Free Serengeti Sunrise: Serengeti Shifters, Book 4 by Vivi Andrews

easily—that part had taken a lot longer to cop to the reality.
    Something had shifted today. The last of his denial falling away until he was forced to face the truth. She meant something to him. He just didn’t want to think too hard about what that might be.
    Tyler raised his fist to knock again when the door opened.
    Zoe stood in the doorway, wearing only a faded T-shirt that fell to her hips. Suddenly the heavy feeling lifted and Tyler was wide awake. His gaze raked her from her bare toes to the golden curls tumbling around her shoulders. Arousal stirred to life.
    She blinked blearily up at him, shoving a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Tyler?”
    His heart stuttered. Zoe wasn’t only something. Right now, she was everything. “Can I come in?”
    She swung the door wider and he slipped past her into the room.
     
    Zoe had gone to bed alone, feeling lost in the expanse of her empty bed. She’d always liked having her own space before, but tonight her cabin felt like a cavern.
    She’d expected to feel a sense of freedom when she told Landon about her plans to leave. Now she could slip off whenever she wanted, as soon as the pride was secure. She’d thought it would feel like a cage springing open, but tonight she felt even more penned than ever.
    Ever since leaving Landon’s, she hadn’t been able to think for all the restless energy running under her skin. She should have been exhausted. It was after midnight and her day hadn’t exactly been uneventful, but Zoe hadn’t even been able to contemplate sleep.
    She’d shifted to her lioness form, hoping that would quiet the white noise cluttering her human thoughts, but her unease had shifted with her into an itch beneath her hackles, an agitation that had her pacing back and forth in her room like a feline in a zoo.
    She’d heard Tyler step onto her porch and shifted back to her human figure, grabbing the nightshirt she’d discarded in an instinctive defense against what she was feeling. What he was making her feel.
    As soon as she opened the door, she wished she hadn’t. Tall, muscled and weary, he looked far too good standing on her porch, something dark and needy in his eyes. Her soul felt like it was trying to reach out to him through her skin. She told herself it was just her animal side’s need for the reassurance of touch, but the words felt like a lie.
    When he squeezed past her into the cabin’s single open room, the scent of him teased her, inviting her to press her face against his neck and breathe, urging her to rub against him until their scents were tangled around one another and everyone who came near him would know who he belonged to.
    Zoe shut the door, pausing to stare at the worn wood until she could evict that instinct from her thoughts. Even her feline side wasn’t usually possessive. She didn’t need to mark her lovers and resisted all their attempts to mark her, so why couldn’t she stop imagining branding Tyler Minor with her scent?
    “Nice,” he commented behind her, and Zoe turned, realizing as she did that he’d never been inside her place before. He was careful about boundaries, careful never to be alone with her anywhere there was a bed handy.
    Zoe’s gaze slid to the large, low mattress, the only piece of furniture in the room. The austere lack of furnishings and decorations weren’t really her style, but she’d never seen the point in making a place feel homey if it wasn’t going to be her home.
    Now the lack made her uncomfortable. Watching Tyler survey her bare walls and impersonal furnishings, she wished she’d bothered to do something with the place. At least it was dark. He couldn’t see much. Maybe he’d just think it was charmingly minimal without the light to show it was barren.
    Not that it mattered what he thought. She refused to let it matter. He was just a guy. This was just a house. Shelter and nothing more. It filled a need. Just like he did. A physical need. Zoe took care of her own emotional