Or they might go to the fight club that was held once a week, where Shifters took out their aggressions in the ring, with the rest of the Shifters betting like crazy on the outcomes.
Tiger wasn’t allowed to fight in the fight club. They didn’t trust him, and Tiger agreed with that. To him, fighting wasn’t a game. It was survival. Kill or be killed.
Right now, his bed was the best place to be. He was hard and ready, wanting Carly. But just lightly touching her while she slept filled something in Tiger he hadn’t realized was empty.
Tiger leaned over. Remembering how to pucker his lips and how to release the pressure at the correct moment, he kissed her cheek.
Carly blinked once, then again, then her smile blossomed. “Oh, hey.” She slid herself to a sitting position and tucked stray locks of hair behind her ears. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“You stayed.”
Carly shrugged. “I told Armand about the accident, and he said that under no circumstance was I to come to work. He said he’d make Yvette answer the phones and beg her to be nice to people.” She laughed a little. “Yvette has the biggest heart in the world, but she doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She’ll save their lives and fix them the best meal they’ll ever eat, but she will give them her unvarnished opinions about them at the same time.”
“Glory is the same. Except she can’t cook.”
Carly laughed again, drawing her knees to her chest and circling her arms around them. How wonderful, Tiger thought as he studied the softness of her thighs, to know people—who weren’t researchers studying him—to know enough about them to make jokes.
“Looks like you’re feeling better,” Carly said.
Tiger put his hand to his abdomen. A few twinges went off at his touch, but that was all. As before, his body had closed up, was making itself whole again.
“Why did you stay?” he asked.
“I just told you. Armand said . . .”
“No.” Tiger sat up with her, reflecting that he was tired of lying on his back. He propped himself on the headboard, leaning an arm on his drawn-up knee. “You could have gone home. Gone anywhere. But you stayed.”
A flush of color stained her cheeks. “I was worried about you.”
“Why? You saw that I was healing.”
“Tiger, no one gets shot twice in as many days and heals faster the second time. Dylan said it was like your body was changing, like it was adapting to the circumstance.”
He shrugged, and even that didn’t hurt. “They wanted me to be the best fighting machine ever. Gave me drugs that hurt like hell, and surgeries, always surgeries. And then tested me and gave me more drugs. I was the only one who survived.”
Carly’s eyes widened. “There were more like you?”
“There were twenty-three. I was the last. Then there was only me.”
She touched his arm, fingers light on his bicep. “I don’t know how to answer that. How to convey how really sorry I am. It sounds lame even to say it.”
The touch had been a mistake. Tiger’s healing body had been content to be in her presence, to rest while he drank in her scent.
The warmth of her hand on him awakened primal needs, and the beast in him rushed to the surface. He should warn her, tell her to get out.
He couldn’t make himself. Tiger was lonely, and alone, in spite of living in this house, in this room where he could watch over all of Shiftertown.
Carly was here. And he needed her.
Simple words, for a simple being. Tiger clasped Carly’s wrist and lifted her hand away, but kept hold of it as he looked at her. She gazed back at him, her expression telling him she felt the change in him, his raw need.
“Tiger,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”
The hesitant words made Tiger stop himself, to push down the feral beast who wanted her. “Of me?” Even his voice had changed, the words harsh and flat.
“Of me.” Tears moistened her eyes. “I just had a bad ending to a relationship I thought was fine. I don’t want to let myself fall in love with you. With anyone.” She touched his face, this second touch ripping away all restraint Tiger had put on himself. “But I think it’s too late for that.”
Too late. Much too late. Tiger growled like a true tiger, pushed Carly onto the bed, pinned her with his hands on her wrists, and brought his mouth down on hers.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tiger’s lips were hot, his mouth moving on hers, his tongue sweeping inside. He opened Carly’s mouth with his as she’d shown him how to in Ethan’s dressing room, brushed kisses along her lips and chin as she’d shown him how to in the car.
He held her down with hands on her wrists, his body weight on her. Tiger could have crushed her, Carly knew, but he held himself back, shaking with the effort.
Tiger pulled Carly’s lower lip between his, sucking, the tiny pain sensual. He licked across her lips, then inside again, tasting her mouth.
Carly tasted him back, loving the velvet friction of his tongue. He tasted of spice and musk, the hot bite that was him. Tiger didn’t close his eyes to kiss her; his golden gaze was fixed on her, watching her watch him.
When he eased away, Carly pressed kisses to his mouth, his lips smooth and warm, a little moisture behind them. Tiger kissed her again, matching her actions, his mouth deftly caressing hers.
“You’re a quick learner,” she said breathlessly.
“I am.”
“Mmm. Modest too.”
“They told me so,” Tiger said. “The researchers said I learned fast.”
Carly’s anger surged at those faceless people who’d kept him in a cage, performed experiments on him that hurt him, trying to make a Shifter into a better fighter or whatever it was they were doing. Kept him in a cage. And he was the only Shifter who’d survived this torture.
“They should be arrested.”
Tiger shrugged. “They went away.”
The words were simple, but Carly sensed the volumes of pain behind them. They’d hurt him, then they’d deserted him. He’d had a mate, he’d said, and she’d died. Tiger’s child had died as well. How could he bear it? How could anyone stand so much?
“I’m here,” Carly said. Silly, because she was lying under him—where else would she be? “No matter what. If we hook up or we don’t, if we’re friends only—hell, if we move to opposite sides of the globe—I’ll be there for you when you need me. Okay? I promise.”