Лорел Гамильтон - Dead Ice

The new form was like a reset and he was suddenly hard and impossibly big inside me. It was still black furred arms that reached for my shoulder, but the arms, like other parts of his body, seemed bigger. Claws dug in to hold me in place as he thrust one last time, so deep inside me that it was just this side of too much, just this side of pain, but it was the kind of pain you’d sell your soul for just one more time.

Blood began to ooze down my shoulder as the claws tightened and his body convulsed inside mine. He gave another coughing scream, and I knew before I looked back over my shoulder that it would be the tiger with fire-colored eyes that was pouring himself thick and hot inside me.

I HEARD THE door open behind us but couldn’t see anything but the change of light behind the tigerman’s body. I called out, “It’s Micah, he’s all right, I’m safe.” I trusted Micah, I did, I did, damn it.

“Holy shit!” A man’s voice from the door.

The tiger snarled over its shoulder, its claws digging in a little more, so that blood trickled faster from the points of its claws in my skin.

Rafael spoke from the bed. “Do not startle him.”

“Us, startle him?” I could see Benito now as he moved farther into the room so he could see me around the tiger’s body, so if he had to shoot the bullet wouldn’t go through the weretiger and into me.

“It’s Micah, he has two forms now,” Bram said; I knew his voice without seeing him.

“That’s not possible,” Benito said.

Rafael said, “I saw him change form; it is Micah. I don’t know how it is possible, but it is him.”

I looked at the floor, where my blood was starting to form tiny drop patterns. “Micah . . .” But the growl came again, and this time he leaned over me, nuzzling me, pressing his face into my hair, until I could feel the hard push of his muzzle against the back of my neck. Male cats often bite the back of their mate’s neck during sex, but if what I was feeling bit the back of my human neck I was gone, or crippled for life, unless I could heal it.

Bram stepped wide around us, hands held out so that his gun was pointed at the ceiling. “Micah, Nimir-Raj, can you hear me? I am one of your leopards.”

His breath was hot as he huffed into my hair, but he wasn’t just getting my scent; I was getting his and my black tiger snarled inside me, awake and pissed. We didn’t like the claws in our shoulder, not one bit.

“Run, get Jade, bring her here, now!” Bram said. I heard someone running away, and Benito was still in the room, so there were more guards in the hallway.

“Micah,” Rafael said, “say something, let us know you understand us and that you are not going to hurt Anita.”

The tiger leaned back from my hair. I felt a tension ease from the muscles in his arms, and the claws in my shoulder eased. “I’m here. I’m here,” he said in a voice that was lower and deeper, coming from the chest of the tiger, bigger than even his leopardman form could boast.

Benito spoke, “My king, move to me, you do not need to be here.”

“Is that right, Micah, are you a danger to us?”

“I am aware, but I am having some issues regaining full control,” the tigerman said; for some reason I couldn’t think of him as Micah the way I did his panther form.

“What kind of issues?” Benito asked.

“Do not shoot him, Benito,” Rafael said.

“The room is too small, and you are too close, my king.”

“Anita, call your leopard, remind him who he is,” Bram said, and he knelt, very slowly, down beside us as the tiger turned and snarled at him.

“I’m sorry,” Micah said. “I don’t like how many people are in the room, or the guns.”

Bram kept his hands up, gun pointed skyward, but he was less than three feet from us; he might not get the gun down, pointed, and fired this close before the weretiger was on him. He wasn’t just risking his life; he was offering it.

I wanted to say, Bram, don’t , but my own tiger chose that moment to start running up that long corridor inside me. She was coming to take care of us, to give us claws and fangs to fight back. The spatter pattern on the floor was growing more decorative, and the trickles down my arm had finally met the spatter so it was beginning to pool. I was hurt, bleeding. It made it hard to argue with the tiger as she raced to help.

“My black tiger is coming, Micah.”

The weretiger snuffled my neck again, but it wasn’t a growl he breathed out against my spine this time. It was almost a . . . purr. “She smells good to this body.”

“She won’t be good if you bring her; she’s pissed that we’re hurt.”

He bent over me, and it was as if he hadn’t realized what he’d done until that moment. “Oh, Anita, I’m so sorry, I’ve never hurt you like this before.”

“You might dismount before her tiger forces the issue, my friend,” Rafael said.

“Please, Micah, she’s close, and she’s not listening to me.”

He started to pull out of me, moving his hips back, but his body still mostly inside me. I saw my tiger leap like a piece of darkness made furred and muscled, snarling, and she crashed into me. It was like getting hit by a freight train, except my body was the tracks and the train and the prison she was trying to break. The impact drove me upward, shoving me into the weretiger on top of me, sending us both careening across the room and into the wall. His body took the impact or I’d have broken something.

My human body was stunned, breathless, smashed against the furred body behind me, but the tigress could move. She sprang to her feet, but something about my being stunned let her stand in my human body, so that we were suddenly in the hallway facing back toward the doorway, snarling, crouched on the balls of my feet and fingertips, as if I couldn’t remember if I was four- or two-legged.

The weretiger that was Micah spilled through the doorway on all fours, the massive humanoid upper body hunched as it looked at me with eyes like fire. I screamed at it, and it was a tiger’s scream that felt like it tore my throat just to make the noise, but it was as if the tigress had figured out how to drive and I couldn’t get back behind the wheel. All I could do was watch as she launched us at the black figure in the doorway.

Bram was there to block my arm, to stand between me and my prey. I tried to slash his face, but the claws I could “see” in my head passed through him as if they weren’t there. I tried to throw a left hook, but my shoulder wasn’t working right, and Bram just pushed my arm down and moved into me, forcing me back not with blows, but just his size. He was taller than me and he shouldn’t have been. My tiger was bigger than that; it was . . . wrong.

My tiger snarled and it came out of my mouth, but it hurt as if my throat couldn’t, or shouldn’t, make the sound. I dropped to my knees and could see Micah past Bram’s legs. He was still in tiger form, but he reached out for me with a clawed hand still stained with my blood. “I’m sorry.”

He collapsed slowly to the floor, hand still reaching for me. I started to crawl toward him, but Bram knelt down and stopped me. “I don’t know if he’s himself yet.”

I understood the words, and my inner tiger agreed he was too dangerous to approach, but me, myself, I wanted to touch him. The black tigerman looked at me, and then from one blink to another his eyes changed from orange and yellow to Micah’s chartreuse leopard eyes. He slid to his side and looked at me as the black fur began to slide away and his human body melted upward through the black-on-black stripes.

I went to him when he was back to being my Micah, and no one stopped me as I knelt by him. He put his hand in mine and looked up at me. “I love you, Anita.”