Tiger Magic
Page 28

“You never brought a girl flowers and candy?” Carly nuzzled his cheek as he’d nuzzled her. Nice. The bristles of his whiskers tickled her nose, his skin warm.
“They threw my mate in to me, and took her away when we were done.”
The grating words made Carly jerk upright. The pain was back in Tiger’s golden eyes, the bewilderment of trying to follow Carly’s teasing words mixing with bad things from his past.
“What?” Threw her in and took her away? What was he talking about? “Who’s they?”
“The people who kept me in the cage, until Iona let me out.”
Tiger’s words were stark, matching his bleak look. “Who the hell kept you in a cage?” Carly tasted rage. What had happened to him?
“The researchers who made me.”
“Researchers?” Like Dr. Brennan, the slimy anthropologist? With his bodyguard backup?
Was that what they wanted? To put Shifters like Tiger and Ellison with his cowboy hat into cages?
“Well, I don’t know who Iona is, but I’m glad she let you go,” Carly said. “Good for her.”
“She took me out, and Liam brought me here, to his Shiftertown. Liam’s trying to teach me to be normal.”
The ironic twist on the last word caught at her. “What’s normal?” Carly asked with half a laugh. “Ethan is considered normal. And he’s a total bastard.” She cupped Tiger’s face, losing her smile. “Don’t be normal, Tiger. Promise me?”
Tiger closed a light hand around Carly’s wrist. He gave her the intense look again, as though he were trying to read every thought inside her, as though he were looking for something to hold on to.
Carly rose on tiptoe and kissed him again, loving his warmth, the amazing power of him. Tiger’s golden eyes half closed as he nuzzled while she kissed, nipped while she licked. Wanting snaked through her, hotter than ever.
The door creaked open and someone cleared his throat.
“Sorry to interrupt y’all.” Ellison’s over-the-top Texas accent preceded him inside. “But Ethan passed out a little bit ago. Maybe I was holding his wrist too hard? Should be careful about that. Unfortunately, he’s coming around, and he’s back to wanting to call the cops. I say we get while the getting’s good.”
Carly started to turn away, to follow Ellison, but Tiger stepped to her, not letting her move. He studied her in his slow way, as though memorizing her and every detail of this moment.
Finally, Tiger caressed her wrist with his thumb and eased back, releasing her. He never looked away.
Heart thumping, Carly grabbed up all her clothes and stuffed them into a tote bag, sliding into a pair of shorts so she’d be decent enough to drive. Though Ellison had again turned his back, Tiger watched her, the heated look that roved her body making Carly want to hurry up and find that romantic hotel room.
* * *
“I’ll drive,” Ellison said, taking away the keys Carly had brought out from her purse.
Tiger liked the arrangement. Before Carly could walk around to the front passenger door, Tiger wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into the backseat with him.
Ellison didn’t wait for them to straighten themselves out. He gunned the car as soon as the doors closed, heading away from the cloying house and back to the fresh but humid air of Austin.
Tiger didn’t like Ethan’s smell on the clothes Carly had insisted on bringing with her, including the ones she wore. But he could always build a bonfire when they got back to Shiftertown—Shifters liked bonfires—and burn them all. Andrea could lend Carly some clothes for now. The two women looked to be about the same build, as far as Tiger could tell. Kim was too short; Shifter women like Glory, far too tall.
“You know, I like humans,” Ellison said as he drove. “My mate is human—you’d like her, Carly. Maria’s fiery and sweet, kind of like you. But that human Ethan is a piece of work.”
“I know.” Carly sounded sad under her anger. “It’s humiliating. I was going to marry him.”
“That’s the advantage of being Shifter,” Ellison said. “You can smell if someone is a shithead right off the bat. And that guy really stinks.”
“No kidding. Where were you when I needed your sniffer two years ago?”
“Right here in Austin, sweetie.” Ellison winked at her in the mirror. “You should have come to Shiftertown more often.”
“I didn’t know anything about Shifters before yesterday. Never thought about them much.” Carly grimaced. “Sorry, no offense.”
Tiger saw Ellison’s grin in the rearview mirror. “None taken.”
Carly smiled back at him, and her wide, red-lipped mouth made Tiger’s need bite him. He reached for her and scooped her around to face him, positioning her knees alongside his thighs on the seat. Carly looked surprised but didn’t pull away, and rested her hands on his shoulders.
“Quit,” she said. “This is dangerous.”
“I’ll drive carefully,” Ellison said, stepping on the gas.
Tiger wound his arms around Carly’s waist. “I’ll keep you safe. You can forget about the human. You’re my mate now.”
He saw Ellison glance in the rearview at them again, but his smile was gone. Carly looked puzzled.
“I’m happy to forget about Ethan. But you . . . You need to learn how to romance a girl.”
Ellison barked a laugh. “Good luck with that.”
“You don’t even know how to kiss.” Carly leaned close, bathing Tiger in her good scent.
Tiger knew that if he could lose himself in this woman—this strange woman with her laughter when he didn’t understand what was funny; her long, luscious legs; her smile that lit fires in his heart—then he’d never be afraid again. The nightmares, the frustration when other Shifters expected him to make the right response, the ever-present fear that he’d be plucked out of this relative peace and put back into a cage, all of that would vanish. The fears ate at him every day, except yesterday, and today—all the times he’d been with Carly.
Her presence soothed everything feral in him, the wild instincts that the researchers had bred into Tiger and that Liam was trying to ease out of him. Tiger had never been soothed in his life. But his body relaxed when he was around Carly, as though he’d never realized his muscles had been pulled tight until the tightness was gone.