Along Came a Tiger (Tiger Shifters) (8 page)

Daniel grunted and turned away. “You’re right,” he said, then faced her again. “But there’s a reason he’s buried this body and didn’t just…”

When he trailed off, she clenched her jaw to keep in a growl. Didn’t just toss the body on a roadside the way he’d done to Su-jin. Sarah’s need to kill spiked at the reminder.

“There’s something about this body he doesn’t want uncovered,” Daniel finished.

“We can’t dig it up to find out, though, without tainting the evidence. And I don’t think we can count on the human authorities to discover the truth either. We should just kill him and be done with it. Bury his body next this other one. That seems fitting.”

“He’ll be looked for. They’ll find him. Sarah.” He sighed and stood to pace around the living room.

“I know, I know. I can’t help it. I want him gone and nothing short of that will feel completely right.”

“You’ve never killed anyone before. It will hurt you, don’t you get it? It will mark you. Even if our laws didn’t prohibit it…”

She raised a hand to still his argument. “Right now, how I feel, I would accept that damage to my soul, Daniel.
But
,” she emphasized the word when he opened his mouth, “I will deal with that for the time being.”

He stopped pacing to face her fully. “Meaning?”

“You can trust me to go with you. I
want
to go.” She leaned back in her chair. “I feel like I could kill him, but you’re right, I’ve never killed anything larger than a deer—and that in tiger form. I don’t know.” She sighed. “I want him dead, but I know Su-jin wouldn’t want me to go through with this. It’s just so damned hard to let it go. I hate that he gets to walk around free and my friend doesn’t.”

Daniel approached, but she shook him off. She couldn’t take any physical contact in that moment.

“Maybe…” she said, trying to find a way to accept the option Daniel was offering her. “I don’t know, maybe we can scent something, a detail we can give to the human authorities along with the location of the body to tie it back to Su-jin’s murder. The drug…”

She stopped. The authorities no longer had Su-jin’s blood with evidence of the specially designed drug. They wouldn’t be able to make the link to Williams being associated with two bodies containing that drug.

“Don’t get your hopes up on this ever tying in with Su-jin’s murder,” Daniel said, echoing her train of thought. “Even if we give them the information about the drug—which will draw suspicion because how would we know about it? —they can’t compare it to anything to link the two killings.”

“I realized that as I said it out loud. But there might be something else?” She leaned forward in her seat again, settling her forearms on her knees.

He shook his head. “The best we’re likely to get, the absolute best, is that the humans link Williams with the buried body. He won’t ever be brought to direct justice in Su-jin’s murder.”

“That’s the fucking problem,” she grunted.

“Sarah…”

“Yes, I know. I’m trying, Daniel, I really am. This is
…a better option than I thought we had. Some form of justice at least. If it works.”

Daniel grunted and started pacing again. She couldn’t blame him. Restlessness and uncertainty dogged her.

Watching him distracted her from her internal turmoil, and because it was easier than thinking about her situation, she indulged herself. God, she loved the way he moved. He was so gorgeously made, thickly muscled but not too bulky, with long limbs, and a sort of contained grace that reminded her of his tiger form. The jeans and tight blue t-shirt he wore fit him perfectly, too, showing off his yummy body and making her want to strip him bare to see the muscles beneath.

It had taken a great deal of will power not to tempt him upstairs to join her in the shower. Her approaching estrous made her skin more sensitive, and the water was hot and sensual, encouraging rather than dampening her desire. She wanted him so badly, she had trouble sitting still.

All her lustful thoughts continued to fill her with guilt, though. She was still in mourning, damn it. Estrous left her edgy and needy, but she knew she wouldn’t feel like this with any random tiger. Only Daniel could distract her like this and take her mind off the revenge she wanted so much.

Daniel finished a circuit of the living room and stopped in front of her, forcing her to straighten to look at him.

“Okay. We’ll go. If we get there after midnight, we should be safe enough to search the woods without drawing attention. The park will be closed at that stage, so there shouldn’t be anyone else around. If we go in on foot, we shouldn’t attract the park police either.”

She nodded, eager now he’d agreed to take her.

“But one way or the other, we are out of there before sunrise,” he said, his expression stern. “And that’s it. No going back and searching more. We find what we can, give the information to the police, and hope they can link the body to Williams. That will be the end of it.”

She raised her brows.

“I mean it. No matter what happens, you
have
to give up on revenge. Look what’s happening with Joseph? His best friends had to tranquilize him. He’s going to end up in confinement. If you can’t let go…”

She waited for him to finish, to repeat what he’d been telling her for the last twelve hours. Or tell her that he couldn’t take being apart from her, that he loved her. Something to give her a reason to let revenge go. But he didn’t finish, he just went back to pacing.

“Could you?” she dared ask. “Could you allow him to get away with killing someone you loved?”

Her question stopped him abruptly. He held very still, and she wondered what he was thinking. When he faced her, his expression was closed and unreadable.

“Rest while you can. Help yourself to more food. Mary won’t mind.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Won’t
she
?”

His expression softened into a faint smile. “There’s nothing between Mary and me. Have you picked up a strong smell of me here?”

She pursed her lips and glanced away, embarrassed to answer.

“Sarah. She’s just a friend. You’d like her.”

She snorted a disbelieving laugh before she could stop herself.

“Was that because she’s human? Or because she’s my friend?”

She stood. “I need some fresh air.” She didn’t want to talk about this right now.

Honestly, she was surprised by her level of jealousy. He’d given her no reason to be suspicious. Though, outside of the Run, she had no idea what he did, who he saw. She didn’t even know exactly how he felt about her beyond lust. She assumed he cared for her. He wouldn’t be doing all this if he didn’t. But
…Were his feelings enough to keep him faithful between her cycles?

Ridiculous. She found no sign or scent that he spent a lot of time in this house.

Outside of the fact that he knew his way around the kitchen pretty well.

As if reading her thoughts, he said, “I’ve been here twice since she was deployed to check on the place as a favor for her. Before she left, I’d been inside this house exactly one other time.”

“Fine.” Her cheeks heated with her embarrassment. She was acting silly. “I believe you.” She did, even if her tone didn’t make it obvious.

Shit. She really did need some air. “Will you trust me to walk around outside or do you want to come with me?”

“I trust you not to run away now.”

Now
because he was taking her to find evidence against Williams, she realized. If not for that, he wouldn’t have trusted her.

“Do you want company?” he asked more quietly. “Or do you need time alone?”

She needed time alone. “I’d like the company.”

He hesitated and then followed her to the mudroom off the kitchen and the door that took them into the open yard.

In the daylight, she could see the property better and spotted the horse barn a few hundred yards from the house. The area was mostly grass and dirt. The house sat atop a small rise, the barn on the same hill. At the base of the hill, a little stream cut through a meadow that was edged by a few trees. Not enough to hide a hunting tiger, but enough to provide shade on a hot summer day.

It was still early enough in the day that the temperature was reasonable, the humidity down. The air currents carried a strong scent of grass. The sun warmed her skin. The place was peaceful. A kind of sanctuary, with the nearest neighbor barely visible in the distance.

Sarah’s own retreat was significantly smaller. She made good money, but she’d only been able to afford a little cabin in the woods while still paying rent on her apartment in Philly. The retreat was her territory, the place she went when she needed peace and freedom. She was surprised she felt a similar peace in another woman’s territory.

“It’s beautiful here,” she commented.

Daniel grunted.

She wanted to laugh. Not much of an answer. For a tiger, he’d always seemed so unaware of the beauty of nature surrounding them. Her Mate Run took place in an isolated, hard to reach part of the central Appalachians where they were unlikely to come across any humans. It was beautiful and primal. But Daniel had always seemed oblivious to the scenery.

He’d been fully focused on her.

Her heartbeat jumped and she cut a look at him. In the sunlight, his dark brown hair showed a few lighter highlights. And his eyes
…His eyes were stunning, such a surprisingly vivid blue, surrounded by thick, dark lashes.

When he shifted to his tiger form, his eyes stayed blue. That didn’t always happen with other tigers. The human appearance didn’t predict the tiger shape. But Daniel was a rare white tiger, and he took the stunning color of his eyes into that shape.

He paused when he caught her staring. “Everything okay?”

She nodded, but her throat was dry. Remembering their kiss in the kitchen only increased her need for him. The part of her feeling guilty for her desire seemed to sink farther away, growing dimmer and dimmer as she eased closer to Daniel’s heat.

Her nose filled with his unique scent. Delicious. A scent that made her want to bury her face in his neck and just soak him up.

“Sarah?”

She licked her lips. She finally understood why females weren’t allowed to be around the males once they started running. Resisting temptation was impossible. She stepped close enough they were touching, her breasts brushing just barely against his hard chest. He was so tall she had to drop her head back to catch his gaze.

To her surprise, he didn’t step away. She’d expected him to be strong, to insist on the self-control they needed to exercise. Instead, his chest rose and fell a little faster as his breathing increased. His desire spiked and added an element to his scent that called to her lust. Their scents started mingling. Oh, she loved that smell, the combination of flavors that was theirs, and theirs alone. So perfect and so wonderfully delicious.

He stared down at her without moving to take her in his arms, without dropping his mouth to hers. He was waiting for her, she realized, waiting for her to decide what happened next. The power he gave her was heady and erotic. She could do what she wanted with him, and he’d let her.

He always did.

No one would know if they broke the rules of the Run. No one even knew they were here, except for Alexis and Victor. And they’d hardly say anything. She and Daniel could fuck to their hearts content and no one had to know.

So tempting. So very hard to resist.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sarah leaned closer, arms at her sides, flattening her breasts against Daniel’s chest. If she kissed him, she wouldn’t be able to stop, not like earlier. Her emotions were too raw, her need too powerful. The comfort and release she’d find with him would give her a peace she hadn’t had since her friend’s murder. Sex
…no, making love with Daniel would remind her she was still alive. She’d been living with so much sorrow, she craved life.

“No one would know,” she murmured, only realizing she’d spoken aloud when she heard her own voice.

“We’d know.”

“Do you care?”

“I want you enough, I’d forget to care for the next few hours.”

He paused as his gaze darted over her. The look in his eyes quickened her pulse.

Yes, she thought, yes. A few hours of passion. Stolen. Healing. She wet her lips and smiled when he groaned. His chest rose and fell with his hard breathing and the movement rubbed against her breasts, tightening her nipples into tight peeks and sending a spear of desire down to her core. It would be so very easy to give in, to let go, to forget everything but the passion she’d find in his arms.

He was still staring at her lips when he said, “But I would eventually care again, because if anyone does discover this, we’ll be forced apart.”

She instantly sobered at his words. The fact that he was still concerned about them being separated gave her hope. Maybe she hadn’t completely ruined things between them. She’d damaged the trust they’d developed, but if he still wanted her, if he still wanted a future with her, she could repair that damage.