Fast and the Furriest
Tiger Tails: Fast and the Furriest
Ladies, like a tiger's stripes? Tug his tail and keep him forever!
The wolves came first. Followed by the bears. Finally, lions decided to play in the spotlight, but the tigers have held off. Let everyone else get stared at. Ares was happy on his mountain with his pride while humans thought they knew all about the different shifter species.
Their secret was safe…until her. One reporter took tigers from the shadows and thrust them into the limelight by releasing a picture of a tiger shifting. Specifically — him. (What could he say? A little moonlight, a little fur…)
Now he has a town of stripe-hunting women looking for a tiger’s tail to pull and… a full moon on the horizon.
Can he keep his tigers from being mated against their will? Better yet, can he forgive the one woman responsible for outing his species? Ares isn't sure, but he's willing to give it a shot.
Ares never thought he’d say the words in his lifetime, but he opened his mouth and out they came. “You can’t eat a human just because he looked at you funny.”
His sister Claire glared at him. “He was gonna pull my tail.”
God save him from paranoid tigers. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as he asked the obvious question. “Were you wearing your tail?”
“No,” she grumbled.
“Then please tell me, by all that is striped and orange, how the hell did you think he could tug your tail
if you weren’t wearing it?
” Claire winced, and he realized he may have been shouting by the time he finished his question.
But who could blame him? His mother should have killed Claire at birth. Not because anything was
wrong
with his sister, but mainly because twenty-two years later, she was a real pain in Ares’s ass.
He took a deep breath and tried to find some sort of calm. It hadn’t worked so far, but a man could hope. “Claire, you know how it works, we all do.”
Mating was a three-step process for tigers. Sex without a condom to give their partner a few shifter characteristics and see how their significant other handled those changes. Then a bite made the changes permanent.
Neither was the true tie that would complete a mate bond, though. The most important, the action that once taken could never be reversed, was the tail-tugging. It went soul deep and formed a bond that only death could break. With or without bites, that one act couldn’t be revoked. For a tiger to have their tail pulled, to have that binding forced on them…
Ares’s worst nightmare came to life. They’d been lucky so far, his tigers keeping to their human forms, but the full moon was so close.
Fuck.
“The humans know it too and all because—”
He knew the end of her sentence and cut her off with a slice of his hand through the air.
All because of that human bitch you got cozy with.
The human bitch being Ares’s ex, Zoe. Zoe, the luscious bit of human his tiger still missed. Zoe, with her smile and tinkling laugh. Zoe and… her camera phone and newspaper connections.
Zoe Reynolds: photographer, reporter, and… Ares’s mate. At least, he’d thought so. Now she was merely the weapon of his pride’s destruction.
At the moment, his public relations team was working on spinning the story. They’d been debating revealing the truth versus denying it all, and then… in came his human-craving sister.
“Claire,” he sighed and leaned forward in his chair, forearms resting on the edge of his desk. He was tired, so damned tired, and all he wanted was one moment of peace. “I need you to work with me—”
“And not against me,” his younger sister drawled.
Darcy, the head of his PR team, huffed, drawing his attention from his sister and reminding him he was actually in the middle of a meeting and not free to argue. “Look, Claire, it’d be a good idea to lay low for a while. Stay close to the house.”
“You’re gonna let them drive us from our land?”
“No,” he drew the word out and prayed for patience. “I’m asking the pride to stay out of the outlying acres while we get a handle on things. You can still go up the mountain, but avoid the forests closest to town. Stay away from the hiking paths and areas open to the public.”
He stared Claire down, letting his strength as alpha flow through the room. Darcy whimpered and looked at the ground, her inner tiger succumbing to his dominance. Now he waited on his sister. She held his gaze, blue eyes blazing with determination fueled by anger. Their father was an alpha, the strongest of the strong, and he’d imbued all of his children with that power. It was part of the reason she managed to hold his stare for as long as she did, but she’d submit.
And… there it was. Claire snatched her attention from him and glared at the wood flooring, tilting her head to the side. She clenched her jaw, muscles standing out, and he knew she had plenty to say about his orders. Well, he had too much shit to do to listen to her rant and rave.
His tiger nudged forward, its curiosity piqued by his show of dominance. It wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Curious cat. “I’m asking you to be smart and save our mother worry, Claire. I’m asking you to stay safe.”
She gritted out, “If she hadn’t—”
“That conversation is done, and the issue is no longer up for discussion.” He wasn’t going to rehash things every damned day.
His tiger finally understood Ares’s frustration and source of anger. It was familiar with his sister’s behavior, and as far as Zoe went… the animal didn’t want to think about her or the mistake they’d nearly made. The whole situation would have been worse had he allowed Zoe to tug his tail, had he joined with her permanently.
The cat understood and accepted the situation, but that didn’t mean it didn’t mourn. With a final flick of its tail, the feline turned its back on Ares’s human consciousness and padded to the far reaches of his mind, content to sleep the day away. It’d been like that from the moment he’d read the article’s headline and byline.
Ladies, like a tiger's stripes? Tug his tail and keep him forever! by Zoe Reynolds
Then there’d been a picture, bright and bold, showing off Ares’s naked body along with several snapshots of his transformation. Oh, there was appropriate blurring here and there, but they’d gotten the point across.
Just like werewolves, bears, and lions, there were weretigers.
Even worse, tug a tiger’s tail and then the two were suddenly mated whether the tiger liked it or not. And trying to part a tiger from their mate could have deadly consequences.
“But, Ares,” Claire whined.
“Claire, if you were any other tiger…”
“You’d have me pinned to the ground already with my scruff between your teeth.”
He made the threat way too often and didn’t follow through often enough. Or ever. Dammit. “So help me, I will send you to Arizona. Just see if I don’t.”
That had her gasping, and her gaze clashed with his once more. “You’d…” she stuttered. “You’d send me to the
desert?
”
“Yes.”
“They don’t even have trees there!”
“I’m sure they have a few,” he assured her.
“And no marshes. Or swamps! Or caves!”
Ah, the places a tiger liked to play the most. He rose to his feet and placed his palms on the desk, leaning over the smooth surface. He forced the cat to come forward and help a guy out. It grumbled, but did as he asked, shifting his human eyes to tiger yellow. “No. Savannahs.”
“You
wouldn’t,”
she gasped and clutched her chest.
“I. Would.” Okay, he wouldn’t.
“I… I hate you and I’m telling Mom!”
It was like he shared a house with a teenager once more. With that yell, Claire spun on her heel and stormed to the double doors, not bothering to ask for permission to leave. Really, he didn’t give a damn. He simply needed the woman out of his hair so he could deal with the issues—real threats—at hand.
With a sigh, he fell back into his chair and closed his eyes, pretending he was alone. Pretending because he was more than aware of Darcy. And his guards. And his other staff. And his lone tigers that needed an alpha’s support. And his family. And… everyone that depended on him to fix the clusterfuck before them.
“You should get her under control. An alpha should be seen as strong. He shouldn’t allow his sister to—”
“I don’t discuss my family.” He opened his eyes and met Darcy’s golden gaze. The cat filled him by choice now. As much as his sister annoyed him,
no one
said a word against her. Ever. “With anyone.”
“I’m simply saying what others feel.”
He knew others viewed the dynamic he shared with his immediate family as a weakness. He considered it a strength, a normalcy that kept his tiger from going over the edge and killing everything that annoyed him.
Because, really, the cat saw that as an answer to… everything.
“And I’m telling you my family is a topic that is off limits.” He sat up once more, ready to attack the problem at hand. “You have a job within the pride, Darcy, and it’s not to keep track of the Joneses.” The tigress’s cheeks reddened and her attention dropped. “Now, let’s read through the press release once more and go over the schedule. Have you emailed the details to the other prides?”
Ares let himself get lost in the details of planning the pride’s first press conference. The tigers were coming out of the closet… whether they liked it or not.
As an FYI, they did not.
There were stupid decisions and then there were
Stupid Decisions.
Zoe realized her decisions were of the all caps kind— STUPID DECISIONS.
Returning to Wilden was one of those choices—decisions—that pushed past stupid and on to utterly idiotic. But she’d returned, unable to do anything
but
come back. She’d tried to stay away, tried to keep her distance once she realized the truth of what she’d done.
Or what had been done to her.
She wasn’t the true victim though. No, that “honor” rested on the shoulders of every weretiger in the world.
Zoe wondered if she’d leave The Den alive.
The Den. Or the Wild. The small, tiger-laden town could go by either name when speaking to a resident. No matter its name, it was still home to the national alpha. Zoe knew him as Ares Jones — boyfriend, lover. Not alpha.
Now he was her ex.
She wondered if he planned on getting rid of her. Permanently. He had to be angry over being thrust into the spotlight. She knew he blamed her.
Never come back. I can’t promise I won’t kill you if you return.
The words were the harshly whispered message saved on her voicemail when he’d finally returned her calls. So, why was she sneaking back into Wilden again?
Oh. Right. She burned with the need to see him again. Her skin itched. Her heart ached. She was always—always—cold. She couldn’t think straight.
And they’d only been apart four days.
Every inch of her, from head to toe, was consumed by the need to go to Ares.
Zoe needed to get her hands on him, to see if his touch could soothe some of the sensations that chased her every day. And to apologize for the way her life had imploded his.
She made the final turn up the mountain, fingers gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles were white. Nervousness over entering Wilden wasn’t the only reason for her unease. Nope, she was also afraid of falling to her death off the side of the narrow road. The two lanes were bracketed by the mountain and the sheer cliff face.
She didn’t remember the drive being so harrowing. Of course, the last time she’d traveled up to Wilden, she’d been too consumed by not getting lost. Why couldn’t her panic over seeing Ares again override her fear now? It would be really helpful.
Zoe edged into the small town and… slammed on her breaks. Holy hell.
The normally empty streets were filled curb to curb with cars. And between those cars stood people.
All of them women. Women with camera phones taking selfies. Women holding mirrors as they touched up their lipstick. Women who tugged on their skirts and low cut tops. And contrary to what Zoe would do—she tried to cover her curves instead of flashing everyone her goods—they pulled their skirts
up
and their tops
down
.