Tiger Lily

by May Dawson

  “I bet Flynn would have pushed him into a closet,” she mused.

  “Or over the balcony railing,” Blake muttered.

  “Too dark,” she said, leaning forward to rest a hand on his shoulder, as if she was comforting him for getting an F in Disney Prince 101. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

  We went on talking about the dire fates that the enterprising princesses would inflict on a douchebag like Brad, and the miles sped by, until Lily was laughing again.

  When we reached her grandfather’s house and we were unloading, Blake passed by me and glanced over his shoulder at Lily, climbing the porch steps with a potted plant on each hip.

  He clapped my shoulder. “Thanks.”

  “For what?” I asked innocently.

  “Being the smart one,” he said. It was an old joke between us—he was never impressed by my brains—but right now, it felt too much like he meant it. Maybe he didn’t always know the right thing to say to Lily, but he always took care of her—and of all of us.

  “You know we both look up to you,” I said, jerking my chin toward Dylan, who was unstrapping some of the furniture of the truck bed and couldn’t hear me to argue. “You must be pretty smart yourself—or we would’ve murdered you in your sleep for telling us what to do all the time.”

  “Too dark,” he said, but as I clapped his shoulder back, we smiled at each other before we went back to work.

  A few minutes later, I found myself following Lily up the stairs and down the hall to her room.

  I set the last of the boxes of books on Lily’s bed. “There you go. Want me to help unpack?”

  She shook her head. “Wow, it seems so weird that my life just fits in here. I had this whole life out in the real world…”

  She flopped on the edge of her bed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear absently.

  “Silver Springs is the real world too.” I sat down next to her, even though it was a close fit.

  She shifted closer to me, almost imperceptibly.

  “I guess you’d know,” she said. “You could be anywhere.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Archer. I don’t know what I want.” She glanced away. “I just know I want something…different.”

  “If you ever have any idea what you want,” I told her. “I’ll help you get it.”

  “Oh?” A playful smile crossed her lips, although her eyes were still sad.

  There was still a spiraling curl hanging in front of her ear; as soon as she moved one back behind her ear, another seemed to pop loose.

  “Do you want to get away from Silver Springs? Do you want to sail around the world in a yacht? Do you want a villa in Italy?” I said, my voice teasing, even though I meant it. I tucked that wayward strand back, and she tilted her face, so that her velvety cheek brushed the palm of my hand. My heart stuttered in my chest, afraid she’d take me up on my offer and leave us behind, but what I wanted didn’t matter right now. “Do you want to go to Hawaii or San Francisco, get a place and start over—”

  “You’d come with me?” she asked, quirking her eyebrow. “You’d leave Hot Wheels?”

  “I didn’t know that you’d want me to come.”

  Her lips parted in disbelief.

  I meant it, though. If something else—someone else—would make Lily happy, I’d do everything I could to help her have her joy. Even though my chest squeezed at the thought of being left behind.

  “Well,” she said softly, her voice husky, “there is one thing I know I want.”

  She leaned over and kissed me. Her lips were soft, and she smelled like oranges. I wanted more of her, and I pulled her into my lap. Her arm slid around my shoulders, our kisses deepening as her warm, soft body swayed against mine. She was so perfect I could lose myself in a moment like this.

  There was something I still had to tell her, though. I pulled away reluctantly.

  “I think I get it, Lily,” I said, trying to find the right words. “Why you left. Have you heard Blake and Dylan call me Archie?”

  She nodded. Her big eyes were luminous.

  “They still call me that, and it drives me crazy. Who wants to be an Archie?”

  “Have you told them to stop?”

  “Yeah. And they mean to—they’re not jerks. Well.” I corrected. “Not all the time. They try.”

  “It’s just hard for them to see you any other way than they always have,” she said.

  I nodded. “But we aren’t the same people we were as kids.”

  “When you leave Silver Springs city limits, you’re a big high-powered app-developing CEO,” she said hesitantly, looking to me as if to gauge if I were right.

  I nodded, reluctantly. I didn’t want her to think of me that way. “Sort of. I’m the founder and the owner—but someone else is the CEO now handling the day-to-day.”

  “So you can be here,” she said. “Running the reception desk and changing oil and installing new batteries? Doesn’t that seem crazy to you? You came back here and then they still call you… Archie? You came back for that?”

  “Yeah,” I said simply. “I did.”

  She shook her head as if she almost couldn’t believe it, but then she leaned over and kissed me again. As if she loved that about me, even if she didn’t understand it.

  She was so gorgeous, looking at me with her eyes bright and those strawberry-blond curls.

  I kissed her back, and then somehow she fell backward and leaned over her in the narrow space on her bed between boxes. The boxes seemed to tower over us, but it didn’t matter.

  She whispered into my ear, “Archer…”

  It didn’t matter who called me Archie. Because she said Archer in that low, sexy tone of voice, and it was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.

  I covered her in kisses, and she began to pull my shirt over my head. I didn’t know what had come over the two of us, but it felt as if there were some unspoken pull as we both hastily half-stripped and half-undressed each other.

  She looked at me with her eyes alight as she took my cock in her hand.

  “Hurry,” she murmured, and I slid my hands along her waist, the curve of her hips, her thighs.

  There was a distant voice, a footstep in the hallway.

  And maybe I should have stopped, but I wanted her so badly.

  I scooped her up and crossed the few short steps to the door, pressing her against it. She let out a giggle, then pressed her mouth against my shoulder to smother the sound. I braced her against the door with one hand as I eased the lock closed quietly.

  Her lips moved against my neck as she laughed. Something about those petal soft lips against my shoulder made me wild, and then she looked up at me, mischief in her eyes—and she licked me.

  “Licked you, you’re mine,” she told me.

  “And you’re mine,” I told her, but it wasn’t a joke for me. I wasn’t sure it was a joke for her either. I felt the truth of it roll through me, full of power.

  My lips claimed hers, and she kissed me back just as hard, the two of us trading furious kisses. Her thighs were tight around my hips, and she pressed her hips forward against mine insistently. She reached down and caught my cock in one hand, pressing it against her core.

  I slid inside her slowly, and she let out a moan, her fingers tight on my shoulders. Her back arched faintly, exposing her long, naked throat, and I bowed my head to cover her neck in kisses. Her back arched more, and my hands were tight on the perfect curves of her ass as I began to move with her.

  She bit her lower lip, looking down at me as the force of our bodies slammed against the door, over and over. She let out a low moan as her orgasm built, and then rocked forward, biting my shoulder to keep from crying out. I kept on going, pounding inside her as I felt her shatter around me, as she bit down hard enough on my shoulder that it would’ve hurt if I could’ve felt anything but her body against mine.

  I pressed my face against the side of her face, against her ear and the
sweet roundness of her cheekbone, as I felt myself shatter inside her.

  The two of us paused, both panting, our bodies still wrapped up in each other’s.

  “That was amazing,” she murmured into my ear, glancing at something over my shoulder. I half turned, still holding her pinned against the wall, to see the teddy bear on her dresser. “If only the bear weren’t so judgmental.”

  I’d met quite a few bear shifters, so I said, “Bears usually are.”

  I kissed her again, more slowly, and she kissed me back as if she might never let me go.

  I’d be okay with that.

  24

  Lily

  “We need to talk, old man,” I said as I sat down on the couch in the living room.

  My grandfather frowned, but closed his newspaper and lay it down on the side table beside him. “Why does it sound like I’m in trouble?”

  “Did you know I’m not really a tiger shifter?”

  He froze, and that was all the answer I needed. Lord. It was true.

  “You know I can still see when you hold still,” I said, when his freeze had gone on too long.

  “I saw you shift when you were a baby,” he admitted. “Into the cutest little orange tabby, just like you were the cutest little girl—”

  “You’re not going to make things better by telling me how cute I am,” I cut him off.

  “How cute you were,” he corrected, just to be a jerk, and I gave him a dark look.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, if you knew?”

  He sighed. “Because you were so happy. What does it matter what kind of cat you were? And…”

  I raised my eyebrows when he didn’t go on.

  “You were being bullied,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember how hard that was—”

  “Oh, I do, believe me.” Those were the sharpest of childhood memories: Hearing my name, followed by the titter of someone’s laughter. The moment at lunch, gripping my tuna sandwich in my hand, when I realized my ‘friends’ had met at the mall without inviting me. The look on Blake’s face when he intercepted a note being passed in our class…then went right over the desk at the guy who had started it.

  I wished other memories were as sharp, like picking wild raspberries with Lupine in the woods, or reading with Archer in the grass at the park, or coloring with my mom at the kitchen island on a rainy afternoon as the rain droned against the glass.

  “You got your confidence back then,” he said. “You were convinced that you were a tiger, and it didn’t matter what anyone said to you. You just smiled at them like they didn’t even matter and walked on.”

  It’s hard to be impressed by how small someone tries to make you feel, when you know you can eat them.

  I heaved a sigh. “But all these years?”

  He shrugged. “I thought maybe things had changed…I’m not an expert on shifters or magic or tigers or raising little girls, for that matter.”

  For a few long seconds, the silence hung between us.

  Then I said, “You did okay anyway, old man.”

  He started to say something that was either going to be sweet or sarcastic; there was no middle ground with him.

  I pulled the fleece blanket from beside me on the couch over my legs, and something fell out of it.

  Both of our eyes fell to that object on the floor at the same time.

  An enormous satin pair of panties.

  He lunged for it abruptly. As understanding dawned, I pressed my hands over my eyes.

  “Oh my god, those are Lasagna’s, aren’t they?” I asked. “You and she—on this couch—”

  I abruptly scrambled off the couch.

  “I’m seventy-five, not dead!” He tried to stuff the underwear in his pocket, but they were too big, so he ended up holding them behind his back.

  “You defiled the couch!”

  “You defiled my washing machine!”

  I stared him down across the living room.

  “You knew?” I asked finally.

  He nodded. “For one thing, Lily, I’ve got a Ring doorbell now. I saw you two creeping across my porch half-naked, thinking you were being stealthy. I decided I didn’t want to know anything about—all that—” He waved his hand in the air.

  “A wise choice.”

  “I got a call from my friend the police chief the next day,” he added.

  I groaned. “Okay, good job, you successfully distracted me from my distress at your couch antics. How does anyone lose a pair of panties that big, anyway? There’s a reason humans coined the phrase granny panties, huh?”

  He shrugged. “We were busy.”

  “Why can’t I meet Lasagna?”

  “I didn’t want to add to your post breakup angst. You can meet her.”

  “There is no angst,” I scoffed.

  He let out a laugh. “Right now, you’ve got more angst than a whole season of Grey’s Anatomy.”

  He used to watch that show with me, but he always complained about it. “Don’t you ever wonder what happened after season five?”

  That was when I stopped watching.

  He gave me a look that was just as guilty as he was when we found the panties.

  “You kept watching it out with me,” I said. “Wow. So many secrets and betrayals revealed tonight.”

  “Lily, really,” he asked. “Are you all right? With the…news…about your inner cat?”

  I stumbled for the right answer. “I feel… foolish. Ridiculous. But I’ll get over it.”

  Really, cats of all types are awesome.

  “And now I don’t have to worry about Carol Baskins or Joe,” I added with a shrug. “So there’s that.”

  I might not be exactly okay right now, but I had a feeling I would be.

  I was back in Silver Springs where I was loved—even when I was ridiculous or foolish.

  And that was a powerful thing.

  25

  Mondays were always rough, but this one was especially so.

  Things felt tense between Blake and me after our conversation in his truck. Archer had tried to rescue us both, but it didn’t change that we’d had to be rescued. We might not have finished our argument, but we hadn’t made up either.

  And things felt so good between Archer and me, and between Dylan and me. I didn’t want things to be strained for Blake and I.

  I might not be exactly who I thought I was, but maybe I could have a happy ending anyway.

  We worked late into the afternoon on Roberta. We were supposed to be doing a complete overhaul of the brakes, but everything that could possibly go wrong, went awry.

  “Go ahead without us,” Blake said, waving the guys off at the end of the day. “Lily and I will get a bite to eat later.”

  I gave him a side eye as Dylan and Archer locked up the rest of the shop.

  “What?” he asked me without looking up, as if Blake could read my mind.

  “I went out on a date with each of you,” I said. “Dylan took me to the springs, and Archer took me to karaoke and you—you took me to move. And now is this date number two? Working overtime? You’re just going to keep having us spend time together in the most miserable—”

  “I’m not miserable with you,” he said mildly.

  I pulled a face. “That’s not fair.”

  “I guess not fair’s going around.”

  “You are impossible.” I propped my hands on my hips.

  “You know what’s impossible,” Blake said, his temper flaring to the surface for the first time. His eyes blazed, and I knew he had a whole lot to say, but he paused there, as if he was struggling to contain himself.

  And maybe I should’ve been intimidated, but even though I knew some people would take him that way, with his spreading shoulders and his muscular body and his heated eyes, he didn’t scare me. Brad had backed away from Blake as if he were terrified. I didn’t think Blake would really hurt anyone, unless he had to. But I knew Blake would never hurt me.

  I stepped closer to him, my chin lifting. “Finish wh
at you started, Blake.”

  “Pussy cat, I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that since we were five years old.”

  I stared at him, confused because it felt like we were fighting—temper was still hot in his eyes, we were definitely fighting—and yet… and yet…my heart was doing strange, flip-floppy things again. I could’ve sworn that my heart snuck out on its own and bought energy drinks from the vending machine.

  I leveled a finger at him. “I don’t need you to boss me around, Blake.”

  “I never thought you did,” he said tartly.

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “Because I care about you!” He said it as if it made him furious.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?” In an angry tone, he told me, “You’re funny. Smart. Kind. You’re just… you’re Lily!”

  “I’m a prickly pain in the ass, if you recall,” I reminded him, my voice just as hot, even as my heart leapt at his words. But there was something that still ached in me from the confrontation with Brad, and it oozed out like rotten pumpkin guts as I admitted, “I was just fired from my job. I was just cheated on… me being Lily isn’t exactly something a lot of people like.”

  “Well, trust me that I like you,” he said, stepping toward me, looming over me. The heat of his body washed over me.

  “Trust me for once,” he added, a note of steel in his voice. Bossy as ever. “And I’ll try to trust you that you won’t just leave.”

  I should tell him glibly, “No promises.”

  Or I should kiss him.

  And yet, I just… stopped.

  The moment hung between us, the two of us staring at each other. In the silence of the bay, I could have sworn I heard both our hearts beating frantically.

  I should just close the space between us. Just kiss him. But that was the one thing that felt scary to me.

  “Hang on,” he said, still holding that smoldering eye contact with me. Hang on, he said—as if nothing was happening. He added, “I’ve got something for you.”

  I watched him go as he headed to the little office behind the lobby, then came back.