Here Kitty, Kitty! (33 page)

“No need to get tense.  I have a list of other names.”

“Such as?”

“Cerulean Blue.”

Zach shook his head.  He knew the evil heifer was just fucking with the man.  Last he heard from Sara, they—yes,
they
—had all decided to name the future Víga-Feilan, Kendrick.  Ricki for short.  Which Zach knew Conall would be more than happy with.  Of course, the evil wench seemed to be having way too much fun torturing his friend to bother telling him that yet.

As Conall let go with a volley of curses, while at the same time tickling Miki’s neck so that she hysterically began to laugh, Zach headed back toward the kitchen.  He found it empty, so he went out to the back porch.

The porch now surrounding his house was at the insistence of his mate.  She asked him about it once.  He said no.  And yet the construction guys showed up the very next day.

Zach stood at his backdoor, staring at what now lay across said porch. 
This keeps getting worse.

He stared down at the seven-hundred-pound tiger sprawled across the wood.  Big tiger head resting on enormous paws.  Of course he had a tiger on his back porch.  Why wouldn’t he? 
This is what you get when you mate with a nut
.

And sprawled face-down on top of the tiger’s back, a beautiful sleeping woman wearing ridiculously expensive four-inch-heeled shoes, denim cut-off short-shorts, and a subtle platinum band on the third finger of her left hand…and not much else.

Gold eyes looked up at him.

He glanced around, “Sara,” he whispered so as not to wake Angie.

The hillbilly motioned toward the kennels with that enormous fucking tiger-head.

He should have known.  While the workmen built the porch, they also put together a wickedly nice kennel.  Why?  Because Sara felt Roscoe needed a girlfriend and she didn’t want to keep them all in the house.

That stupid dog now had six girlfriends.

He came around the corner to find his mate stretched belly-down across the grass.  Normally he’d get a hard-on as soon as he saw her, but he became distracted.  Distracted by the orange and black striped fur ball in her hands.  Since all shifters were born as human and didn’t shift until much older, what she held in her hands could only be one thing…

“Woman, is that a tiger cub?”

Sara cringed, then looked at him over her shoulder.  “Oh, your home early.”

“No I’m not.  Answer me.”

“Ban needs her to stay here for a little while.  Just till he’s ready to move her into a rescue.  He found her at a local circus and said that they’d been mean to her and her mother.  But the rescue could only handle the mother right now because she’s really sick.  I offered to help by keeping the cub away from her until she’s better.”

“It’s a tiger cub, Sara.  A
real
tiger cub.  Not a kitten.”

“I know.”

Zach stared at her.  For a woman that really didn’t want children…

“Ban said no more than six months.”

“
Six months
?”

“Don’t yell!”

She held the cub up.  So tiny at this point that it comfortably fit in her two hands.  But in three months or so, it would be the size of Roscoe.  In six months it would be able to bite off Roscoe’s head.

“Look at her, Zach.  Look at those blue eyes.  Eventually they’ll turn gold, but right now they’re blue.  How cool is that?  And she’s so sweet.  She just needs a little love.”

“And about five hundred pounds of meat a day.”

“Oh, that won’t be for another year or two.”

Zach sighed and rubbed the palms of his hands against his eyes.

When did his life get so out of control?  He had hillbillies on his front porch.  His best friend was madly in love with a psychopath.  There was a half-naked beautiful woman asleep on top of a one of the mightiest predators known to man.  And, of course, there were tigers.  He had big, hillbilly
tigers
in his home.  And his mate was now rubbing a full-blood tiger cub against his cheek and making cooing sounds.

He pulled his hands away from his face and looked down into those beautiful brown eyes.  She smiled, causing the scar on one side of her face to crinkle up a bit.  God help him, he never saw anything sexier.

Shit.  Dick went hard.

“Six months and then it goes…even if that means a tiger-headed blanket on our bed.”

Sara crouched down to let the tiger cub go off and play with Roscoe and his harem of well-trained bitches.  Then she began pulling his black T-shirt out of his black jeans.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting you naked so I can fuck you until you pass out.”

“Oh.  Okay.”

She ran her hands under his T-shirt and Zach closed his eyes, loving the feel of her against him.  She pushed his T-shirt up, her tongue licking the still-sore bite she’d given him that morning.  She sighed with pure pleasure as her hands slid around his waist and she laid her head against his chest.  “I love you, Zach.”

He wrapped his arms around her.  “I love you, too, baby.”  Then he slapped his hand over the old wound on her thigh.

“
Zach
!”

Laughing, she tried to pull away from him, “Lemme go!”

“Not on your life, Morrighan.”  He fell back on the ground, bringing her with him.  He rolled on top of her, pinning Sara’s body under his.  “I’m never letting you go, you crazy bitch.”

She tried to wiggle away from his hands, but he yanked her back, somehow managing to pull off her sweatpants in the process and rubbing his hand over the old wound on her thigh.  He pinned her arms over her head as her body arched under his, her breath coming out in short hard pants, “You evil bastard!”

He nuzzled and nudged her shirt and bra up over her breasts and licked the already hard nipples, his grip tightening on her thigh.  “That’s right, baby. 
Your
evil bastard.”

And he’d make sure she never forgot it.  Because there was no where else he’d rather be.  No one else he’d rather be with or in.  Sara Morrighan was it.

For life.

- End-