by Lynn Red
She sputtered. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then come on.” He continued toward his own house.
Frowning, Mandy followed behind him. When she first moved to the Merino land, she thought it was odd that they all lived together on the same farm but under different roofs. Now, though, she was rather glad that she didn’t live with Vic and Johnny and had her own place. Following Adrian to his house, though…it felt strange. He must have liked his privacy, she thought. While her little house was squeezed in between Vic’s big place and Johnny’s smaller one, Adrian was at the far end of the land, a good walk away from where they’d parked. She’d seen his cabin of course, but she’d never gone inside.
The interior was sparsely decorated with only a flat panel TV hanging on the wall. The furniture was also sparse, but of a good make. Leather, too. She ran a hand over one couch. “Nice stuff. Better than my little place.” The little house she’d been ‘awarded’ after joining the tiger clan had hand-me-down furniture with worn spots and mismatched throw pillows for her ugly couch.
“Your place was designed for visitors,” he told her. “It wasn’t intended to be a permanent home.”
Right. She was supposed to shack up with Johnny. After he’d bitten her and changed her into a were-tiger, he’d just assumed she’d fall into his bed, flinging her panties aside in gratitude. Jerk. “My place is fine,” she told Adrian. “And I’d really like to go back to it now.” That craving for privacy was growing stronger and stronger. “Please.”
“Nope,” Adrian said. “Unless you want to forfeit.”
“I’m not forfeiting anything!”
He grinned at her, and for a moment, he was so stunningly handsome he took her breath away. “Good. Now, come on.” And he stripped off his shirt.
Mandy’s jaw dropped and she remained still as he continued to strip. “W-what are you doing?”
He tilted his head at her in a catlike move, even as he leaned over to pull off one of his shoes. “Undressing for a shower?”
“I thought we were supposed to stick together for the next three days!”
“We are.” He gave her another one of those confident, sexy grins. “But no one said I had to give up my showers.”
“I-I’m not going in there with you!”
“So you’re giving up?”
“No!”
“Then you’re going in with me.” He undid his zipper and then reached for the waistband of his jeans.
Mandy covered her eyes. “I do not believe this.”
“Let me tell you something about shifters, Mandy. In case you hadn’t already noticed, nudity isn’t an issue for us.”
Oh, she’d noticed. Since the day she’d been changed, the tiger clan had a ‘group’ shift in which everyone pulled off their clothing and changed as if it were normal for a bunch of adults to get naked together. She hadn’t participated of course - she refused to shift - but they’d still made her stick around and watch.
But there was a difference in a bunch of people being casually nude and one tall, sexy, determined man stripping in front of her, hours after he’d declared that he wanted her as his mate. So she kept her eyes closed and tried to seem as casual about things as possible. “What about me?”
“What about you?” He sounded amused.
“If you’re going to shower, where am I going?”
“In the bathroom with me?”
“It’s going to be rather steamy in there.” Lordy, why did that sound like a come on?
“Which is why I suggest you take your clothes off.”
“No!”
“Suit yourself.” There was a rustle of fabric and then a pause. “You coming?”
She put her hands on her hips, her eyes carefully closed. “I refuse to look.”
“Why?” Now he sounded just puzzled. “You’ve seen it all before.”
“Yes, but it’s different now.”
“How?”
Because we’re alone together, she wanted to tell him. Because you said you wanted me as your mate. But the shy words got stuck in her throat. Eventually, she managed, “It’s just different. That’s all.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. A moment later, a warm, callused hand gripped hers. “Come on, then, if you’re not going to look.” And he began to tug her forward.
Eyes squeezed shut, Mandy let Adrian lead her through the house. The acoustics changed as they walked, and when he shut a door, she assumed they were in the bathroom. Under her sneakers, it felt like tile, and the soft scents of soap and shampoo touched her nostrils, mixed with the warm, spicy scent of tiger-shifter and Adrian. She really should put her foot down, she thought, even as he began to whistle quietly and the water turned on.
He really was just going to shower like she wasn’t standing there. Curious, Mandy peeked just a little. Sure enough, Adrian was in the shower, rinsing his dark hair under the spray. His tight buttocks were visible through the clear shower curtain, tanned and taut. And he wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to her. She relaxed and leaned against the sink, watching him shower. It really was odd to be here, watching a very naked Adrian get clean. She felt a little breathless as she watched him soap up his hands and then run them along his muscular arms and then down his stomach and over his ass. Mandy blinked repeatedly, unable to stop staring at the suds gliding down his skin. Well now. That was, uh…interesting.
She pressed her thighs together tightly, annoyed when a hint of her own aroused scent touched her nostrils. That was one of the awful things about being a shifter - you could smell everything. And right now? She smelled her own scent, and that bothered her. She wasn’t a blushing virgin, but shifters played by a different set of rules, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to jump onto the playing board.
“Sure you don’t want to join me?” He asked, interrupting her rather dirty thoughts.
“I’m sure,” Mandy retorted, her voice a little more vehement than it needed to be. Which was also embarrassing.
“I won’t touch you.”
“I know you won’t, because I’ll break your hand.”
He chuckled. “You need to get used to nakedness, Mandy. Shyness is a human thing, and you aren’t quite human anymore.”
She rolled her eyes at that. They were constantly pointing out how not-human she was. It was unnecessary, really. She was quite aware that there were changes in her body and she wasn’t quite ‘normal’ anymore. Heck, just the fact that she could smell her own arousal tingeing her nostrils was a big hint. No one had to beat it into her head.
But just because they thought they could make her one of them without so much as asking her if she had a problem with it? They were in for a bit of a surprise if they thought she’d just roll over and go along with things. Fuck all of that.
So she crossed her arms over her chest and stubbornly closed her eyes again, waiting. “Hurry up already.”
Adrian chuckled again, but the scent of soap grew stronger and she heard him splashing as he rinsed off. Then, he turned off the water and she smelled fabric softener a moment before the rustle of a towel touched her ears. He was drying off. Good. They could hurry up and get out of the now-steamy bathroom and she’d have breathing room again.
A moment later, she heard a soft thump into what sounded like a laundry basket, and then Adrian’s hands touched her shoulders. She jumped, her eyes flying open in surprise at the touch. “W-what—“
“Just steering you out,” he said from behind her, his scent enveloping her nostrils. Something hard brushed against her jeans-covered ass.
“Something tells me that’s not your tail,” she retorted as she stepped forward.
“Can you blame a guy?” he asked, still amused judging from the sound of his voice. His fingers smoothed over her shoulders in an almost-caress. “I bet you watched me shower.”
“I bet I didn’t,” she said in an outraged voice.
“Mmmhhmmm.” He didn’t sound as if he believed her. “Well, shall we go to bed?”
&
nbsp; She could not believe that she was seriously contemplating crawling into bed with Adrian Merino. Her head must have been screwed on backwards. Seriously. “I still don’t see why I have to sleep with you,” she protested as he guided her across the hall and into his room. “I don’t see what this has to do with our bet in the slightest.”
“Actually, it has everything to do with our bet,” he told her. “Your body relaxes while sleeping, and that’s when a change is most likely to kick in. If it does, you’re going to need help. And if we’re together, there’s no chance of you hiding it.”
It was like he knew exactly what she was thinking. Damn it. Grumpy, she glanced around at his room. “You’re kidding, right?”
Again, his bedroom was clean and neat, with minimal furniture. There was a dresser with a TV on top of it, a nightstand with a clock, and a bed. A rather narrow looking full-sized bed. Not king, not queen. Full. And since Adrian was a big guy, she suspected he’d be taking up quite a bit of the bed, which meant she was going to be hugging the edge of the mattress…or hugging onto him.
Neither of which sounded appealing at the moment, or so she told herself.
“Bedtime,” he said cheerfully, and flicked the light-switch off.
She turned around. Thanks to her new tiger-senses, though, she could see almost as well in the dark as she could in the daytime, so turning the lights off didn’t do much except make Adrian’s eyes gleam green. He was also, she noticed, still completely naked. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He looked surprised. “You want a goodnight kiss?”
“Pajamas! You’re forgetting pajamas!”
Adrian’s eyes reflected the moonlight in a way that made her skin shiver. “I’m a tiger-shifter, girl. We don’t wear ‘jammies’ to bed.”
“Well you should tonight. Especially if you’re having a sleepover.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, drawing attention to the fact that he had insanely sculpted pectorals and that fascinating vee of hard muscle at his hips that bespoke of taut flesh and not a single ounce of fat. “This sounds like a chicken out to me.”
“It’s not a chicken out,” she cried, clenching her fists. “Why do you keep assuming that I’m going to chicken out just because I don’t want to rub up against your junk all night?”
“Because you should know that I’m not going to touch you unless you lose the bet?”
She tapped her foot, trying to decide if this was worth arguing over. Mandy knew that he wouldn’t touch her — Vic’s word was law, and he’d assured her that she was safe with his men. Even Johnny had held off on pressuring her for sex once Vic had laid down the law. And she knew from her last month or so with shifters that they really didn’t see the big deal about nakedness.
But…still.
Adrian rolled his eyes and shrugged, then climbed into bed under the blankets as if she wasn’t there. “Night,” he told her, and closed his eyes.
That decided her. If he was going to act like this was no big deal, then she would, too. She pulled her shoes off and set them next to the bed, then crawled in on the other side, careful to keep the blankets separating them.
“Not going to get naked?” he asked, voice sleepy.
“Screw you.”
“Only if you ask nicely.” To her horror, he threw an arm over her waist and snuggled her body against his.
“Do not touch me!” She pushed at him, furious. “I thought we were just going to sleep!”
“I am,” he said easily, and yawned into her ear. “But I like to sleep with a nice backside up against me, and you’ve got a real nice one.”
“Fuck you,” she said, edging to the far side of the smallish bed and clinging to the edge.
He chuckled, and his low, husky voice thrummed in her ears. “I have a nose, too, you know. I can smell everything you can.” His sexy voice was little more than a whisper. “Some things I can smell even better than you, I imagine. And they smell mighty good.”
Her face burned hot into the darkness. He was referring to her arousal. That dick. She ignored him and closed her eyes, trying to sleep. If she pretended like he wasn’t there, he’d get the picture. Hopefully. It wasn’t easy, but eventually she relaxed and dropped off into an exhausted slumber, her body and mind tired. She always seemed to be fatigued lately, and even the tension in the bed couldn’t keep her from drifting off.
Something made Mandy wake up in the middle of the night. She blinked up at the unfamiliar ceiling, wondering what on earth had woken her up. The scent of Adrian was thick in her nostrils, but it was an oddly comforting sort of scent, as was the feel of his warm body against hers. So that wasn’t it.
In the next moment, though, her entire body gave a violent shake. Her skin prickled with awareness, and she felt hot, then cold. Oh…oh no. This felt a bit like a shift. She’d shifted three since being turned, and each experience had been traumatic. Slow, gradual pain had increased and morphed until her skin and bones had followed. This time, it seemed that her innards were the ones trying to make the shift, though. Her ribs cracked as she breathed, and she felt her insides twist painfully.
Shit. Mandy squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating. If she shifted now, their little bet was over. She had to control this. Had to. So she forced herself to breathe slowly and regularly, and kept picturing herself mentally as human, hands clenched. All the while, her innards seemed to tremble, as if waiting for a starting gate that never arrived.
A hand reached out and stroked her hair. “Mandy?” Adrian’s voice was soft, sleepy. Soothing. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, even as sweat broke out on her forehead. Oh, ugh, she wasn’t okay.
“What’s wrong?” His hand continued to smooth her hair, a gentle comfort.
And it was such a nice, unassuming touch that she wanted to burrow into it. To pull her body against his warmth and just ride out the pain, knowing that she was protected and taken care of. But…she couldn’t. Not if she wanted to be in charge of her own life. So she swallowed hard. “Food poisoning, I think,” she lied.
His hand gently stroked her cheek, knuckles grazing her skin. It wasn’t a pushy touch, just one designed to soothe. “Do you need anything?”
“No, I’m okay.” She had almost even convinced herself of that, too. But then her stomach gave a horrible little lurch, and her mouth filled with saliva, and she realized that food poisoning might not have been too far off the mark. Either that, or her refusal to shift was making her stomach protest. Either way, she was going to barf.
She bolted from the bed and headed for the bathroom. Her head barely made it to the bowl before dinner decided to make its presence known for a second time, and she spent the next few minutes puking her guts out. When she finally stopped heaving, she laid her cheek against the cool porcelain, feeling awful and wrung out. Her entire body shuddered as if feverish.
It really, really wanted to shift.
And she really, really didn’t want it to. She closed her eyes and concentrated, willing her body to pay attention to the rules again. To go back to being normal and human.
Something cold pressed against her forehead, and she opened her eyes to see Adrian squat next to her, still naked and tanned and gorgeous, and pressed the bottle of water against her cheek next. “Drink this when you can,” he instructed. “It’ll help settle things.”
She took the bottle from him and offered a weak smile. “Thanks.”
His fingers traced her face again, and he lifted his chin. “Go on, drink.”
Mandy did, and to her surprise, her stomach started to feel almost immediately better. The sweating stopped, and her innards quit shivering. She continued to sip the water for several minutes as Adrian stroked her hair, until she felt good enough to go back to bed. “I think I’m all right now.”
“Here,” he said, offering her his hand. “I’ll help you up.”
She placed her hand in his and uttered a token protest as he went one step further and swung her into his arm
s, resting her against his chest as he headed back to the bedroom. She could walk herself back to the room…but her body felt wrung out, and it was nice to just relax in his arms and let him handle it. So she burrowed against his chest as he carried her back into the bedroom and gently laid her on her side of the bed.
“How’s the stomach?” he murmured as he took the near-empty water bottle from her fingers.
“Better,” she said softly. “How did you know?”
His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “When I was a boy, I used to get hard at the sight of a girl, and my body thought that was a cue to shift. I learned that drinking ice water was a way to douse things enough to get my body back under control.” Adrian chuckled. “For about five years straight, I carried a water bottle with me everywhere. I was a horny little bastard.”
So…he’d known exactly why she had gotten sick. But she kept up the token protest. “It was food poisoning,” she called after him as he returned to the kitchen. He didn’t say anything else, so she closed her eyes and tucked her hand under her cheek.
Adrian’s heavier weight got back into bed with her, and then his arm went around her shoulders, dragging her against him. She didn’t protest. She knew the difference between a comforting touch and a skeevy one, and this one was all comfort. A moment before she drifted back to sleep, she realized that in half of a day, Adrian had shown more care and understanding for who she was than Johnny had the entire time she’d known him.
As the deliciously sweet female slept, burrowed against him, Adrian realized he’d been handling Mandy all wrong. She didn’t need to be needled into losing control of her beast and then trapped into a situation she didn’t want. If he wanted her, she’d have to come of her own free will.
And that was the thing that had been missing for his soon-to-be mate, he realized. No one gave her a single choice about things. Johnny and the other tiger-shifters had been born into the Merino clan. They’d always known that things eventually rolled up to the alpha and nothing was really, truly their decision.
But Mandy was born human. She didn’t grasp answering to someone, even when that someone could protect her. She was making her token struggles - fighting against him, fighting against her shifting, fighting against being dragged into the pack - because no one had stopped to ask her what it was that she wanted.
