Tigre

by Cara Bristol

  That would make her mid-forties, a few years younger than him, although Saberian and human ages didn’t compute quite the same.

  “So, what brought you to Vegas?” she asked.

  “Edwin Mysk has a research-and-development facility in the desert. He invited me on a tour.” Tigre had gotten the impression Mysk was grooming him as his replacement if and when the Verital left Earth to find the lost ’Topians.

  She whistled. “The tech magnate invited you? He’s like one of the richest men in the world.”

  “Is he?” He shrugged. He hadn’t given much consideration to Mysk’s finances. “He’s ’Topian.” A mind-reading Verital, to be exact.

  Her jaw dropped. “He’s an alien? I’ve seen him on TV. He doesn’t resemble you at all.”

  His mating glands throbbed like crazy, and his cock ached. He had no one to blame but himself—he’d suggested the drink. She would have been content to go their separate ways. Being near her was torture. “We don’t all look alike. There are many different species of alien,” he chided. Of all the ’Topians, Veritals resembled humans the most and could easily pass. Her assumption had been logical, but he enjoyed needling her.

  “Nor does he look like your friend Inferno,” she snapped.

  “Ah, yes, my brother whom you arrested.” He took a sip of his drink.

  “Inferno is your brother?”

  “By another mother. Six of us arrived on Earth after the destruction of our planet. We were strangers at first, but we formed a surrogate family.”

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea.” Her eyebrows pulled together in genuine sympathy, and he felt like an ass for baiting her.

  “Thank you.” He nodded. “We’re all different species of ’Topian. I’m a Saberian, Inferno is a Luciferan. Psy, who was there the night you arrested Inferno is a Verital like Mysk.”

  “The arrest seems to be a sticking point with you. This is the second time you’ve mentioned it.”

  “Inferno was innocent. He didn’t set fire to the Church of Argent.”

  “I knew that, but circumstantial evidence pointed at him, so I had to follow procedure.”

  “You knew he didn’t do it, but you arrested him anyway?” The injustice raised his ire.

  “I didn’t know for sure, but I had a hunch, but then you got me—”

  “I got you what?” he demanded.

  “Nothing.” Out of vodka, she seized her water glass. “I released him as soon as I got a lead on the real perp. No harm, no foul,” she taunted. “Still think sharing a drink was a good idea?”

  He hankered to kiss the smirk off her face, to get her to admit she sensed their connection and felt something for him, to give him a chance to reveal they were genmates, to allow him to protect her from those who had hurt her and caused her to erect a defensive barrier.

  The server arrived with their food. “Get you another drink?”

  “Yes!” they answered together.

  “The same?”

  “Yeah,” Kat said.

  “Keep ’em coming,” he said. Only a couple more stiff drinks would get him through this evening.

  The food wasn’t bird feet but nuggets of breaded fowl served with fries in a paper-lined plastic basket. They were each given a small plate. He reached for some chicken, and his fingers brushed hers. Tingles sizzled up his arm. She jerked her hand away as if burned.

  Am I that abhorrent to her? “You first.” He motioned.

  She sat ramrod straight in her chair and picked out several nuggets and scooped some fries onto her dish.

  He shifted to ease the ache in his groin and curled his lip, inhaling a deep breath to cool the heat. Unfortunately, taking a breath had the opposite effect. The aroma of her arousal washed over the receptors in the roof of his mouth. He swallowed. Herian, he could taste her. She wasn’t immune to him after all. He shook with the effort it took to not catapult out of his chair, bend her over the table, and finalize their mating in the lounge.

  She eyed him. “Something wrong?”

  He downed his fresh drink in one gulp. “Why would you say that?”

  His recent mood swings had baffled his fellow castaways. Saberians were known for their equanimity, their sanguinity. And they were even tempered and calm—until they encountered their genmates and were stricken by feral fever.

  His parents had informed him about the feral fever during the “talk” when he’d still been a cub, but they hadn’t gone into detail, and no warning could have prepared him for the ferocity and how it would affect him—he couldn’t concentrate or sleep. No other ’Topian species experienced the overpowering lust—only Saberians.

  Like his brothers, he’d longed to meet his genmate—until he had, and the surge of hormones had taken control of his mind and body. He hated being at the mercy of biology, resented that his physical responses had been predetermined by Xeno genetic engineering, that his people had been created to become an object of study and amusement, that his genmate—the sole woman he could mate with—had dismissed him with a curl of her pouty lips.

  He couldn’t walk away from her any more than he could end his own life. She was his life. She permeated his blood, his marrow, his DNA.

  Claws jutted out of his fingertips, and he gripped the table, gouging divots in the wood. “Nothing’s wrong,” he reiterated and retracted his claws.

  She bit into a chicken nugget. “If you say so.” She licked her lips, and a growl of lust erupted from his throat.

  Her eyes flashed, and she dropped the chicken onto her plate. “Don’t grunt at me. You did that at the fire, and it’s rude. If you have something to say, say it.”

  I want to fu— His claws extended again. He would shred that dress from neckline to hem…

  “You sneered at me,” he accused.

  “I didn’t sneer! And if I did, it was after you growled at me.”

  He begged to differ. Before he’d uttered a word, she’d curled her lip and dismissed him without so much as speaking to him. One glimpse had been enough for his genmate to find him lacking.

  “If I growled, then I apologize,” he said in a last-ditch effort to patch things up.

  “If? There’s no if!”

  Enough. He would never be able to get through to her.

  The waitress collected their empty glasses and set fresh drinks in front of them. He downed the scotch and pushed off from the table and to his feet. The room spun; he’d managed to get himself shit-faced. “This was a bad idea.” He dug out his wallet and tossed a few bills on the table.

  “I’m paying—”

  “Keep your money.” A Saberian cared for his genmate, even when she rejected him. He could smell her desire, but she still didn’t like him. He had to leave now before he did something stupid.

  The small tables were packed so close together, she had to stand up so he could pass. As he squeezed by, his olfaction organs absorbed her musky arousal, the race of her heart pounded in his ears, and his skin tingled from the heat of her body exposed by that brief, tight dress.

  “Fine. If that’s the way you’re going to be.” She jutted her chin out and glowered at him, her lip again curling with disdain.

  His mating glands throbbed. Yearning and lust roared through him. He growled a warning.

  “Stop growling at me!”

  He was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. Restraint snapped, and he grabbed her, hauling her close to his body, against his erection. He hesitated for a fraction of a second then ducked his head and kissed her.

  Chapter Three

  Amanda Blake purred a soothing rhythm against Kat’s ear, a break in routine with how the cat usually woke her up—with a sharp-clawed poke to the face and a loud demand to be fed.

  Stranger still was the way Kat felt. Her head pounded like someone was drumming bongos inside her skull, her mouth had germinated fuzz, and her sour stomach roiled. Had she contracted the flu? Gotten food poisoning? She cracked her eyelids open, and
light stabbed at her eyeballs.

  Those aren’t my curtains. She stared at gold satin drapes framing a wide sliding glass door leading to a balcony. I don’t have a balcony. What the hell? Alarmed, she surveyed the unfamiliar room, her gaze bouncing off abstract artwork, thick carpeting patterned in a geometric design, and sleek modern expensive-looking furniture. Through an open door, she spied a soaker tub in a marble bath.

  Hotel. She was in a hotel.

  Memories of the law enforcement conference surfaced. She wasn’t home in Argent, Idaho but in Las Vegas. Except this spacious, ritzy suite looked nothing like the economy room the sheriff’s department had booked for her.

  Amanda Blake continued to purr.

  Except…her cat was home in Argent, being cared for by Verna, her next-door neighbor.

  Please, no. I couldn’t have… I didn’t…

  A strong, masculine forearm was clamped around her waist, and, if she wasn’t mistaken—and oh, she futilely prayed she was—morning wood pressed against her naked buttocks.

  No. No. No. Please be a dream. Kat ran a self-check, noting her kiss-swollen mouth, whisker-burned face, tender breasts, sticky inner thighs, and considerable soreness between her legs.

  That purr. Not Amanda Blake.

  Tigre.

  His breath stirred her hair.

  She shrieked and sprang upright, grabbing the sheet for protection.

  He bolted to a seated position. “What’s wrong?” His mane of hair was tousled in an attractive uproar from sleep—and from her fingers, she recalled with dismay. Dark bands crisscrossed his naked chest. The sheet covered his stomach, but she recalled how the slightly raised color bands faded to a faint tinge across his lower abdomen, before forming dark rings around his cock.

  How she wished she didn’t know that. “You—you—we—we—” She clutched at the sheet.

  “We mated.”

  Not a word she would have ascribed to her sexual behavior, except, in this case, it fit. Nothing else could describe the animalist cravings resulting in a ferocious coupling. Not brutal, never that, but fierce, almost desperate. They’d been unable to get enough of each other. How many times had they had sex? Three? Four? And that didn’t count the oral.

  “You seduced me!” she accused. Not with banter—although she’d enjoyed sparring with him—not with his ripped body or uniquely handsome face, but, but…with that kiss. The kiss. She’d already been tipsy when she’d encountered him at the craps table. Against her better judgment, she’d agreed to go with him to a bar. One drink had led to several. She’d gotten blitzed. He’d been blitzed.

  None of that could explain what she’d done.

  She blamed it on the kiss.

  His amber eyes looked somber, almost apologetic. “Feral fever. When a male is affected, it affects his genmate, too.”

  “What the hell? You infected me with something?” He’d given her an alien disease? Would Earth medicine have a cure?

  “It’s not an infection. And I didn’t do it deliberately.”

  “You kissed me deliberately!”

  He’d gotten up to leave, and he’d planted one on her. She remembered his taste, scotch—because that’s what he’d been drinking—and then some exotic, enticing elixir-like musk she couldn’t seem to get enough of, and she’d lost the willpower to resist him. She had to have him. She would have straddled him and humped him right there in the cocktail lounge, except he’d hustled her out of there.

  She was still in bed, wrapped in a sheet reeking of sex, but her face heated in recollection of how she’d clung to him while riding the elevator to his suite. The instant the hotel door had shut, they’d torn off their clothes. Literally. His claws had come out, and he’d shredded her dress—her one good, freaking expensive dress—from neckline to hem. At the time, it hadn’t mattered. Now? My one freaking-good dress! As if the loss of a dress was the worst of her problems.

  They’d tumbled atop the king-size bed and gone at it. He preferred doggie style, she recalled. She’d accommodated him, not caring what position they employed as long as she got him inside her.

  “I’ve gotta get to my room.” She yanked the top sheet free of the bed and wound it around herself. “I’m taking your bathrobe.” His bathroom would have one; hers did, and she had the cheapest room. She’d avoid the elevator and take the walk of shame down ten flights to her room located midway in the hotel tower. Security would have her on video, but guests creeping from one room to another probably wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

  What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

  As she slid out of bed, her gaze fell upon a piece of paper on the nightstand. Her hands shook as she picked it up, saw her drunken chicken-scratch signature and Tigre’s more legible one. And she recalled the very worst part, a hazy part with bits and pieces missing that she’d hoped was an alcohol-fueled nightmare.

  They hadn’t gone straight from the bar to his hotel room. They’d made one stop.

  The Wedding Belles and Beaus Chapel.

  “We effing got married?” She waved the paper.

  “We’re genmates. I assumed you’d want that,” he said.

  * * * *

  Not bothering with his robe or her shoes, stopping only to scoop up her clutch purse, Kat fled the suite for the stairwell. Hiking up the sheet, she flew down the steps as fast as she dared.

  She burst onto her floor and rushed to her room. Thank God she hadn’t run into anybody, but having an audience to her humiliation was the least of her concerns.

  I married him!

  She waved her key card over the sensor and charged inside. The door slammed shut, and she flipped the extra lock across the door. She threw her purse on the dresser and paced. How did this happen? How could I have done this? What am I going to do?

  Get an annulment. That was the only option. She’d been drunk as a skunk. That counted as diminished mental capacity, didn’t it? But, even inebriated, she wouldn’t have consented to wedding a near-stranger she detested. The alien disease he’d infected her with had messed with her mind.

  More hazy memories were assuming clarity. Her animosity had waned under the onslaught of horniness fueled by hot kisses as they waited for the elevator to ferry them to his floor. Consumed by lust, she’d had to touch him without the barrier of clothing, craved skin-to-skin contact, full penetration. She’d felt like she would die if she didn’t get him inside her.

  If only the fricking elevator hadn’t gotten hung up. She still would have screwed his brains out, but at least she wouldn’t be married.

  But the elevator had taken its own sweet time, as if some kid playing a prank had pushed every single button. Tigre’s seductive, maddening scent had infused her senses. He’d wrapped protective arms around her as they’d waited. “I need you, my genmate,” he’d whispered, his raspy growl somehow sounding sexy instead of insulting.

  “What does that mean?” She’d peered up at him, mesmerized by his gorgeous eyes, the pupils narrowed to slits. He had feline eyes. Topaz with vertical pupils. Sexy as all get-out. “What’s a genmate?”

  “It means we are bonded by our genetics. We are meant for each other.”

  The pickup line growled in his husky voice sounded sincere and dredged up a deep-buried longing. Soothed the longing. Filled the empty spaces in her soul. She almost believed he genuinely cared for her.

  “I knew you were my genmate the moment I laid eyes on you,” he said.

  “You sound like you mean that.” Clinging to him, she’d licked his neck.

  “I do mean it. It’s the truth.”

  She swayed, and he caught her, steadied her, as if protecting her was his sole mission in life. Something in her softened, melted, and, as she gazed into his eyes, she’d imagined she’d seen the same desolation she felt. “But you don’t like me,” she said, a smidge of sanity reasserting itself.

  “I need you. You are what has been missing from my life.”

  Of course, sh
e hadn’t known then he’d infected her with an alien pheromone, making her as drunk on him as she was on vodka, so she’d been seduced by his words, his expression of loneliness. “So, what do we do about it? Besides fuck like bunnies?” she’d quipped to cover her sudden feeling of naked vulnerability.

  He’d jerked his head at the Wedding Belles and Beaus Chapel they’d passed on the way to the elevator. “You’re my genmate. Since that will never change, perhaps we should get married, too?”

  “Okay,” she’d agreed, the suggestion making perfect sense at the time. Temporary insanity. A law enforcement officer for more than two decades, Kat had witnessed many criminals plead temporary insanity. She’d considered the plea bogus until now. Only insanity could explain her capitulation—she’d lost her ever-loving mind.

  They’d hurried to the chapel, caught the officiant before she’d closed up, had the night cleaning crew serve as witnesses, and got hitched.

  What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas—unless you marry him.

  Surely the fact that she’d been so insane as to wed a virtual stranger she didn’t like provided more than ample grounds for annulment of said marriage. She hoped so. Kat sank onto her bed and buried her still-pounding head in her hands. “What have I done?”

  Chapter Four

  “You’re home sooner than expected,” Inferno commented as Tigre entered the farmhouse. “Everything go okay?”

  The hesitant tone pricked at Tigre’s guilt. He’d been a real ass to live with, snapping at everyone with little provocation. He couldn’t blame his brothers for kicking him out of the house and sending him to Las Vegas. Since the feral fever had abated, his head had cleared, and he realized he owed everyone an apology.

  “Yes, as far as Mysk goes. Construction of the defense plant is progressing well; one whole section of the factory has been completed, and the design of weapon system prototypes has begun. But an unexpected development occurred during the trip.”