* * *
When Tiger woke again, the afternoon was waning, long blocks of light slanting through the windows. He’d learned that in this season—summer—the light lingered for a long time, so it could be eight in the evening already.
The first sensation he had was one of rightness. His body felt much better, the horrific pain gone. His headache had receded, leaving only a slight pounding to remind him of the previous hurt.
The second was stunned wonder. Much of the rightness he felt came from the fact that Carly was lying next to him, curled up under the sheet, her head on a pillow.
Tiger’s bed was large, the biggest in the house. He was as bulky as Liam, though he shared height with Ronan, a Kodiak bear Shifter. Kim had gotten Tiger a bigger bed because when Tiger had first arrived, he’d been restless at night, rolling from side to side. Hard to find comfort on the small mattress that had been Connor’s when his previous sleeping pallet had been the metal floor of a cage. After he’d fallen out of the smaller bed a few times, Kim had brought home the larger one.
Carly had plenty of room in the bed. The fan played near the window. It, combined with the cooling breeze from all four open windows, had made Carly pull the sheet over herself. One thigh, covered with a couple of inches of the canvas-cloth shorts she’d put on at Ethan’s, poked out from beneath the sheet.
Her makeup was smeared from the accident and sleep, her hair was messed from its careful French braid. Beautiful. Tiger would explain that Carly didn’t need the face paint and her hair tucked away for her to be pretty.
But she was unhurt. Tiger scented that from her, saw it in her unbroken skin. She’d been bruised and afraid, but not hurt. He let himself believe in the Goddess long enough to be thankful.
Before the crash, Carly had been teaching Tiger about kissing. When the subject had first come up, Liam had told Tiger that Liam hadn’t known how to kiss either. Kim had taught him. He’d implied that not knowing how to kiss wasn’t a problem for Shifters, and that was when Connor had said Tiger would learn when the time came.
Tiger brushed a wisp of hair from Carly’s cheek. He knew he needed to make his way to Ronan’s and question Walker. He needed to know why Walker had been sent to watch Carly, and why a man dressed in the same kind of black fatigues had shot Tiger in the back more than a dozen times.
But the house was quiet, the street outside quiet as well. Shifters would be inside eating their nightly meal, talking to their mates and cubs, mothers and fathers, sharing time with family. Later, the more nocturnal ones would be out with neighbors, playing with cubs in the long stretch of green behind the houses, or leaving Shiftertown to go to the bar Liam managed or one of the clubs in town that allowed Shifters.
Or they might go to the fight club that was held once a week, where Shifters took out their aggressions in the ring, with the rest of the Shifters betting like crazy on the outcomes.
Tiger wasn’t allowed to fight in the fight club. They didn’t trust him, and Tiger agreed with that. To him, fighting wasn’t a game. It was survival. Kill or be killed.
Right now, his bed was the best place to be. He was hard and ready, wanting Carly. But just lightly touching her while she slept filled something in Tiger he hadn’t realized was empty.
Tiger leaned over. Remembering how to pucker his lips and how to release the pressure at the correct moment, he kissed her cheek.
Carly blinked once, then again, then her smile blossomed. “Oh, hey.” She slid herself to a sitting position and tucked stray locks of hair behind her ears. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“You stayed.”
Carly shrugged. “I told Armand about the accident, and he said that under no circumstance was I to come to work. He said he’d make Yvette answer the phones and beg her to be nice to people.” She laughed a little. “Yvette has the biggest heart in the world, but she doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She’ll save their lives and fix them the best meal they’ll ever eat, but she will give them her unvarnished opinions about them at the same time.”
“Glory is the same. Except she can’t cook.”
Carly laughed again, drawing her knees to her chest and circling her arms around them. How wonderful, Tiger thought as he studied the softness of her thighs, to know people—who weren’t researchers studying him—to know enough about them to make jokes.
“Looks like you’re feeling better,” Carly said.
Tiger put his hand to his abdomen. A few twinges went off at his touch, but that was all. As before, his body had closed up, was making itself whole again.
“Why did you stay?” he asked.
“I just told you. Armand said . . .”
“No.” Tiger sat up with her, reflecting that he was tired of lying on his back. He propped himself on the headboard, leaning an arm on his drawn-up knee. “You could have gone home. Gone anywhere. But you stayed.”
A flush of color stained her cheeks. “I was worried about you.”
“Why? You saw that I was healing.”
“Tiger, no one gets shot twice in as many days and heals faster the second time. Dylan said it was like your body was changing, like it was adapting to the circumstance.”
He shrugged, and even that didn’t hurt. “They wanted me to be the best fighting machine ever. Gave me drugs that hurt like hell, and surgeries, always surgeries. And then tested me and gave me more drugs. I was the only one who survived.”
Carly’s eyes widened. “There were more like you?”