Nik moved quickly, going across the room and grabbing her around the waist before she could hit the floor. She moaned in pain and he held her gently, slowly slipping to his knees, her naked back pushing against his naked front. She was so weak, she couldn’t stand on her own.
“Breathe, sugar. Just breathe.”
He had to fight hard to keep his self-control. Not easy with her naked flesh pressed against his. And before he took hold of her, he spotted the sexiest damn tattoo in the middle of her back. He didn’t have a chance to get a good look at it, but knowing she had one set his teeth on edge.
“I’m going to be sick.”
Uh-oh. Well, that killed the libido right quick.
“Come on, darlin’. Let’s get you in the bathroom.” Each bedroom in his house had its own bathroom and he had never been more grateful. He stood up, bringing the woman with him and swiftly took her inside. He held her with one arm while he lifted the toilet seat cover and the toilet seat. Kneeling down again, he brought her with him, making sure her head hovered over the toilet.
“It’s going to be okay, sugar. Just relax.”
Moaning, she gripped the sides of the toilet and leaned forward. He was about to reach around and pull her hair off her face, when her head swung back, slamming into his nose. His brothers had broken his nose years ago, but this bitch literally knocked it out of joint. He heard the bone pop.
“Goddammit!”
Releasing her, he fell back to the floor.
He looked up in time to see her smoothly get to her feet, the sheet sliding off that sweet, sweet body, leaving her naked and oh so beautiful. With a coldness he’d never seen on a human not born cat, she turned and yanked the top of the toilet tank off.
“Wait—” was the last thing he said before she brought the hard, heavy porcelain down on his head.
Angie winced. She never wanted to hurt something that pretty, but it’s not like he gave her much choice.
Damn! When did tigers get involved in this little drama? She wrapped the sheet around her body and ran out of the bathroom into the adjoining bedroom.
She saw no sign of any of her stuff, but that wasn’t very surprising. She wouldn’t exactly expect them to leave her .9 out and loaded.
She ran out into the hallway, heading in the opposite direction from the one the tiger had been taking. She’d only gotten a couple of feet, though, when she skidded to a stop. Two other tigers sat quietly at the end of the hallway near a set of stairs. They looked at her, and she was positive she saw surprise on their cat faces. She knew that if they could register surprise they were at least partly human. Hell. She’d rather deal with real tigers. No ulterior motive except dinner.
“Shit!” She turned and ran down the other way. The hallway stretched long and sported two exits. Boy, this wasn’t just a house. This was a mansion. A very nice mansion. Shame she didn’t have time to enjoy it. She skidded toward another stop at the top of the stairs. Two women, chatting quietly, sat on the bottom step. They looked up at her, eyes glinting in the dim light of the stairwell, and frowned. Nope. They weren’t completely human either.
“Fuck!”
She tore back the other way, but saw the tigers loping toward her. She went into the first room she found, slamming the door shut behind her. No lock. Shit.
Angie desperately glanced around the room.
There must be a weapon around here somewhere.
“Oh, my God, Nik! What did that evil bitch do to you?”
Nik forced his eyes open to see his sister and cousin kneeling over him. “Help me up.”
They each grasped a hand and hauled him to his feet. He couldn’t let them go right away. Still too shaky.
“Maybe we should call the doc?” his cousin Reena asked as she used a wet washcloth to wipe blood off his face and out of his eyes.
“No. I’ll be fine.” He pulled away from them, slowly walking back into the bedroom. He looked over at the two tigers standing in the doorway.
“Shift. Now.”
The two tigers looked at each other. For a minute, Nik thought they might make a run for it. But they knew better. Knew he’d track them down and kick the living tar out of both of them.
They shifted to human and looked at their brother sheepishly.
He stared at them. “Why is there—” He stopped, putting his hands on both sides of his nose, and snapped it back into place. Nik closed his eyes against the pain. When he opened them again, both his brothers were trying to ease out of the room.
“Don’t make me come get you.”
They stopped and turned around.
“Where is she,” he barked. If he’d been more human, the crazy woman would have killed him. Luckily, his people were very hard of head.
“Your bedroom.”
“Great.” That’s all he needed. Some insane woman ripping up his bedroom. He pushed past his brothers and stalked down the hallway.
He’d just gotten in front of his door when his sister, Kisa, spoke, “Isn’t Granddaddy’s shotgun in your room?”
Nik looked at his bedroom door, then hit the ground as wood exploded around him. A hole the size of a basketball punched through it.
Who the hell is this crazy heifer?
Angie ejected the shotgun shell and aimed the gun again. Her feet braced firmly apart, her eyes on the hole she’d just created. She needed to get to a car. Or a phone. Preferably both.
This was bad. Really, really bad. She didn’t even know they had tiger shifters. What did tigers do? Christ, weren’t they man-eaters or something? And what about all the Pack-Pride bullshit? Were all cats involved in that or the lions only?
Goddammit! Where the hell is Miki when I need her ass?
Angie realized how quiet it had suddenly become. Real quiet. She strained to hear anything as she took several small steps forward.
She stopped abruptly, closing her eyes. She didn’t know how long he’d been behind her, but she knew he stood there now. She could feel him.
She steadied the gun in her hand and spun around to clobber him with it. But he was fast and strong. He grabbed her around the waist, yanking her up against his naked body with one hand while the other snatched the gun from her.
They stared at each other as he threw the gun out the open balcony window he’d come through. She could feel his hard chest against her tits. Her legs straddled one of his enormous, rock solid thighs.
Holy shit, he’s fuckin’ gorgeous.
He glared at her. “You are so payin’ for that door.”
Then he dropped her on her ass.
Chapter Two
“You rude, motherfucker!”
“You try to kill me in my own home and I’m rude?”
“You kidnapped me!”
“Woman, I did no such thing.” As he spoke, he looked up and saw his brothers staring at him through his poor abused door. He saw the truth in their eyes. Christ, they had kidnapped her. Those idiots!
“Well, how do you explain me getting here, hillbilly?”
He looked back at the beautiful woman sitting on his floor. Man but she was pretty. Shame she was such a highfalutin’ bitch.
“There seems to be some kind of misunderstanding—”
“Really, Jethro? Ya think?”
He closed his eyes and counted to ten. He needed to remain calm. Although this woman seriously tested the tiger in him. When he opened his eyes again to answer her, calmly, she was diving for the open window.
With a roar that shook the house, he went after her. He had her by the waist before she even reached the balcony. That’s all he needed. Some crazy heifer with a broken leg because she jumped out his second-story window.
“You motherfuckingbastardsonofabitchwhorecocksuckerprick!”
Nik dragged the kicking, screaming woman out of his bedroom and to the room that had belonged to his old Aunt Abby. A crazy tigress, she’d believed everyone plotted constantly in hopes of stealing her valued “possessions”. So when she moved in for the last year of
her life, she’d insisted on a walk-in closet with a lovely lock on it. For the first time since the old woman died, Nik locked that closet. Right after he tossed her crazy butt inside.
She kicked and screamed louder, but Nik ignored it as he adjusted the padlock. He had to find out what the hell his brothers had been up to and he still hadn’t had his cup of coffee.
Nik was not a happy man.
Angie banged on the door one more time, but she knew he’d left the room. She felt him leave, even though he did it silently.
“Goddamn redneck!” She hadn’t been this angry in a long time. Not since the judge ordered her to go to anger management. One little incident with a baseball bat and a guy’s knees and suddenly she’s marked as a raging lunatic. Typical.
She felt around in the dark and eventually found a light. Flicking it on, she yelped in surprise and jumped back as far as she could manage.
She stared at the stuffed wolf silently staring back at her. Angie didn’t want to know if it was once like Sara since, upon death, the shifters didn’t change back.
She bit back a sob of absolute rage. She wanted to go home.
Now!
A pair of jeans quickly pulled on, Nik walked into his kitchen. A cup of fresh, hot coffee found its way into his hand and his butt forced into one of the kitchen chairs.
“Drink it, Nik,” Reena ordered as she poured herself a cup. “Before you say or do anything that we’ll all regret, drink your damn coffee.”
With a low growl, he took a sip. French roasted. His cousin and sister knew him well. He had what he considered “foo foo” coffee in his cabinets. But he kept that for company—when he had company. He liked coffee strong enough to remove old paint.
“Feel better?” Kisa asked as she handed Aleksei, her twin, a piece of cantaloupe. Aleksei took it and took another step toward the exit. As did Bannik. Idiots.
“Don’t even think about leavin’.” Nik took another sip of his coffee. His head hurt. Man, that woman had a lethal way with a toilet.
“Why is that woman in my house?”
Bannik and Aleksei glanced at each other. Apart, they were two of the brightest men Nik knew. Predators with hearts of gold. But together…Lord, they could be stupid.
“It’s the girl from the airport,” Alek offered. Like that was an explanation.
Reena sat down catty-corner from Nik. “What girl at the airport?”
Ban grinned. “Big brother here practically tackled that poor girl at the airport ’cause he thought she was cute.”
“I didn’t tackle her.” Nik looked at his cousin, who was really more of a sister to him. Her mother, for reasons no one could quite put their finger on, had shunned Reena when she was barely seven. The tigress stopped caring for her, feeding her, or anything else. Reena wandered over to their territory and his mother took her in, raising her as one of her own. “It was an accident.”
Reena raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure. You are known for being quite clumsy.”
“Shut up.”
“Anyway, we got to this town Daddy wants so bad and there she was. Struttin’ around all those wolves like she owned the place. A full-human.”
“Still doesn’t explain how she got in my goddamn house.”
“I’m gettin’ to that.” Ban scratched the scar across his stomach. The price he’d paid for his daughter. Tiger females were brutal lovers, but Ban loved his daughter and Nik feared for any man who would one day come into her adult life. “See, she has this little store with really nice stuff in it. Me and Alek would go and check it out, ya know, every day or so. Anyway, last time we were there, she left early and when we walked out, we smelled hyena. Which seemed strange, ’cause it’s wolf territory.”
Nik’s head fell back with a sigh. “I am so bored by this.”
Ban didn’t use less words, but he did talk faster. “Anyway, we go to the parking lot to see if she was okay, and she’s got this hyena female down on the ground and is crushing the holy hell outta her windpipe. Which we would have let her go on doin’, but this Clan of hyenas came out of the trees and she was kinda outnumbered at that point. So me and Alek stepped in. She got banged up a bit, but that was kinda our fault ’cause we kinda hit her when we leaped over her to get to the hyenas.”
“That still doesn’t explain why she’s here,” Nik roared in frustration.
“We couldn’t just leave her there. Clearly them wolves were not takin’ very good care of her.”
“That’s really gallant, but both of you have quite substantially large, albeit tacky, homes, so I’m not sure why her skinny ass is in mine.”
“Well, me and Alek knew you liked her too. So on the way back, we rolled dice for her, and you won.”
“It seemed only fair to include you when we were playing since you saw her first.”
Nik stared at his brothers. He prayed that there were cameras all over his kitchen and someone was going to jump out at him and scream, “You’ve been punk’d!” But that didn’t happen.
“You two do realize you’ve brought her over state lines?”
“How else do you think we got from Texas to here?”
Nik lifted his coffee mug, about to chuck it across the room at his brothers, but Reena’s cool hand on his arm stopped him. “What he means, you two Neanderthals, is that it’s now a federal offense. Life in prison mean anything to you?”
“We rescued her. I didn’t see any wolves out there trying to help. Ask me, she should be damn grateful.”
“She is not grateful. She’s crazy. Look what she did to me.” Nik pointed to his still oozing forehead. “And in case you’re wonderin’, yeah, this hurts!”
“If you don’t want her, I’ll take her.”
Alek shook his head. “No. We should roll for her again.”
“You’re right. That’d be the fair thing to do.”
“You’re not takin’ her anywhere!” Nik snapped. “The only place she’s goin’ is back to her people.”
“Um…” Kisa, always painfully shy, cleared her throat. “Actually, the town she lives in, those aren’t her people.”
“Because she’s human.”
Kisa shook her head. “Actually, she is considered part of a Pack. Just not that Pack.” She cleared her throat again. “After I cleaned her up last night—”
“You cleaned her up?” The words were out of Nik’s mouth before he could stop himself and his brothers were all over it.
“Don’t worry, big brother,” Ban offered.
“We didn’t see her naked,” Alek finished.
He glared at both of them. “I don’t care if you did.” Yes he did.
Nik looked back at Kisa. “Go on, darlin’.”
“Well, I did a little research on her. You know, to find out what we were dealin’ with. And she’s part of Alek’s little girlfriend’s Pack now.”
“She ain’t my girlfriend,” Alek sighed out.
“What girlfriend?”
“Nessa Sheridan.”
Nik finally grinned, “Sweetie pie Nessa?”
Alek glared at his kin. “Don’t call her that.”
“Is that how you found out about that property Daddy wanted? From your little girlfriend?”
“She ain’t my girlfriend.”
It had been years since Nessa Sheridan brought that pretty little ass of hers to visit. One of the few wolves they ever allowed on their territory. College friends for four years and for some unknown reason his usually suave brother couldn’t quite get what he wanted from her. But, in usual Vorislav fashion, the man kept trying. His phone bills must be brutal, though. The woman had lived in Europe for quite awhile now.
Of course this still created a very big problem. “If we’re talkin’ the Sheridans…we’re talkin’ the Magnus Pack.” He’d never met the other Pack members but he remembered Nessa’s brother and father well enough. And he knew the rest of that Pack’s reputation. Wolves. Bikers. Nut cases. Since he last had to deal with that “little gang”, they’d wiped out the W
ithell Pride and had taken on a new Alpha Female. Some psychopath who had the entire Cat Nation double-checking the locks on their doors at night. She’d only been Alpha for six months, but apparently she was damn scary.
“The…” Reena’s sharp gold eyes lasered over to her cousins. “The Magnus Pack!”
“Why,” Nik asked Kisa carefully, “is an unmarked human part of any Pack?”
“She’s best friends with their Alpha Female.”
“The crazy one?”
Alek and Ban ducked as Nik’s coffee mug went flying. He didn’t throw it, Reena did. “You idiots! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Apparently Reena had heard about the Magnus Pack’s Alpha Female as well.
“Don’t yell at us,” Ban shot back.
“You’re right! I should just kick your butt!”
“Stop,” Nik barked.
“Um…” Kisa raised her hand like she was back in fifth grade. “Anyone else think she’s gotten kind of quiet up there?”
They all looked up at the ceiling. And Nik was almost surprised not to see blood seeping through the walls.
The lock removed, the door swung open and Angie squinted at the bright sunlight pouring through the windows. She leaned against the wall, her arms crossed in front of her. Once her eyes adjusted to the light, her breath almost caught in her throat. Damn, but the man was beautiful.
So tall. Six-five, maybe. Black thick hair with hints of red and several streaks of white. Not grey. White. And what she’d missed when she crashed into him at the airport were the big round swirls of white hair behind each ear. That looked unbelievably weird to her, and yet she had the almost overwhelming desire to run her fingers through it and find out if it felt any different than the rest of his hair. She also noticed he kept it short in the back, but he let the front get a little long, so it fell into his eyes. His nose, long and slightly flat at the tip, reminded her a bit of a cat’s muzzle. And his gold eyes with green flecks reflected the sunlight coming into the room. The lids of his eyes slightly slanted, so she guessed he had some Asian in him.
He’d finally put some clothes on, too. Loose fitting jeans and an old blue T-shirt with Navy written on it. He didn’t wear any shoes on his big cat feet. Good. If necessary, she could break his foot.