Tiger Queen: Reverse Harem Romance

by Cassie Cole

  I hid my disappointment with a glare. “Tomorrow night, then.” I gave him a kiss and rose from his lap. As I exited, I glanced at him over my shoulder. He had already put his headphones back on and was typing away.

  I went upstairs and tried not to feel like I had just been rejected. Anthony’s excuse seemed legitimate. He did have his day job to worry about while we were here. But it also felt like it was about me, and not the work he had to do. Like he would have come up with a different excuse even if he wasn’t busy.

  Eager to talk to someone, I called Ashley. I wanted to tell her that we had already moved eight big cats to the ECAP, which proved that the work I was doing here was worthwhile. That I hadn’t just accepted it because the men were smoking hot.

  And I wanted to tell her that I had already slept with two of them, because if anyone would understand and be excited for me, it was her.

  But Ashley didn’t pick up. I left her a short voicemail and then sat on my bed feeling lonely.

  The moon was shining bright through my window, a sliver away from being completely full. I went to the window and gazed out at the treetop view. The trees were illuminated in the moonlight and gently swayed, which made them look like dark green paintbrush strokes against a black canvas. It was beautiful.

  Then the view was interrupted by a flickering light in the distance. The same one I had seen before on the far end of the zoo. Brilliant and bright and man-made, ruining the natural splendor I had been admiring.

  Determined to do something tonight, I changed out of my pajamas and left the house.

  The night was filled with crickets and other night insects as I walked down the path to the zoo. I had not brought a flashlight, but the moonlight was bright enough to keep me from twisting my ankle on the uneven ground.

  The zoo itself was creepy at night. The animals were totally silent in their cages. I could feel them watching me in the darkness, wondering why I was there. It made me feel like an intruder. This was their private time without any humans, and I didn’t belong.

  I imagined being stalked by a tiger in India. Knowing that they were watching me from the darkness but not knowing where they were. It sent a shiver up my spine that had nothing to do with the evening chill.

  The glow was coming from the back end of the zoo. There was a sort of scrapyard back there filled with broken machinery and various other zoo equipment or materials that Crazy Carl had been too lazy to properly dispose of. As I neared, the harsh light reflected off the metal and cast long shadows across the ground.

  Jake was hunched over a piece of metal. The device in his hand was connected to a long hose, and it flashed with such powerful brightness that I cried out with surprise and turned away. Even after looking away my eyes stung and a greenish afterglow remained in my vision when I blinked.

  “What are you doing here?” Jake asked in a deep voice.

  I blinked rapidly until he came into view. He was wearing his sunglasses and cotton beanie, but was shirtless and covered with sweat. The tattoos on his chest and arms glistened in the moonlight.

  “Sunglasses aren’t proper protection against a carbon arc torch,” I said. “You need a welding mask.”

  “These sunglasses work fine while it’s on the lowest setting.” He hefted the welding device. “How do you know what this is?”

  “I’ve seen Flashdance.”

  “Flash what?”

  “Cheesy eighties movie? Girl wants to become a dancer?”

  He made a face. “What’s that have to do with arc welders?”

  “Nevermind. What are you doing out here?”

  “None of your business.”

  I glanced at what he had been working on. It didn’t look like anything that could be used at the zoo. “It would help if you and I were on the same page.”

  Jake barked a laugh. “Whatever you say.” He turned back to his work, but I approached quickly and got in his face.

  “I don’t understand why you’re so combative about everything.”

  “Combative? I—”

  “No,” I said like he was a bad dog. “I’m talking now. You’ve been combative about everything since you showed up. You argue with David and drag your feet. When we need help, you’re nowhere to be found. And you’re off here in the scrapyard doing God-knows-what. You might as well have not returned at all.”

  His sunglasses made him look impassive. “Are you done speaking?”

  “Yes I am. I just wanted to say that you’re not a team player.”

  “Maybe I don’t think we’re on the same team.”

  I sucked in my breath and had to struggle not to start yelling again. “This is a lot of change all at once. I get that. You think we’re dismantling your father’s legacy, and I’m just some outsider who showed up to help in that endeavor. But it’s for the best. The animals need to be moved to real homes.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I know you don’t care about these animals, but you should know that more than anyone since you worked here longer than David or Anthony. Do me a favor. Answer this question, and be totally honest. Did Crazy Carl—your father—give these animals a good home? Tell me with a straight face that caring for the animals was his primary concern.”

  He shrugged and resumed his welding, forcing me to turn away and flee from the terrible harsh light.

  I was angry enough to punch a hole in the wall when I got back to my room. I couldn’t sleep so I pulled up videos of Crazy Carl on YouTube. There were dozens of commercials where he was doing crazy things with guns or fireworks, but there was some more candid video as well. Hidden camera style footage where Carl was yelling and cussing at the animals. In one of them Carl was trying to get the wolves to come out for a celebrity visitor, and when they didn’t appear he hurled his flashlight into the enclosure. It smashed against a tree and exploded in a shower of plastic and batteries. Another video showed him taking newborn tiger cubs from a mother and bragging, “You know what this is? Twenty grand. I’m holdin’ twenty grand, baby!”

  It helped reiterate that I was doing the right thing.

  I woke up late the next morning. David was already long gone, and even Jake’s bedroom was empty. I found Anthony downstairs in the library, asleep in the same chair with his computer in his lap. I took the laptop away and put a blanket over him, then kissed him on the forehead.

  I took the long way into the zoo, past Carl’s big monster truck in the driveway and down the road leading toward the parking lot. I was still angry from last night. Not just because Jake was being unhelpful, but because it still felt like David and Anthony were avoiding me. I had slept with both of them, and now they were acting distant. I was terrified that I had made a mistake.

  “Damnit,” I muttered. I had left my walkie-talkie charging on the bedside table. I didn’t feel like going back to get it, though. I had wasted enough time this morning by sleeping in.

  I walked past the visitor’s center and stopped dead in my tracks.

  Up ahead was Big Caesar’s cage. The gate was wide open.

  And Big Caesar was gone.

  22

  Rachel

  I froze for several heartbeats and gazed around slowly. Like prey that had realized it was being hunted. The logical part of my brain started reciting facts.

  A Bengal tiger was loose.

  I did not know how long he had been free.

  He could be fifty miles away… or hiding in the trees around me.

  I forced myself to move, because standing still wasn’t going to help me. We had run animal escape drills during my residency, and some of the key points remained burned in my head. Get to safety. Notify other staff. Clear the zoo of visitors.

  But I couldn’t notify the others if I hid in the visitor’s center.

  I jogged up to his cage and took a quick look at the exterior. The cage appeared undamaged, aside from normal wear and tear. There were no tire tracks in the mud in front of the cage, which means he had not been moved.

  “Focus
,” I muttered to myself. Without a walkie-talkie, I needed to quickly find David or Jake and let them know Caesar was gone. Then we could seal off the zoo and search for him. David would be in the food preparation building, which was on the other side of the zoo.

  I started walking. An escaped animal should have caused the other animals to yell and screech with excitement, but it was a quiet, peaceful morning. My heart pounded in my ears and made it difficult to hear anything. Caesar may have been docile and friendly in captivity, but big cats had a way of returning to their primal instincts when the power dynamic changed. If I came across him in the open…

  I turned the next corner and stopped in my tracks.

  The big enclosure for the female tigers was directly in front of me. Except it was different. Previously it was shaped like a long rectangle, but a new fence now divided it into two square enclosures. On the right, our two remaining females—Chloe and Lily—were asleep on the ground.

  And on the left…

  Big Caesar was laying on his side on a patch of grass. And resting against him, using the big cat like a pillow, was a shirtless Jake Haines. Both of them were fast asleep.

  I had to admit: the sight of Jake sleeping with the big animal, totally comfortable with the situation? It was incredibly sexy. And Jake was plenty sexy to begin with.

  As soon as my shock wore off, I marched up to the fence and said, “Jake!”

  Caesar stood up, causing Jake’s head to fall to the ground with a thump. “The fuck?” Caesar loped over to me and stood on his hind legs, extending his arms through the fence toward me. I couldn’t explain why, but I sensed that he was much happier than before. I was so relieved to find him safely inside an enclosure that I reached forward and rubbed him through the cage.

  “You are an asshole,” I told Jake when he walked over to us. “I almost had a panic attack when I found his cage empty this morning.”

  He rubbed the back of his head and winced. “Chill out.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing!”

  He removed his sunglasses and looked at me with confusion. “You said it yourself. He needed a bigger enclosure. Problem solved. I thought you’d be happy!”

  I gritted my teeth. I wanted to be angry with him, but I was really happy to see Caesar in a proper enclosure. And it was satisfying to see that Jake really was helping out around here rather than doing something random.

  I took a deep breath and said, “Try to keep me in the loop about any animal moves in the future. Alright?”

  He smiled sweetly at me. “I’ll take that under consideration.”

  David came walking up the path behind me. “Hey, doc. You got a minute?”

  I followed him toward the visitor’s office. “Did you know about that? Moving Caesar?”

  “Saw it when I got here this morning. Best thing Jake’s ever done.”

  “I really need to be kept in the loop about stuff like that.”

  “Good luck. I’ve been trying to get Jake to communicate better his whole damn life. Let’s go into the office. I want to talk to you about something.”

  I followed him inside, then into the back office. He closed the door behind me. It made it feel like a performance review that was about to go poorly.

  “What’s going on?”

  He took a stack of papers off the printer and slid them across the desk, then he sat in the chair across from me. “The zoo has major financial problems.”

  “You know, that’s pretty much the first thing you told me when you barged into my hotel room.”

  He didn’t smile back at me. “Food expenses are much higher than I expected. Moving eight big cats helped reduce our needs, but we still have over a hundred other animals here in the zoo. A new shipment of food arrives tomorrow. It’s cash on delivery. It’s a big number.”

  David tapped the printed papers in front of me. I ignored them. “Do you not have enough to pay for it?”

  “We can afford tomorrow’s shipment,” he said.

  I relaxed, but only for a minute.

  “That food will last another week. We can afford two more deliveries. After that, the money Anthony and I pooled will be all gone.”

  “So we need to move the rest of the animals in three weeks?”

  He gazed at me skeptically. “We both know that’s impossible.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “What other options do we have?”

  “I looked into additional financing,” David said as if he was prepared for the question. “This place is already leveraged out the ass. The bank won’t approve any additional loans. ”

  “And the GoFundMe?”

  “It’s raised just over a hundred bucks,” he replied.

  I blinked. “So that’s it? We’re out of options if we can’t move the rest of the animals in three weeks?”

  David hesitated. “There’s another way.”

  “Well let’s hear it!”

  “We can open the zoo back up.”

  I recoiled as if the idea were a venomous snake. “No.”

  “We need cash flow, Rachel,” he insisted. “It doesn’t solve our problem, but it bolsters the cash we already have. It would extend our ability to feed these animals from three weeks to four, or five, or even longer.”

  “No.”

  “Not to mention the cost of repairing and maintaining the enclosures, and other operational costs…”

  “I said no! That was one of the terms of my employment here. No reopening the zoo to tourists.”

  “That’s why I’m bringing this to you first,” he said gently. “I’m asking, not telling.”

  “There has to be another way.”

  He tapped the papers again. “The math doesn’t lie, Rachel.”

  “I can take a pay cut,” I offered. “I’ll work for free.”

  David blinked in surprise, but shook his head. “That’s awfully selfless of you, but your weekly salary doesn’t come close to making a dent. This is a big problem, and it requires a big solution.”

  I didn’t want the zoo to re-open. I hated the idea. And I knew David was right. Finding homes for the rest of the animals in three week was impossible. If they didn’t get some more money coming in…

  “Fine.”

  David relaxed visibly. “It will be better than before, I promise. No private photos with drugged-up tigers. We can tighten our rules on—”

  “I said okay,” I snapped. “It’s your zoo, not mine.”

  “Rachel…”

  I stormed out of his office before he could say anything else.

  23

  Rachel

  I was angry all day. While I fed everyone, cleaned out some of the enclosures, and did visible examinations of the animals. I wanted to scream and rage at someone. To let it all out.

  To make matters worse, Ashley called me back during lunch.

  “Rachel! I’m sorry I didn’t pick up last night. We were having game night here at the horse farm. This place is a hoot!”

  “Sounds like you’re having a lot of fun,” I said with a small pang of jealousy.

  “So much fun. Hey! I heard you guys moved eight cats down to the Endangered Cats Animal Preserve!”

  “We did,” I said. “Four female Bengals, two male Siberians, and a pair of cheetahs.”

  Ashley chuckled. “You know, when you actually took the job there I was skeptical. I thought Crazy Carl’s sons would be just like him and want to keep the zoo open and make more money. I’m glad I was wrong.”

  “Yeah, totally,” I said. “I’m glad you were wrong too.”

  After we hung up, I felt a tremendous amount of guilt about everything. Ashley had warned me this might happen. And now we were reopening the zoo. Sure, David insisted it was just to get more money and buy us some more time to move the animals. But it felt like I was being used.

  The problem was this place wasn’t built like a proper zoo, where the visitors observed from a safe and non-disturbing distance. The animals here were cramped and too close to the
visitors, and even surrounded by them on all sides in some cases. In the videos I had watched last night, visitors threw food into the enclosures and laughed when the animals ate it. Some people taunted and tried to scare the big cats to get an exciting reaction out of them.

  Real zoos were a lot more ergonomic. Good enclosures were built down into the ground, allowing the visitors to look down into them from above. That gave the animals the illusion of privacy, and kept them calm. Not to mention it was important to keep humans as far away as possible, so that the variety of scents did not bombard the animals’ senses. It would overstimulate them.

  I was taking notes on the chimpanzees behavior when Anthony came walking up. “Did you hear what David came up with? We have a way to earn some money. We’re reopening the zoo.”

  One glance at him told him everything he needed to know.

  “Oh. Were you against that?”

  “It was one of the conditions of me working here!” I exclaimed. “I absolutely hate it. These animals should not have humans pressing against the fences around them on all sides.”

  Anthony sat on the bench next to me and grimaced. “It’s all my fault.”

  “It’s your fault David decided to re-open the zoo?”

  “The GoFundMe hasn’t taken off the way it should,” he explained. “If it was doing better we wouldn’t need to re-open.”

  I sighed and patted his thigh. “You can’t control whether or not people donate, Anthony.”

  “I could be doing more social media work,” he replied. “Other zoos? They post on Facebook and Twitter dozens of times per day. Photos and videos and fun facts. Showcasing the animals and stuff. I’m not doing any of that. I’ve been too busy with my programming job.”

  I put a hand on his back and gently caressed him. “You’re doing a lot already.”

  “I could be doing more.”

  I remembered where I had found him this morning, asleep in the library with his computer in his lap. “There are only so many hours in the day. Don’t beat yourself up.”