To Tempt A Tiger (3 page)

“She was exhausted. The episodes always wear her out.”

He took in the creases along Rose’s brow and the little lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, the deep circles under her eyes. “She’s not the only one exhausted,” he commented. “I wish I could let you rest before we do this. But it’s important you believe me. Quickly.”

She waved a hand in a vague circle. “It’s better to get this nonsense over with while she’s asleep. If you’re gone before she wakes up, I’ll have less explaining to do.”

He narrowed his eyes, but decided they could argue about him leaving after she faced his tiger. “You understand what you’re agreeing to?”

“Yes. I’m agreeing to let you strip and pretend you can turn into a tiger. When you can’t, you will take your clothes and leave. If you refuse, I’ll call the cops. Or worse, my parents.”

He actually paused at that. Her parents were…well, they rivaled tiger parents in their fierce protectiveness of their only child. And they were both hunters. With a lot of guns. “After I shift, don’t shoot me, okay? Give me a chance to get back to human and then we’ll talk. And don’t scream if you can help it. You’ll wake Zoe.”

Rose looked at him with her brows raised, her mouth a flat, disbelieving line. She showed no sign of fear or unease, just impatience to see him gone. He couldn’t blame her for that, but this was too important.

He dropped the light jacket he wore, mostly for show, across the back of a chair. Then pulled his long-sleeved t-shirt over his head. He heard her very faint inhale and his blood pumped faster. He met her gaze. Her expression hadn’t changed, but her scent had. That hint of desire was stronger now, a delicious curl of spice he could actually taste. He smiled.

“I need you to watch me shift so you don’t think I’ve pulled a trick. But if you’d be more comfortable, you can turn around while I’m undressing.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” she muttered. “Get on with it.”

He nodded, trying not to let her stare affect him. He had to concentrate so he could shift as quickly as possible. He could change to his tiger form relatively fast for his kind, but it wasn’t an instantaneous process. It took a few minutes. And he’d go a lot slower if he was distracted by lusty thoughts of the woman watching him. As it was, it was taking an act of will to keep from getting hard.

He toed off his boots as he unbuttoned his jeans, still too aware of her gaze on him. He wasn’t shy or even remotely modest. Most tigers weren’t. They spent a lot of time naked. But Rose wasn’t just anyone. She was the woman who, four years ago, he’d been prepared to abandon his own kind for, the human woman he was so desperately in love with he’d been willing to face his father’s fanatical anger and prejudice to stay with her.

Being naked with Rose was not the same as being naked with anyone else.

He slid his jeans and underwear off and draped them over the chair with his coat and shirt. When he faced Rose, she was making an effort to keep her gaze…up. That made him smile. She snarled.

He shook off his need to tease her and pulled his attention to the shift. After she witnessed that, there was the very real possibility it would kill any desire she still felt for him. He’d hate that, but the sacrifice would be worth it for Rose and Zoe’s safety.

“This will take a few minutes,” he explained. “I won’t hurt you as the tiger. I’ll still be myself. Just in a different body. Okay?”

She snorted her disbelief. “Get this over with, Vlad. I want you out of my house.”

“Fine.” He gave up trying to soften the blow and let his tiger out.

Rose’s brain took almost thirty seconds to catch up to what she was seeing. For what felt like a long time, she simply couldn’t compute the information her senses were sending to her. That delay probably saved her sanity.

By the time her brain caught up, Vlad’s body had contorted into a form no human body could take on. His legs shortened and changed shape. His arms seemed to reposition and thicken. His hands widened and his fingers retracted, replaced by claws that came sprouting out from human skin now rippling with waves of russet, black and white fur.

The thing that had been Vlad folded forward, standing on all fours as his head and face contorted, moved and changed. Horror kept her still and mute. She couldn’t have screamed if she’d wanted to. The part of her mind not curling into a ball of terror took note of her physical reaction to the shock—the sweat covering her even as she shivered with cold, the fine trembling in her muscles, the way she felt like she was floating and yet couldn’t remember how to move her heavy limbs.

So this was what a mental breakdown felt like. She’d always wondered.

When the thing before her finally stopped contorting and shook out its fur, a massive Bengal tiger stood in the middle of her living room staring at her.

With Vlad’s beautiful brown eyes.

Curses she’d never allow in the same house as her daughter piled up against her tongue, but she couldn’t remember how to let those words out. In her mind, she screamed and denied, but beyond that, all she could do was stare.

There was a tiger in her living room, and she’d just seen the man she used to love do something that only happened in movies and fiction.

He’d said her daughter could do that. Zoe’s pain was caused by her body
trying
to do that.

The thought brought her back fully into her body and gave her control of herself again.

“Sonofabitch,” she hissed. “Vlad, you sonofabitch, why didn’t you tell me about this? What have you done to our daughter?”

The tiger shook his huge head and sat, wrapping his long, thick tail around his legs just like a domestic cat. For some reason that struck her as odd, and in the next minute, she almost laughed that the tiger’s position was what she focused on as being odd.

“Can you talk like that?”

He shook his head.

“But you understand? You can…think?”

He nodded, holding her gaze the entire time.

Her heart was pounding so hard she was afraid she might pass out. She could
see
Vlad in the big cat’s eyes. And yet, it wasn’t him. There was something both wild and contained in the depths of the tiger’s gaze. Something powerful and dangerous.

To her utter astonishment, the danger drew her and helped tamp down some of her horror. She wasn’t amazed at being drawn to danger and thrill—she and her parents made their living organizing and leading adventure travel. She was a danger junkie. Even after having Zoe, she still couldn’t resist rock climbing or white water rafting occasionally, just enough to get her adrenaline pumping. She didn’t take the kinds of risks she used to when she was with Vlad, but motherhood hadn’t killed off her need for that rush of excitement.

And here she was, facing the most dangerous thing she could imagine. The part of her not screaming hysterical denials was suddenly…curious. And excited.

“Fuck me,” she muttered. Then slapped a hand over her mouth and glanced back toward Zoe’s door. The realization that she’d turned away from the dangerous predator in the room had her looking back quickly. She could swear the tiger was smirking.

She shook her head. “You need to change back.”

He nodded and stood, his body starting to convulse again.

“I need a drink.” She rushed into the kitchen, stunned that she’d actually chickened out and run away. But she wasn’t ready to see the process reverse itself.

By the time she came back out again, Vlad was not only human but sitting fully dressed on the couch. The incongruity of it made her pause and blink. Had she imagined all that?

“You didn’t imagine it,” he said, as if reading her mind.

She scowled and continued to the chair across from the couch. She glanced at the yellow sunflower clock on the wall over the TV. Was it still so early in the day?

It felt like hours had passed, but he’d only just knocked on her door about forty-five minutes ago.

She sat on the edge of the chair across from him and stared. “So…tiger shapeshifters, huh?”

He nodded.

“Does it…hurt to change?”

“No. It’s like stretching. There’s a pull and tension, but not pain. This is what I’m born to do. There’s nothing odd about it to my body. After, it’s like a release of tension, and I feel really good and strong.”

“Going human to tiger?”

“Either way.”

“You think Zoe’s body is trying to make her do that?”

“I know that’s what’s happening. It’s trying to do something natural, but her little mind is getting in the way. Our young—”

“Wait, how many of you are there?”

“Not as many as there used to be. But that’s a much longer story.”

Curiosity sparked but she pushed it aside so she could focus on how this affected her daughter. “Can Zoe just
not
do that? Can you teach her how to do for herself what you did for her in there just now? Then she doesn’t ever have to be…” She trailed off. She’d been on the verge of saying Zoe wouldn’t have to be a freak. But she realized that would insult Vlad. “I just want her to have a normal life, be a normal kid,” she finished.

“She isn’t, and she’ll never be a normal
human
child, Rose. But that doesn’t mean she can’t be normal for what she is.”

“This just can’t be real.”

“If I’d thought this might happen, I would have…”

When he didn’t finish, she narrowed her eyes, trying to see into his soul. “You would have what?”

“I would have prepared you, given you the choice of whether or not you could live in my world. And if you couldn’t, I would have found a way to give you up before you got pregnant.”

She remained silent for a long time as she worked her way through that admission.

Vlad was the first to break the silence. “We need to find someplace for you and Zoe to stay for a bit while I draw my brothers off.”

“I’ll take care of that. Why do you think they’ll hurt us?”

He ran a hand through his hair and stared at the sunflower clock, his mouth flattened into a tight line. “It’s complicated without giving you a lot of tiger shifter history—which we don’t have time for now—but basically, they think any offspring from tigers and humans are…abominations that must be killed. They learned that lesson and attitude from my father.”

“Your father?”

“He…” He swallowed visibly, then faced her, his expression impossible to read. “He tried to kill my half sister, Nila, because of what she is. My brothers hunted her down with him and would have happily helped kill her if they’d gotten the chance. They’ll try to kill Zoe.”

“They might try. They won’t succeed. I’ll rip them apart.” Even as she said it, she flashed back to his shift and that huge tiger facing her with Vlad’s intelligent eyes. She shook off the moment of fear and panic. Didn’t matter what she was facing. This was her daughter’s life. She’d tear apart all the demons of hell to protect Zoe.

A slight smile broke Vlad’s expression. “You’re as fierce as any tiger mom I’ve known. I’m glad. Our daughter obviously has a wonderful mother.”

“How can I kill a tiger shifter? Can I just shoot them?” She ignored the little thump of her heart following his compliment. She didn’t have time for it. But the fact that he thought she was a good mom pleased her a lot more than she wanted to admit. She couldn’t trust the comment, though, not after he’d as much as called her a bad mother earlier for letting her daughter remain in pain. She grabbed on to the anger that thought produced and thrust it in front of her more complicated emotions like a shield.

“It takes some seriously heavy ammunition and more than one shot,” he said, “but yes, you can shoot a tiger shifter dead. Especially if you shoot them in the head.”

“No special bullets needed?”

“We’re not werewolves. But we do heal incredibly fast, so one bullet isn’t likely to work—unless it’s one of those military grade explosive things or you hit the shifter in the head in just the right spot. A broken neck, done just right, will work. But you’d have to practically rip a tiger’s head off to make sure they’re dead. It takes a lot of damage to overcome our healing speed.”

“Can you kill another tiger? How would you do it?”

“I’d tear them to pieces while in tiger form.”

She shivered a little, not sure if it was from fear or a rush of excitement, and not inclined to look too closely at what either might mean. “I don’t have that option. I’ll just have to get a few big guns.” She started mentally scrolling through her father’s inventory. She’d have to swing by their house.

On her way where?

“Vlad, I have a job. I can’t just run off. And won’t your brothers just track me down? What’s the point? I’ll be safer here with a lot of ammunition and the help and support of my parents.”

“You’re risking Zoe’s life staying here. You don’t know what my brothers are capable of.” He wouldn’t quite meet her gaze.

There was something he wasn’t telling her. “Spill. What have you left out?”

He sighed. “My brothers aren’t the only threat. They aren’t the only ones who think like my father. There are a bunch of tigers as fanatical as my dad. Not all of them were killed when he was. Not even close.”

The news surprised her. “Your dad is dead?” She knew Vlad and his father didn’t get along—she’d learned that when she and Vlad were a couple—but losing his father had to hurt. She’d be devastated.

“He was killed by one of the tigers who rescued Nila from him. He would have been put to death by the elders anyway. He’d killed humans, which is an automatic death sentence.”

“Elders?”

“Our governing body.”

She was curious enough to ask more, but she didn’t have time for it now. She needed him gone. Then she had to decide how best to protect Zoe. If she ran, she’d have no way of knowing when it was safe to return. She’d be in unfamiliar territory. And she’d be away from her parents if she needed their help.

“I’ll tell you all about the shifter world later,” he interrupted her thoughts, “when you and Zoe are safe.”

“We’re safe. I just need some guns.” She went back to strategizing ways to protect Zoe. If Vlad’s brothers were like him, she was facing some serious trouble. But it would be easier to defend from home. She couldn’t tell Vlad that, though. He’d just keep coming back. She didn’t want to see him anymore, and she certainly didn’t want Zoe around him. She willfully ignored the fact that Zoe might be a shapeshifter and without Vlad her pain could continue. Rose would take care of that too…somehow.