"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.
Manik let his lips wander from her mouth and nuzzled at the thick waves of hair that fell upon her shoulders, then explored with his mouth and his hands the many parts of her that he wanted to know: the swell and pout of her breasts, the beaded hardness of her nipples, and down to the part of her where she became a pear. He nuzzled the round parts of her flesh, tickling them with his nose--and all at once, he began to purr.
Yes--he purred. It was not a human imitating a purr; it was an actual feline purr, the purr of a cat, but much stronger, much deeper. It was surely the purr of a tiger. It rumbled into Lara with strong, deep fingers of vibration, like a quake of passion rolling into her body. "Oh my God," she gasped. "That's amazing."
"You're so beautifully round," he said, purring even as he spoke. "Tigers are meat-eaters, but you...you're like a round, ripe fruit. A fruit I've wanted to taste all evening. I want to know the sweetness of you. And I'm going to be inside you and fill you with me."
Lara trembled at Manik comparing her to a fruit. He was the most beautiful, exotic, and extraordinary of men, too good to be true because he was not truly human, and all the more wonderful because he was not. And he was the rarest of men, a man who craved not the lean fruit, but the succulent, round pear.
Manik stood up, presenting his maleness to her. Lara looked at it, branching out and curving down from between his legs, and wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. She touched it, and a surging feeling in the shaft felt almost like a tiger's pounce. She ran her hand up and down its fantastic, thick length, and let her fingers grow slick with the nectar exuding from its tip. She reached behind its base and carefully teased the berries in his pouch. Manik let her get the feel of him, purring ever more deeply, until he took her hand in his and said, "Climb up onto the bed and let me taste you."
Without hesitation, Lara did as she asked and presented herself to him lying down as he had shown himself standing up. Manik climbed up after her, crawling up the bed like a tiger stalking in ambush, his eyes blazing green fire, purring carnally at her. He spread Lara's legs apart and crawled between them, bringing his head to the fruit he most desired. Nestled in the pear was the pink and glistening fruit of Lara's womanhood, which Manik began hungrily to lick.
Lara tossed her head from side to side on the black satin pillows and quivered on the comforter, letting the predator claim what he had caught. Her world became the sound of him purring, sending the vibrations of his predator's desire from the wetness between her thighs up into her core. She trembled inside as much as she did on the bed from the way he plundered her petals and licked insi
de her passage, and licked up from there to the fleshy bulb that was the center of her pleasure. Never was prey so ecstatic at being devoured as Lara was at the tender mercy of Manik's mouth. Her breaths turned to rattling gasps from his licking and sucking and purring. And the greatest rapture of all, she knew, still awaited her.
As if sensing that thought, Manik took her entire flower in a deep, sensuous, probing kiss. She cried out for joy, her back arching, her knees bending, giving herself into this sensation of pleasure beyond belief. He kissed her down there long and luxuriously, savoring every second of this shared delight. When at some length the wave of euphoria subsided, Manik slowly, reluctantly moved his mouth from Lara's opening and started to kiss his way up the pear of her middle, back up to her breasts to tease the pearl-hard nipples with his tongue, and at last settled the lean, hard, beauteously sculpted perfection of his body on top of her. Overtaken with wonder at the press of that incredible physique against her softness, at the way he pinned his captured prey onto the black satin beneath them, Lara licked her lips just before he took them in a kiss to match the one he had given her below, and she braced herself for what she wanted most of all--and which he did not hesitate to give her. There was a feeling of her innermost being expanding to accept him, even as her inner walls did likewise at the long, smooth, sure stroke of his entrance. Lara gasped in mid-kiss with the head-spinning feeling of Manik moving his length and hardness deep inside her, penetrating her for the first time.
Manik pinned her wrists to the pillows with his hands and drove his crotch against her mound, sending his throbbing length as far into Lara as it would go, making her put her head back against the pillows, open her mouth wide and release the pleasure that was almost more than she could bear as a long, passionate howl. He lay atop her, responding to the sounds of her incomprehensible joy by enveloping her gaping mouth with his own and feeding her his eager tongue. Ecstatic to be so helpless, so powerless, against a tiger's desire, Lara let his mouth muffle her outcry, while her entire consciousness focused on the beating of his erection in and out of her, the slapping of his hairy crotch against her entrance, and the mix of her slippery wetness with his the woody rigor of his shaft. Her tunnel expanded inside and her womanhood flooded with moisture as she received him. He slipped into her again and again, thrusting ferociously, relentlessly, capturing her as surely as if she were something he had stalked and leapt upon in the jungle. Lara wished that she could pry her hands free and clutch at the tight firmness of his buttocks, which she was sure must feel almost as exquisite as what he was pumping within her. For want of grasping his urgently heaving rear and feeling it rise and fall with each delicious stroke of his erection, she instead tightened her thighs around his hips and savored his beats that way. And still his mouth slid against hers, and still his tongue penetrated her there, rolling voraciously in time to his thrusts down below.
Billionaire: Billionaire Romance: Billionaire Tiger (A Billionaire New Adult Shifter Contemporary Romance) Page 3
