Angelica wasn’t sure which of the two them was in worse shape. Taylor had shifted and then killed a man in order to save her life, but he seemed less affected by it than she did. She felt like she was supposed to just shrug it off, not wilt and fall in a dead faint while fanning herself and calling for Rhett Butler. But she was a doctor, not a warrior. She’d seen a lot of death, and a fair bit of mauling in the jungles where she’d worked. But then she’d been dedicated to saving the patient, trying everything in her power to prolong life, to promote healing.

No one had ever had to die before for her sake.

No, that’s not exactly true, is it?

The cartel in the Amazon. What was she supposed to think of them? A lot of them had died. But Taylor had been there to stop them from running drugs, to help the villagers who were under their thumbs. Death wasn’t so intimate. Some would even argue those deaths might have been necessary to save the lives of countless others. Maybe they hadn’t exactly stopped the flow of drugs into the United States, but they’d put a serious dent in someone’s supply. That had to be worth something. How many drug overdoses had she seen in her intern days?

No. Sad as it was to take a life, she’d never felt guilty over what had happened back in South America. This, though, was a different story altogether.

But Batu had a rifle aimed at the back of my head. That makes a difference.

She shuddered, not wanting to think about it. They were home, back at the staff housing, such as it was. The room they provided her was standard for the doctors. For that matter, as far as she could tell it was the same room for nurses and orderlies, but nurses had to double up and orderlies used bunk beds. According to Anitah, just preparing for the day required a very carefully vetted bathroom schedule.

The doctors, on the other hand, were given rooms with private baths.

But by some fluke in the building of the rooms, at least hers, the bathtub was huge. The bathroom held a claw foot metal tub, and if the plumbing came in as an afterthought it was still there and thankfully provided water that scalded the unwary. The tub was easily big enough, even for someone Taylor’s size.

She brought up the hot water until it steamed in the warm night air and then stoppered the drain and let it fill. She started with boiling hot water; it took longer for it to cool, giving more time in the tub. The last few inches would be topped off with cold so that it was possible to enter. She loved the feel of pockets of cold water in a hot bath.

She walked into the room while the tub ran and saw Taylor pacing the floor. He looked so much like the girl did after she’d changed she expected him to shift at any moment. Her breath caught in her throat and for a moment she was scared, truly scared that someday she might lose him to the tiger. It was an odd and irrational thought, but the beast was always there, wasn’t it? And what if someday the man could no longer bear the trappings of civilization any better than the tiger could?

“You okay?” she asked. It might have been the stupidest question she’d ever asked, but she was going to stand by it. She tilted her head to look at him, biting her lip as she waited for his answer.

He nodded and then paused. “Actually...” He cleared his throat, one hand going to his hair, running fingers through strands that were growing long, something just past military buzz cut that wasn’t quite sure yet what it was. “I’m still having this insane desire to change again. It’s like the cat wants out, and doesn’t care if I’m along for the ride or not.”

She nodded as though she understood, though she didn’t. Her earlier fears coalesced into a hard knot in the pit of her stomach. “There’s a box under the bed,” she said, her voice a little choked until she caught herself and strove to steady the unreasonable fears that had been brewing since they’d gotten back. “A shoe box all taped up. Get that for me, will you?”

Maybe it was premature to bring this out, but damn it, if tonight wasn’t the night then when would it be? She turned back to the tub, checking the depth, wondering how much water would be displaced by two people and whether or not she needed to start running the cold.

It felt good to busy herself with the mundane, the small details. She listened as Taylor rummaged around in the room behind her. Furniture shifted, and the mattress creaked as he sat down on it. When Angelica looked, he had the box next to him. His hand went to his pocket, looking for his knife, she realized, to cut the tape. But he came up empty and looked up at her, frowning.

She understood but didn’t say it. He’d had the knife earlier. Of course he did. When had Taylor ever been without a knife? She shook her head, as though it was no big deal, and retrieved a pair of scissors from the table and began cutting away the tape. “I have saved this box since the day we parted,” she said, smiling down at the package. “I held everything in place just for our grand reunion. Because, of course, our reunion would be a grand thing.” She laughed a little. “That reunion is today.”

She peeled aside the lid and pulled out a bottle of Champagne and a brightly colored ball.

“I get the bubbly,” he said with a sardonic grin. He grabbed the ball and tossed it from one hand to the other. “Is the ball something for the cat to play with?”

“Hardly,” she said with a twinkle in her eye as she snagged it midair. “Watch.” She turned and tossed it gently into the filling tub where it fizzled and broke apart, hissing and spitting and turning into large bubbles and froth.

“Bath bomb,” she said. “Just for us.”

Taylor’s smile was a little dubious, but he seemed game enough as he walked into the bathroom to watch the froth grow. “Lavender?”

She nodded. “I looked for gas-and-oil scent, but oddly enough they didn’t have any. You’re going to have to go floral for a day.”

“I think I can manage it.” His eyes were dark. Intense.

Angelica knew that look. He was positively smoldering. Her mouth went dry. Someplace lower got wet. She moved forward, fears forgotten, thinking only how much she wanted to be in his arms. How much she needed to touch him. To taste him. To experience every single thing he had to offer.

He caught her as though he were drowning, and she was the only thing that would save him.

She kicked the bathroom door shut behind them.

Truth be told, he was the only thing that could save her.

Then she was in his arms, or he was in hers. It was hard to tell with the frantic violence of their coming together. Lips met lips. Hands caressed. Discovered. Explored. He stopped long enough to peel off his shirt and toss it aside. She gasped, reaching to touch the new marks on his skin since she’d last seen him. She hated seeing his scars, and though she knew his work put him in harm’s ways she hated to see the evidence that sometimes there were things that even the cat couldn’t heal fully.

But he was still gorgeous. She smiled at the way his muscles moved under his skin, the way his shoulders seemed to take up the entire room, the way his arms hung from his shoulders. Not like they just got set up to dry, like most people, but as though they were too heavy and too large to place anywhere else.

He turned to shut off the water. She came in and turned on the cold tap and slipped free of her shirt. He reached behind her and snapped the stays on her bra, slipping it down her shoulders and to the floor. She wormed away for a moment and contented herself with a trail of kisses along his arm, lingering at his hand, taking each finger into her mouth in turn in a teasing suckling that left him gasping and her horny.

She perched gingerly on the edge of the tub, which left her at eye level with his belt. She raised an eyebrow and tilted her head back to look at him.

Oh, yes. He wanted her. He very specifically wanted her to do something.

She pulled it free, the little tongue popping out of the hole, and ran her fingers under the belt, slipping the leather through the buckle.

A quick twist of the wrist and his button popped open; the zipper was already halfway down. She yanked the pants down over his hips and pulled the shorts in one motion, leaving them puddled at his feet. He stepped out of them and kicked them over in the general direction of his shoes and socks.

She’d thought to pleasure him here, sitting in this way, and leaned forward to do so, but Taylor clearly had other things in mind. He reached down and wrapped an arm around her, taking her up in his arms and bringing her out into the bedroom. She squealed with laughter as he lay her down on the bed and grabbed the scrubs she was still wearing at the ankles and yanked them down. They slid over her legs and then were spun off into the pile of dirty clothes, while she giggled helplessly at his blatant need. In the bathroom the water would be cooling. She no longer cared.

He grabbed her panties and twisted them in one fist and pulled. With a great rip they tore off her, leaving her gasping, laughter forgotten as he tossed them aside. The look in his eyes as he gazed at her spread on the mattress took her breath away. That gleam was part amusement, part play, all lust. But Angelica’s heart skipped a beat when she saw that there was no small amount of love in that look, too.

Before she had time to wonder at it too much, he grabbed her ankles and pulled her to the edge of the bed, laying over her, skin pressed to skin, taking her mouth with his, caressing her, kissing her neck, burying his face in her neck, kissing the hollow of her throat, moving down. His hardness pressed against her, taunting her, laying on the surface of her wetness and barely, so barely, pressing the hidden clit under the folds of her sex. As he moved down he dragged over her sex, and the sensations ran through her body and exploded behind her eyes. The feel of his lips on her breasts as he took each nipple one at a time was exquisite. He licked, sucking and pulling on her tender flesh until she began to writhe under his careful attention. Only then did he grab her by the ribs and pull her up to meet his lips.

It was too much, and she wasn’t getting enough of him. She writhed against him as he slid his arms down her as he moved down her body, as if the placement of his hands forced her body to arch. Hands found his face and framed it, fingers caught at his hair and she decided that she liked that he was growing it out a little, giving her more to touch, to play with.

Then he reached her wetness and she found herself unable to think at all.

She lifted her hips to him, wanting, needing, begging him to kiss her, to bite her, to let her feel him, alive and strong and between her legs. Her murmured pleas were barely words at all, more sounds, becoming moans and whimpers as he gently bit down. She gasped and her back arched as she grabbed the blanket in both fists, pulling the material to her. He lavished her sex, caressing, exploring, touching, drilling his tongue into her until she could only lie there, her head moving back and forth restlessly against the blanket.

The touch, after so long an absence, was electric. It sent little shocks through her body, all of them connecting her legs that began to twitch to the points of her nipples, cooling in the air to the spot just shy of her clit where he had his tongue. She gasped and moaned, tried to wrap her legs around him, to take him in, to adjust him to where she wanted him to go, but his hands held her tight and she couldn’t move her legs at all without his permission. Strangely, that only added to the immediacy of the sensation, and she loved the passionate imprisonment, and begged for more.

She came so close, so close, and then he would back off. It was infuriating. Frustrating. He played her body like it was an instrument, pulling out sensations no one had ever found, loosening them and bringing them all to a boil and then bringing her back down, only to rise again.

She ground her teeth in frustration, pounded the bed because the walls were too thin to scream bloody murder at the top of her lungs, because she wanted him to let her release.  Most of all because she didn’t want to stop, not even for the orgasm that was building up behind her, ready to wash over her, taking her, blacking her out.

But she couldn’t take much more. Couldn’t hold back much more. He broke off, rose from between her legs. She cried out in frustration, in despair and need, until he stepped between her legs, his cock thick and magnificent, pointed most intimately right where she wanted it most to go.

She tried to rise, to impale herself, to force him deep inside of her. He stayed tantalizingly out of reach until she subsided, and only then slid inside her in a single thrust. The friction and the pressure of the entrance, the roughness, tore through the last of the teasing and slammed her over the edge. She spasmed as soon as he was buried inside of her and he thrust hard and fast as the orgasm swamped her. She no longer rode it out, it was too much for that. She lay back, letting her body bounce and writhe and flail under his hard thrusts, and the orgasm abated and rose again, like the teasing he’d started.

Amazingly it never seemed to end.

Every time she thought the waves had finished, he’d thrust again. When her clit became too sore to touch he moved her, entered from a different angle where the pressure was less direct. The waves came again and she grasped the covers and brought them to her mouth. Damn the wall, she had to scream, needed to release the wave that was tearing through her. Muscles clamped down on him and pulled, and she heard him cry out as his own release shuddered through his frame and left him shaking, spasming inside of her.

The endless high, the knee-shaking waves of intense pleasure began to settle. He was still in her and she flexed just to feel him, and to hear him moan.

He pulled out slowly. His exit triggered aftershocks as his penis slid free, trailing along the over-sensitized clit.

“Damn...”

It was all she could manage to say, and when she looked up at him her eyes were wide. The smile on her face felt too wide, painfully so. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even smiled at all, truth be told. This was overwhelming.

Exhausting.

She had no idea how she would rise, and felt her eyes already drifting shut in the blissful wake of lovemaking, of aftershocks still tearing through her system, causing her to shudder intimately in ways she never could have imagined before him.

“C’mon, up you go.”

The was laughter in his eyes, a tenderness in his voice as he leaned down, picking her up to bring her to the tub.

They had been busy long enough for the lava heat to dissipate, but the water was still deliciously hot, and she sank into the water with a contented sigh. Taylor crawled in behind her and shifted her around until she reclined with her head resting against his chest. Between the warmth of the water and multiple orgasms Angelica lay languid, sated, relaxed, and completely unable to move.

It was enough to stay there, in the tub, alone with him at last. It was enough to hear him breathe, to feel the large, capable hands on her. Never again would she take for granted the joy of being naked and vulnerable and perfectly at ease around someone you love. Especially around someone who loves you back.

At that moment, being there with him in the tub was enough.

Her eyes drifted closed. She was suddenly so very tired. Every crisis, every fear, every question about lion girls and hospital subterfuge faded, unimportant at least now, in this moment.

Tonight... Let the world end without me. I’m busy.