Shelly Laurenston: Here Kitty, Kitty!

This was bad. Really, really bad. She didn’t even know they had tiger shifters. What did tigers do? Christ, weren’t they man-eaters or something? And what about all the Pack-Pride bullshit? Were all cats involved in that or the lions only?

Goddammit! Where the hell is Miki when I need her ass?

Angie realized how quiet it had suddenly become. Real quiet. She strained to hear anything as she took several small steps forward.

She stopped abruptly, closing her eyes. She didn’t know how long he’d been behind her, but she knew he stood there now. She could feel him.

She steadied the gun in her hand and spun around to clobber him with it. But he was fast and strong. He grabbed her around the waist, yanking her up against his naked body with one hand while the other snatched the gun from her.

They stared at each other as he threw the gun out the open balcony window he’d come through. She could feel his hard chest against her tits. Her legs straddled one of his enormous, rock solid thighs.

Holy shit, he’s fuckin’ gorgeous.

He glared at her. “You are so payin’ for that door.”

Then he dropped her on her ass.

“You rude, motherfucker!”

“You try to kill me in my own home and I’m rude?”

“ You kidnapped me! ”

“Woman, I did no such thing.” As he spoke, he looked up and saw his brothers staring at him through his poor abused door. He saw the truth in their eyes. Christ, they had kidnapped her. Those idiots!

“Well, how do you explain me getting here, hillbilly?”

He looked back at the beautiful woman sitting on his floor. Man but she was pretty. Shame she was such a highfalutin’ bitch.

“There seems to be some kind of misunderstanding—”

“Really, Jethro? Ya think?”

He closed his eyes and counted to ten. He needed to remain calm. Although this woman seriously tested the tiger in him. When he opened his eyes again to answer her, calmly, she was diving for the open window.

With a roar that shook the house, he went after her. He had her by the waist before she even reached the balcony. That’s all he needed. Some crazy heifer with a broken leg because she jumped out his second-story window.

“You motherfuckingbastardsonofabitchwhorecocksuckerprick !”

Nik dragged the kicking, screaming woman out of his bedroom and to the room that had belonged to his old Aunt Abby. A crazy tigress, she’d believed everyone plotted constantly in hopes of stealing her valued “possessions”. So when she moved in for the last year of her life, she’d insisted on a walk-in closet with a lovely lock on it. For the first time since the old woman died, Nik locked that closet. Right after he tossed her crazy butt inside.

She kicked and screamed louder, but Nik ignored it as he adjusted the padlock. He had to find out what the hell his brothers had been up to and he still hadn’t had his cup of coffee.

Nik was not a happy man.

Angie banged on the door one more time, but she knew he’d left the room. She felt him leave, even though he did it silently.

“Goddamn redneck!” She hadn’t been this angry in a long time. Not since the judge ordered her to go to anger management. One little incident with a baseball bat and a guy’s knees and suddenly she’s marked as a raging lunatic. Typical.

She felt around in the dark and eventually found a light. Flicking it on, she yelped in surprise and jumped back as far as she could manage.

She stared at the stuffed wolf silently staring back at her. Angie didn’t want to know if it was once like Sara since, upon death, the shifters didn’t change back.

She bit back a sob of absolute rage. She wanted to go home.

Now!

A pair of jeans quickly pulled on, Nik walked into his kitchen. A cup of fresh, hot coffee found its way into his hand and his butt forced into one of the kitchen chairs.

“Drink it, Nik,” Reena ordered as she poured herself a cup. “Before you say or do anything that we’ll all regret, drink your damn coffee.”

With a low growl, he took a sip. French roasted. His cousin and sister knew him well. He had what he considered “foo foo” coffee in his cabinets. But he kept that for company—when he had company. He liked coffee strong enough to remove old paint.

“Feel better?” Kisa asked as she handed Aleksei, her twin, a piece of cantaloupe. Aleksei took it and took another step toward the exit. As did Bannik. Idiots.

“Don’t even think about leavin’.” Nik took another sip of his coffee. His head hurt. Man, that woman had a lethal way with a toilet.

“Why is that woman in my house?”

Bannik and Aleksei glanced at each other. Apart, they were two of the brightest men Nik knew. Predators with hearts of gold. But together…Lord, they could be stupid.

“It’s the girl from the airport,” Alek offered. Like that was an explanation.

Reena sat down catty-corner from Nik. “What girl at the airport?”

Ban grinned. “Big brother here practically tackled that poor girl at the airport ’cause he thought she was cute.”

“I didn’t tackle her.” Nik looked at his cousin, who was really more of a sister to him. Her mother, for reasons no one could quite put their finger on, had shunned Reena when she was barely seven. The tigress stopped caring for her, feeding her, or anything else. Reena wandered over to their territory and his mother took her in, raising her as one of her own. “It was an accident.”

Reena raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure. You are known for being quite clumsy.”

“Shut up.”

“Anyway, we got to this town Daddy wants so bad and there she was. Struttin’ around all those wolves like she owned the place. A full-human.”

“Still doesn’t explain how she got in my goddamn house.”

“I’m gettin’ to that.” Ban scratched the scar across his stomach. The price he’d paid for his daughter. Tiger females were brutal lovers, but Ban loved his daughter and Nik feared for any man who would one day come into her adult life. “See, she has this little store with really nice stuff in it. Me and Alek would go and check it out, ya know, every day or so. Anyway, last time we were there, she left early and when we walked out, we smelled hyena. Which seemed strange, ’cause it’s wolf territory.”

Nik’s head fell back with a sigh. “I am so bored by this.”

Ban didn’t use less words, but he did talk faster. “Anyway, we go to the parking lot to see if she was okay, and she’s got this hyena female down on the ground and is crushing the holy hell outta her windpipe. Which we would have let her go on doin’, but this Clan of hyenas came out of the trees and she was kinda outnumbered at that point. So me and Alek stepped in. She got banged up a bit, but that was kinda our fault ’cause we kinda hit her when we leaped over her to get to the hyenas.”

“That still doesn’t explain why she’s here, ” Nik roared in frustration.

“We couldn’t just leave her there. Clearly them wolves were not takin’ very good care of her.”

“That’s really gallant, but both of you have quite substantially large, albeit tacky, homes, so I’m not sure why her skinny ass is in mine.”

“Well, me and Alek knew you liked her too. So on the way back, we rolled dice for her, and you won.”

“It seemed only fair to include you when we were playing since you saw her first.”

Nik stared at his brothers. He prayed that there were cameras all over his kitchen and someone was going to jump out at him and scream, “You’ve been punk’d!” But that didn’t happen.

“You two do realize you’ve brought her over state lines?”