Seduced By The White Tiger (IR Paranormal Shifter Romance BWWM) (6 page)
The wolf representative cut him off. “You do have dirty blood. We’ve a set way of working, and you coyotes are at the bottom, just like all scavengers are.” He was obviously very offended by the impudence of the other party at the table. His hands gripped the edge of the table, knuckles turning white with the strength his hands held.
The coyote was equally upset, however for a different reason. “We’re scavengers, so what. We play an important part in our world and we want to be respected for it.”
Gregor had sat in silence, watching the argument reach this point. He turned to the wolves. “Who has been the aggressor about the territory?” He held his had up as the coyote tried to respond, signaling silence.
“That land was ours anyway. We let the coyotes live there, but it was always ours.” The wolf deflected the question.
“So you were the aggressors?” Gregor spoke calmly, specifically not laying blame on either side of the table. “What made you suddenly want your land back?” He asked, after making his observation. It was a simple question, but one that the wolves obviously couldn’t answer immediately.
After taking a moment to realign his argument the alpha wolf started to explain. “They were trying to claim the land as their own, instead of just living there like we let them.”
“What use do you have to the land? Its useless desert and you know it.” The coyote representative started to yell, jumping out of his chair, making the seat fly backward and shatter against the wall.
That was all it took for the tenuous peace to end. When the chair leg flew across the table and almost hit the wolf they broke into aggressive stances. The growling over took the talking and the beasts began to change form. Hair grew all over their bodies as their clothes ripped to pieces. Muscles rippled and grew. Dominique was surprised at how well the movies had always portrayed the changes a shifter’s body goes through in order to take on its primary combat form. By the end of the changes both of the men were hulking man-beasts. The wolf was significantly larger than his coyote cousin, but no less angry. They growled and snapped at each other over the table, trying to establish dominance. Dom jumped back, trying to stay out of the line of fire. Anna jumped forward, shielding the young witch with her body. Gregor stepped forward as well, pushing the table out of the way, forcing the table out from between them and forcing himself between them.
His body began the same process as the other two beasts, but instead of his fur being a solid color like the wolf, which was a grayish color or the coyote colored blonde, he grew feline features that were covered in white and black striped fur. Dom gasped, she knew that the man she had been with for the past day had been a tiger, but had no idea he was one of the rare white ones. It explained everything: white tiger shifters are renowned for their noble heritage and the fact that their presence can often resolve disputes without words. They, creatures with a genetic abnormality changing their pigmentation, were supposedly related to the famous tiger that had stopped the shifter wars almost three hundred years before. As a result, they were respected and able to mediate disputes that others wouldn’t be able to. That was why they called him down here.
The warring tribe leaders backed down at the sight of Gregor’s combat form, unable to bring themselves to attack the noble shifter. He stood between them, desperately trying to calm a situation that shoddy workmanship and defective materials had caused. Anna pushed Dom back. “Go, get out of here!” Her order was clear. Dom burst into action, scrambling for the door. The coyote was closest to the door at this point saw the movement and rushed toward the witch.
The truth was that there was no way that Dom was going to outrun the beast, he was stronger and faster and infinitely more instinctual. The man-beast hybrid jumped on her, grabbing her with one hand wrapped around her waist and lifting her like a rag doll. “Let me go!” She screamed.
Gregor attempted to grab her, save her, but Anna got to Dom first. The wolf had taken advantage of everyone’s distraction in order to leap at the coyote. He ripped at the creatures flesh, causing him to drop the witch and focus on his attacker. Gregor swept Dom up into his fur-covered arms and sniffed her for severe injury. When he found none, she swore she could hear him purr for a moment and he stepped forward to try to stop the fight, but it didn’t look like it was going to work. Anna jumped forward once again and ripped one of the shifters off of the other one. Dom couldn’t tell the difference between them anymore, now that the combatants had already taken large pieces of flesh out of each other and they were covered in blood.
Anna threw one of the shifters across the room. “Get out of here. Take him someplace safe, Dom!” Her orders were clear and precise. “You aren’t going to be able to fix this Gregor and I can’t restrain them with the two of you in the room.” Gregor picked Dom up and cradled her in his arms; he couldn’t operate the door handle with his unwieldy hands. After a few moments of fumbling he growled and pushed on the door with his open palm. The splintered door quickly fell out of the way and the tiger human hybrid walked out into the large cubicle filled room. There was a massive fight starting in the room. Pieces of cubicles were flying across the room, making a path to the door nearly impossible to see. Gregor couldn’t speak in his current form, but he looked at the woman in his arms, noting how tiny and helpless she looked at that moment. He examined his surroundings, knowing that she was especially vulnerable to the exceptional strength of the shifters that were fighting amongst themselves. He held her close to his body, trying to shield her as much as possible.
He ran as fast as he could across the room, managing to avoid most of the flying materials, and keeping his charge safe from all attacks. The blows that he endured were only ricochets and misses, nothing that really hurt him, but she was still worried as he carried her through the door at the other end of the room. Once safely in the tiny closet he shrunk down to his human form. She noticed that he was naked, standing in front of her. “Can you bring the car around?” He asked her, looking down at his body, and trying to cover his growing desire with his hands.
She recovered her feet and left the room not saying a word. It only took a few minutes to pull the car up to the door. He must have heard her pull up because he rushed out of the closet and threw himself into the passenger seat. She reached into the back seat and pulled a blanket out of it. “Cover up, the last thing I need is to be pulled over with a naked man in the passenger seat.”
He laughed a little. “I think that might be the least of our issues, from the sound of it, the fight has moved into the parking garage.”
“I’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Where are we going to go?” He asked, hoping that she would take him someplace private.
“I think that the safe house would be the best bet right now. There are probably people there, waiting for us.” She wasn’t trained in combat driving and hoped that she wasn’t being followed. “I’m not very good at this.” She confessed.
“You seem to be doing just fine, the only problem I have is the fact that your seat is sticking to my butt.”
“Well, I’m sure when they installed the fake leather seats they weren’t thinking about a naked person sitting in one of the seats while we were driving.”
“I guess not.”
Dominique didn’t take long winding through the streets of El Paso to reach the safe house, but for Gregor it seemed like an eternity. When she finally pulled into the driveway of the safe house they had been at he opened the door and sniffed the air. “The wolves are here.” He cautioned her.
“That means we’ve been compromised. I have to take you someplace else.” Her words were hurried and panicky. “Let’s get you out of here.” She waited until he closed the door as several people came out of the bushes, eager to approach the car. She didn’t know if they wanted to know the results of the talks or not, but she couldn’t risk it. After they pulled onto the freeway, she decided where she would take him. “We’ll go to my place. It’s the safest place I know about.”
He nodded then noticed that she wasn’t looking his direction. “That sounds like a good idea, I’d love to have some time when I’m not hurt to see your place, and maybe you’ll show me the greenhouse.”
“You have to be the only person I’ve ever met that has wanted to see my house.”
His eyes glittered as she pulled off of the interstate, heading toward her house. “Maybe it’s not your house that I want to see.”
When they arrived, it didn’t take him long to get settled. He took the chance to explore the small three-bedroom house, and noticed there were plants everywhere. She didn’t seem to be the type of person that regularly entertained guests. It became exceptionally clear when he saw the bathroom. The bathtub was overflowing with tropical plants. There were lights shining brightly in the room and several humidifiers to help create a tropical rain forest all around the room. It looked like she had planted things in the sink and the bathtub, leaving the faucet to drip into the soil, giving the plants the constant moisture that they needed to survive in the arid desert they was currently in.
“I didn’t realize how much you loved plants.” He mentioned as he walked back into the front room.
“I like them a lot, actually.” She explained. “What would you like for dinner, I’m afraid I don’t have much here, most of my food has spoiled. I usually shop every few days, but I haven’t had a chance to recently.”
“I’m sorry that I disturbed you so much.”
“It’s not a problem.” She plopped down on the couch, sighing. “This has been one of the most exciting days I’ve had in a long time.”
He walked up behind her, slowly touching her shoulders. She didn’t pull away so he started to rub her tense shoulders. “This is going to be quite a challenge, isn’t it?” He asked as he started to work out the painful knots on her back. It was obvious that she wasn’t comfortable with the situation that she found herself trapped in, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t handled herself with great professionalism throughout their ordeal. Her demeanor couldn’t keep his mind off of her short loss of control earlier; he couldn’t keep the sight of her face lost in passion as he looked up at it out of his head. The vision was taunting him.
“I’m pretty sure that this isn’t going to be as easy as you thought it was going to be.” Her observation was blatantly obvious, bordering on the inane. She tried to control the smirk that was trying to form on her lips, but it wasn’t working. He didn’t respond, merely continuing to rub her shoulders, trying to get her into a more relaxed state. Her shoulders began to slump after a few moments, showing that his gentle ministrations were starting to work. He noticed how intoxicating her smell was, and he knew that if he was alone with her much longer, he was going to make a move on her. He didn’t know why she tempted him so much. Never had a woman occupied his thoughts so completely. He knew that he had made errors in the initial negotiation because he kept looking at her at the other end of the table, the way she watched him as he tried to get both parties to find common ground. He should have handled it differently, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it now.
He leaned in to kiss her neck, delicately brushing tendrils of hair out the way. She tensed for a moment then craned her neck a bit to give his head more room to nestle in there. He kissed her once again, gently nibbling on her shoulder after he moved the strap of her sleeveless shirt off of her shoulder. She moaned slightly, spurring him on just a little stronger. He continued to rub her back as he lifted his head up to whisper in her ear. “You should lie down and take your shirt off so I can get all of these kinks out. You’re so tense.” He hoped that she would take his suggestion, and he had to admit to himself that most of his hopes were about seeing her face as he ran his hands over her body once again.
She didn’t respond immediately, in reality she didn’t know how to respond. Somehow, in the back of her mind, she knew that there was something wrong with this moment, but in reality she didn’t care very much in that moment. She slipped her shirt over her shoulders placing it on the coffee table. As Gregor walked around the sofa, she shifted herself until she was lying on her stomach on the couch. He groaned at the sight that he didn’t have a chance to see. He leaned over her and started to rub her body with his warm hands, working the muscles out and trying to help her relax, but the effort seemed to be in vain, as soon as he worked out one knot he found another one. For a long time he focused on her tension, not speaking, all the communication between the two of them seemed to come physically, like tiny electrical pulses shooting through their skin. It was almost meditative on both sides, bringing both parties into a sort of mutual understanding.
It took him a while to find and banish most of the knots in her back. He removed his hands. “How does that feel?” His question broke the silence.
She turned over, facing him with her hands covering her breasts. “Much better.” Her smiled was vivid in his eyes, taking over several of his thoughts. “Thank you for saving me today.” She seemed happy in that moment, completely and honestly happy.
He couldn’t resist the smile on her face; he had to be closer to it. He leaned in to kiss her and she didn’t pull away. He, once again, let his lips explore hers, softly probing her mouth with his tongue. His hands touched her arms, feeling the softness of her skin against his palms. He loved touching her; he adored running his hands over her body. It was a moment of pure pleasure. “Honestly, I couldn’t help myself. I had to save you.” He could see the disappointment in her eyes as he pulled his mouth away from her long enough to respond to her. “I’m sorry.” His apology was for pulling away for that moment, and it was mumbled as he brought his lips back down to her pouting face. He kissed her eyes, fluttering his caress on her cheeks and moving down to her face, finally settling back on her lips. It was a possessive motion he drove his tongue into her mouth, fiercely and protectively.