Petting Them: An Anthology of Claw-ver Tails

by Tate James

  Lastly, I dragged my gaze to Kazhar who stood quietly stewing on the right. His eyebrows were drawn down into a fierce scowl and intensity radiated from him, even though he was silent. I wasn’t sure why he was so upset. Maybe he was perpetually in a bad mood.

  His dark hair hung like a shaggy mane down to his shoulders, lightened by a few streaks of gold that matched his amber eyes. He only wore one crystal, but it was a giant pendant that gleamed like a captive star against his chest. His black attire matched his disposition and gave him a disreputable look that shouldn’t have looked so damned good.

  Put him in a black leather jacket and give him a rumbling motorcycle, and he was my bad-boy biker wet dream.

  I swallowed the drool pooling in my mouth and squeezed my thighs together. Down, girl. Now is not the time for your shenanigans.

  It’d been awhile since I’d had sex, and regrettably, the last few times hadn’t rocked my world, which was why I’d never called any of those guys back. Add in crazy long hours at the diner and the stress of keeping a roof over my head, and golly gee whiz, I had no sexual desires left over and certainly no time to indulge in a sexy romp.

  And, of fucking course, I probably looked like something the cat had dragged in. Or rather tigers. I snorted softly to myself. Naturally, I would meet the hottest guys I’d ever seen in my life, while wearing ancient thermal underwear, no makeup, and with bags under my eyes from not getting enough sleep.

  I caught Marak’s gaze and he gave me a warm smile. “What’s so funny, Kimber Leigh?”

  “Just Kimber. Leigh is my last name. I was just thinking you’re all dressed so nice and I’m sitting here in ratty old pajamas.”

  Kazhar dropped to his knees, startling me. He took my hand in both of his and kissed my knuckles. “What would you like to wear, Tygress? We’ll fetch it immediately. Gold? Jewels? Silks?”

  “Um, about that…”

  Eyes narrowed, he stared back at me. “You don’t believe us.”

  I blew out a heavy sigh. “Look, I’d love to believe you. I mean, what girl wouldn’t want to wake up with three gorgeous princes who swear she’s their lost princess? But that’s not me. It couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m no princess. I’m no… Tygress. I don’t want to disappoint you. There has to be some giant mistake, and I’d rather…”

  I swallowed hard and averted my gaze, blinking back tears. I’d rather wake up now and realize it was all a fantastic dream, than allow them to convince me this was real, and then wake up. That would suck so bad. To have a dream come true…

  And, lose it. All of it.

  Especially them.

  I barely knew them, sure. But in the little while it’d taken for them to bring me to this place, they’d displayed nothing but kindness, consideration, and an eager willingness to make sure I was comfortable. That I wanted to stay.

  Dharius knelt on my left, and Marak pushed in between him and Kazhar, so I was surrounded by them. For a moment, my senses overloaded. They were so large and sexy and intense… Only Kazhar touched me, still holding my hand, but I could almost feel their energy buzzing over my skin through the thick thermals. And, they smelled so fucking good. Some kind of warm, sweet spice that I didn’t recognize, but my stomach thought they smelled like the best dessert ever. In fact, my stomach growled. Loudly.

  Blushing, I tugged on my hand, but Kazhar wouldn’t let go of me. In fact, he gently pried my fingers open and pressed his lips into the palm of my hand.

  Warm, soft lips. A hint of bristle on his cheeks. A wet flick of his tongue.

  My pussy clenched, sending a pulse of molten need racing through me.

  Fucking hell. If this was all a dream and I woke up turned on like this…

  I was going to murder someone.

  Dharius laid something in my lap. “Watch this first, Kimber. And, then we’ll feed you.”

  The low rumble of his voice implied all sorts of wicked feeding that had nothing to do with food. Biting my lip, I focused on what looked like a tablet, though it was made from a polished, glassy crystal instead of metal.

  “We each must touch it to activate it. The last Prime Alpha encoded her message inside the crystal so that only four Primes, one from each tribe, could receive her words.”

  Dharius pressed his thumb on the left side of the screen, and a thin bar started to glow along the edge with pearly, greyish light. Marak touched the top of the screen, and it activated in a bar of blue light. Then Kazhar on the right side lit up a golden bar.

  The bottom of the screen was dull. My fingers trembled as I stared at the crystal. What if I touched it and nothing happened? Would I be able to wake up then? Or would I be stuck here on their planet…

  Knowing I wasn’t their lost princess.

  I was nothing. Just a broke waitress from St. Louis who couldn’t get home. Who didn’t want to go home, because there wasn’t anything there for me. I had a few friends from the diner, but no real family. They might wonder why I didn’t at least call in sick. Roger might curse and mutter under his breath, but then he’d call Sammie to come in and take my shift. She could use the money. She had two kids, and an alcoholic husband who couldn’t hold a job.

  In a matter of a few days, they’d forget I’d even existed.

  The landlord would post a final eviction on my door, and this time, I wouldn’t be there to beg for another month. He’d clean out my tiny one-room apartment—which would probably take about five minutes. A few books, my uniform from the diner, a few spare clothes. I’d rented the place furnished because I didn’t have any furniture of my own.

  Twenty-seven years old and I had nothing to even show I’d been alive, other than a stack of bills I couldn’t pay.

  I looked at each man, fighting back tears. What if I was actually someone? Someone that people had been looking for? That people would actually care about? What if I didn’t have to live in misery, alone any longer?

  “What is it?” Kazhar asked as he kissed the inside of my wrist. “What do you fear?”

  I didn’t know which was worse. This anxiety knotting my stomach that they were wrong, or the desperate hope soaring inside me that they were right. Hope had only ever hurt me before.

  I hoped someone would adopt me, and call me their daughter.

  I hoped that I would have a family of my own.

  I hoped that I would go to college and have a great career.

  I hoped… only to be destroyed time and time again. I’d finally given up hoping for anything better. It hurt too much.

  But none of those hurts had ever been as monstrous as this one would be if they were wrong.

  Holding my gaze, he slowly lowered my hand toward the screen, turning my hand in his so he could press my thumb to the bottom of the screen.

  I held my breath for an eternity. My heart stopped. My chest ached. My ears roared with the sound of blood pounding through my skull.

  The bar lit a brilliant emerald green, and a sound escaped my lips that was very much like a squeak.

  They were right. I was the fourth Prime.

  Unless this was all a fucking dream.

  The four bars glowed brighter, and the center of the crystal blinked on. A woman’s face appeared on the screen and my throat squeezed off.

  She looked like me in forty years. Long red hair, lighter than mine and streaked with silver. Green eyes. Even her lips looked like mine, her mouth wide and generous. Though she had tiny lines around her mouth and crinkles around her eyes, as if she’d smiled and laughed a lot in her life.

  “My daughter,” she whispered, smiling despite the tears pooling in her eyes.

  I made another small gasp and covered my lips with my left hand. Kazhar still held my right hand. Dharius and Marak both pressed closer so they touched my knees, offering the comfort of their bodies.

  “I’m leaving you this message because I know you will hear it. I will it to be so. You will survive the perilous journey on which I’m sending you. You will mature. And, when it’s time, you’l
l return to your homeland. It breaks my heart to send you so far away, but I fear for your safety here. You’re the last female Prime, and our enemy hunts me endlessly. Even sending you away into hiding here on Dhalmaria won’t be enough. They’ll torch the entire planet trying to kill you, and if you die… We die. The Primes will die out with this generation unless they mate non-Primes, which will weaken our power. We lose more to the Sitti every single day as it is, and we need to be whole and strong. Without you, eventually the tribes will be no more.”

  Her voice broke and she looked down a moment, her shoulders shaking. My mother. Crying. For me.

  I was crying too, squeezing Kazhar’s hand like he was the only thing keeping me from drowning.

  She looked back up, her eyes shining with ferocious determination. “And so, daughter of mine, I’ve saved you, and simultaneously doomed you to twenty-four years of life alone on an alien planet. Already in your young life, you’ve been forced to watch your father murdered so I could flee with you. You’ve watched our treefall collapse to the ground. Burned. Destroyed. I don’t know what you’ll see on the other side of the portal, but it has to be better than dying here.

  “I’m using Sitti’s technology against them to save you. They need our crystals to power their portals, and so it’s only fair that I use their portal to send you to safety. It’s risky, but I believe our calculations are correct. We’ve selected the safest planet we could find. The main complication is the timing. We can only open this portal once every twenty-four years. Dhalmaria must be aligned with the twin suns and moons to clear the path to your planet. The portal component isn’t full strength out of necessity. I had to be able to hide it on your tiny body in such a way that no one would ever suspect and possibly remove it. Its size diminishes its power, but it should be strong enough to power the jump to your planet.”

  She smiled tremulously, and my heart swelled in my chest, aching with love for this woman I couldn’t remember. Now that I saw her face, some phantom memories stirred deep in my mind. Maybe wishful thinking on my part, my mind immediately latching on to her image and insisting I had seen her. That I remembered her. Maybe the toddler’s memories really were buried deep in my mind somewhere. I hoped so.

  “You have just under twenty hours to decide whether to stay here with the surviving Primes, or to return to your sanctuary planet. Then the window of perfect alignment ends, and you won’t be able to return for another twenty-four years, though I doubt there would be enough power left in the small crystal to power the portal a fourth time. I know it’s cruel to pull you away from your home that you’ve built so far from here, so I’ve made every Prime swear that they’ll give you the final choice. You won’t be forced to stay here. You won’t become a pawn, a prize to be gained by males fighting over a mate. You will decide, Kimberly Amurkin. They will take you back to the portal and allow you to leave without question. It’s your choice, my child, the last Tygress of Dhalmaria.”

  My full name. I’d never heard Amurkin before. I must have been unable to say it to whoever had found me on Earth.

  The screen blinked and went gray, even though the outer band still gleamed until we each removed our fingers from the outer band.

  “I’m sure you have many questions.” Kazhar’s voice was gruff as he stood. “If you will join us for dinner, we’ll answer any questions that you have, Tygress.”

  4

  Another woman stepped into the room, startling me. They’d said I was the last female. Not that I’d even wrapped my mind around that yet… but here was another woman about my age as far as I could tell. She had short black curly hair and gray eyes almost as mischievous as Marak’s.

  “Not so fast, my lords.” She pushed in between Dharius and Marak to take my hand and tugged me free of the guys. “Our Tygress should have the chance to bathe and dress before dinner.”

  Kazhar scowled but muttered, “Of course, Tela, of course.”

  As I followed her, I felt the hungry, hot stare of their eyes on me, but I resisted the urge to look back over my shoulder. Though I certainly put a little extra bump in the trunk.

  She led me down a twisty hallway, up a narrow flight of stairs, and down another hallway with doors on either side, though she passed them all. I bit my tongue as long as I could, but curiosity killed the cat. Er… tiger. “Um, Tela, right?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “My name is Kimber. Can I ask you some questions?”

  “I know, and of course, my lady.” She paused at the end of the hallway before a large double door. “I’m at your disposal. Your room, my lady.”

  I took a single step inside and froze. First of all, the room was fucking huge, like as large as my entire building back home, and the walls were round.

  Round. Like a tree. The massive treefall…

  I tried to draw a floor plan in my head to see if I was right, but I was completely turned around. Could this room actually be inside the heart of the giant tree? “This is my room?”

  Tela’s eyes widened. “Yes. Is it not acceptable? I can have another room made up, but traditionally, the tribe’s Tygress and her cubs live in the heart.”

  I stepped inside, trying to take it all in. The walls were polished smooth, but I noticed deep grooves here and there along the walls and floor. It made me think of claw marks. I could suddenly see a cute litter of tiger cubs tumbling and wrestling across the floor, chasing each other. Instead of scribbling on the walls with crayons, they’d probably scratch everything up with their claws.

  Thick, lush carpets made the floor warm and cushioned beneath my bare feet. The massive space was completely open, although furniture placement helped define smaller zones. On my right, there were rows of shelves loaded with books and several comfortable-looking chairs for reading. On my left, large body-sized pillows were scattered on the floor for lounging. I assumed it was a baby-tiger playing area. Small doors and shelves were built into the wall, likely holding toys out of sight.

  On the opposite side, the biggest bed I’d ever seen in my life sat against the curved wall. The headboard and mattress were both rounded to fit snugly against the tree’s inner wall. The ceiling was lower over the bed and gauzy curtains were hung around the massive mattress, to give some privacy.

  As I neared the bed, the tinkling sound of running water grew louder. Of course. The waterfall must run above somewhere. I hoped it didn’t spring a leak in the middle of the night.

  “This is incredible,” I said, turning back to face Tela. “This is all carved out of the living tree without harming it?”

  She smiled, her face lightening with relief. “Yes, it’s wondrous, isn’t it? It’s such a shame that we’ve lost the other treefalls. They’re irreplaceable.” She pressed a spot to the right of the bed and a wooden panel popped open. Steam billowed out. “Artisans long ago structured the plumbing so that we could heat water directly from the falls without harming the tree at all. If it’s too warm, we can adjust the temperature, though it’ll take a few minutes for the stream to reach this chamber.”

  I could barely wait to jump into a shower or tub. If the water was as nice and hot as that steam promised…

  Peeking into the small dark nook carved out of the tree, I gasped and practically danced in place. Crystals glowed softly all around, giving it a candlelit atmosphere without risking the wood. A sunken pool cloaked in steam beckoned me to strip and dive in up to my neck. Though I did hesitate a moment with a stranger present.

  “Did you have other questions, my lady?”

  Yeah, I did. Tons. I gave her a considering look and then shucked my pants anyway. I had underwear on so it wasn’t like I’d be stark naked, and I wanted to get into that pool. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d filled up a tub and soaked, let alone one that large. I hoped it was deep, too.

  The guys had prowled around naked after shifting without blinking an eye, so I had to assume most of the people here would take such a thing in stride. I pulled my top over my head and resisted the urge to
cover my breasts like a school girl as I dipped my toe in the water.

  So hot. So fantastic.

  Sighing with bliss, I slowly worked my way into the steaming hot water. “They said I was the last female Prime, but then you walked in.”

  “Ah.” Smiling, she nodded. “I’m not a Prime, my lady, though I am a Tyger. Primes are only the Tygers descended from the original leaders of the four tribes of Dhalmaria. The only Primes left are you four.”

  “Can you shift into a tiger too?”

  She shook her head. “I’m unable to shift. Most of our tribes have lost that ability. Some believe it’s the loss of our Primes over many generations that has affected our ability to transform. Others believe it’s the loss of our treefalls. No one really knows for sure.”

  I finally sat on the built-in shelf and leaned back against the carved wood. And yes, delicious hot water reached my chin. I might never leave this bath. The guys would have to come drag me to dinner. Or better yet, we’d just eat right here…

  That lead to some dangerous musings. I didn’t think I’d survive three hot guys and this incredibly hot water at the same time. Not that all three of them would ever…

  Shaking my head, I pushed that thought away, grateful the heat had already flushed my cheeks so my blush of embarrassment wasn’t obvious.

  “If you’ll excuse me, my lady, I’ll pull some clothing out for you to consider. Do you prefer to dress up or to be comfortable?”

  This was like some kind of fucking fairytale. So obviously, I said, “Dress up.”

  “Of course. I’ll be right back. If you need anything, please let me know.”

  I sank deeper in the water, luxuriating not only in the heat, but having someone take care of me, even a little bit. Any minute now I was going to wake up and this would all go away. I’d drag my weary ass to work and paste on a smile as pissed-off customers cursed me out because their bacon was too crispy. I’d resist smacking the guy who got too handsy for fear I’d lose the pittance of a tip he’d leave. And then cry after my shift because I’d already had my free meal—standing up on my five-minute break—and if I paid the rent, I wouldn’t have enough left to stop by the grocery store on the way home.