Roar For More (Online Shifter Dating Agency Romance)

by Winter, Sasha

  And damn…he’s more than just ‘attractive’. He might actually be the sexiest man I’ve ever seen, she thought.

  They would need to use some of the climbing equipment for the last stage of the trek, though Jesse insisted it was only for the sake of professionalism—they could have easily made the climb freehand, but any clumsiness could have resulted in a broken ankle, and all good mountain climbers know that the risk is not worth taking.

  All the same, Aubrey was beginning to wonder how much farther the water was. She was beginning to think they weren’t getting anywhere quickly now, but she was underestimating the ability of a jagged landscape to deceive, as all of a sudden the ground before them gave way and she found herself looking out on a body of beautiful, bright-blue water.

  “Oh, wow! I’d expected to be able to see it from a distance,” Aubrey said, smiling while catching her breath.

  “It does sneak up on you,” Jesse replied. “I can never quite remember which part of the climb is the last, but I hope it was worth it.”

  “Oh, absolutely! It’s beautiful here. I imagined some boring manmade construction but this is terrific.”

  Almost as terrific as your biceps, she thought, glancing over at him and admiring his rippling muscular arms as he slid his jacket off and wiped his brow.

  “One of the secret places of nature,” Jesse agreed. “There’s plenty of them out there, but you don’t know about them if you don’t go looking.”

  For a few more moments they stood taking in the scenery, but Aubrey knew she could not hang around admiring Colorado for too long. She had work to do and had to make sure she searched the site thoroughly. Her suspicions had been that some kind of noxious chemical had been seeping into the water, but the site seemed so clean that she found no concerns when studying any of the grassed or rocky banks. There were no substances left behind by any engineers charged with maintaining the site; no litter or strange-looking vegetation. It wasn’t long before her thoughts naturally turned to the small building that sat on the grassy half of the bank, and she wondered if any secrets might be waiting within. Could something toxic have been kept in there and allowed to leak out into the water?

  Unfortunately, the door was locked and of a firm structure, and it would have been silly to attempt to break through, even if they were in the mood…though Jesse did offer to try.

  “Stupid of me not to think of it sooner,” Jesse said, annoyed with himself. “Pretty sure a copy of the keys are kept in the town hall’s water department; we could have just brought them with us.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Aubrey replied, refusing to let him take any blame. “I didn’t even let you know the real reasons for coming here until we were halfway up the trail. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s my own. Besides, I can take a water sample. That might give me what I need once I get it back to the lab. Look at this, though…”

  She was pointing to the grass leading up to the office door. Though the ground was fairly firm at that time of year, scorched by the baking sun, it was still pretty obvious that they were not the only recent visitors to the reservoir.

  “Someone seems to have been coming here frequently.”

  “Well, sure, it must be someone’s job to keep an eye on the place,” Jesse replied.

  “Let’s just hope they know what they’re doing. Something’s definitely going wrong, but it all just looks so clean and perfect here. I’m inclined to think we could do with looking in this building, though—might mean you have to put up with me again if I have to come back.”

  Jesse chuckled at that.

  “It will be a pleasure, Aubrey. Anyway, it’s possible we can get back in time to catch someone at the town hall. If not I’ll go there tomorrow and ask about access.”

  “I’ve got you running favors for me now, huh?” she asked, quirking her lips up.

  “Hey, you’re the one trying to save my people. Seems to me I should be doing a lot more,” he reflected. “Anyway, my hiking friend, it’s a beautiful day, but shall we head back?”

  “Yeah…oh wait, bear with me while I take a water sample,” Aubrey replied.

  The body of water was dug deep into the mountainside and the banks were steep. Any attempt to make contact with the water without actually jumping in demanded lying on the ground and taking a full arm’s reach. Aubrey wanted one sample from the main body of water itself and one from the water filtration unit, allowing her to assess any significant differences.

  After having taken the first sample, she found the depth of the filtration unit to be somewhat kinder and so thought that by just bending her knees she could obtain the sample.

  This was an awful mistake.

  Regardless of how well Aubrey had quashed Jesse’s expectations that she might be too soft for the trek, the fact was that her legs were naturally achy after their long hike, and she underestimated by how much. The unbalancing came when she went to stand back up and her legs decided they needed extra strength to complete the act. Foolishly her instincts were to cling to the samples in her hands rather than dropping them to steady herself. They were precious, of course, but not more precious than her very life.

  And yet here she was, tumbling headfirst into the water.

  What the hell just happened? Was the first thought to register other than the realization that she was head to toe in water. Getting soaked was the least of her problems, however. She’d fallen right in the filtration unit where the current was strongest, and before she could even think about swimming or resurfacing she felt it drag her under.

  Only then did the direness of her situation sink in.

  The current was powerful and instinctively she knew that even if she had been prepared for the attempt, her limbs were simply not strong enough to fight against it, no matter how much she flailed around. Oh, shit.

  In her panic, her mind seemed to work at a million miles per second. Her understanding of the filtration unit’s inner workings was sketchy, and a flurry of questions ran through her head. Was it going to spit her out somewhere and allow her to surface? It certainly didn’t feel that way; in fact, it felt like the current was holding her still, and attempting to move in any direction was impossible. Her head was in contact with something above, probably concrete, and she was able to remain upright by pushing up with the palms of her hands, but this was about all she could do with her arms.

  God…I know what’s going to happen, she thought, I’m going to drown. Shit, shit, shit…

  As her lungs began to hurt from lack of oxygen, the yearning for air became so unbearable that every fiber of her being was poised for agony.

  And yet she couldn’t even scream, trapped underwater as she was.

  Some people reported seeing angels coming to collect them during near-death experiences. Maybe some saw devils too but don’t care to admit so afterwards. What Aubrey saw, however, would most likely have made no sense to any religious sect whatsoever.

  She could not see very far and would have been right in concluding that she remained under the manmade structure—if the ability to think remained intact—but what she could see ahead of her in the murky dark water was suddenly filled with a an image that would have terrified anyone who had not already readied themselves for death. Of all the wondrous beasts the animal kingdom boasted, it was one that needed no introduction to even the most ignorant. Even those who had never seen one in person didn’t need reminding of what a tiger looked like, or explaining what one was capable of. If wildness had a face, then it was surely a tiger’s.

  Right now, that was the face that Aubrey saw coming for her mid-drowning.

  There was no time to take this absurdity in. Aubrey’s grip on reality slipped away as water filled her lungs, and all she could really see now was a series of flashes of color before she woke up again, looking upon a great expanse of blue. If it was heaven she was staring up at, then it would have been just fine with her, but it was plain old Earth’s sky that she lay gazing at. The water that had gotten into her lungs had es
caped and she was breathing again, though she couldn’t remember how.

  What the hell happened to me?

  When she was finally able to move and look around, she saw Jesse lying beside her. He was wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, and he was lying back and breathing heavily as well.

  “Jesse!” she cried, forcing herself to sit up. “That…that was you?”

  He nodded, dragging in another deep breath.

  “I…I don’t even know to thank you,” she said, tears filling her eyes as a rush of emotion swept through her. She barely knew the guy, and he’d risked his life to save her own.

  “No worries,” he said, as if it hadn’t been a big deal at all.

  “You’re a tiger? At least…I saw a tiger, I think.”

  “Sure, that was me. No way I could have done that swim in human form.”

  “But you never said. I assumed you were a wolf or a puma.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “I’ve never met a tiger. At least not in person. You really…you saved my life.”

  “It’s fine. You feeling okay? You really had me scared, y’know. You just splashed right in all of a sudden.”

  Aubrey tilted her head to the side and tipped more water out of her ears. “I…um…I’ll live. I’m just in shock, I think.”

  “There was a load of water you spat out before you came round. I was so relieved when I finally saw you breathing again.”

  His voice was gruff and yet still somehow soft, and Aubrey felt another surge of desire towards the man, despite how inappropriate it was at a time like this. She shifted uncomfortably, trying to ignore the growing heat between her legs, and the wetness that was most certainly not from the reservoir she’d just been dragged out of.

  “What a fucking idiot I am,” she then said, recalling what she had done. She rarely swore, but this occasion really called for it. “I can’t believe I just fell in there like that.”

  “We got you the right shoes and everything,” Jesse said, trying to lighten the mood with a silly joke. “But please…don’t do that again.”

  “Don’t worry, I think it will be a while before I even trust myself boiling the kettle,” she said with a rueful smile. “I still can’t believe you’re a tiger! Wait…are you okay?”

  Bewildered as she was by her own actions, Aubrey suddenly realized that Jesse didn’t look so good, and she recalled that he had been against the idea of shifting considering how unwell he had been feeling.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just catching my breath.”

  “Did shifting hurt you?”

  “I’ll be okay. I feel a bit like I’ve run a marathon, but I’ll make it back,” he said, making the effort to sit up. As he did so, Aubrey was unprepared for how close together they were; she could easily just thrust her head forward and kiss him.

  And that was exactly what she did.

  Of course it was just to thank him, to show him her gratitude for saving her. Wait, no…who was she kidding? She was pressed up against him, passionately pressing her lips against his, and the soaking shirt that clung so tightly to her breasts pressed up against his bare chest, thumping with the relief of being alive and ignited with the flame of sexual attraction allowed to burn.

  This was more than a grateful kiss.

  It was another thing entirely…

  Chapter 6

  Their lips grazed together softly at first, but Aubrey and Jesse were both impatient from all the sexual tension that had been building up between the two of them, even though they’d only known each other for a day. He pulled her in closer, bodies meshing together perfectly in a tight embrace, and she moaned softly into his mouth as his tongue explored hers in a kiss so hot it could’ve set the reservoir behind them on fire. She could feel a distinct hardness digging up against her thigh, and it sent wild shivers down her spine as she pictured how wonderful it would feel to have him inside her.

  Jesse finally broke away, and the two of them spent several moments looking into each other’s eyes before Aubrey broke the link, sighing and thumping back down on her back. Once again she needed time to let her lungs take in air.

  The kiss had been unbelievably intense, filling her with tingling desire, and if Jesse had put his hands on her, taken her in his arms and begun to remove her sopping wet clothing, she would have let him go all the way. She wanted him to, in fact. If there had been a more lust-fuelled moment in her life she could not remember it. The fact he had risked his life to save hers and now lay there almost naked under a clear blue sky, in a great outdoors that was all theirs to make love in without caring that a wide horizon might reveal them to anyone, was a missed chance that would take some getting over.

  Just because he’d ended the kiss didn’t mean he’d rejected her, though. He’d kissed her back just as passionately, tenderly putting his fingers up to her face and stroking her flushing cheeks, but his state of exhaustion seemed to mean that it just wasn’t going to happen, at least not right at that moment. He might be a ladies man; she had gotten that impression of him straight away, but he most likely had a disease in his system that was a possible killer. His caution was not something to take personally; he had saved her life against the odds—surely that was enough to take from the day.

  “So…why didn’t you tell me you were a tiger?” she asked again, too pleased to be alive to care about being embarrassed over the kiss. “No offence, but I didn’t take you as being too reserved when we first met.”

  “As a shifter, I guess there’s a sense of pride over not having to explain yourself, but if you asked I would have told you,” he replied with a smile.

  “What was it like, swimming in there as a tiger?” she asked, nodding back towards the water.

  “Felt like a blur, honestly. My instincts are fading, I can only remember an image of you struggling for air. Sorry for the holes in your new jacket, by the way.”

  “Huh? Oh…”

  Of course, she realized, he had dragged her back to the surface with his teeth; a set of the most ferocious jaws in the animal kingdom coming to her aid. For once she really appreciated irony.

  “I…erm…I have to tell you something,” she said. “But you might not want to hear it.”

  “Shoot,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Thing is, Jesse, it all makes a lot more sense now that I know you’re a tiger, which means I’m pretty certain that you have this damn disease, as much as I hate to say it. I have to be totally honest with you, though, seeing as you just saved my life and all.”

  “What do you mean? How does being a tiger change things?” he asked, furrowing his brows.

  “Well, I don’t want to get too much into the boring science stuff.”

  “Is it something you can put in simple folk’s terms?”

  “Not exactly, but people like you who hide their intelligence will be fine,” she said with a wry smile.

  “Leave the sweet-talking to me, Aubrey; you focus on the science stuff,” he said with a wide grin.

  “All right. Well, basically, one of the things I noticed was that the virus is a bit quicker in paralyzing women than men. My studies showed that this was related to two factors; muscle density and adrenaline—or basically how strong you are, if you prefer.”

  “You trying to flatter me while penning my obituary? That’s a first.”

  She smiled, amazed at how calmly he was reacting to the situation. “Come on, Jesse,” she said, sitting up to look at him again. “How much stronger than a puma is a tiger? Five times stronger? Ten times?”

  “I’ve never really had to think about it.”

  “It explains why your symptoms are delayed. They’re actually completely normal for your muscle density. We just haven’t had any tiger shifters who have caught the disease yet, because tiger shifters are so damned rare. It didn’t occur to me earlier.”

  “I don’t quite feel as attractive knowing I’m diseased. What a horrible word.”

  “Seriously, though, Jesse, we nee
d to get you back to town. I know I’m stronger than you thought I was but I can’t carry you back.”

  “I’ll make it. But can you cure this thing, Aubrey?” Jesse asked, for the first time letting out some sign of stress that he might have a deadly condition.

  “I think I can,” she said, finding a strangely aggressive tone from nowhere; one that someone might use before entering a boxing ring. “It’s why I came. Finding the source quickens the research, because if I’ve found it I can nail the bastard in hours, or at least find a way of blocking it. Blood viruses aren’t invincible to the advances of science; they’re easy to kill as soon as we can see their ugly faces.”

  “You’re really something, you know,” Jesse replied.

  “You saved my life, Jesse. I’m going to work like a honeybee on acid to make sure that you’re cured. There’s just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  She blushed deeply. “Do you think you could watch over me while I replace my water samples?”

  ***

  Trek accomplished, Aubrey and Jesse made their way back down the trail, eventually to a dying evening light. Aubrey had been worried about Jesse on the way, but he’d been fine once they got going and just said he needed a good meal. Tigers must really be powerful creatures, she thought, wondering how early humans had ever shared the same landscape with them.

  Once they were finally back in town, she broke it to him that there was something more she needed.

  “I need a sample from you,” she said.

  “A sample of what?” he asked, lips quirking up in a mischievous smile.

  She pressed her lips together to hide her amusement. “Blood.”

  “Thank god for that.”

  Recalling how difficult it had been to talk him into being her guide, she was able to reflect that they had come a long way since then, despite having only known each other for just over a day. He gave up a blood sample without so much as a whine or a whimper and, regardless of what their earlier kiss had meant, she believed she had found a most unlikely friend. If only we could be more than friends…