He pushed it back. Ruthlessly.
She said, “How many Sentinels go missing, unrecorded? How many women of childbearing age?”
He shook his head, floundering, a pounding in his ears.
“Because they were looking in the wrong generation, tiger mine.” She moved closer, twining her fingers in his. He growled, deep in his chest, and she only laid her free hand against his chest. “Because brevis might have guessed at your age, but they didn’t get it right. How could they? No one else has ever changed so young. No one else has spent their childhood hiding as their other. Maks,” she said, her voice going low. “How long does it take for a tiger cub to grow up?”
And he only looked at her. Only looked, while the truth of his life lay out before him for the first time, and the impact of it swirled into the sensations already battering at him.
“You may have looked fifteen at your initiation, but you weren’t. Not in years.”
“Then...” He couldn’t quite say it out loud. Because initiation did more than bring out a Sentinel’s full potential...it balanced him, clearing pathways for the mature energies. It made order of an undisciplined connection to the earth.
But only when the body was ready.
As if she’d followed his thoughts, she said gently, “I don’t think your initiation took. I don’t think your body had yet reconciled your chronological age with your physical age.”
He frowned at her, trying to think past the ongoing battle for control, the reaching sensation that filled him beyond full and still ached for more. “But I’ve been with others since. Surely, if it hadn’t happened that first time...”
She shook her head. “Something took—something partial. It had to have, or they would have known. Haven’t you ever felt an initiation? It’s unmistakable. More children are conceived on initiation nights than all the other nights put together.” She smiled, a little bit rueful.
Initiated, but not initiated. All this time.
“Initiation does more than bring out the potential of a young Sentinel,” Katie said, and yes, she was damned close now, hands on his shoulders, moving down his arms, tracing his collarbones. “Because it does that by clearing certain channels of energies. Without that, we can’t be balanced. We aren’t quite whole...or stable.”
He struggled to absorb the implications of that statement. Initiated, but not initiated. “Then...Flagstaff...”
“Until then, you were managing,” she said. “But I think the energy surges there—before the hotel—knocked you out of balance. Then, once you were released into full activity again, the imbalance got worse.”
He only frowned at her. It made sense to a point. But this—this—between the two of them...
She must have felt it—that resistance to the idea. It didn’t seem to bother her.
Not judging by how close she’d come to him now, and the whisper of her breath against his jaw as she just barely nipped skin, sending shards of sensation through his body and making it—
So very hard—
To think...
She said, “I know you’ve been with other Sentinels...”
“Often enough,” he managed.
“But you haven’t been with me.”
His hands landed on her upper arms, tugging her in close. He went for her neck, so slender and thin-skinned, the life pulsing close to the surface and her vulnerable nape right there. She didn’t stiffen; she didn’t fear. She clung to him, and the sensation of reaching crowded him from the inside out, filling him beyond endurance. The pain followed on its heels, but not enough to deter him. Not now.
Her words were a different story, muffled as they were. “Let me help, Maks.”
He froze. “I’m not your patient. I’m not your project.”
He wasn’t prepared for her self-deprecating laughter. “Like I haven’t wanted you since the start. Like I haven’t already pretty much imploded in your arms, right there on my porch. Have mercy, Maks!”
Right there on the porch. Hot and wild and rocketing her straight to completion, the feedback between them taking him so close...before the pain hit.
“Katie,” he said, his mouth brushing her neck with the words. “Katie Rae.”
“Yes,” she told him, shuddering with the words. “Please, Maks.”
Yes. Every part of him wanted her, inside and out. He wanted the connection, the sensations, the completion. Sweet, brave Katie Rae—he’d known her, seen her, since that moment her vision had pulled them together in her car. It had only taken him a while to recognize what he’d learned of her in that moment—from her compassion to her courage.
The rush of understanding surged through him, bigger than he was; the tiger sprang free, roaring through his being. He gasped with the enormity of it, losing track of the house, the room, the doorway—of everything that wasn’t him and wasn’t Katie.
And then the pain slashed through him, leaving him only a glimpse of Katie’s startled face—flushed cheeks and kissed lips and wide eyes. He wrenched himself aside from her, agony in his chest—but not from the pain. He could handle the pain.
But not the loss of control.
Maks, the strong one. Maks the protector. Maks, so close to his tiger that he’d lived an accelerated childhood in his tiger’s skin.
Maks, who didn’t dare release his tiger on the woman he loved.
* * *
Katie stood in her bedroom doorway, rumpled and kissed and aroused beyond measure, flushed with the overflow of energies as much as from Maks’s hands on her body and her hands on his—and suddenly alone.
Just one brief glimpse of the wild, naked desperation on Maks’s face, that’s all she’d had—and then he was gone.
And she knew just why. She’d felt it, a near-subliminal impression of fear and understanding—her connection with Maks obscured by sensation but wholly, vibrantly alive.
Fear.
For her, and what he might do to her. For what he might turn into. Fear for his own sanity, in the clash of fugue and pain and desire.
Tiger, fleeing from himself.
But if she was right...
Maks, without complete initiation, would only destroy himself from the inside out. Energies turning on themselves, talents blocked and unrealized, a body tearing itself apart.
It wasn’t a chance she could ever take.
As ever, the deer was swift. She ran down the stairs in his wake, her shirt rumpled and half-unbuttoned, and out into the daylight of her porch.
He hadn’t even hesitated. Halfway across her yard, barefoot, flannel shirt flapping open—she caught only a glimpse before the achingly bright swirl of energy formed around him and the tiger emerged on the exposed open ground beside her house.
So many times she’d demurred from running the woods with him; so many times, she’d felt that flicker of self-protective unease. This time, she flung herself into the deer—small but infinitely quick, a reddish-brown blur of movement across the scattered bunchgrass and needle-covered ground.
Powerful as he was, he wasn’t built for a lengthy sprint. Eventually, she’d catch him.
Eventually, she did.
Far into the rugged woods, he’d stopped—the pines closing thickly around him, a rough thrust of granite blocking his progress and nurturing a stand of smaller trees—twisty little Gambel oaks and bushy mountain mahogany with a burst of low spreading fleabane off to the side.
He stood in the midst of it, spraddle-legged, panting with head low and eyes dazed.
And Katie, because she’d felt his fears, did what she had to do. One step after the other, slender legs and vulnerable neck, she moved closer to him. She knew when he’d spotted her by the cessation of his panting—and knew it again when he raised that massive head to look at her.
If she was wrong...
One swipe of a paw. One crunch of those jaws...
But she wasn’t wrong. She’d been in his memories; she’d been in his life. She knew what formed him, as well or better than he could underst
and it himself.
I’m not wrong.
And still it took all her courage for that next step...and then the next. And then she was there at his shoulder, her petite black nose nuzzling into the fur of his ruff.
The tiger groaned, a deep and wrenching sound, and threw himself away from her—taking the change, blue-and-white strobing light obscuring the very moment he became Maks. He staggered to his feet until he met the thick trunk of the closest ponderosa and braced himself against it, head bowed.
Katie stepped after him, moving right through the change as he had done, the air gentle against her legs where she’d leaped right out of her yoga pants during the change. Just as the deer had done—just as barefoot as he—she took one deliberate step after another, all too aware of the tension in his back and shoulders, the muscles standing out in relief.
His skin was hot with the energy, damp with effort, the muscle hard beneath her tentative fingers.
“You can’t go on like this,” she said quietly—so matter-of-fact in voice and word when she wanted only to run—or to wrap herself around him. “We can’t go on like this.”
He gulped air, shuddering faintly beneath her touch.
“Whatever’s happening with the Core, we have to fix this—we can’t deal with them until we do.” Her voice grew a little more fierce. “Not just for you, Maks. For me.”
He shook his head, a barely discernible motion. Not rejection—she knew it as she knew her own self.
Fear. He threw it at her in his desperate attempt to explain—for he was beyond the words that had never come easily to him.
She understood perfectly. It shouldn’t be like this—not the fugues he had endured, not this massive swell of never-channeled energy. Not the pain of blocked channels, finally challenged.
Or maybe she hadn’t understood at all. For as Katie’s touch brought on another surge of desire, Maks dug his fingers into the chunky orange-brown bark of the pine and managed hoarsely, “Can’t...keep you...safe.”
She moved closer, sliding her hand around his ribs from behind; she lay her cheek against his back, feeling the tremendous struggle of will and body.
“Maybe that’s my job,” she said. “I’m the healer, Maks. I’m the one who can make this work.” Her other hand slid between them, skimming down his body, scraping nails lightly against the denim between her touch and the back of his thigh. His leg trembled; he made a sound deep in his throat. She tucked herself up closer, running her other hand over his chest, finding the smattering of pale chest hair. He sucked in a breath and the reaching power surged higher, a rushing noise in her ears. She told him, “I’m the one who wants to make this work, because I want you. I want you so badly it scares the hell out of me. Don’t you dare think of this as a project.”
The way he stiffened had nothing to do with desire, and everything to do with the energies battering at him, seeking release. The sound he made then came of a different kind of desperation—and the fear she felt from him was now a different kind of fear.
And oh, she didn’t blame him at all. The power gathering inside him was nothing she’d ever felt before—nothing anyone should ever have to feel. There was a reason for initiation, a reason it was crucial...a reason they’d tried it for Maks, never guessing that his scrambled maturation would leave him not more settled, but less. So very vulnerable, with the unchanneled energies tangled and echoing and waiting for a chink in his formidable armor.
“Ssh, Maks. It’ll get better.” She hoped. “It’ll get better. Think about me. Think about what you did to me out on the porch, the way you made me feel...” She brought one hand up the back of his thigh, dipping between his legs from behind; she brought the other down straining abs to trace along the inside of his waistband. His head dropped back; bark flaked away under his fingers. The sight of him, the feel of him, the echo of his internal energies, swirling against her own...it hummed through her in a promise so strong she nearly tore the jeans open, nearly went for him right then and there.
Instead, humming, she licked his skin, warm and salty, right along his spine. “Please, Maks...”
She could survive the consequences if he didn’t complete his first, partial initiation to join with her now. She would ache, and she would feel bereft, and she would never be the same, but she’d survive.
But Maks wouldn’t. Not for much longer.
“Please,” she whispered. “For me.” Shameless, playing on his body...playing on his lifelong need to protect. Her hand slipped inside his jeans—and she froze when she realized there was nothing between her skin and his.
Maks jerked in response, and he snarled, and he turned so fast she didn’t see it coming. By the time her body protested the loss of his, he was fisting his hand in her hair, wrapping one arm around her to cup her bottom and lift. She didn’t think twice before wrapping her legs around him. He shoved her back against the tree, and by then he was kissing her—growling and kissing her, every plunge of his tongue in her mouth echoed by a jerk of his hips, energies reaching...reaching...shot through with pain that brushed against her without affecting her, all her careful intentions shot to hell as she pushed back against him. Her fingers clenched around his arms, his shoulders, his neck; her body spiraled way past control and straight to—
She cried out with the surprise of it, all hot and sweetly abrupt, and came back to herself with her heels digging into Maks’s muscled ass and her shirt pulling up under her breasts. Maks sank to the ground, taking her with him. Finally he rested on his knees—still kissing her, his face buried in the hair at her neck, his teeth nipping as often as not.
“All the way, Maks,” she said, almost too breathless for words as she groped between them, hunting the second button of his jeans.
Way too much work. She shoved him, hard and demanding—he went sprawling, his legs awkward, and she rode him down, her knees making contact with the pine-needle carpet. The moment he landed, she rose up and went after his pants.
She threw back her head and cried out with the relief of it as they slid together—as Maks gasped, his eyes gone dark and distant and his hands clutching convulsively at her hips. But his second cry came of pain, and his distant gaze grew wild, and even as she bent over to reassure him, he cried out again. His hands left her body to clutch at the ground, and his hips rising under hers were arched in agony and no longer in pleasure.
“Maks—Maks,” she said, stroking back his hair, stroking along his arms and chest. “Ssh, Maks, be with me, Maks—” as if she said his name often enough, he might hear it.
But Maks heard nothing, twisting under her in an awful parody of the delight this moment should bring him, his eyes wild with the tiger’s primal, furious fear.
* * *
Nick Carter sliced through the brevis lap pool with a vengeance—hard, efficient strokes that pulled him through the water at speed. And though his wolf hated swimming—hated the feel of it, the buoyancy of it, the insidious invasion of nose and ears and mouth—this afternoon the water felt like silk, caressing and soft. It put him in mind of Jet’s hands—the wicked mood, where he knew he’d pay for gentleness with unpredictable ferocity and demand. Jet of the truly wild nature, untamed by the Core and untamed by her time with Nick and with brevis. Jet with her unabashedly direct sexuality, beautifully athletic body—
Nick snorted out a mistimed breath, slung his head free of water, and planted his feet at the bottom of the waist-deep lap pool.
Mercy for him that the water wasn’t any lower against his body.
What the hell—?
The pool room’s metal door clanged shut. Nick sluiced the remaining water from his eyes and found Annorah standing at the end of the lap lane with a towel in hand.
“Saddle up,” she said, and tossed the towel at him, taking for granted that he’d pluck it out of the air before it hit either the water or his face. “We got trouble. Or haven’t you caught on yet—” She interrupted herself, her head tipped a bit to the side, and a bit upward, and snapped, “I
know, already! Quit tying up my head!”
Nick wiped his face dry, gave a token scrub of the towel over his hair and wrapped the soft white terry around his neck. Annorah’s fluster and flush had his attention like little else could. She’d come a long way since the spectacular failure in the field that had left Maks, Ruger and their team in critical condition and nearly resulted in Joe Ryan’s death...but she’d also always been a rock when it came to this part of her work.
Apparently, not today. She shifted uneasily—uncomfortably?—her sable hair in the kind of disarray that meant she’d been poking at her own head, and that meant plenty of action. Nick gave his cell phone—over in one of the locker-like cubbies with his keys—a quick glance.
“Don’t even bother listening to that pile-up of voice mails,” Annorah told him, hands on hips. “They all say the same thing, I can guarantee it.”
Suddenly he understood—her demeanor, his own thoughts...the reason he wouldn’t quite haul himself out of this pool to check his cell phone after all.
“Initiation,” he said dryly, his hands tightening on the towel with reason. “One hell of an initiation. There’s a reason we schedule these things. Does anyone know who—?”
“It’s Maks,” she confirmed, seeing the understanding on his face. “But it can’t be.”
What the hell was going on up there? And how had he so misjudged the decision to bring Maks back into the field? He struggled with thoughts thick under the influence of heat and sex and heavy, thumping desire. “Can you reach Katie?”
Annorah shook her head. “She’s the only Sentinel up there besides Maks, so I expect she’s very, very busy.”
Nick pressed the towel against his brow with the heel of his hand. Hell. It made no sense. And if this impossible initiation went sideways, it was going to go sideways in a big, big way.
“Nick—” Annorah said, her tone both pleading and pushy.
“I know,” he said grimly. “But I can’t get that team up there any faster than they’re already going. Katie will have to handle this.”
Annorah’s expression said what she thought of that clearly enough—protective of Maks, not trusting the unfamiliar Sentinel who had most likely triggered this situation in the first place.
Tiger Bound Page 19
