition.
     
    Then she turned to him with the slow,
seductive smile he knew all too well and every other thought burned
right out of his mind. Damn, she was gorgeous. Tall and confident,
curvaceous and overtly sexual.
    He was so screwed.
    * * * * *
    Shana took a deep breath. Caleb‘s scent
teased her and a coil of heat tightened at the base of her spine.
She wet her lips and turned to face him.
    The man was eleven different kinds of sexy.
He was tall and muscled everywhere. The bulge of his biceps as he
pressed his palm against the door made her mouth water. His dark
hair was cut ruthlessly short and looked black in the low light of
the bungalow, but in his lion form, when the sunlight hit it,
teasing hints of reds and browns streaked through. The curve of his
lip, the jagged angle of his jaw, everything about him made her
want him.
    But that was just the hormones talking,
wasn‘t it? It was perfectly natural for her to hunger for him like
this. The vise closing tight around her heart was just a side
effect of the need pulsing through her veins in waves. It had
nothing to do with him.
    She wasn‘t here because it was Christmas Eve
and she‘d missed him like a hole in her heart. She was here because
she needed to wrap her legs around a man and scream.
    She just needed to keep reminding herself of
that.
    Just sex. If she kept it at just sex, Caleb
couldn‘t disappoint her again.
    She tossed the mistletoe onto the bedside
table and grabbed a long curl of green ribbon off the desk. Caleb
had apparently been doing some last minute package wrapping. Shana
licked her lips. There was only one package she wanted to unwrap
tonight.
    She closed the distance between them, holding
his eyes the entire time. “Have you been a good boy this year,
Caleb?”
    He shrugged, dropping his hand from the door.
“Sure.”
    Shana flipped the ribbon over his head. She
held the ends of the green cord so it stretched taut behind his
neck. He kept his hands loose at his sides, not reaching for her,
and she kept her distance as well, the ribbon their only point of
contact.
    “Aren‘t you going to ask me if I‘ve been a
good girl?” she asked softly, leaning closer.
    “You‘re never a good girl.”
    A slow smile curled her lips. “You know me so
well.” Shana ducked under the ribbon and turned so her back was to
his front and the green cord wrapped around both of them. She held
the ends with her hands crossed in front of her.
    His body heat warmed her back and she tugged
on the ribbon until he stepped forward. She bit back the little
sound of want that tried to escape as his strength and heat pressed
against her back from shoulders to thighs. She closed her eyes as
his erection pressed into the small of her back through the layers
of their clothing.
    Shana hummed a few bars from Santa Baby as
she bent her knees and slowly rolled her hips in a teasing little
grind against him. His hands closed on her hips, but not to
stop
    her.