“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.
Tiger touched Carly’s lips, liking the amazing softness of them. “In that room, that wasn’t kissing?”
“Well, it was.” Her face went pink, so pretty. “But not sweet kissing.”
“You have different kinds of kissing?”
Ellison made a noise up front. “I am so enjoying this conversation.”
“Like this.”
Carly pursed her lips and touched them to Tiger’s mouth. Tiger liked that, her lips soft and warm, the press light, yet it made his body heat with need.
Carly pulled away. “See, you’re supposed to kiss back. When you don’t move your lips, I think you’re not enjoying it.”
How the hell could she think that? Tiger wanted her, wanted to strip off the shorts and open his jeans and have her right here. Who cared about the cars around them, and Ellison in the driver’s seat? Tiger should be inside Carly, where he belonged.
He hadn’t understood why she hadn’t wanted to take what they were doing to its natural completeness back in the house. She’d said it would be about Ethan, even though Ellison had the man contained downstairs. Carly seemed to think the place they did it was important. Another thing Tiger didn’t understand.
Ethan was nothing. The man was a liar and a fraud, weak and ineffectual. If he’d been a Shifter in the wild, he’d have been dead a long time ago. His existence inside the house or out of it made no difference to Tiger being with Carly.
But it was important to Carly, and so he’d stopped.
Females could be fussy, both Liam and Connor had explained, and the male who wanted one had to learn how to please her. Women could afford to be choosy because males were prevalent in Shifter societies and females were scarce. Males competed with each other for the females, and females sat back and picked the best ones.
Of course, in the old days, before Collars and Shiftertowns, Liam had said, a Shi
fter male could choose his female by locking her away and having sex with her until she agreed she was his mate and filled his house with cubs.
Either way made no sense to Tiger. Mates were bonded to each other, no need for enticing each other or trapping each other. They were already one.
“I’ll show you.” Carly formed her lips into a pucker again, waiting for Tiger to imitate her.
He pulled his lips into the round shape Carly made, but instead of kissing him, she burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “But you look so funny.”
Tiger relaxed his mouth, liking her laughter so much that her words didn’t sting. He put his hand behind her neck and pulled her down to him.
“Kiss me,” he said.
Her laughter died, her eyes went soft, and Carly touched her lips to his mouth. This time, Tiger shaped his lips to match hers, meeting hers pressure for pressure.
“Oh,” she said, her breath brushing his skin. “That’s nice.”
Much more than nice. Tiger touched his lips to hers again, learning how to add and release the pressure as she did. It wasn’t the same as when he’d tasted the inside of her mouth, but good. Very good.
He slid his hands down Carly’s spine, finding a gap between the waistband of her shorts and her warm back. From there he could dip his fingers inside, brushing the waistband of the panties with the tiny polka dots. Tiger remembered her walking away from Ethan in nothing but her high heels and panties, her legs gorgeous, bare back straight.
He’d already been rock hard from watching her slide off the dress and throw off the bra, and the little wriggle in her hips when she’d walked off in fury had spiraled the mating frenzy through him. Tiger couldn’t help but follow her. He’d told himself he was protecting her, but Tiger knew his reason for going after her had been far more basic.
The skin of her buttocks was smooth, hot from the weather and from being enclosed in the shorts. Tiger wanted to push the shorts out of his way, but he couldn’t because it was so tight in this little car. When he got Carly back to Shiftertown, he’d peel the clothes from her and touch her all over.
Carly drew back from the kiss. “What are you doing?”
“Touching you.”
Tiger brought one hand up between them and cupped her breast, easily feeling it through the thin shirt. He lightly pinched her nipple, watching it firm to a point. Carly drew in a little breath, her eyes fixing on him.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she whispered.
“Why not?”
She leaned closer. “It makes me want to do bad things.”
Good. The things wouldn’t be bad though. Sex was never bad with a mate. “Do them with me,” Tiger said, fingers going lower on her buttocks.
In the front Ellison reached to the middle of the dashboard. “I’m turning on the radio. Right now.” He pushed buttons until a country song filled the car, a man and a woman singing about kissing each other. Ellison chuckled. “I guess that was just my luck.”
The song seemed to galvanize Carly. She wrapped her arms around him as the strains of the music went on, and kissed his lips again.
Tiger returned the kiss, learning how to match what she did. He tugged at her nipple while their lips met and parted, met again.
Ellison pulled up at a stoplight. A man in a truck next to them looked over, then he started to whoop and honk. Carly lifted her head, her face bright red.
Tiger didn’t care. Let them, as Ellison liked to say, eat their hearts out.
Ellison pulled away through the intersection, and the truck beside them turned off, the man giving a thumbs-up sign as he went.
Carly unwound herself from Tiger, pried his hands from her body, and sat down next to him. “How embarrassing. Sorry, Ellison.”
Ellison was grinning. “Hey, Shifters don’t care. I once came out of a bar to find my back-door neighbor and his human girlfriend going at it, full throttle, on the hood of my pickup. I had to wait ’til they were done. My neighbor said he was being discreet by using my truck instead of a total stranger’s.”
“Nice of him,” Carly said. “So Shifters really don’t care about romantic hotel rooms, rose petals, and champagne?”
“We can,” Ellison answered. “But when the mating frenzy hits, all we need is a surface that doesn’t give too much.”
“Mating frenzy,” Carly repeated. “Connor mentioned that.”
“Every Shifter has it. That crazed need to lock yourself in a room with your mate and go for it as much as and for as long as you can. We don’t come out for days, sometimes.”
“Days.” She sounded hesitant.
“Ellison.” Tiger thought of the phrase Liam and Connor used so often. “Shut it.”
“Goddess, now you’re starting to sound like a Morrissey,” Ellison said, never losing his good-natured drawl. “You’ve been living with them way too long.”
“Why do you live with them?” Carly asked Tiger. “You don’t want a place of your own?”
Ellison answered before Tiger could. “Shifters don’t have a choice. Only so many houses in Shiftertown, and we’re not allowed to live outside it. In my house, there’s my mate, Maria, Deni—she’s my sister—and Deni’s two sons, and hopefully a cub of my own soon.” His voice warmed when he spoke of the potential cub. “Tiger’s from . . . out of town, and there weren’t many houses with room for him when he arrived. Liam’s is one of the largest houses, and after Sean and his mate moved in with Dylan and Glory, Liam had an extra bedroom.”
“And no one else wanted me living in their house,” Tiger finished.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He spoke the bare truth, but Carly stared at him, aghast. “Why not? Did they say that?”
“They didn’t have to,” Tiger said.
Tiger closed his mouth, unsure how to explain, but Ellison spoke up. “Remember what he did in the hospital room? Yeah, I heard all about it. Plus he nearly took out that human, Walker. The other Shifters are afraid he’ll do something like that.”
“But that’s not fair,” Carly said. “In the hospital, they had you scared to death. You knocked out Walker because he was spying on me and was carrying a loaded pistol. I mean, who does that?”
The warmth in Tiger’s heart escalated. Carly was looking at him in dismay, not fear, radiating anger at others for not understanding him.
They had scared him in the hospital—he’d been afraid he’d never see Carly again.
“And anyway,” Carly went on. “If you were attacking to hurt people, your Collar would have stopped you.” She pointed to the inert black and silver chain around his throat. “Shocks you when you get aggressive, right?”
Again Ellison jumped in before Tiger could speak. “You bet it does. Hurts like a mo fo.”
Tiger remained silent. Carly was his mate, and he trusted her, but he didn’t want to frighten her too soon with the fact that his Collar was a fake.
Carly leaned forward in the seat. “Ellison, you missed the turnoff. You take Koenig so I can get out to the gallery.”
Ellison glanced back through the mirror, looking at Tiger. Tiger gave him a nod.
“Sorry.” Ellison slowed and turned at the next intersection, driving north to make for the 290.
“Thanks. I really appreciate this,” Carly said.
Ellison had been heading for Shiftertown, knowing Tiger wanted to be alone with her. But Tiger was curious to see this gallery where Carly worked, wanted to make sure all was well there.
Carly settled back, her scent sweet and spicy, but also conveying to Tiger her underlying nervousness. Not fear for what Tiger and Ellison could do to her—it was more subtle than that, buried deep. Carly feared to trust at all. The man Ethan had taken her trust in him away from her by blatantly sexing the other woman. His house had still smelled of that encounter, despite the cleaning solution scent over it. The house had also smelled of Tiger’s blood.
Tiger had never trusted easily either. The things the rese
archers had done to him had made him close himself off, fearing to believe in anyone. Liam and his family were trying to instruct Tiger in how to trust, and so far, they’d not betrayed him. But when the researchers had taken away Tiger’s cub and then told him it had died, Tiger’s last spark of hope had died with it.
He’d watched the spark die in Carly when she’d seen Ethan and the woman. Whatever people had done to her in the past, they, like Ethan, had made promises, then withdrawn them, just as the researchers had poked things through the bars of Tiger’s cage to see what he’d do. As a cub he’d needed touch and caring, and he’d received none.
And then they’d left him alone. Completely alone, abandoned, not even having the courtesy to kill him.
Tiger would never let Carly feel that alone. Never. Not even if he had to stick with her day and night until she understood.
* * *
Armand’s art gallery lay outside the heart of Austin in a tiny town called Karlsberg that was being built up and gentrified. Large, historic homes mingled with new mansions, and several streets of art galleries, restaurants, and gourmet food shops attracted well-heeled tourists.
The long stretch of road where Carly had first met Tiger was again deserted as Ellison drove along it. They passed the place where the Corvette had broken down, not far past the sign saying that Karlsberg was thirty miles away.
Tiger recognized the spot too. He looked over at Carly, giving her his full stare. Nothing hinting or coy about it.
She knew she should talk to him. She should say, I can’t rush into another relationship right now. I need to figure out how I feel about my fiancé turning on me, and I have abandonment issues. Don’t make me care about you, only to have my world pulled out from under me again.
Carly would say all that if she were sensible. But no, she’d decided to kiss him, and to teach Tiger to kiss her. She’d fantasized about having crazed, intense sex in Ethan’s dressing room with Tiger, and not just as payback to Ethan.
She should slow down, until she was not needy, and then assess what she was feeling for Tiger. Things were moving too fast, as fast as Ellison racing down the highway.