Night of the Tiger

by Doranna Durgin

  Scott snorted. “Good, because we can take care of this right now. She was with me in that stairwell. And what we were doing is none of your business.”

  Marlee’s jaw dropped just a little bit more—but it didn’t stop her from taking advantage of the moment, moving back just a little bit more.

  “Go ahead,” Scott said. “Write that down in whatever notes you’re keeping, and then think hard about how to improve your manners for the next time you’d like to speak with Miss Cerrosa.” He, too, knew how to make himself bigger, how to draw on the tiger’s nature. He knew how to hide it, too, when even that little bit of a connection brought out a spike of driving pain.

  He knew how to use human wiles, as well. “You can be certain that I’ll be thinking about how you can improve your manners. And so will my buddy Maks—and, if comes to that, Nick Carter.”

  “Hell,” one of the men blurted out. “That means Jet would be in on it, too.”

  Jet was Nick Carter’s deeply bonded life mate—wolves, both of them, except that Nick took the wolf as his other form, while Jet had been born wolf and twisted into human shape by Core workings. And while Nick might indeed be stretched thin with a wounded Southwest Brevis, Jet wouldn’t hesitate to take two canids to task if she heard they’d acted with disrespect.

  Scott’s grin was as predatory as his stance. “I imagine she would.”

  The man stepped back, held up his hands. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I guess if I have to worry about Jet’s reaction, then I must be crossing a line.” He looked back at Marlee. “Stay out of the stairwell, okay? Too many vulnerable people down there.”

  “Yes,” Marlee murmured, exchanging a glance with Scott. That’s exactly it. Exactly why they’d been there in the first place. “I understand.”

  The two left with a haste that spoke of previous encounters with Jet. Marlee reached for the back of the little couch, feeling just a little bit bereft. One more illusion of freedom, stripped.

  “I’m sorry,” Scott said, shifting awkwardly where he stood, his expression full of new understanding. “I don’t even think they see what they do. I guess I didn’t.”

  “You know Maks,” she said, by way of reply. Maks, who took a Siberian tiger as his other—mysterious background, silent by nature—and the Sentinel who, with Marlee and a small group of others, had ultimately invaded Fabron Gausto’s operations to bring him down, saving Nick Carter in the process. Just not soon enough to stop Core D’oìche.

  “It’s a tiger thing,” Scott said of Maks, and shrugged. “We spar. He doesn’t say anything, he whips my ass, and then when the time comes, he covers my back.”

  “I liked Maks,” she said unexpectedly, her voice a little wobbly in the wake of the confrontation. “He made me feel safe.”

  That, somehow, didn’t surprise Scott at all. The deep stab of jealousy, filling in where the pain of the missing tiger now faded, did. He took one step forward—just one. “What about me, Marlee? Do I make you feel safe?”

  Her startled gaze met his, and for a moment he saw that which might have been her other—something small and fleet of foot, gentle of nature and vulnerable for it. And, apparently, honest. “You make me feel,” she said. “Maybe that’s even better.”

  Chapter Five

  After a week during which Marlee played the role of Abril, the medical floor patients and personnel became used to seeing her; she became used to seeing them.

  She became used to seeing Scott, too.

  Now she ducked out of the patient lounge to a chorus of goodbyes, and found herself grinning.

  Big, brave Marlee. Not afraid of the sick people.

  She ignored her little voice. Not being afraid of the sick people was a fine place to start. And in the past week, she had learned a thing or two about them.

  Such as the fact they had no idea, most of them, of how much presence they projected. They had no idea what it was like to be fully human and facing a Sentinel of great strength and speed—someone who could see in the dark, manipulate energies into wards and shields and sometimes even exude pure power…someone who could take an alternate shape of lethal grace.

  At least, not until they’d had to face their own mortality with these Core-driven injuries. Until they’d learned what it was like, in some small sense, to be human in a Sentinel world.

  It gave her some emotional room to step into—to explore. It also gave her the chance to learn that the medical floors weren’t warded in general because such things turned tricky for the healers—and right now, the healers needed all the help they could get. They counted, instead, on the layers of security between here and the upper levels; on the restricted access and heightened vigilance.

  Marlee didn’t go back into the stairwell. But she did walk the halls—sometimes alone and sometimes with Scott. She marveled at the casual way he would take her hand, or drape his arm over her shoulder…or the whisper of his hand against her back. He had no problem with touching, this tiger didn’t. Or with looking. For if half the time she found him scowling, his anger directed at his injuries and failings, the rest of the time she found him watching her. Simply watching—and almost, but not quite, saying something. Almost, but not quite, reaching for her. As if the touch that was often so casual, in that moment might mean more.

  Then again, what did she know? She was a woman who once thought she’d known herself, but no longer. Everything was up for doubt.

  The elevator glided to a smooth stop, made a self-important ding of arrival, and the doors opened. Marlee headed for the gym—and stopped short a moment, suddenly aware of the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, the lightness in her steps. She put fingers to her mouth…confirming it. Believing it.

  Surely, getting caught as a mole wasn’t the best thing that could have happened to her, after all. Surely not.

  But she was still lighthearted as she grabbed her bag from the workout room and ducked into the bathroom to change, and lighthearted as she started her workout, waiting for Scott to finish his physical therapy session and join her.

  But after she’d finished her workout and toweled herself down, she glanced at the clock. This time she wasn’t smiling.

  She was worried.

  Or maybe she was just annoyed at being stood up. She jammed hastily folded clothes into her bag and headed out into the hall…only to do an automatic about-face at the sight of the same coyote who’d driven her into the gym a week earlier, and then startle back when she nearly ran into someone new. Bear.

  Marlee fought the initial panic at being trapped between them—and by then the coyote had passed her by, and by then she’d seen that this was not a Sentinel who shone with his otherness, but merely a shaggy-haired person of a somewhat shambling nature with a long fluorescent light bulb in hand. She made herself stop and draw a breath…and to pretend she was speaking to the men and women she knew on the medical floor. Practice, practice, practice. “Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Scott O’Brien around here? We were supposed to meet…”

  He looked her up and down and offered a noncommittal grunt. “See him sometimes, but not today.” Then his gaze sharpened. “You’re that Cerrosa woman, aren’t you?”

  “Abril,” she said, making it sound like a correction when it was nothing but confirmation. “My name is Abril. Like the month.”

  The man merely grunted again, and nodded at the elevator. “Try the primary medical floor. Seen him there, sometimes.”

  “Thanks.” She offered him a brief smile and headed to the elevator, and despite her concern, her chest felt lighter…her confidence kicked up a notch higher.

  One of the healer assistants nodded a greeting when she arrived on the floor. “Haven’t seen him,” the woman offered, as if Marlee could be coming back down again only for one thing. “He had physical therapy a little while ago—maybe they wore him out.” She smiled, a little ruefully. “They do have enthusiasm.”

  Except Scott had gone in to PT for ultrasonic phonophoresis, worki
ng on the lingering inflammation in the strong curve of muscle just beneath and over his shoulder blade. She’d seen those scars more closely in the past several days; they were nothing a non-Sentinel would have healed from at all. But Scott drove himself toward perfection—even as Marlee grew ever more certain the shoulder wasn’t the reason he was here at all.

  “I’m just going to check his room, okay?”

  The woman grinned. “Have at it.”

  Marlee gave her a double take, tried to hide it, and suddenly found herself aware of and startled by the assumption she saw there.

  Scott’s hand at her back, Scott’s arm around her shoulders, Scott’s grin, breaking free of his constantly simmering anger to respond to some acerbic thing she’d said.

  Hmm.

  She tapped lightly on his door, alert for the sounds of the little flatscreen within—or for the sounds that he was, as sometimes happened, employing the furniture for push-ups or handstands or free weights, their workout date forgotten.

  Silence.

  Surely he hadn’t gone off on his hunt without her—or without telling her.

  At that spike of alarm, she tried the door—waiting, for decency’s sake, for any sound of protest at the intrusion.

  What she heard was a sound of distress.

  Remembering his fierce privacy, she bit her tongue on an exclamation of dismay and shoved into the room, dropping her bag, kicking the door closed and finding him huddled in the corner.

  The look he turned on her was purely feral. Purely tiger.

  Purely warning.

  But his bare torso quivered with pain, and his muscles stood out in clenched relief, and this was one tiger who wasn’t going anywhere. Marlee looked into that feral gaze—that other—and took a deep breath as she went down to her knees beside him. “Scott,” she said, with a calmness she didn’t feel. “Come out of there and talk to me.”

  His eyes widened slightly—not panicked, but wild, and not able to understand. Trying.

  “Scott,” she said gently, and ran the back of her fingers along the skin of his upper arm—a gentle, caressing touch that left a shiver in its wake. “I see you in there. Now come back and talk to me.”

  The tiger snarled, shining out from within him, clamping down on her wrist with a strong hand.

  She should have been terrified—of what he was, of what he could become, of what he could do to her. Instead, her fear rode high—but it was only for Scott, and for not what he might do to her. It was for what he might do to himself.

  There was no point in fighting that grip, and she didn’t. She leaned in close, feeling the wild gust of his breath against her cheek, the bruising grind of the bones in her wrist. “Scott,” she said. “I see you.”

  He pulled away from her with a gasp—a final jerk of resistance. And then the strength drained from him, and he was only a man, the tiger in retreat as he lay panting. She stroked him—a long, reassuring pass over his shoulder and arm, a gentle scrape of fingers through disheveled hair. And she startled when he moved again—faster than she’d expected, fiercer than she’d expected, and she found herself caught up in a tight embrace.

  A needy embrace. Just like any man in extremes, hunting comfort—clutching to it.

  She hugged him back, tears stinging her eyes as the impact of it hit her—this strong man, this Sentinel, reaching out to her. Relying on her. She rested her cheek against the damp skin beside his neck and held him.

  After a moment, the desperate nature of the embrace changed. He disengaged slightly, enough to look her in the eye—his own expression still a little bewildered, but ruefulness creeping in. “Yeah,” he said, searching her gaze—sparing a thumb to brush across her wet lashes. “I see you, too.”

  #

  “What happened?” Marlee asked him. “Did you try to take the tiger again?”

  Scott couldn’t hide his surprise, or—when she laughed shortly to see it—the face he made at her. “How did you—”

  She laughed again, this time without humor. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to make myself feel safe. That means watching the ones you’re afraid of—knowing them.” She cocked her head at him. “Or maybe you Sentinels just aren’t as inscrutable as you think.”

  At that he scowled, but it was for the sake of form and quickly passed; she didn’t even flinch when he closed the distance between them to kiss her forehead, but she did when he froze in an abrupt aftershock of pain, his breath briefly caught in his chest.

  “Dammit,” he said, once he was breathing again. “I guess it’s not going to let go so quickly. Time to get out of here.” He climbed to his feet, tugging her up along with him. The sheet fell away; he caught it, wadded it up and tossed it on the bed.

  “Get out of here?” she said, looking wary. “You need to tell the healers what’s going on, not run away from it.”

  This time his scowl was real. “I don’t run from anything, Marlee. I run toward.”

  It didn’t seem to impress her. “Great,” she said, her hands going to her hips and her mouth quirked in disapproval. “Where angels fear to tread…”

  “Hey,” he told her. “I know how that phrase starts. And I’m no fool. I just need to do this my way. And I don’t need a room full of—”

  Observers. Healers, watching him. Doctors, taking notes about him. Interfering with him…stopping him.

  That, she seemed to understand; she relaxed her confrontational stance. And then, when another aftershock shot through him, sucking away his breath, she threw her hands up in exasperation. “Fine,” she said, grabbing the dark blue T-shirt hanging over the impersonal hospital bed and shoving it at him. “Let’s go, then. Exactly where are we headed? And why am I coming with you again?”

  “For one thing, we’re going to your place,” he told her, ignoring her scowl as he pushed his head through the shirt’s neck opening and jammed a hand toward one sleeve. “For another…” He took a deep breath. “For another, I need you.”

  He watched as the words reached her—the slightly widened eyes, the quick drop of her mouth. And then she pulled herself back into irascible. “Dammit,” she said, and grabbed her gym bag. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Six

  “There,” Marlee said, pushing the door closed with her foot and tossing her bag onto the small couch. She headed right for the kitchen to pull out the ice water. “We’re here. Now exactly what did you need from me?”

  “Maybe,” Scott said, casting around for his own answers, “just a place where I don’t feel like a lab rat. For a little while.”

  She added an energy powder to the pitcher, poured, then shoved a second tumbler across the counter at him without even hesitating this time. Bossy, in fact. “I’m not even sure you’ll fit on the couch. Try again. Because that’s not needing me. So either you were playing me when you said that, or—”

  “No!” He took a quick step toward her, only to be brought up short when she stabbed a finger at the tumbler. And then, since she was right—he probably needed this energy drink and more—he grabbed the thing and gulped it down.

  By then she’d slipped out into the main area, yanking her things from the gym bag and tossing them into the hamper tucked away in the small shower stall. She threw the bag into the tiny entry area closet…and stood there with her hands again on her hips.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, but that, too, was only buying time. “Marlee,” he said, riding a surge of frustration, “you see things. There’s more Sentinel to you than—”

  She cut him off with a derisive sound, moving to the edge of the enclosed greenhouse of a balcony—giving herself room.

  “Listen to me!” He crossed that space in two long strides, grabbed her shoulders, clamped down tight. “It’s more than just paying attention. You can see what we are—all of us. The wolf, the bobcat, the jackal—”

  “The bear,” she muttered, nonsensically. “As if anyone couldn’t tell that man is a bear.”

  What the hell…bear?

&n
bsp; “Not everyone can,” he insisted. “Do you really think we could mingle with the rest of the world if it was so obvious? Do you think we’d have stayed hidden for thousands of years? I sure as hell know better. It’s you, Marlee. And if you can see them…if you can see me…maybe…” Maybe you can help me find the rest of myself.

  “You’re wrong,” she said, and spat the words. “I’m nothing more than anyone else. I never have been, I never will be.”

  Frustration grew to anger. What was he doing, asking for help from the woman who had been behind his injuries in the first place? Had he really thought she’d want to? That she’d step out of her little safe place, just for him?

  Unthinking, he gave her a little shake—and all hell broke loose, Marlee right along with it. She twisted free of his grip, coming back at him with a sudden rain of blows. “No more!” she cried, her face gone as fierce as any agent tapping the other. “None of you! You don’t get to make me feel small anymore!”

  In that instant of astonishment, he could do nothing but block her—small as she was, quick as she was, strong as she was—restraining her fury with the press of his entire body.

  She glared at him, her cheeks flushed, her expression beyond defiance. “I’m not afraid of you! I won’t be afraid of you! Any of you!”

  Scott shouted right back. “I’m not trying to frighten you!” He released her wrists, ignoring her hands at his sides, gripping his T-shirt—not quite shoving, but controlling…claiming space. His hands cradled her face—careful with those delicate features, careful with the fury he held, and completely overcome by his own confusion, by his body’s sudden surge of response to her. “God, Marlee, I’m not trying to…I’m not—”

  Her fury faded to a confusion that mirrored his own.

  “Gonna kiss you,” he muttered.

  “Yes,” she breathed, and beat him to it. Her hands, pushing, suddenly tugged him in. Her knee, futilely trying to jam up to his groin, instead moved to wrap her leg around his. Her mouth found his—responded to his, with kisses as fierce as her anger, kisses along his jaw, kisses hot against his neck, teeth against his neck, until the heat flooded through his body and his hips jerked in primal, undeniable response.