Here There Be Tigers (42 page)

Nikolai Chernikov knew the woman was a tiger
shifter the instant she stepped into his diner. He’d felt her the
moment she came into town. No tigers lived anywhere near Eirene,
which was why he’d settled here five years ago.

Worse still, the tiger invading his territory
was
her
. Tatiana Loban-Gupta. She was more dangerous to him
than all the rest of his people combined.

She sat at the counter and glanced around the
cozy space, taking in the bustling breakfast crowd. For several
moments, Nick couldn’t think past his raging heartbeat. She was
stunning. Golden blonde hair, dark brown eyes, perfect heart-shaped
lips, and a figure so lush it made his mouth water.

She was even more beautiful than she’d been six
years ago, the first time he’d seen her. They hadn’t met then. She
hadn’t even noticed him, much to his relief. But that moment was
fixed in his memory.

He’d been at the elders’ compound in West
Virginia, stalking through the corridors deep in thought after a
meeting with his grandmother, where she’d once again tried to talk
him into returning to the Mate Run. He’d walked into a large, open
atrium and looked up. There Tatiana stood with two males and a
female, smiling, laughing, and talking as if the world hadn’t just
turned upside down. Her scent had washed over him, a mix of
honeysuckle, female, and her basic essence, robbing him of breath.
His pulse had hammered hard. Something about her scent had called
to him on a basic level, beyond anything he’d experienced before;
primal and insistent. His tiger had lifted its head and
growled.

She wasn’t just beautiful and sexy. She wasn’t
just a rare and delectable female tiger shifter. His tiger had
insisted she was
his
.

Only a moment passed, a few heartbeats, then
he’d turned and escaped to his room at the complex, running from
the spark of electricity he’d felt for her. He’d tried to tell
himself it was for her own good. He was one of the infamous
Chernikov brothers. No tigress in her right mind wanted to be
saddled with him. No tigress gave the Chernikov boys a second
glance.

She’d grown even curvier over the years, curves
that had nearly brought him to his knees four months ago when she’d
come out of nowhere and introduced herself. His damned bad luck to
have been at the elders’ compound again at the exact same time
she’d been there. He’d managed to avoid her for six years. And all
that careful avoidance had gone to hell.

Damn her, what was she doing here? Didn’t she
know better?

His tiger raised its head, scenting the air and
absorbing her deliciously unique fragrance. That scent had haunted
him since he’d first picked it up. The tiger in him saw a
mate.

The man in him saw trouble.

He waited for her to order coffee from Jane
before he came out of the kitchen to greet her. He had to settle
himself, control his reaction, or he was likely to scare off all
his customers and ruin the comfortable life he’d built for himself
here.

As soon as he stepped into the main room, her
gaze locked on to his. She smiled, just a little, and raised her
coffee mug to her lips as she watched him approach.

Fuck. He was in serious trouble.

“
Tatiana,” he greeted her from the
opposite side of the counter. Safer to have at least some obstacle
between them, even if it was only the flimsy barrier of wood and
Formica. “What brings you here?”

“
You.”

Well, she didn’t mince words. He liked that
about her. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“
What else could I do? You’ve been
avoiding me for months now. You ignore my letters and emails. You
didn’t leave me much choice.”

“
You could have stayed
away.”

“
You know better than
that.”

No, he didn’t. But that wasn’t a conversation
they could have in public. “You want something to eat?”

“
What’s good?”

“
Everything. My omelets are really
popular.”

She wrinkled her nose and shivered. “No,
thanks. Maybe just a side of bacon?”

He hid a smile and nodded. For some reason,
most tigers hated eggs. He wasn’t one of them, but obviously,
Tatiana didn’t share his taste.

“
Be right back.” He felt her gaze
along his spine all the way back to the kitchen.

Every muscle was stiff and tight as he worked
to contain instincts better kept in check. His tiger didn’t want to
listen to civilized logic, but giving in to those thoughts would be
disastrous.

He’d moved to this isolated little town in
Colorado and stayed as far away from his own people as was possible
for five years. Occasionally, he saw his brothers when they stopped
in to visit. But they had their own lives, so emails and phone
calls had become the default. Outside of that situation four months
back with Mitch and his new fiancée and the subsequent trip Nick
had had to take to the elders’ compound, he hadn’t been around his
own kind in a long time.

Which suited him and the other
tigers.

Tatiana being here was going to bring down a
world of trouble onto his head. The kind of trouble he’d gone out
of his way to avoid. The older he got, the more he just wanted
peace. Tatiana was the exact opposite of peace. She was excitement,
chaos, passion, reckless abandon. And despite what his tiger kept
telling him about her, he did not want to go back to fighting every
single day of his damned life.

He finished the bacon but sent the plate out to
her via his waitress Jane.

He was a coward.

Scrubbing his hands over his face, he let out a
quiet groan. “Fuck.”

He stared at the wall for a long moment, and
then gave in to necessity. He couldn’t ignore her anymore. He
couldn’t pretend she meant nothing to him. But he couldn’t have her
either, and she needed to get that through her thick
skull.

Which meant they had to talk.

But damn, if that wasn’t going to be the
hardest conversation of his life.

Tatiana worked hard to keep her knee from
bouncing as she ate her way through the plate of bacon. She was
putting everything on the line being here, but she didn’t have a
choice. She couldn’t continue on as she’d been indefinitely. She
had to talk Nick into returning to the Mate Run,
her
Run.

She assumed a relaxed pose and tried not to let
her nerves show, but her stomach danced with both giddy excitement
and dread. In an attempt to distract herself, she studied the
little diner Nick owned. It was a charming place with bright walls,
polished wooden floors, and tables decked out with the kind of
paper coverings kids could draw on. She smiled as one little boy,
probably no older than two, scribbled furiously on the paper with
two different colored crayons, then raised his hands in triumph to
present his masterpiece.

The sight tightened a band around her chest and
she had to look away.

Despite what the others said, she
did
want children. She’d always wanted them. Lots of them.

But she refused to mate with just any tiger,
and until she’d caught Nick’s scent four months ago, she’d
despaired of ever finding a suitable mate. Every male who’d come
forward to participate in her Mate Run fell short. She tried to
keep an open mind, but when the time came to choose, she just…kept
running. The idea of any of them catching her filled her with
dread.

You weren’t supposed to dread being with the
man who might possibly be the father of your children.

The elders had tried to help, and Tiana had
honestly tried to select a potential mate. Her Run had been opened
to males from around the US, a much larger pool than normally
participated. Usually only the males located near a female’s
territory took part in her Run. But then, usually the females knew
who they wanted before they even started to run.

For reasons she’d never been able to
understand,
none
of the tigers she’d met did anything for
her. She wasn’t trying to be obstinate or difficult. She just
wanted to want the man she’d spend three days having sex with, and
so far, not one of them had sparked that chemical, basic lust in
her.

She’d started to worry about herself. Maybe
something was wrong with her. Maybe she was broken.

Then she’d caught Nick’s scent and every nerve
in her body came to life. Her heart raced, her stomach tightened,
her lips tingled. She drank in that delicious smell and all the
wonderful sensations swamping her body like a woman deprived of
water for years. She’d thought the scent seemed vaguely familiar,
but she knew she’d never had this reaction to another tiger before,
so it had to be someone new to her.

She was so excited to actually feel lust for a
tiger it wouldn’t even have mattered what he looked like. The fact
that he turned out to be gorgeous was a bonus—tall, well-muscled,
light brown hair, green eyes, strong features. She’d very nearly
jumped into his arms the minute she’d seen him. A combination of
relief and lust had rolled through her in delightful
waves.

Until she’d discovered he was one of the
Chernikov brothers.

Worse, he was the oldest Chernikov. Nikolai—or
Nick, as he preferred—hadn’t taken part in a Mate Run for more than
ten years. And no one wanted him to return to it.

Except her.

As far as Tiana was concerned, the others could
just get over it. Tiger shifters were on the brink of extinction.
Too many males, not nearly enough females, and the numbers dropping
no matter what they did. The institution of the Mate Run, the only
way a male could earn a rare female, had staved off societal chaos,
but it hadn’t done anything to increase the number of female
births. It was better for their people if she mated and had
children. If the mate she wanted was considered the dregs of the
tiger world, well, so be it. He was her choice.

The problem was convincing him of
that.

When he finally came back out of the kitchen,
her heart jumped and her pulse sped. His scent wrapped around her
like a delicious aphrodisiac, and she actually had to work to keep
from crawling over the counter to get to him. She was two weeks
away from her next reproductive cycle. She had two weeks to
convince him to join her in that Run.

Failure was not an option.

“
Where are you staying?” he asked
without preamble.

“
I’ve got a room in the motel near
the highway.” She couldn’t help herself when she said, “Why? Are
you offering me a better option?”

His mouth turned down and she heard his faint
growl. “That’s not gonna happen, and you know it.”

“
I know no such thing.”

“
Tatiana…”

His warning tone only stoked the flames dancing
along her nerves. She’d never wanted a man so much in her life.
Nick might try, but he was not getting away from her.

She nodded to the kitchen. “When will you be
finished?” She cut her gaze to the not-so-subtle stares of the
diner’s clientele. “It’s probably better if we talk in
private.”

She actually saw his throat work as he
swallowed, and she had to suppress a satisfied smile. His desire
flavored his scent, adding a musky punch that only excited her
more. But Nick was no desperate cub she could command with the
flick of her hand. If she rushed things, he’d shut her out
completely, and she’d lose her only chance at ever having a
mate.

His gaze wandered over the dining room as he
considered his options. Finally, he said, “The breakfast rush ends
in another hour. We’ll talk then.”

He turned his back to her and returned to the
kitchen, leaving her as nervous as a teenager waiting on her first
date.

One hour. She had one hour to rally all her
arguments and logical points to convince him to chase
her.

But as she watched him walk away, her brain
simply refused to work. All she could think about was dragging him
back to her motel room and fucking him until the world ended. That
wasn’t an option, not if she wanted any hope of a family with him.
She was playing a dangerous game even being here. If any of the
others found out…

No, she wouldn’t consider that now. She had to
focus on convincing him to come back to the Run. Every other
problem could wait.

BOOKS BY KAT SIMONS

Tiger Shifters Series

Book 1: Once Upon a Tiger

Book 2: Along Came a Tiger

Book 3: Here There Be Tigers

Book 4: Her Tiger to Take -- Available
February 2015

Book 5: Coming Late Spring 2015

AUTHOR NOTE

For those of you curious about Mitch’s best
friends Max and Irina’s story, that was actually the very first
short story written in the Tiger Shifters world.
Mate Run
was originally published in the anthology, FANG BANGERS: An Erotic
Anthology of Fangs, Claws, Sex and Love, edited by Lori Perkins. I
will be offering a free copy of this short (very erotic) story to
my newsletter subscribers in 2015. If you’re interested, please
join the newsletter (
http://eepurl.com/OxQQL
) for
more information.