Petting Them: An Anthology of Claw-ver Tails

by Tate James

  Stunned, I didn’t try to move. Instead I just lay there underneath the heavy motherfucker while my breathing quickly escalated to the edge of hyperventilation. Thousands of fractured questions zapped across my brain, fighting for supremacy, but only one managed to complete itself.

  What the fuck just happened?

  “Calm down,” Adriel ordered me, his chest vibrating against my cheek where my face was smooshed against him. “Maggie, seriously, calm the fuck down, or you’re going to pass out.”

  He was right; of course, he was right. But how the fuck was I supposed to calm down when someone had just trashed Candy Jack with me inside? For the love of cats, I was lucky to still be alive!

  “Cleo, are you hurt?” Boden called out from somewhere nearby, and I considered his question. Was I hurt? I couldn’t feel my legs. Holy shit, I couldn’t feel my legs!

  “I’m paralyzed!” I squeaked in terror. “I can’t feel my legs! Oh my god, I’m never going to walk again!”

  “She’s fine,” Adriel snapped, peeling himself off me and standing up on what was once Candy Jack’s window and was now the floor. “I took the worst of it.”

  Now that he’d removed his considerable weight from my body, the blood rushed back into my legs, and I was hit with the reassuring pins and needles that proved I wasn’t paralyzed.

  Phew.

  “Jesus Christ Supercat, there is a massive chunk of glass in your back, Adriel,” I exclaimed when he turned slightly and I spotted the easily ten-inch shard protruding from his flesh. Blood was pooling around it and running down his blue T-shirt, causing it to stick to his body in a disturbingly sexy way.

  Yeah, okay, I was a little bit fucked up. I could own up to that.

  Adriel glanced at the glass over his shoulder and grunted his displeasure. He didn’t even seem all that concerned by the situation, just displeased. More to the point, how the hell were we all alive?

  “Guys, what the ever-loving fuck just happened? How are we still alive? Surely bones should be broken or... something. And Jack! My poor van!” I scrambled to my knees and tried to orient myself. From what I could see, Jack was on his side and there was considerable damage to the side above our heads. So much that the back end—where Hunter had been sitting on my bed—was crushed like a tin can. “Hunter!” I blurted out, staring wide-eyed at the remains of my “bedroom”.

  “I’m fine,” the Australian mumbled, crawling out from under a pile of my clothing, which had previously been stacked nicely inside my little wardrobe. “But it’s nice to hear your concern, Cleo babe.”

  I rolled my eyes at Hunter’s constant flirtation, but quietly I breathed a sigh of relief. Psychopaths or not, these three were sort of growing on me, and it would have been a shame to see them dead so soon.

  “We need to get out of here,” Boden said, stating the obvious. “It’ll only be a matter of time before those assholes follow us down here to finish the job.” Crouched over to avoid the cabinets hanging open and my bar fridge halfway out of its home, Boden made his way to Adriel and just wrenched the shard of glass out like it was a flipping toothpick or something.

  As I stared—horrified and fascinated—the wound in Adriel’s back just... closed. Like it had never been there. If it wasn’t for the residual blood coating his shirt, I would have thought I’d imagined the whole damn thing!

  “What the—” My stunned exclamation was cut short by all three men turning their sharp, somewhat glowing gazes on me. Seriously, though, their freaking eyes were freaking glowing!

  “Now isn’t the time, Cleo,” Boden told me firmly, giving me the pretty solid impression he was actually the one in charge of this merry band of nutcases. “We need to get you out of here before they catch up. Let’s haul ass, boys.”

  Without waiting for any further arguments from me, Adriel stooped forward and snatched me up in his arms like I was a naughty child. My squirms and protests did me absolutely no good as he carried me out of the wreckage of my beautiful Candy Jack, then deposited me onto the grass below a tree some distance away.

  From where he put me, I could see the hill we had just rolled down. More importantly, I could see the big rig parked at the top, which must have been responsible for pushing us off the road. Beside it, several figures stood arguing—if the wild hand gestures were any indication.

  “Guys,” I murmured, not taking my eyes off the people at the top of the hill for a second. “Are we still in danger here?”

  Neither of the three responded, but Boden’s sharp gaze followed my line of sight, and he grimaced.

  “Okay, stupid question, huh?” I laughed nervously. “What do we do now?”

  “Now we get you the fuck out of here,” Hunter replied, wincing as he shook broken glass out of his hair. He was still shirtless, like he had been when he woke up, and only sported a tight pair of boxer briefs on his lower half.

  As fucked up as the timing of it all was, I couldn’t help checking out his package for a brief moment before focusing on the facts that we’d all almost died and it was looking like it had been pretty damn intentional.

  “Take her,” Boden ordered Adriel, jerking his head toward the dense forest behind us. “Head north, and we’ll catch up after we sort this lot out.”

  Adriel’s jaw clenched, and he opened his mouth to argue with the blond-haired mountain man. Luckily though, my ears were spared his complaints when the dudes on top of the hill fired something at us and a tree to my left exploded.

  Literally. Exploded.

  “What the fuck was that?” I screamed for what felt like the millionth time. I was really starting to sound like a broken record, but who wouldn’t under the circumstances?

  “Shit,” Boden cursed, then got no further words out as the next shot fired from above hit him in the shoulder and sent him flying backward three yards.

  Adriel turned to me with a fierce look on his face, one that left no room for arguments.

  “Run,” he ordered me, his voice low and underlined with an animalistic growl. “Run now and don’t look back.”

  Even if his words hadn’t inspired enough primal fear in me to turn tail and run for my cats-damned life—they had—my mind would have been made up by the barrage of shots raining down on us. Puffs of dirt exploded all around us, and in the distance I saw our would-be killers begin to make their way down the hillside.

  Panicked, I scrambled to my feet and took off in the direction both Boden and Adriel had pointed me in. Stupidly, though, I did exactly what Adriel had told me not to do.

  I looked back as I ran.

  I looked back just in time to see Hunter leap onto the twisted remains of Candy Jack, his human form distorting and twisting as he flew through the air. When he landed on the side of my van, he was no longer the lean, muscular Aussie who had picked me up on the side of the road.

  He was a freaking cat. A huge-ass freaking cat.

  4

  It was only through some miracle of self-preservation that I kept running and didn’t pass right the fuck out due to shock. Hunter had just turned into a cat. Not a small, cute, and fluffy pussycat either, he had turned into some sort of wild cat with fangs and claws and weighing probably the same amount as an average-sized tiger.

  Holy fuck, was he a tiger?

  No, that didn’t make sense; he hadn’t looked anything like the tigers I’d seen at the zoo. His fur, from the brief flash of it I had seen before getting the hell out of dodge, had been a chocolatey brown, and he had a series of darker stripes across his back. The general shape of him had been more mountain cat–like and less tigery, though.

  Ah hell, I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. The guy I’d been considering fucking had just shifted into the body of a large cat. End of story.

  My bare foot snagged on a tree root, and I went crashing to my knees. It was only then that I realized I’d been running blindly through the forest with zero idea where I was or where I was going. Add to that the fact that someone had just tried to kill me, probabl
y had killed Boden—holy shit—and Hunter had turned into a huge-ass furry animal, and I was on the verge of a mental breakdown.

  Or maybe I’d already had a mental breakdown, and this was all in my head? Shit had really gotten bad when the most logical explanation was that I’d lost my sanity and was actually locked in a padded cell somewhere.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed, panting heavily. I was in shape, sure, but I was no long-distance runner. Sweat coated my body, and now that I was stationary, my legs quivered with exhaustion. How far had I come? Was anyone following me? Had the guys all been killed?

  My mind flashed back to Boden flying across the grass, and I couldn’t work out if my imagination was adding the blood pooling under him when he landed or if that had really happened.

  Before someone had tried to kill us, I had been just about to eject the three of them onto the side of the road. So why did the idea of them being dead make my head spin and my hands shake? Without even noticing what I was doing, I’d pushed myself back out of the dirt and started making my way back the way I’d come. I needed to see if they were okay...

  A thud sounded, and I froze.

  Slowly, I turned to see what had made the noise, praying it wasn’t one of the men who’d run us off the road and then shot at us with weapons I could barely even describe.

  Thankfully, it wasn’t. Instead, I found a giant, golden-furred cat sitting on its fluffy butt and watching me with obnoxiously intelligent blue eyes. I mean, that in itself was a pretty damn obvious sign that this was no normal cat. What sort of mountain lion had blue eyes, for fuck’s sake?

  Okay, once again, I had no idea. Maybe mountain lions did have blue eyes, but I was pretty sure they didn’t have the exact shade of blue that Boden had.

  “Seriously?” I laughed nervously, eyeing the enormous creature as his tail swished back and forth. “So this whole magical creature thing wasn’t bullshit? You’re really...” I trailed off as the words stuck in my throat and my vision swam. Maybe I was going to pass out after all?

  To make matters worse, the big cat, who I could only assume was Boden, stood its enormous ass up and padded across to me. Up close, he was even bigger than I’d really given him credit for. If I were so inclined, I could ride him like a pony—he was that huge.

  Well... that even sounded dirty inside my own head.

  The air around him seemed to shimmer, like I was looking at him through a gas leak, then his shape shifted, rearranged, and settled back into human form. Tall, muscular, tanned, and totally naked human form.

  “So, you’re not dead. That’s always good,” I mumbled, squinting at him as my vision blurred and swam again. “I think I might pass out now, okay?”

  “Not okay, Cleo,” Boden scolded, deftly catching me in his arms as my knees buckled and I started to swoon. I shit you not. I made like Scarlett O’Hara and swooned. “You might have a concussion from the crash. It’s not safe to pass out until we can be sure you don’t.”

  “Just a little snooze,” I argued, gluing my exhausted eyelids shut and letting him carry my sweaty butt for a bit. “Wait.” My eyes flew back open, and I frowned up at his handsome face. “Where the fuck are you taking me?”

  His lips pulled up in a grin, and I noticed a few fine lines around his blue eyes. “Are we back onto the serial killer thing, Cleo?”

  “Can you blame me?” I scowled up at him. “We are in the middle of goddamn nowhere, someone just tried to murder us all, I’m wearing nothing but a tank top and panties, and you’re...” I paused and ran a hand down his body and over his strong ass to double-check my eyes hadn’t deceived me. “You’re naked. So yeah, Boden, we’re back on the serial killer thing!”

  He sighed but didn’t put me down. He also didn’t lose the grin, and I was trying real freaking hard not to melt under the force of it. “You just saw me turn from a lynx into a person, and you’re worried about whether I have a fetish for knives and pretty, tattooed girls’ flesh?”

  I frowned, painfully aware of the absurdity now that he’d said it out loud. “I was thinking more like strangulation, but that’s interesting that you think I’m pretty.”

  Oh. My. Cats. Did I seriously just say that?

  I was starting to come around to my mother’s opinion that I was a bit of a hot mess. Here I was casually discussing murder techniques with a were-lynx, if that was the correct terminology, and all I could latch onto was that he thought I was pretty. Fucking what?

  “Maybe I do have a concussion,” I muttered, rubbing at my forehead. “Put me down, Boden, I can walk.”

  He peered down at me and raised a brow in a mocking sort of way. “Are you sure? You just swooned like you were in a silent movie and your corset was done up too tight.”

  I glared back at him, not appreciating that he’d called me on my girly half-faint. To emphasize my point, I wriggled in his grip until he placed me back on my feet.

  “Oh wow,” I coughed. “You really are naked.”

  “Quit staring; you’ll give me a hard-on in a second,” Boden scolded me in a voice that only sounded half teasing. “And of course I’m naked. When is the last time you saw a lynx walking around in a pair of Levi’s?”

  “Fair point,” I agreed, trying really hard to do as I was told and quit staring. But seriously, was it really my fault that he was easily the most perfect specimen I’d seen in, well, ever? Aside from Hunter and Adriel, that was. But I hadn’t seen either of them naked yet.

  Yet.

  Yep, I was suffering a mental break for sure. My brain had just totally accepted that I’d be seeing the other two beautiful, magical men naked at some stage in the near future and was fully on board.

  “You’re not going crazy, Cleo,” Boden interrupted my rambling brain and dragged me back to the present. He placed his warm palms either side of my face and captured my gaze with his own. “I promise you, you’re not going crazy. This is maybe not the way I would have liked to explain things to you, but you can blame Hunter for that.”

  At his name, panic spiked through me, and I sucked in a sharp breath. “Hunter!” I blurted out. “Is he—?”

  “He’s fine,” Boden assured me, still gripping my face between his hands and stroking my skin with his thumbs.

  “And...” I trailed off, not totally sure why I really gave a crap about Adriel, considering what a fucker he’d been toward me, yet totally unable not to ask.

  Boden’s lips quirked into a half smile. “Adriel’s fine too. They’re just doing a bit of cleanup and will catch up soon.”

  His words reassured me way, way more than I should have needed for men I barely knew and had suspected of being serial killers until very recently. The depth of crazy emotion I was feeling toward these three was serious cause for concern, if I was totally honest. But it seemed unimportant in that moment, so I shoved it into the back of my mind to deal with later.

  “What’s going on in your head right now, Cleo?” Boden murmured in a soft voice. “Your emotions are so conflicted I can’t get a clear reading on anything. You’re either about to kick me in the balls and run, or...”

  My breath caught, and I could practically hear my heart beat, it was thundering so loudly. Boden was right; I was equally torn between running for my fucking life and jumping his freaking bones. Call it my fuck or flight reflex, I guess.

  “I can’t risk you running right now, Cleo. My job is to keep you safe.” Boden’s voice was low and husky, his gaze steady and unblinking while his strong hands held my face captive.

  His words barely had time to compute before his lips were on mine. Lightning zapped between us as he softly pressed against my mouth, tentative for a second, then bolder as he seemed to commit to what he’d just done.

  I gasped at the electric sensation, my lips parting in surprise as warmth flooded through my whole body and made me groan. Boden wasted no time, seizing the opportunity and plunging into my mouth with a ferocity that set me reeling. All of a sudden it was like we couldn’t get enough of each other. We we
re all hands and lips, teeth and tongues as I gripped tight to his neck and hoisted myself up.

  My legs wrapped around Boden’s waist, trapping his hardened length between us with only the thin fabric of my panties separating us. Through my lust-clouded brain, I shot out a quick, silent thanks to Meg for making me keep up my waxing appointments, despite the fact that I’d split from my deadbeat boyfriend months ago.

  Boden moved a few steps, not seeming to struggle in the least with me pasted to his front like some sort of lust-drunk spider monkey. He pushed me against a particularly smooth tree trunk and ground his pelvis to mine in a way that made me cry out and rake my nails down his strong, tanned back.

  The intensity of the whole situation had made me a little overeager, though, and I gasped when I saw my nails had drawn blood. How freaking sharp had my manicurist left those damn things?

  “Shit, sorry,” I panted, biting my lip and showing Boden my blood-tipped nails. “I didn’t mean to.”

  A sly smile crept over his face as his hands ran up my sides and fondled my breasts through my thin tank. “Didn’t mean to what, Cleo?” he teased. “Mark me?”

  My eyes widened, and I sucked in a short gasp. Is that what I’d just done? Was this some... crazy, magical were-cat thing? Had my desperation to get laid just created a cultural faux-pas?

  “Don’t look so worried,” he chuckled as his head dipped low to capture one of the nipples he’d just freed from my pathetic top. “I have every intention of returning the favor.”

  His teeth closed over my hardened nipple, and I moaned, thrashing against him like... ugh, like a cat in heat. Jesus Christ Supercat.

  The sound of something loud approaching through the trees made us both freeze, but there was no time to correct our compromising position before both Adriel and Hunter appeared in the clearing we’d been about to fuck in.

  “Fuck you, Boden,” Hunter cursed, his eyes wide as he took in his friend’s naked ass pinning me to a tree while his lips were glued to my breast.