Tiger Queen: A Reverse Harem Romance

by Cassie Cole

  Both of us moaned loudly and surrendered to the act. Anthony fucked me harder, skin slapping against my ass cheeks and sending ripples of pleasure through my body. He ran his hands up my back while pounding me with his cock, and his grip tightened around a handful of my hair. He pulled gently, and I let out a gasp of pleasure as I craned my head back.

  Neither of us lasted long. Something about the sudden, unexpected sexual gratification of doing it in the medical facility drove me over the edge very quickly. I started to cry out with ecstasy because it was too intense for me to keep my voice down, so Anthony wrapped his free hand around my mouth to muffle my noise. I wailed my orgasm into his palm, and within seconds he was gasping and groaning and filling me with his hot come.

  He pulled out, then lifted me into another embrace so he could kiss me.

  “I thought you liked to get to know someone first,” I said as we hastily put our clothes back on.

  He shrugged one shoulder and zipped up his pants. “When I said that, I barely knew you.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I know you a little bit more.”

  I leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “And I know you a lot more. Have you been working out at your brother’s gym?”

  “I do bodyweight exercises at home. Nothing fancy.”

  “Well, it shows.”

  The way he blushed three shades of red was the cutest thing I had ever seen.

  We returned Chloe to her enclosure and allowed her to re-acclimate as the sedatives wore off. Once that was done we began preparing the transportation crates that we would use to move the animals.

  The ECAP truck arrived at four in the afternoon. It was essentially a large refrigerated box truck with the animal preserve’s logo on the side. Two men hopped out of the front, both of them wearing khaki clothes and work boots. One was bald and in his sixties, and the other barely looked old enough to shave.

  “Welcome,” David said as we all shook hands.

  “So this is the infamous Crazy Carl’s,” the bald man said. “Thought this place would run forever.”

  “We’re trying to do right by the place,” David said. “Hence us finding homes for all the animals.”

  “They’ll do well down in Florida. We just expanded and have twelve hundred acres for them to roam.”

  I handed him a three-ring binder. “This is all the medical information on the eight cats you’re taking. There are some gaps in the documents, I’m afraid. But I performed examinations on all of them this week, and made sure they were up-to-date on their vaccinations.”

  “We appreciate the hustle. Will save us time once we get them down to Florida.” He handed the binder to the younger kid. “You can spend the drive back inputting all this information into our database. I’ve got a hotspot set up for the laptop.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I can send you digital copies,” I offered. “If that would make it easier for you.”

  “That’s okay. Kurt’s our summer intern. This’ll be a good experience for him to learn our system.”

  I laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “It’s just that I applied for that internship a few months ago. I was rejected. You must have a strong resume, Kurt.”

  The kid looked like a deer in the headlights. “Um. My dad is on the board at the animal preserve.” He carried the binder back to the truck.

  “It’s not what you know,” Anthony said. “It’s who you know.”

  We spent the next two hours moving the big cats into the truck. That process involved moving them into individual transportation cages, then using a forklift to carry them across the zoo to the truck. We radio’d Jake but he didn’t respond, nor did he come help. David said that was probably for the best.

  The eight animal cages fit snugly into the back of the box truck, two wide and four deep. The bald man checked the air conditioner unit, then closed the door to the back and locked it with a big padlock.

  “You guys are doing the right thing here,” he told us as we signed the transfer paperwork there in the parking lot. “Especially keeping the zoo closed in the interim.”

  “Like I said, we’re trying to do the right thing,” David replied.

  “You must be bleeding money.”

  David signed one of the documents and handed it over. “Yep.”

  The intern hopped out of the truck. “I looked at the binder. It’s super thorough! You’ve only been here a week?”

  I shrugged. “Trying to get everything caught up.”

  “Maybe you should have gotten the internship at ECAP, not me.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Good thing she didn’t!” Anthony chimed in. “Then we wouldn’t have gotten our hands on her!” He winked at me.

  “Just sending them off like that, huh?”

  We turned to see Jake approaching. He rested a shovel over his shoulder and was wearing a shirt for once.

  “That’s the idea,” David replied. The two EPAC guys glanced at each other.

  Jake stopped ten feet away from the rest of us and gestured with the shovel. “Dad would’ve hated this. All of it.”

  “Jake…” Anthony said.

  “Dad’s not here,” David declared. “We’re in charge now. Which means we have to make the tough decisions.”

  “You mean you’re in charge,” Jake shot back. “If you had asked my opinion I would’ve told you we shouldn’t dismantle dad’s legacy…”

  “Your dad was Carl Haines?” the EPAC intern suddenly cut in like his opinion mattered. “His legacy is one of animal abuse. Illegally breeding and selling tiger cubs all over the country. Allowing family photos with tigers so drugged-up they can barely sit up straight. I’m glad—”

  The bald man put a hand out to stop him from saying more.

  The wind rustled the trees all around us. The moment was pregnant with tension. Behind his sunglasses it was impossible to see what Jake was thinking, but I knew it wasn’t anything good.

  “You’ve got the cats you came for,” he finally said. “You can get the hell off our property now.”

  We all breathed a sigh of relief as he stalked back into the zoo.

  20

  Anthony

  I hated confrontation. I liked it when everyone got along together. Which was bad because my older brothers were always fighting. It had been that way since we were kids. David liked to be in charge, and Jake hated taking directions. It had only gotten worse after we had left the zoo.

  When Jake showed up a few days ago, I was optimistic about everything. I thought maybe dad’s death would help us all bond. Mend old wounds.

  Yeah right.

  I stood there while David and Jake argued about the big cats we were giving away. Like a mouse trying to avoid two larger animals fighting. Thankfully it was only an argument and it resulted in Jake walking away, but I could see the stress and strain on David’s face afterward.

  The EPAC truck drove off, and then it was back to work.

  I had learned over the years not to get in either of my brothers’ faces immediately after a fight. The two of them were similar in that way: they needed to be left alone to stew after a fight. They would both eventually listen to reason, but only after they had been inside their own heads for a while.

  I went back to the house and got on my laptop to do some programming work. When I came here I thought I would be able to coast by with my day job, but a new project had been dumped on my plate and it was taking more time than I expected. I was lucky to have a job that allowed me to work remotely, but juggling that and the zoo work was taking up every free minute of my time.

  Not every free minute, I thought.

  The memory of what Rachel and I had done in the medical office made me smile. I normally waited a long time before sleeping with a girl, but there was something about Rachel that made it more difficult to wait. I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  It was probably because she was super fucking hot.


  There were times when she was cute, like when she fed the animals and winced at the sound of bones being crunched. There were times when she was beautiful, like when the evening sun shone in her blonde hair while she was working in the cages. But most of the time, the only way to describe her was hot. She was the kind of girl that belonged on a poster in a teenage boy’s bedroom, with intense eyes and sharp eyebrows above a supermodel’s face. A button nose and lips that were both wide and full.

  It seemed so effortless for her, too. Like she looked that way after rolling out of bed in the morning.

  “What’s for dinner?” David asked later that night while I was in the kitchen.

  “King ranch casserole,” I said while filling a glass dish with food. “I was going to use only half a can of tomatoes though, since you’re doing the low-carb thing.”

  “I don’t mind picking them out.”

  “This is easier.” I stirred the food into the dish and began covering it with grated cheese. “Rachel and I hooked up.”

  “What? Really?”

  “In the medical office.” I felt my cheeks turn red. I didn’t normally like to kiss and tell.

  David smacked me on the back. “That’s awesome! I was wondering if she would be into the group thing. This is great. It’s really great, Anthony.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  David lingered. “You don’t sound happy.”

  I covered the dish with foil. “It’s not because of her. It’s about what happened with Jake.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you think we’re doing the right thing? By moving the cats?”

  David’s face hardened as he put up his walls. “What other choice do we have? Dad bankrupted this place, and that was while he was illegally selling cubs. It can’t stand on its own. We need to move the animals.”

  “Yeah. You’re right,” I said.

  He put a hand on my shoulder. “It still hurts, though. I just don’t wear my emotions on my sleeve like Jake. I’ve accepted it and moved on.”

  I put the dish in the oven. “Dinner will be in an hour. I’m going to go for a walk.”

  I wandered back out to the zoo. Rachel wasn’t in any of the enclosures, but I found her in the medical facility hunched over a keyboard. Her face was illuminated by the screen, and it brightened when she saw me.

  “Hey there sexy,” she said.

  I grinned. “Took the words out of my mouth. Dinner’s in an hour.”

  She nodded. “I’m just finishing up some numbers. David asked me to run some calculations on food and vitamin requirements now that we’re eight cats lighter.”

  I leaned down and kissed her. “Don’t be late.”

  “No way!” she said with a laugh. “I’ve started looking forward to your meals. I’ve never had a man cook for me this much!”

  I walked back through the zoo feeling lighter than air. I know she didn’t mean it that way, but I couldn’t help but feel like she had just called me her man. It was nice being relied upon like that. I was making her happy by feeding her each night.

  Not the typical male gender role, but hey, who cares?

  It was a nice night so I took the long way around the back of the zoo. I lingered with the chimps, then spent a few minutes over by the exotic birds. After that I passed the big enclosure where the six female Bengals had been kept. Only two remained now. They were playing with a rubber ball, batting it between them and wrestling over it.

  It made me sad to see the enclosure so empty. I had agreed to David’s plan from the beginning, but seeing the results of it made it a lot more real. It felt like losing a piece of dad. I had never gotten along with him—none of us had—but he was still my father. Dismantling this place felt like desecrating a grave.

  Jake came walking by with a welding torch and hose slung over one shoulder. I waved and fell in beside him on the way back to the supply shed. I had always been able to get through to Jake in a way that David never could. So I decided to try to make him feel better.

  “It sucks,” I said. “I know it sucks, and you’re hurting right now. We all are.”

  “David seems fine.”

  “You know he puts on a strong face,” I replied. “He’s struggling with this as much as we are. He’s just accepted what needs to be done.”

  Jake glanced at me, then scoffed. “He sent you, didn’t he?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you must have just talked to him. Because it’s his words coming out of your mouth right now. He always knew how to get you to come clean up his mess.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  Jake stopped and turned to me. “What’s not fair is what we’re doing to dad’s zoo.”

  “What do you suggest?” I felt David’s argument coming out of my mouth, but it felt like the truth so I didn’t stop it. “Dad bankrupted this place. We don’t have any other options. If you have a magical solution up your sleeve, I’m sure David would love to hear it.”

  His jaw tightened. It made the veins in his neck bulge slightly. “Anything but this. That’s my solution.” He resumed walking.

  I followed and said, “David’s right you know. You love sitting on the sideline and complaining without actually contributing.”

  It was a harsh thing to say. It was the truth. I regretted it instantly.

  But Jake kept walking and said, “You two are cozying up to Rachel.”

  The comment caught me off guard. “She’s… It’s no big deal. She’s nice.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet she’s nice.”

  “You should give her a chance,” I said. “You’d like her.”

  “Hah!”

  “I’m serious. She’s a lot like Lara. But better.”

  “Better how?” he asked skeptically.

  “She’s smarter,” I replied. “More driven. She has a better sense of humor.”

  He grinned sideways at me. “She’s hotter, too.”

  I found myself smiling with him. “Yeah. She’s hot alright.”

  “She’s got the best lips I’ve ever seen,” he went on. “And the way her ass looks in those khaki shorts…”

  For a moment it was like we were kids again. Back before everything had happened between us and we could walk through the zoo, chatting about the hot girl we had seen that day.

  We reached the shed and I asked, “So are you going to give her a chance?”

  “Hell no.”

  I gave a start. “Why not?”

  He hung the welding torch on the wall. “Because this is all temporary. David’s shitty plan is to dismantle the zoo. What happens in a few months when that’s over? Yeah, that’s right. David goes back to his shitty gyms in Richmond, you go back to work in Raleigh, and Rachel goes wherever the hell she wants. Any relationship with her has a time limit.”

  He stared at me in the shed, silent. Finally he sighed. “Sorry to burst your bubble, baby brother. But you have a habit of falling head-over-heels for women like her. Forget about it. Let’s go get some dinner. What’d you make me?”

  “King ranch casserole.”

  “Hell yeah. You didn’t skimp on the tortillas and peppers on account of David’s stupid diet, did you?”

  We laughed and joked about dinner on the way home, but my excitement about Rachel had been replaced with a sinking sense of dread.

  21

  Rachel

  Dinner was awkward and I didn’t understand why.

  Nobody was behaving the way I expected. For one thing, Jake seemed upbeat as if the argument earlier was in the distant past. He wolfed down his dinner and joked about the lack of carbs. Meanwhile, David was quiet and contemplative. Like something was on his mind. None of Jake’s prodding comments seemed to get through to him.

  And Anthony? He was downright gloomy. He was bad at hiding it, too. He fake-laughed and forced a smile all through the meal to the point that I started to grow worried.

  Jake left the house again after dinner. David and I took care of the dishes.

  “You okay?” I a
sked.

  He wiped one of the plates with a towel and placed it on a drying rack. “Why?”

  I rinsed a plate and handed it to him. “You seemed preoccupied at dinner.”

  “Just thinking about the finances. I read your report.”

  I flashed him a big smile. “Eight fewer mouths to feed should help, right?”

  “Right,” he said dourly. “But it’s not helping as much as I expected.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  He smiled gratefully, then kissed my hair. “If I think of something, I’ll let you know. In the mean time, keep doing what you’re doing.”

  David carried a stack of financial documents to his bedroom. Since he didn’t seem to be in the mood for anything sexy, I headed to the library to look for Anthony. He was seated by the checkers board, but he was typing on his laptop and had headphones on. He took them off when I entered, and I could hear the thumping beat of techno music from across the room.

  “I’m going to take two of three tonight,” I promised. “So I’m warning you now: you’d better bring your A-game.”

  He smiled weakly. “Yeah. No, I’d love to. But I kind of have a bunch of work I need to catch up on.”

  “I thought you said you were such an amazing computer programmer that you could complete a week’s worth of work in an afternoon.”

  “Normally that’s true. But one of my teammates took a new job, and a new project of his fell into my lap. I need to give it my full attention.”

  I moved his laptop to the table and sat on his lap. “Well I just fell into your lap. So maybe you should give me your full attention.” I began caressing his cheek.

  He kissed me, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. “I’m really sorry. You’re beautiful, and I want nothing more than to say yes, but I need to finish this checkpoint before the morning or my boss will chew me out.”

  I let out a dramatic sigh. “Very well. How about you come visit me in my room when you’re done? Not necessarily for anything sexy. Just some sleepy cuddling. After what we did in the medical office today, you owe me some cuddles.”