by Reina Torres
“Back off, Devlin.”
“Together we can make this work, sir,” the Mayor just wasn’t going to shut up. “Give me the gun and I can assure you that no one will file charges-”
“You’re already putting a choke-hold on the police, hmm?”
Devlin saw the concern and confusion on the Mayor’s face. He knew from the involuntary signs that the Mayor was giving off, he had no idea what the man was saying.
“And maybe,” the man continued to rave, poking the Mayor in the chest with his gun, “you just need to know what it feels like…”
He knew.
Before the man even moved, Devlin knew what he was going to do and turned his head.
“…to lose everything.”
His tiger roared inside of him, clawing at his insides in a desperate bid for freedom, but Devlin could barely think. Everything he felt was instinct.
The woman standing beside the Mayor, the one person who hadn’t run away as soon as the man brandished his gun, was everything.
His everything.
His mate.
And the man who held a gun on her, turned his murderous intent on the woman whose loss would reduce Devlin to a cold-killing machine, gave Devlin a taste of what it was like to lose everything. And Devlin wasn’t going to have any of it, not while he could stop him.
He didn’t think about the consequences of his shift. Didn’t care about the roomful of people, the dozen reporters in the room, or the cameras.
Devlin was suddenly all claws, fur, and murderous intent of his own as he leapt through the air.
The gunman was caught unaware. The tiger closed his teeth on the man’s forearm, wrenching his arm away from their mate. The trigger pulled and sent a bullet into the wall as something tore into their side.
Pain stabbed through him, but he didn’t care. They needed to stop the man. They needed to protect their mate.
They fell to the floor together, the man struggling to free his arm from the jaws of the tiger, and they let him. There were other things that the tiger hungered for and fear added to the flavor.
They saw the abject fear in the man’s eyes, smelled his panic and the sudden acrid salty scent as the man lost control of his body, and they felt the spurt of blood in their throat as they feasted on the tender flesh of the man’s throat.
They heard the screams and the pounding thunder of feet as the high society guests rushed through the doors.
By the time reason began to surface in their head, he knew that the room was almost empty, and his mate was safe.
But they might not be.
As his human mind surfaced bit by bit, he heard the loud clash of voices, the cacophony of shouts and the flash of lightbulbs.
They were hurt, bleeding. A subtle shift of their body drove the truth home. Three bullets embedded in their flesh, a long slide of pain along the flesh of their hip.
A soft gasp of sound beneath him was followed by a gurgle of sound as blood erupted from the open mess of the gunman’s throat.
“Take the shot! Kill the fucking thing!”
Devlin knew they were talking about him.
Turning his head to look for his mate, he saw her struggling with the Mayor, trying to pull free from his arms.
They didn’t care that he was the Mayor. He needed to get his hands off their mate!
Their muscles hurt, but they didn’t care. Crouching, they were ready to jump.
“Dad, let me go!”
Father. Their mate had a father. They couldn’t kill her father.
“Paige, please. You need to get out of here.”
They roared, willing her to look at them. Willing her to see what they had done… for her.
“Will someone please kill that beast!”
The yelling started again, and he heard Charlie’s voice in the chaos as well. Charlie, pleading for them to wait.
The other officer must have seen him change, must know that it was him inside the beast.
“Dad,” she broke free of her father’s restraining arms, “he saved my life!”
She stumbled closer and they matched her movements, padding closer, scenting her in the air.
“Get them out,” the Mayor’s voice was somewhere in the distance, the words making some kind of impression, but not enough to distract them from her. “Get all of these people out of here!”
Their wounds were bleeding, but they wanted her touch more than they wanted healing.
“Paigey, careful.”
They swung their head at Charlie and saw his confusion etched in his features. They liked Charlie, but if he tried to get between them-
“It’s okay, Uncle Charlie. I don’t think he’s going to hurt me, you saw what he did.”
They turned back to her, saw the smile on her face, saw the curious light in her eyes. And saw her curves hidden underneath the shapeless sack of dress that she wore. Curves made for his touch. For their pleasure. For his cubs.
Their mate.
The change began before he could stop it.
And then he didn’t want to.
She had her hands on them and her scent was heaven.
Devlin pushed the tiger back and reached for her, touching the side of her face as his body worked to push the bullets from his flesh and complete the healing of his wounds.
“Oh my God,” he heard someone scream, “did you see that?”
And then he didn’t see anything.
Chapter Two
Paige barely heard the noise filling the air around her. She didn’t even realize how they’d gotten back to the house. One moment she had a gun pointed at her chest, and then there was a tiger – a TIGER! – ripping out the throat of the man who wanted to kill her.
And then that tiger changed into a man. No, he dissolved into a man. Not really. How else could she describe it? She pressed her palm to her temple and struggled to make sense out of the world.
Her father and his advisors were clustered around the fireplace, their heads bent together discussing matters of ‘great importance’ as if the world they’d known hadn’t just been turned upside down.
The phone started to ring again, and Paige squeezed her eyes shut to stop the ache in her head. One of her father’s staffers who had been assigned to field the calls didn’t even move. He just stared at his hands from his seat beside the table.
Paige got up and moved down the hallway toward the servant’s wing, trying to ignore how wrong that still sounded. Little Paige Lundin, who had lived off Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches as a child had servants.
But as odd as that felt, she’d just seen a man who could change his form, change his size and shape and become a tiger! She’d been to the zoo, she wasn’t such a small-town girl that she hadn’t been to wild animal parks and seen the furry four-legged animals that could gobble you down as a snack.
Wild Animal parks had fences and zoos had walls and trenches. Inside the reception hall just a little while ago, she’d seen a tiger rip out a man’s throat and then walk right up to her like it was the most natural thing in the world, only to collapse against her and into her lap.
Paige pushed open the door into the kitchen and stopped short. “Oh my God, what did they do to you?”
Her savior was handcuffed to the grate in front of the antique bricked oven, double-handcuffed, if the low lights in the room were anything to go by. His back lay half on the floor and half-leaning on the grate, his wrists red and chaffed by the metal.
She took a few steps forward and felt an arm wrap around her middle and pull her back.
The man shackled to the fireplace tugged at his cuffs, growling from deep down in his throat.
“Miss, you need to stay back.”
“Officer Samuels, let go of her!”
There was a moment where she realized that he was about to cut off her air, squeezing her diaphragm a little too hard.
Her savior had murder in his eyes. “Let her go, or I’ll kill you!”
Paige stumbled free and looked acro
ss the room. “Uncle Charlie? I want to talk to him.”
She heard her uncle swear under his breath. “Paigey, that’s not a good idea.”
“Uncle Charlie. I want to speak to him and I don’t want a bunch of people staring at us or listening in.”
When she didn’t hear anything, she turned around and swept the room, meeting the curious stares of half a dozen policemen.
“You’re all going to leave now. I’m sure there are more important things to do than stare at a man who just saved my life.”
“He’s a monster.”
She skewered the young officer with a look. “Who are you to speak? Officer Samuels, is it?”
He looked away from her for a moment and then swung his gaze back to her face. “You saw what he did. He’s a freak!”
“I was a little distracted at the time,” her voice was soft, but in the sudden quiet of the room it was loud enough to make the officer’s face blanch of color, “but I doubt that he deserves the reward that he’s received for his heroism.” She pointed toward the door. “Everyone out, please.”
Her uncle was the last one to move, his eyes watching her carefully. “You sure about this, Paige? I could stay-”
She nodded and gave him a pat on the arm. “He didn’t try to hurt me, he saved me. I think people should remember that first of all. I’ll be fine.”
When her uncle closed the door, she turned back around to look at the bound man, noticing the way he focused his eyes on her face. It was a heady feeling. Having a man that gorgeous looking at her with such a singular intensity, made her feel tingly all over.
“I’m Paige,” she started, “Paige Lundin.”
He didn’t speak, just continued to look at her with laser focus.
“Paige.” She touched a hand to her chest. “That’s my name.” She waited and saw a tinge of humor in the dark of his eyes. “Goodness. I sound ridiculous, don’t I? I’m talking to you like you’re a child… or Tarzan. If I start trying to make ape sounds, please, by all that is decent, stop me.”
“Why should I stop you. I want to hear you talk. And now that you’ve started, I don't want you to stop. It helps keep my mind off of these.” He yanked at the handcuffs, grating the metal.
To say the sound of his voice shocked her would have been a gargantuan understatement, and she was suddenly very conscious of a deep sense of guilt. As if she wasn't awkward enough as it was. “Oh good,” she watched him chuckle silently, “I’m glad you’re getting a laugh out of this.” She clutched at her dress. “I was just about to faint.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think you’re the fainting kind.”
“Kind?” She felt the skin between her brows furrow. “I don’t know what that means, but I hope you’re trying to pay me a compliment.” Even saying the words, she felt a bit off-center and strange on the inside, as if the world beneath her feet had started to tilt, ever-so-slightly.
Her humor died away as he shifted his shoulder and the handcuffs attached to the grate made a horrible metallic screech.
“I guess I should start by apologizing to you.”
“Apologize?” He made a conscious effort to relax and she felt even more shame heaped upon her shoulders.
“That you saved me and you’re the one locked up.”
“Locked up with you.”
The look he gave her made her shiver and she wasn’t sure exactly why. Moving closer she, moved around the kitchen table and stopped short. “And you’re half naked.”
They both looked down and she pulled her gaze away a moment later. Someone had taken a kitchen towel from one of the drawers and draped it over his lap. “Wow, that’s kind of small.”
His eyes narrowed as he looked up at her with a distinct growl in his throat. “I’m not small.”
It took her a long second for the words to unwind in her head, and then she covered her mouth with her hand. “I was talking about the towel. Did someone bring you something to wear?”
He certainly wasn’t going to make it easy on her. “I think they’re worried about a concealed weapon charge,” his grin seemed predatory to her. “Do you know if they recovered my weapon at the venue?”
“You had a gun with you?” She hated the soft squeak in her voice. “Then why did you… you know,” she made a vague gesture in the air with her hand, “do what you did?”
He tilted his head to the side, rolling his shoulders back. “Why did I shift?”
She nodded slowly, storing the word away for later, she was sure she’d have a lot of questions for later. “You’re a policeman.”
“I’m also a tiger. And when I saw you, when I knew who you were, it wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about us.”
“Us?”
He grinned at her, baring some of his teeth that looked almost like fangs. “My tiger and I don’t always see eye to eye, but all night long as soon as I got to the venue I knew something was about to happen. I think I felt you in the building.”
Me? She couldn’t make her mouth work, but she laid her hand over her heart and swore it stuttered a bit in her chest.
“Oh wow,” she sighed, and felt her head lighten like she’d swallowed helium, “I’m hallucinating, aren’t I?”
He rubbed his cheek up against hers and she shivered at the rough scratch of his stubble. She could have sworn she heard him purr deep in his chest.
“Or better yet,” she lifted her hand from her side and set it on his chest, splaying her palm over his heated skin in a slow roll of flesh, “I’m stuck in this crazy hormonally induced wet dream. All those years of virginity are catching up to me,” She set her other hand on his side, and slid it up over his ribs and up toward his shoulder.
She bumped the tip of her thumb against something and looked down. She saw the flesh pebbled with sensation and the hard nub of his nipple against the tip of her finger.
Paige felt a strange sensation flush every inch of her body with heat. “Is this what it feels like?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she looked up at him with so many questions rioting in her head.
He looked back at her, his eyes dark with secrets. “What do you want to know?” He leaned forward ever-so-slightly, and she felt as if she could feel his heartbeat through the tips of her fingers.
She knew she could feign stupidity, but she didn’t want to, not when this might be the only chance she’d have to get at least one of the answers she’d always wanted to know.
“Is this what desire feels like?” A heartbeat after she asked the question she pulled her hand away. "I know that might sound stupid-"
“Paige.” His gaze swallowed her whole. "That was only a taste of what will be between us."
Yeah, he had her all tied up in knots. "Will?"
"You're my mate, Paige Lundin. The one woman who can tame the beast inside me." He started to lean forward and was brought up short by the handcuffs. "Damn it."
Just her luck. She got to her feet. "I'll get a key."
She'd barely taken a step when she heard a groaning snap of metal.
"Wait," another snap turned her back around.
The broken handcuffs fell from his wrists and the raw scrapes on his skin started to fade away before her eyes. "How did you do that?"
He rubbed at his wrist and lifted it so she could see. "I heal fast. If I shifted, they'd be almost gone when I shifted back, but I'm not about to shift right now."
"Why not?" Goodness, she sounded like a groupie or something. It wasn't some kind of magic trick. "I wouldn't mind seeing it again. I've never seen a tiger so close and-"
She forgot what she was about to say. That ridiculous little kitchen towel that they'd thrown across his lap was now crumpled on the floor behind him.
"When you said you weren't small, you weren't kidding."
And he wasn't just naked, he was thick and hard.
"Not with you, Paige." He moved closer, one step at a time, until she was up against the table, the edge pressing into her luscious curves and
Devlin’s hard frame against her front.
It was heaven and hell all at once. Every cell in her body came alive with need and his erection pulsing against her belly said he wanted her too.
"Paige.”
She looked up into his face and felt even more heat floor through her body. “Devlin?”
“You feel this, tell me you feel this.”
She didn’t know what ‘this’ was, but it didn’t stop the way she ached for him as though he was a long-lost part of her she hadn’t known she’d been missing.
“I feel,” she began, and he shifted against her, making her gasp, “I feel full being this close to you.”
She heard him groan and felt him rock his hips against her body and that’s when she began to ache even more between her legs.
“I need to fill you, Paige. I need to taste you and take you, and bind us together.”
His lips were so close she felt his words as vibrations against her skin, and those vibrations played over her skin like a physical touch.
“Are you sure?”
She wanted to kill herself for saying it. For sounding like the naïve virgin she was.
He moved closer to her and the hard ridge of his erection was trapped between their bodies. He brushed a kiss over her cheek and drew his tongue along the sensitive lobe of her ear.
She was clutching his shoulders, her lips parted, her nipples tightening under her clothes.
He placed an open-mouthed kiss on her neck and she felt a subtle scratch along her skin. “I’m sure, Paige. You’re my mate, the one for-“
“Stop that! Stop that right now!”
Someone brushed past them and more people entered the room rushing to stand between them and the windows.
Paige struggled to understand but Devlin had no such trouble as she could see. He swung around, left her grasping at the table to keep herself on her feet.
She couldn’t see a thing past his broad shoulders, but she was still riding the rush of blood and hormones in her body. Arousal, pure and simple.
When her father grabbed her shoulder she turned, blinking at him in confusion. “Dad?”
“What was he doing to you?”
“Doing?”