CHAPTER 4
Tiger hit the floor.
Hard.
Sherry looked down at him as she stepped back from Iolanthe, unsurprised by the fact he was out cold. She felt dizzy enough herself and she was at full strength. Her living room wobbled around the edges of her vision, the cream walls blending with her dark violet couch and the oak cabinets and TV stand into a blur of colour.
She eased down into a crouch beside him and pressed her palm to his forehead. What the hell was she doing? It wasn’t as if she knew what temperature a tiger shifter normally ran at. She didn’t know anything about his species.
She barely knew anything about jaguars and snow leopards, and she had been working with those for years.
But then, other than a few scrapes from when fights broke out in Underworld, neither of them had ever been injured like this.
Neither of them had ever needed her to take care of them.
Sherry looked up at Iolanthe where she towered over her, a stunning vision in black skin-tight armour that moulded to her shapely body and looked designed to get the attention of any males in the vicinity rather than protect the wearer of it.
Apparently, it was designed for the men in her species, and as far as Iolanthe knew, she was the only woman in possession of a set of armour.
She couldn’t quite figure out why Iolanthe had chosen to wear it to teleport the tiger to her apartment. It wasn’t as if the guy was a threat to Iolanthe, not in his current condition anyway.
Unless Kyter had wanted his beloved covered from neck to toe so the tiger couldn’t see any skin. Which was stupid. Because the armour just made Iolanthe look as if someone had painted her naked body black.
But then, the workings of a male cat shifter’s mind were often dumb, especially when it came to their women.
Kyter had done enough stupid things in the months since he and Iolanthe had got together, everything from trying to stop his mate from doing her work as a treasure hunter to attempting to hide all her weapons so she couldn’t get into any fights, and therefore in his eyes would be absolutely safe from harm.
Which worked for about five seconds before Iolanthe got into a fight and tried to teleport her weapons to her only to find herself cut off from them.
It seemed her boss still hadn’t learned that he couldn’t stop Iolanthe from doing what she wanted and was just going to have to accept that he had a mate who was strong, and fiercely independent.
Sherry blamed cat shifter society for his behaviour. From what she could tell, women of that world were meant to be all docile and gentle, and in need of a big man to protect them.
She looked back at Tiger.
Was his world like that? Did he expect her to faint at the sight of blood or swoon if someone fought in front of her and cower in fear, waiting for a big man to save her?
Like hell. Life had moulded her into a fighter. If her history with her father hadn’t made her strong, then the year she had spent on the streets before Kyter had taken her in certainly had.
And then Kyter had done his best to make her stronger still, paying for lessons in every damned martial art known to man.
Odd how he wanted her to know how to fight and defend herself, had equipped her with the knowledge and weapons to do just that, but he couldn’t bring himself to let Iolanthe do the same thing.
Maybe it was one rule for the humans and another for beautiful immortal fae in his eyes.
Or maybe it was because he viewed her as a little sister, and Iolanthe was his mate, and therefore infinitely more precious to him.
Irreplaceable.
How did it feel to be that way to someone?
She considered asking Iolanthe and then immediately scrubbed that idea. She didn’t walk in her world. There was no special fated one for her, a one-in-the-world person who had been made just for her. She was just a human, and all that awaited her in life was a string of attempts at love, most of which would fail horribly, and the rest would only fail.
Love was painful and messy.
Life was easier without it.
She had seen that for herself.
She had lived it.
Iolanthe stooped and grabbed the tiger as if he weighed nothing, scooping him up into her arms. It looked ridiculous as the slender elf carried the huge hulking man across the room to the door to the bedroom.
“In here?” Iolanthe glanced over her shoulder at her.
She nodded and got to her feet, and stifled a yawn as she walked across her apartment, kicking her trainers off as she went and leaving them in the middle of the wooden floor. Iolanthe paused again at the side of the double bed.
“You might want to protect the sheets. He’s going to make an unholy mess of things otherwise.”
True.
Sure, his blood would blend with the burgundy colour of her sheets, and she could wash it out of them, but it would soak through and stain her mattress. She couldn’t afford a new mattress and she was damned if she was sleeping on a bloodstained one.
She opened the cupboard set into the wall near the door to her bedroom and took down a stack of towels of all different colours, and went into the bedroom, passing Iolanthe where she stood looking as if the half-dead man in her arms was as light as a feather and no bother at all.
Sherry laid the towels on the bed, four layers deep and hopefully thick enough to soak up any remaining blood before it reached the mattress.
The moment she stepped back, Iolanthe dumped Tiger on them, dusted off her hands and turned away. “He’s all yours.”
“Gee, thanks.” Sherry looked him over, at all the blood on him and the wounds that littered his chest and arms. Some of them looked like burns. She carefully moved his left arm away from his stomach and grimaced at the deep gash across it. Panic clamped icy hands around her heart and she swiftly turned to face Iolanthe. “Wait.”
The beautiful elf looked back at her, her dark hair shimmering with blue as it caught the light coming in from the living room.
“I… haven’t a damn clue what I’m doing.” Her shoulders slumped as she admitted that, some of the tension that had been building inside her since offering to take care of him and keep him safe from Archangel washing away. It felt good to stand up and scream that she was in unknown waters and had zero knowledge of how to traverse them.
Iolanthe casually rolled her shoulders. “Just clean the blood off and patch him up.”
“That’s it?” She felt stupid for asking now. “Like a human?”
Iolanthe laughed.
“What were you expecting? Some elaborate ritual or special medicine? He’ll heal quicker than a human if that makes it more magical for you… but really… shifters aren’t that different to you. Even elves just get patched up with bandages when injured… unless they are twisted bastards that enjoy immense pain.” She shuddered, her pretty face draining of colour and her violet eyes telling Sherry she didn’t want to know. “I’d better go. Kyter will be having cubs. You know what he’s like if I’m near another male. Will you be alright?”
Why did everyone keep asking her that?
She wasn’t weak or liable to break. She was strong enough to deal with this stranger and take care of herself.
“Of course.” She wished there had been more conviction behind those two words, the amount she had meant to put into them.
They had come out unsteady though, laced with nerves and doubt. Iolanthe lingered a moment, studying her closely, and then disappeared, leaving a shimmering patch of air behind her that soon settled.
Sherry looked at the shifter in her bed.
She would be alright.
She would.
Her nerves picked up, kicking into high gear as the apartment fell silent save the sound of her breathing, and it dawned on her that she was alone with him again.
Alone with a shifter who looked even bigger now that he was in her double bed.
A sigh escaped her before she could bite it back.
He was gorgeous.
Breathtaking.
Not just his face either, which was a little rugged but sublimely masculine and alluring even with the long wild black hair and thick beard, and his eyes closed, hiding those striking amber irises from her.
Every inch of him was honed, packed with muscle born of physical labour and not hours in the gym.
She could almost feel how powerful he was just by looking at him, felt bone-deep aware of his strength and prowess as she stood sentinel over him, and felt drawn to him in a way she had never experienced before.
He lit up every inch of her, stirred her desire and sparked her soul, woke her heart and rattled her so hard she wasn’t sure what the hell she was doing.
She could only stare at him, could only inch towards him and be closer to him, but even when her knees hit the edge of the mattress she wasn’t close enough to satisfy the need he had triggered in her the first time she had looked into his eyes.
She needed to be closer still.
What was he doing to her?
She wanted to blame the fact she hadn’t been with a man in a long time, and he was one hell of a fine specimen of one, but part of her was too aware that it ran deeper than that.
That she felt drawn to him because she felt strangely connected to him.
Shit, she was in over her head.
She tried to look at him objectively, checking him from head to toe, but that lasted all of a second before she was bewitched by the sight of him again, by the sheer size of him and how damned alluring that body of his was even when it was covered in blood.
He was everything male and it spoke to her feminine side.
Honed. Powerful. Incredible.
And covered in blood.
Sherry forced herself to focus on that slightly enormous fact.
She had brought him here to tend to his wounds, not gawp at him.
And definitely not to do anything with him.
She looked over his injuries again, her desire fading and a seed of anger blooming inside her, entwined with pity as she lifted her eyes back to his face and stared at him. How long had he been held by Archangel? If he had been clean shaven when they had taken him, it must have been weeks since they had captured him. She wasn’t sure how quickly men’s facial hair grew, but his beard was several inches long.
He had reacted so violently when Kyter had threatened to send him back to Archangel.
His eyes had held such fear.
She was beginning to believe he was innocent and had done nothing to deserve what Archangel had done to him.
They had hurt him, both physically and mentally, had come close to breaking him if his behaviour at Underworld was anything to go by, and now it was down to her to piece him back together and make him strong again.
She could do this.
She dragged herself away to the bathroom adjoining her bedroom and flicked the light on. She opened the tall white cupboard in the corner beside the pedestal basin and grabbed some cotton balls, a hand towel, bandages and antiseptic, as well as every half-full box of sticking plasters in her collection, and went back into her bedroom.
Tiger moaned and his face scrunched up, flashing canines through his beard at the ceiling before he settled again.
She should have asked him his name when he had been conscious, but he had been in so much pain, and not only physically. There was emotional pain there too. She could recognise it in him, because she had been so familiar with it herself during her upbringing. It was only after Kyter had taken her in that the pain had finally released her and she had been able to mend.
What emotional pain plagued the tiger?
She wanted to know.
She wanted to help him overcome it.
And that meant healing him.
She set everything down on the low cabinet beside the bed, turned on the lamp that stood on it, and then shoved all her clothes off the wooden chair in the corner and dragged it over to his side.
Sherry worked in silence, cleaning the blood off him and then applying antiseptic to the smaller wounds that littered his broad chest and stomach. She kept herself detached from what she was doing, viewing just a small section of him at a time so he didn’t distract her from her task with wicked thoughts.
The smaller wounds she left uncovered. The ones that looked as if they needed protection, she covered with a combination of sticking plasters and bandages.
She reached the gash on his stomach and stilled.
It was long, and deep. It looked as if someone had run a knife across him from his left hip to his navel.
What the hell had happened to him?
Was Archangel really responsible for all his wounds?
She grabbed the antiseptic again and set to work, and as she cleaned around the wound, anger began to grow inside her, small at first but rapidly filling the space behind her breasts with fire that spread, until she was dabbing fiercely at the wound, thoughts of setting Archangel to rights whirling around her mind. She was going to find them, and she was going to make them pay for doing such despicable things to Tiger, and to all the other innocents they had apparently captured for the sake of torturing them.
They might not be human, but they weren’t so different to them.
They laughed, they loved, they lived in the same way as humans did.
None of them deserved to be treated like laboratory rats.
Sherry pressed the soaked cotton wool ball against the top of the wound on his side, maybe a little too hard.
Tiger growled and tensed, and she stiffened, holding her breath and waiting for him to lash out at her. A low snarl echoed through the room and vibrated through her, strained and gravelly.
She gently laid her hand on his hip, just above the wound, and looked at his face. “Shh, Tiger. Sorry I hurt you.”
He settled, his handsome face going lax again and his big body relaxing beneath her touch. His firm lips parted and he exhaled slowly, almost a sigh.
Sherry petted his side, stroking her fingers up and down his warm golden skin, giving him time to fall back asleep before she continued her work. Her touch calmed him, and it calmed her too, the action of caressing him releasing the hold her anger had on her and allowing it to fade again.
“Remind me to get your name when you wake up,” she whispered, leaned over to her right and smoothed her fingers across his brow, clearing rogue strands of his wild inky hair from it. “Can’t keep calling you Tiger all the time.”
He sighed again in his sleep.
She smiled, feathered her fingers down his cheekbones and through the thick mass of beard to his square jaw, and then off him. Hadn’t she said she wasn’t going to do this? She closed her eyes and sighed to herself, feeling the ground beneath her tremble and quake, on the verge of giving way.
She couldn’t fall.
Not for a shifter.
Not for anyone.
Sherry went back to her work, gently easing the two sides of the wound together and then using plasters like stitches to hold them closed so they could fuse and heal. Hopefully it would work. She didn’t have anything to stitch him with, or the skills to do such a thing even if she did. When she had covered the length of the wound with plasters, she placed a long folded strip of bandage over it and then stuck it down with more plasters, using them like tape.
It would have to do.
She stifled a yawn and glanced at the clock on her bedside table. Almost five in the morning. She should have been asleep hours ago. It was Sunday now, her one day off in the week, but she had come through the two busiest days for the club, long ones that had left her drained and badly in need of sleep.
She just wanted to crash, but there was a big tiger in her bed.
A tiger who needed her awake and alert, ready to aid him if he needed it.
She was going to need coffee if she was going to stay awake until he came around, keeping an eye on him while he rested and recovered. She couldn’t even risk napping. He might react violently if he woke in a strange place. She wanted to be there so he would see a familiar face and would know he was safe.
Sherry tidied everything away in the bathroom and then came back to him, took hold of his left hand and checked his pulse. It was quicker than her own, but then he wasn’t human. It could be normal for him.
She gazed down at his large hand, and canted her head, studying the black ink that started at his wrist. It rose in curling lines up his forearm, and formed a tribal design that was almost floral too. She frowned as her gaze caught on something and leaned closer. A tiny bird sat on a swirl that came out from the main design. Another caught her eye higher up, near his elbow. Leaves joined the stunning artwork there, and the tattoo became twisting branches that contained a multitude of animals, all of them hidden amidst the design. She spotted a small rodent-like mammal, and even a deer. There was a whole forest of animals concealed in the leaves and vines on his biceps and shoulder.
From there, the ink spread over his chest in swirling branches and leaves, and hidden among the vines in the centre of his left pectoral, she found a tiger staring back at her.
Sherry brushed her fingers over the ink, captured by the beauty of it.
Whoever had done it, had talent. A pang of envy ran through her, jealousy born of the fact she had never quite found the courage to get a tattoo of her own, even though she wanted one. If someone had offered to do such beautiful work on her, maybe she would have been brave enough to take them up on it.
His ink told a story. She could feel it was personal to him, that it represented his world, and who he was inside.
A beautiful tiger.
She lifted her eyes to his face, and caught a flash of the amber and black fur that had rippled over his chest and arms when he had been fighting Kyter.
What would he look like if he shifted?
She had seen Kyter in his jaguar form a few times, when he couldn’t hold it back and needed to shift and take out his aggression in the training room. He had given the plastic barrels hell, biting and clawing them, a huge wild beast that had exuded raw power.
But she hadn’t feared him.
Because beneath all the fur, fangs and claws, he was still Kyter.
Would she fear Tiger if he shifted?
Her phone vibrated in her trouser pocket.
She stood and pulled it out, and sighed as she saw the name on the screen.
She swiped her thumb across it as she exited the bedroom and brought the phone up to her ear. “Kyter?”
“I was worried you wouldn’t answer.”
Sherry sighed again and rolled her eyes. “Did you think the tiger would have eaten me already?”
“This isn’t a joke, Sherry. That male is dangerous.”
“Dangerously unconscious. Look, I’m fine… and I know you’re worried… but really, I’m fine. He’s out cold. He barely stirred when I was fixing his wounds.” She swapped ears as she turned to glance back into her bedroom at the sleeping tiger. “I don’t think he’s any danger to me.”
“He’s more danger to you than you think. He—” Kyter cut himself off, and she frowned at the tiger. He what? What was it about this tiger that had Kyter so wound up? She was about to ask, when he spoke again. “I’m sending Cavanaugh over.”
“No.” That wasn’t going to happen. “My house isn’t Cav’s territory, and he’s pretty chill for a cat shifter, but he’s still a guy… and a cat… and it wouldn’t exactly be the first time he’s lost his shit around another guy shifter.”
So it had only happened the once, but it had been brutal and the poor guy on the receiving end of the attack hadn’t known what had hit him. Kyter had been forced to close the club and restrain Cavanaugh until he had finally regained control and shifted back from his snow leopard form.
Tiger wasn’t strong enough to withstand that sort of attack.
She went into the small kitchen on the other side of the apartment to the bedroom and stuck a fresh filter into her coffee maker and filled it with grounds from the refrigerator. Any second now, Kyter would get his temper back down to a simmer and would bounce back, finding another way to tell her that Tiger was a threat to her and convince her to let Cavanaugh come to protect her.
She didn’t need a man to protect her.
She never had.
“Fine,” Kyter grumbled.
Not quite what she had expected. It wasn’t like her boss to lie down so easily and roll over. Normally it took at least three rounds of arguing her point before he gave up.
“But you have to call me the second he wakes up, got it?” Kyter’s voice was little more than a rough growl, and it struck her just how deeply he cared about her, and just how worried he was that she was alone with a strange shifter.
Guilt squirmed in her gut, making her feel queasy.
She wanted to apologise for how she had insisted she take care of Tiger, wanted to reassure him that she would be alright and he didn’t have to worry, even though she knew it wouldn’t stop him, but in the end she settled for saying, “I will.”
“Io will be there like a shot. We’re just a phone call away. Keep it close and call if you need us.” The note of worry in his voice touched her and she smiled into the phone.
“Softie.”
He snorted. “Just don’t want to see my years of hard work turning you into the best bartender we have go down the drain because some dumb tiger got it into his head to eat you and you were too stubborn to admit you were wrong about him.”
A laugh bubbled from her lips. “He might surprise you.”
“Yeah… I think he might have already done that. Be careful.”
The line went dead.
Her smile fell and she brought the phone away from her ear and frowned at it. What the hell had he meant by that?
She looked through the kitchen door towards the bedroom. What was it about this tiger that had Kyter so on edge?
The need to stay awake grew stronger, a trickle of fear about being alone with the tiger sliding down her spine, and she filled the coffee maker with water and turned it on. She played with her phone while it brewed, leaning with her backside against the fake granite kitchen counter.
Surfing the net passed thirty minutes, and watching TV on the couch with a freshly brewed cup of coffee saw another hour fly past. Sunlight streamed through the window of her living room to her left by the time her stomach growled in protest. She left the violet couch, looked down at herself and huffed.
Maybe she should have changed.
Muddy red splotches covered her white shirt. His blood. He had been so worried about getting it on her. She looked into the bedroom and drifted towards it.
Towards him.
He slept soundly on one side of her bed, his lips parted and chest rising and falling on his shallow breaths. He had moved at some point, because his hands rested on his bare stomach, his left one covering the bandaged wound, the fingers slightly drawn so they gathered the material. Had it comforted him to feel the wound bound now?
No longer bleeding?
She couldn’t imagine how terrifying it would be to have such a vicious injury, to feel life slipping from you like that.
Or how strong he had to be to keep going, and not give up.
She slipped quietly into the room, found a pair of dark grey lounge pants in the cream chest of drawers near the bathroom door, and pulled out a white camisole. She checked him again, and then went into the white and cream bathroom and changed her clothes, tossing her dirty white shirt, black slacks, and underwear on the floor in the corner near the shower cubicle.
She used a sponge to wipe off the blood on her stomach and then tugged on her white camisole and grey loose soft pants.
Shit, it felt good to be in fresh clean clothes.
She wanted a shower, but no way she was going to risk it. She wasn’t sure how long Tiger would be out and if he woke when she was naked, he might view it as an invitation.
Sherry pocketed her phone, slipped back into the bedroom and tiptoed through it. When she hit the wooden living room floor, she padded across it to the oak table wedged between the TV and the couch, grabbed her cup and headed for the kitchen.
Coffee.
She needed more.
A yawn escaped her as she poured another cup, and grabbed a cereal bar from the cupboard above the machine. Her phone buzzed against her thigh. She sighed, pulled it out and checked it. Kyter again. At least he was only messaging her this time.
She fired back a reply that the tiger still hadn’t eaten her, and went back to the couch.
Time trickled past as she watched TV and fiddled around on the internet, checking Facebook and then adding around a thousand things to her wish lists on several shopping websites, and answered a million more texts from Kyter, and one from Cavanaugh the one time she took more than a minute to reply to Kyter. That one had told her that Kyter was driving him mad and to text him back ASAP.
She ate lunch sometime in the early afternoon, and the coffee started to lose its effect a few hours later. She yawned and blinked hard as her eyes watered, and sleep beckoned.
She had to stay awake.
Sherry rubbed her eyes, stood and walked around the couch and to the window. She lifted the sash, breathed in the cool city air, gazed at the faint stars and then watched people coming and going along the street below. It kept her awake for all of five minutes before sleep washed over her again, making her eyelids heavy.
Another coffee might help.
Probably wouldn’t, but it was worth a shot.
She closed the window.
Tiger roared.
Cold washed through her followed by a flash of heat, and a delicious sort of trembling between her thighs that lasted only a second before fear chased it away when Tiger started thrashing around, kicking at the covers and clawing at her sheets.
She rushed into her bedroom and grabbed his shoulders, and pushed down with all of her weight and strength, trying to restrain him so he didn’t reopen his wounds.
He bucked and snarled, and fought her, easily dislodging her and sending her sprawling on her backside on the hard floor. Damn, that was going to bruise. She leaped to her feet and grabbed him again, unwilling to give up even when it was clear he was too strong for her to hold down. His breathing quickened, his struggle escalating until she was forced to get onto the bed and straddle him to hold him down.
He loosed a harrowing whimper that chilled her blood and made her heart bleed for him, and then roared.
“Jayna!”
Tiger launched forwards, his head connected hard with the side of hers, and the room danced and spun around her. Lightning arced over her skull and white stars burst and died before her eyes.
She groaned and slumped onto her butt on his knees, clutching her head and fighting the sickening wave of pain that rolled over her.
Tiger suddenly froze right down to his breathing, his amber eyes alert and wide.
“You okay?” she murmured, battling another wave of sickness as he wobbled in her vision.
Shit, he had a hard head.
He nodded.
She managed a smile. “That’s g-r-r-r-eat!”
And promptly passed out.