by E A Price
Eugene was now talking – spilling his guts. His tiger still brooded about that – he really did want the man to spill his guts, all over the floor while screaming in agony preferably.
“Our friend, Eugene is telling us about the other fights clubs his boss started,” Juliet told them gleefully. “Based on his testimony, I think we have a shot at finally closing this case and prosecuting everyone involved. Thirteen years after it should have been closed, mind you,” she added in dismay.
“Did he say why they took Carrick in the first place?” asked Lauren anxiously. “He said something about Emily…”
Juliet darted a glance at Carrick, and he nodded. Lauren would winkle the information out of him anyway; she might as well hear it.
“According to Eugene, our mystery Emily was engaged to Eugene’s boss, and Carrick was having an affair with her…” Lauren sucked in a breath, but Carrick didn’t react to the news. Yep, he knew it would be bad. “Eugene’s boss was called Aldrick Hunter. The name probably doesn’t mean anything to you two, but he was a lion shifter and frankly, a grade-A monster. He dealt in shifter trafficking, drugs, prostitution - you name it. He was finally put in prison for tax evasion about six years ago. No one was sad when he died in prison two years later – he insulted the wrong bear shifter, apparently.”
He must have been the male from his memories – the one hurting him and howling at him that he wasn’t good enough for ‘her’. No wonder he hated male lions.
“Anyway, Hunter didn’t take too kindly to you sleeping with his fiancée, so he decided to teach you a lesson. According to Eugene, they were just going to kill you until they saw how well you could fight, and then they decided they had a use for you after all. You were in the club for just under four years. It's unfortunate that we won't be able to bring charges against Hunter, but at least he's not running around free anymore.”
Carrick grunted.
“Eugene said he was thinking about starting up the clubs again,” murmured Lauren.
“Yes, apparently after four divorces and a huge amount of alimony, our Eugene is a little strapped for cash. A friend of his – someone who used to work at one of the fight clubs - spotted you when you were at Pandora’s and grilled a woman called Fran. Eugene thought that getting hold of you would be the first step to starting the fights again.”
Lauren stared at their entwined hands in her lap. His huge, rough hand eclipsing her pale, slender hand. His tiger whined. Yep, this right here was why he didn’t want to make this blasted trip to Los Lobos – he knew she would find out something about him that she didn’t like. If his life was so great, he felt almost certain he would never have forgotten it in the first damn place!
He needed to get her away from there and talk to her, explain to her and say… say what?
“What happened to Emily?” asked Lauren.
Juliet rolled a shoulder. “Nothing, as far as I’m aware. According to records, she married Hunter, and eight years later they divorced. He got remarried the day after the divorce went through – hardly a fairytale romance by the sound of it. I have her contact details here, in case you want them.”
She held out a piece of paper, but Carrick made no move to take it, so Lauren did instead. Awkwardly with one hand, because Carrick wasn’t letting go of the other, she folded it and put it in her pocket.
His tiger wanted him to growl at her not to bother, to throw it away, but it had been a long day, and at that moment, he wasn’t sure his mate would brush away his snarls quite so easily as she usually did.
She loves us, argued the tiger.
Yes, he very much hoped she did.
*
Georgie was annoyingly inquisitive when they got back to her house. Juliet arranged for a SEA agent to drive them, and helpfully had their rental car delivered back there too.
Lauren had been quiet the whole trip back, and her quietness – something he usually enjoyed – was starting to worry him and his tiger.
After much grunting and growling from Carrick, Georgie finally got the message and went off to bed. She made a few complaints about it being her house, but even she didn’t want to be caught in Carrick’s angry glare.
“Hungry?” he mumbled.
Lauren shook her head and gave him a wan smile.
“Thirsty?”
Another shake.
“Tired?”
Lauren nodded, and her face crumpled. “I was really scared, Carrick.”
He caught her in his arms, and she sobbed into his shoulder. Snot and tears streamed out of her as she shook and cried in his arms. His tiger prowled unhappily, unsure what to do. He wished he were better at this, better at comforting her. All he could do was hold her; no words would come to him. Perhaps that was partly down to his relief. While he’d been worried about his mate hating him for what happened, for his past, he hadn’t considered that she was just scared and needed soothing.
Bonehead sniffed his tiger.
Lauren let out a hysterical giggle. “Perhaps I should have put a towel over your shoulder.”
“C’mon.”
Carrick lifted her into his arms and carried her upstairs. He carefully stripped her and fetched a wet cloth to wipe her face. He put her in bed and slipped in behind her, his arms coming around her.
“I’m not really in the mood,” she murmured in a small, heartbreaking voice.
“I know, baby, just try and get some sleep.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“No. I won’t leave you.”
Thirty
Lauren awoke, still a little groggy from sleep. Her tiger moaned pathetically. She had managed to sleep, but only in fits and bursts, and now felt even more exhausted than the night before.
Carrick’s arms were wrapped tight around her – as they had been every time she woke up in the night - and she nestled back against his warm, comforting body.
“Morning,” he grunted.
“Mmmmm.”
“Hungry?”
She really didn’t want to get out of bed, or for him to get out of bed and leave her. “No.” Her stomach promptly rumbled with the full force of her starving tiger.
Carrick chuckled lightly, and she muttered the word, “Traitor.”
“Me?”
“No, my stomach.”
“We should get breakfast.”
“No, let's stay here,” she groaned even as her tiger and her stomach rumbled in unison.
“You have to eat,” he said trying not to sound irritated and failing miserably.
“I guess.”
Carrick sighed and kissed her shoulder. The tender touch warmed her, but she hoped he didn’t want anything more from her at that moment. When he was upset, Carrick wanted to have sex until he could barely walk, but Lauren just needed to be held. She could scent his arousal, which was never particularly dulled in her presence, but she was grateful that it didn’t grow into full-blown need.
The tiger scolded her, and she realized Carrick wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t try to force her to do something she didn’t want or take advantage of her in a weak moment. They way they came together might have been awkward, but since then all he’d tried to do was make her happy and protect her. It was no wonder she loved him.
She felt him slipping away from her, and she mewled woefully. He chuckled and tucked the covers around her.
“I’m going to get you something to eat.”
“I can manage without…” Her stomach was starting to sound menacing, and she growled, burying her head in the pillow.
“Sure. Anything you… ah…”
“What’s up?” she murmured, sleepily.
“I have three missed calls from Asher.”
“Oh?”
Lauren’s phone was destroyed by Eugene after they were captured, but Carrick resented being made to carry a phone and generally always left the house without it. She wondered what Asher could want. Their tiger pride seemed so far away and unimportant at that moment. “You calling him back?”
“Asher’s not so bad, or at least, he’s not as bad as his father. But then, who is?”
“He’s an idiot.”
Well, Asher did mate Nita even though she was sleeping with his father… that fact alone didn’t speak of a male who wasn’t an idiot.
“At least he wouldn’t threaten a six-year-old cub.”
“What?”
Lauren yawned and closed her eyes. “Locke threatened to hurt Lois if I didn’t mate you. The guy was a monster. I can’t imagine Asher doing anything so heinous. Mmmm. Wake me when the food gets here.”
Vaguely, she could hear her tiger whining in alarm, but she was just too tired to pay attention.
*
The tiger padded through the garden. It was all so familiar – the house, the garden, running through the neighborhood, scaring the rabbit shifters down the block... Not all his memories were back, but he remembered enough. His childhood wasn’t terrible, but he wasn’t about to jump for joy at being home again. He’d been a surly child with an angry tiger, and his dad had been hard and sometimes cruel. He was somewhat glad that he had come home, though he wasn’t sure it was worth the danger or terror Lauren was put through.
Course, she wouldn’t even be there if the alpha hadn’t bullied and forced her into mating him…
The thought had him baring his fangs and wishing there was an unsuspecting bunny around for him to pounce on and slaughter.
He remembered the night Lauren came to him, telling him she would mate him. Her agreement stunned and then delighted him. Stupidly, he thought she was warming to him, realizing he would make a better mate than the other dickwads in the pride. No. She said yes to him because she needed to protect her sister. He’d been foolish not to see it before. Why else would she have wanted him?
He snarled at his morbid thoughts, recalling the words she said to him just the day before. I love you, Carrick. So much.
It didn’t matter what the alpha did. She loved him. She said it. Because she thought they were about to die…
He paused from his prowl as Georgie shuffled out onto the porch. She told him she was hit by a truck while shifted some years ago; it was so bad she couldn’t fully heal herself. She could move around the house okay, but struggled with things like cleaning and cooking – hence the daily helper. From what Georgie told Lauren, her daughters wanted her to go into a home, but she was too proud and was also convinced her daughters were just trying to get hold of her house to sell it.
His sisters, he supposed – Gertie and Geraldine. He vaguely recalled them, too – as obnoxious older sisters who made fun of him while he terrorized them. Could he imagine them trying to pry their mother out of her house to sell it? Yeah, probably. He guessed it was a nice house, but the house he shared back home with Lauren was nicer. A house she was living in out of sufferance he thought piteously.
Completely irritated by his internal whining, the tiger pushed for the shift and Carrick took on his skin form while his beast turned his back and sulked. Moody bastard.
“Your phone keeps ringing,” groused Georgie, holding up the offending item. “I wasn’t sure you wanted me answering it, and since you didn’t want me to disturb Lauren…” Her mouth turned down in disapproval as she trailed away.
No, he didn’t – he’d barked as much at her as he left the house. After Lauren inadvertently told him the truth about their mating, his tiger was furious and wanted to shift, run and hunt, but he needed to take care of his mate. After a few threats, he managed to send out Georgie’s helper to the local Happy Heart Donut shop, and he woke Lauren up and had her eat a couple. Not that she needed much coaxing about that. She had a glorious appetite in all things. Seeing her with powdered sugar around her mouth was far more sensual than it should be and he had trouble holding himself back, but, still put out, he did. Then she went back to sleep, and he went for a run to get rid of some of his irritated energy.
Impatiently, Georgie waved the phone at him as it started ringing again. Apparently, she didn’t like the way he snarled at her as he ran out of there before.
Carrick jumped up on the porch and snapped the phone up, growling a hello. Georgie scowled at him and went back into the house.
“Carrick, when are you coming back?”
Asher. He grunted into the phone. “Don’t know.”
“We need to decide on a new alpha, and I want all the members of the pride there.”
“Humph.”
“I take it you won’t be throwing your paw in the ring.”
Another grunt.
Asher sighed. “Can you put Lauren on the phone?”
“No. So you plan on being alpha.”
He didn’t answer right away, but when he did, he was firm and sure of himself. “Yes. Things are changing here. We actually have a real future now that my dad’s gone.”
No love lost there.
“I’ll meet any challengers if need be.”
There was a certain amount of warning in his voice that suggested he would beat Carrick if he challenged for leadership. His tiger snorted. Yeah, right. But he wasn’t about to bother arguing with the young tiger. It wasn’t like he wanted to be alpha.
“I have lots of ideas about how to improve the pride, and our pride mates are antsy for a new alpha to be named. To start, no more enforced matings. The SEA brought in an alpha from another pride – Warwick from Montana.”
His tiger chuffed in approval. Warwick was known to the pride – mostly because he was approached by Locke to arrange matings between their two prides and he refused because of his contempt for the way Locke ruled his tigers. Warwick was a good tiger. In his eighties, yet still alpha over the strongest tiger pride in the country. When Warwick growled, everyone listened.
“Warwick declared all the matings of the pride to be void.”
Carrick felt a chill not so much creep over him as hit him like a freight train. “He can’t do that.”
“He has. A lot of the pride members were pissed, but he was dominant to my dad, so what he says goes. It doesn’t matter. Any tigers that wish to remain mated will be blessed by the new alpha. Any tigers who don’t are free to do as they wish finally.”
His heart thudded erratically as he thought of Lauren. No, surely, she… no, he couldn’t let her go. His tiger roared in alarm. She had to be forced to mate him the first time – why on earth would she mate him a second time?!
“Carrick? You still there?”
He forced his mouth to work. “Your mate…”
Asher grumbled down the phone. “Nita was never my mate. She will be allowed to remain in the pride given that she is the mother of my half-brothers, but her world is going to change a lot. Look, I can explain more when you get back, so when are you and Lauren coming home?”
“I… I’ll let you know.”
He hung up, ignoring Asher’s protests.
He and Lauren weren’t mated anymore. There was nothing tying her to him.
I love you, Carrick. So much.
The tiger howled. He replayed the words over and over, wondering if she meant them. Wondering if soon that was all he would have – those remembered words playing in his head, taunting him, driving him insane.
The phone shattered to pieces in his hand as his punishing grip destroyed it.
Thirty-One
Carrick was barely through the bedroom door when Lauren leaped on him. He was startled, but in spite of her large frame, he easily caught her.
His mouth dropped open as she fluttered kisses all over his face, then slithered out of his grasp and started bouncing on the bed.
“Sorry,” she breathed. “I’ve had six donuts and thirteen hours sleep – I’m full of beans.”
He said nothing, just bobbed his head up and down in time with her jumps, his eyes riveted to her bouncing breasts. She’d donned one of his t-shirts, but not bothered with underwear so her girls were footloose and fancy-free and she was in a little danger of knocking herself out with them, but she di
dn’t care.
She felt great. Yesterday had been awful, but as she was eating donut number three, four, five and then six, she realized that she was lucky. She was alive, in relatively good health – the six donuts weren’t doing her a lot of good - and she had her mate. Her tiger roared in approval.
As nausea set in – probably helped along by the donuts – she dropped onto the bed and looked up at Carrick, still gaping at her in the doorway. Finally, he seemed to collect himself and came into the room, closing the door behind him.
He was totally naked, and a thin sheen on his body told her he’d been out running as his beast. Her own let out a wistful noise, and she realized she ought to shift and allow her tiger a little playtime.
Lauren grinned and blushed as she noticed his manhood was swollen with desire, pointing at her almost menacingly. He really had enjoyed her jumping on the bed.
Her eyes flicked between his face and his arousal, and he scowled.
“Sorry,” he muttered and moved to pull on a pair of jeans.
“You don’t have to be sorry. If you want to, I, ah…” Lauren struggled for words, never having been in the position of having to proposition anyone for sex.
Taking a deep breath, she peeled off the t-shirt and lay down on the bed. She hated being naked in daylight hours. Didn’t much care for it at night either, but at least then it was darker and more forgiving to all her bits that jiggled.
She smiled shyly, expecting him to pounce on her. When he hesitated, she had to admit to a little disappointment. A stab of jealousy shot through her as she wondered if his desire for her really was ebbing because of his returning memories of Emily. Her tiger grimaced, and she pushed that aside.
“If you don’t want to…” she started, unsure how to finish. If you don’t want to, you’ll hurt my feelings? Nah – way too girly for Carrick.
A look of pain and anguish briefly crossed over his features, but it was gone as quickly as it came.
“I always want to,” he groaned, discarding the jeans and damn near leaping on her.