by Jada Turner
All thoughts of going home for the moment fled as Lara crossed the street. The closer she came to the front of that hotel, the more she knew: Yes, it is. Walking up to that window, she looked at who was sitting inside, swirling the drink in his glass. The coat was the same, except at some point he had donned an immaculately pressed white dress shirt under it. The hair was the same. But that face... Lara's breath caught in her throat at the sight of that face. She almost toppled over in her high heels. She had never gazed upon such exotic handsomeness in her life. Everything wild and free, and everything gentle and lordly, lived in those features. He was as beautiful as a man as he was as a tiger.
That handsome head turned and looked out to the street, and those sparkling, soulful green eyes fell on Lara once more. The eyes blinked, and he smiled. A wave of warmth passed over Lara's body at that smile, and she smiled back--at the sight of him motioning her to come inside and join him.
CHAPTER 4
Lara could not believe it was just the two of them, that he had bought her a drink and they were alone together, facing each other across the table, and that he was as happy to see her as she was him. Happy? Yes--he was actually happy to see her.
"As I explained, Gemma was not my date," Manik said. "And I think I disappointed her quite a bit. She got into her cab and never gave me another look."
That's all right, thought Lara. I'm more than happy to look at you. "She didn't make a contribution, either," she said. "I think she had a very specific reason for being there."
"I'm sure she did. I found her rather...obvious."
Lara's face lit up at how perceptive he was. "Obvious! Yes, that's the perfect word for her. She was obvious."
With a dash of mischief under the British accent, Manik said, "Perhaps at her next function she'll be a little more attentive to the dress style, yes?"
Lara giggled. "And to how much she's had to to drink!" She hoped she wasn't making herself as obvious as Gemma, having heard Manik make a similar observation.
"I like what you chose to wear," he said. "It's exactly right."
"Thank you!" she replied, warmed again by the compliment. "And I loved your tiger face. It was so real. It was like something a Hollywood makeup artist would do. You looked like something out of a movie. When did you have the chance to take it off?"
"I took it off in the back seat of my Jaguar, where I had put my shirt. It's much easier than you'd think."
Lara almost burst out with a belly laugh at that. She loved the very English way he pronounced it: jag-you-are. "Oh my goodness, you're kidding! A Jaguar!"
"Of course," Manik said, smiling the sexiest smile that Lara had ever seen.
"We've really got a whole theme this evening," she said. "A tiger party, a woman in a leopard skin suit, a man who drives a Jaguar. That's perfect."
"Yes," he said softly. "Perfect." His eyes glittered at her.
"So, your name: Manik. Is that something related to cats too?"
He gave her a thoughtful look. "I suppose it could be if you looked at it in a certain way. Manik is an Indian name. It means ‘ruby’."
"Ruby," Lara whispered back in a quiet awe. The name was perfect. The red ruby, the color of lust. This man dazzled like a red jewel. "That's beautiful," she said.
"Lara," said Manik, "when I was speaking to Gemma earlier, I said I wanted to be alone tonight. I'm afraid what you heard was a little bit of a lie."
A hot flash of anxiety hit Lara. "I'm sorry. What I heard...?"
"Yes, when you were standing just off the entrance, listening. You heard me tell her that I wanted to be alone. I lied."
Lara's mouth fell open but only her breath came out. She fidgeted, fumbled for her purse, embarrassed. "Manik, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I did that. It was inappropriate, childish... I'm so sorry..."
What he did next was the greatest surprise of her evening. He reached across the table and took her by the hand, the same hand that he kissed at the party. She looked up with eyes filled with apology into the green pools on his face and found no rancor there, only infinite gentleness. Her heart melted while the rest of her froze. "Don't be sorry," Manik said. "I'm not offended."
Lara half-whispered, "How did you know?"
Smiling mischievously, he answered, "I'm very perceptive, remember?" The moment suspended itself in time. With her hand in his, Lara wished it could stay forever.
Somewhere at the end of forever, she heard herself say, "You said you lied...?"
"Yes. I lied. I didn't really want to be alone. It's only hers wasn't the company I wished I could have. I should have liked much better to have the company of someone...not so obvious."
Lara gulped at the implication. No, it couldn't be. Manik was not suggesting what she thought he was. All she could say was, "Oh..." Then, haltingly, tentatively, "This hotel...this is where you're staying?"
"No," he replied. "My place is a short ride away. And I'd very much like to take you there, Lara--if you'd let me."
"For another drink?"
His fingertips slipped nimbly from her hand down to her wrist. "No, Lara. Not just for another drink."
Lara's mind reeled at the thought of it. Surprise, bewilderment, fear, and most of all, disbelief—pure, incredulous disbelief--spun like a whirlpool inside her. Reflexively, she drew back her hand. No, this was not happening. This could not be happening. Manik was too beautiful, too exquisite, too perfect. There was no way he could be seriously suggesting this. There was no way he could mean it. She was a pear and he was a magnificent tiger. Perhaps Manik did not want the obvious and needy Gemma, but he certainly could not want her. Men like him did not offer what he seemed to be offering to women like Lara. The simple pleasure of his company was all that she knew she could expect from such a man.
"Manik," she said, "there's really no reason for you to say that. You're a kind, generous man. You're good and you're smart and you're funny. And there must be someone else you'd rather..."
"There isn't," he said, gently interrupting. "I've only just come to this country. I don't know anyone in America, not really. But I know what kind of person I like, and it isn't someone obvious. It's someone intelligent, and kind, and warm, and real--everything that I can tell you are. And sexy.” He winked.
"We haven't even had a whole evening together. How do you know all that about me?"
"I know, Lara. I know it from the way you spoke of the tigers; the way you talked of the danger they face from man, how important it is to help them, how horrible and sad and heartbreaking it would be to lose them. Your compassion for them touches me. I feel the same way, more than you know. But I'd like you to know. I'd like you to trust me. I want to tell you how much more I feel for the tigers than anyone else ever could. I want to show you...," he trailed off, still holding her wrist, and looked out the window, not at anything in particular. Somehow he seemed to be looking at something far, far away, something that only he could see.
Lara studied Manik as she had during the presentation. There was that look again, the look she had seen on his tiger face, repeated there on the infinite handsomeness of his human features. It was a look of the deepest sorrow, the deepest heartbreak in all the world. Seeing him look that way close up, she felt like crying. What was it about Manik and the tigers, really? What could it be?
He turned back, and when he looked at her this time, Lara almost felt some unknown physical force picking her up and carrying her into his eyes. "Come back with me, Lara," he said. "Back to my flat, back to my bed. Please spend tonight in my bed with me, and you'll understand. I find your body undeniably enticing. I need you in my bed.”
Her disbelief was now total. Lara felt as though she could topple over, out of this chair, at any second, except that he still had her by the wrist and it felt as if he would never let her go. And hearing the way he spoke, she hoped he never would. Against all reason, in spite of the pure and utter unreality of this moment, Lara wanted nothing more in the world than to do as Manik asked, to share his bed, to feel his
incredible body atop her, to be kissed by that exquisite face, to know his length and hardness thrusting deep inside her, to feel his climax shuddering from him to her. This man, her heart told her, was unlike any other she had ever seen or met, and she wanted to know how truly unlike any other man Manik was.
A moment later, they were making for the hotel lobby and his Jaguar.
CHAPTER 5
And so Lara found herself once again in a penthouse. This one was only one floor, and like Eve's, each of its rooms was large enough to fit two apartments the size of her own. It too had the most beautiful and luxurious furnishings she had ever seen, but everywhere there were more plants: more potted palms, more ferns, more wild flowers. And there were shelves full of animal sculptures and figurines--big cats, wolves, birds of prey, bears. And all of the walls were hung with paintings of the same kinds of beasts. Eve's home had been done the way it was just for the evening, but this was the way Manik actually lived. Walking from his door to his bedroom seemed even more like walking through a jungle than the party did. The whole place spoke of a love of nature and everything wild. Lara felt as if she were entering Manik's soul by entering his home. She could only imagine that he would enter her soul when their bodies joined together tonight.
Manik ushered her into the bedroom and hung his coat on a hook near the door. She found his bedroom decorated like the rest of the penthouse, and she found the king-size bed made with black satin sheets, comforter, and pillow cases. Black--the black of tiger stripes. "Sit on the bed and be comfortable," he said. She did, and he crossed the bedroom to the bar at one end. Of course a wealthy man would have a bar in his bedroom. And of course the bar had a mini-fridge, from which he produced a bottle of... "Sparkling cider," he said. "We've had plenty to drink this evening. I want us fully alert for the rest of the night." She smiled as he poured the cider into two very expensive crystal goblets. He truly thought of everything.
He brought the goblets to the foot of the bed where she was sitting and handed her one. They clinked glasses and each took a sip, and then Manik began: "My mother was from New Delhi, my father from London. They were old money. The fortune came from banking, railroads, tea. I inherited my money from both of them. But there is one thing that I inherited only from my mother. I don't want you to say anything. I just want you to let me show you. Back at the hotel, you asked about the makeup I was wearing. I want to explain to you about that. And for that...it's best if I show you. It would also be best if you put down your glass."
Lara leaned down to rest her glass of cider on the floor by the foot of the bed. Her heartbeat quickened with curiosity. What could this be about?
Fixing the green gems of his eyes on her as if to pin her to the spot, Manik rested his wine glass on the arm of the bedroom sofa behind him. He quickly unbuttoned and peeled off his shirt and let it drop to the carpet. Lara drew a sudden, deep breath at the spectacular sight of him fully shirtless for the first time, showing everything that his open coat had only hinted at during the party. A god incarnate could not have had a finer body than this man. She watched raptly as he kicked off his imported black loafers, slipped off his socks, unbuckled his belt, unzipped his trousers. With quick, sure motions, he pulled down and stepped out of his pants, letting them lie with his shirt on the floor at his feet. All that was left on his awesome body was a black silk thong. Above the thong was a deep, dark thicket of pubic hair. Below it was a pouch holding the most awesome thing of all, something massive and swelling and straining to be released. At the sight of Manik almost naked, Lara felt her muscles growing as limp as the hugeness in that pouch was growing hard.
"Now, Lara," he said, "...watch."
She did. And as Manik stood so gloriously before her, something happened. His skin and muscles, so tanned and perfect, darkened in places. Lara thought at first it was a trick of the light in the room, but it was not the light that was changing. It was Manik. The darkening places on his skin took on a pattern--a pattern of stripes. Tiger stripes.
Lara gaped and gasped, her one hand flying to her mouth, her other hand clutching the satin comforter. Her eyes moved incredulously up and down his suddenly striped body, even as he changed more. The fantastically muscled skin broke out into fur. Orange and white fur covered his legs, arms, and shoulders. White fur coated his chest and abdomen. The stripes of black skin turned to black stripes of tiger pelt. A tiger's orange and black striped tail unfurled from behind him and twitched in the air.
From Lara's gaping mouth, the words, "Oh my God!" clawed and scratched their way out, even as Manik's hands and feet turned to things that looked half like paws with dagger-sharp talons. Lara saw his face become the man-tiger visage he had worn at the party, and then change even more. Human ears shifted to the top of his head and became tiger's ears. The entire shape of the head turned from human to a mighty, massive feline. His voice--still the same voice, but deepened with his transformation into something that was as much animal as man--rumbled to her, "This is how I knew you were listening to me and Gemma. I caught your scent nearby. This is what I am, Lara--like my mother before me."
Lara's entire body went into a clench. She clamped one hand around her mouth to hold in her scream, while hugging herself with the other arm as if to stop herself exploding with fright. She forced her hand from her mouth just enough to plead, shuddering, "Please don't hurt me. Please. Please..."
"Why would I hurt you, Lara? I don't want to hurt you. I want to do to you what I told you I wanted to do back at the hotel. But first I wanted you to see me for what I am. And I wanted you to know why I feel for the tigers even more than you do, more than anyone like you ever could. I am a tiger and I mean you no harm. If you are afraid of me, go. You'll never see me again. I'll never try to contact you in any way. I'll never try to go near you. It will be as if we never met. But if you can find it in yourself not to fear me, I'll take you to my bed, and I will hold you and lie with you and be inside you all night, and I will make you happy in a way that no human ever could."
At his words, Lara unclenched--slowly, haltingly at first, but surely. She watched him staring at her with the eyes that were the only thing about him that had remained the same through his impossible transformation, and before she even knew it, she was sitting calmly on the bed again, looking up at him. Then the tears came. She felt the wetness of her tears rolling down her face, and her body shook with sobs.
"My kind is very rare, Lara," said Manik. "Even more rare than real tigers. But we have all the same feelings as you. We feel them as a man or woman would--and as an animal does. For we are truly both."
Forcing herself to stop sobbing just enough to speak, Lara said, "The things we've done to tigers, making them almost extinct... Your kind must hate us so. Why don't you hate us? Why did you ask me here to make love to me? Why do you want me?"
"Hate is a human thing," Manik replied. "I don't believe in hate. For every tiger who dies at human hands, we know pain. You cause us great pain, greater than you could ever imagine, greater than you could ever know. But I don't hate you. Hating makes the hurt worse."
"But the others, your people...don't you want to turn on us? Don't you want revenge for the tigers? You should want us all dead. You should want to kill us."
"Where would that get us?" he asked. "There are billions more of you than there are of us. If we turned on you the way you say we should, we would very soon go the way of the real tigers. No human would stand up for us, feel for us, the way you do for the tigers. And that, as I said before, is why I wanted you--why I want you. Gemma would never have understood any of this, not like you. A woman like Gemma would never cry for a tiger. To cry for a tiger takes a woman like you."
With a blink of his eyes, Manik let go his tiger form, willing his body to melt and morph back to human, except for the tiger stripes that remained lying up and down the muscles of his frame. The stripes stayed, the sign of his most powerful arousal. Lara was only dimly aware that she was no longer crying. He stood there for a moment more, as
if to reassure her that the thing she saw would never try to do her harm. Then he moved his hands to his thong and pulled it down, and let what it contained fall free. The second Manik slipped off the black silken thong and let it fall to the floor, a long, thick branch of flesh unfurled. The limb of his maleness had no stripes, but the shaft of it was almost as dark as his stripes. The ample foreskin enclosed a broad, blunt, reddened head at whose tip a bead of man-honey glistened. Behind the shaft, two round and delicious berries nestled in a fleshy pouch of their own. Now Manik was revealed in his fullest glory, at the sight of which Lara drew deep breaths of wonder.
Almost like a stalking predator, Manik walked the few steps from where he was standing to the bed. He crouched before Lara and put her arms around his shoulders. "I am real," he said, his voice once again human and oh, so British. "And what I showed you wants nothing more than to enter and take you, not as a tiger but as a man." This he said, even as the slashes of black up and down his body spoke of a sex that would be more than human, the sex of a beast who would make her his most willing prey. At once his mouth was at hers, seizing and taking what it wanted. His kiss was the kiss of man and animal, his tongue demanding to please her and be pleased by her. Lara opened her being to him, suddenly feeling as free as anything in the wilderness, accepting his kiss and returning it with her own.
The next moments became a blur of desire unleashed. Lara was aware of nothing but his smooth, hard muscles against her skin as her clothes and shoes came off. He stripped her naked and, keeping her sitting there on the foot of the bed, enclosed her in his arms and crushed her against his chest, and wetly seized her mouth with his once more. He kissed her as if to drink in the essence of all that she was. She wrapped her arms around him and let him take her this way, quivering at the knowledge of what lay below, between his thighs, and all the ways that Manik would take her tonight.
