“You feel so perfect,” he said against her neck. “I’ve missed the feel of you so much.”
“You, too,” she said, “Me, too.”
They rocked together, petting and kissing, the sound of skin slapping against skin filling the room, and the scents of sweat and sex swirling around them. She let herself go, wallowing in the freedom to just be and feel, take and taste. And love. Her orgasm built until she couldn’t hold back, but with Vlad she didn’t need to. She charged into the abyss and kept him close as he followed.
They lay in each other’s arms, hugging, silent for long moments after. She came down slowly and made no move to break the moment. She wanted to stay just this way for the rest of the night.
Vlad was the first to raise his head. He held her gaze and that emotion she couldn’t quite decipher moved through the depths of his dark eyes. Finally, he kissed her lightly and rolled off. “I’ll be right back. Just want to clean up.”
To her pleasure, he took the time to tuck her under the blanket first, then he paused at the bedroom door.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked.
“Just listening. Making sure Zoe doesn’t get up and catch me walking around like this.” He flashed her a grin and left for the bathroom.
She rolled to stare at the door, a little awed and more than a little scared to face the fact that she was madly in love with Vlad. Again. Still.
Forever.
Vlad finished in the bathroom then walked out to the living room. Alexis had returned not long ago, his sense of her being in the house the only thing that had disrupted his focus on Rose. He was still a little overwhelmed, his body humming from having her in his arms again. And he was looking forward to going back and proving his stamina by making use of that second condom.
But first, he wanted to know what Alexis had put into place for the trip to the elders.
He thought he’d been protective of Rose and Zoe before this. Now, his protective instincts were pushing him to run away with them, keep them safe and well away from any other tigers. He couldn’t, but everything in him wanted to.
Alexis sat on the couch, reading something on her phone.
“Victor has put his security team to work setting up safe rooms in the compound for all of you,” she said without preamble, still looking at her cell.
“Good.” That would augment the things Elizaveta was supposed to be doing.
He’d had to go through her assistant to start the arrangements because it was almost impossible to talk to an elder directly over the phone. Most of them just didn’t do it. But going through an intermediary worried him. Most elders trusted their assistants with every aspect of their affairs. But all his life Vlad had seen the way money could swing loyalty. He’d used that fact frequently himself. When it came to Rose and Zoe, his trust in other people’s moral fortitude was very limited.
“Any other news?” he asked.
“Victor says Elizaveta is thrilled.” Alexis glanced at him and rolled her eyes.
“Should I be pleased or afraid?”
“Terrified.” She set her phone aside. “Elizaveta will ensure you have official safe passage, and Victor will make sure you have official security. I’m going to go in with you, just to add a little muscle.” She grinned. “I’ve asked a couple of Trackers I trust to meet me there so we can provide you with the physical security you’ll need.”
“I can handle that part.”
“I’m sure you can. But we want to make a show of it. We need everyone aware that Zoe isn’t vulnerable or without support within the community. Nila didn’t have this going in, and it left her open to attacks. We don’t want anyone thinking that’s an option with Zoe. Outside of those like your brothers, you still have the elders to worry about and… Do you know about the split among the Trackers?”
He nodded.
Just like the rest of the community, the Trackers were divided over the issue of human-tiger mixes. Some of them sided with Elizaveta, some were on the fence, and some were with the elders who didn’t want hybrids in their midst. His father had used the Trackers who agreed with his stance when he went hunting for Nila. They hadn’t directly helped him go after her, but they’d actively thrown the other Trackers off his trail, giving him time to try to kill her. Since the Trackers were essentially the police force of the tiger shifter world, having some of them help a wanted criminal had damaged the organization’s reputation.
Many of those who’d aided his father hadn’t been identified by the elders yet, either. Vlad was still working on uncovering them all himself. He had to work carefully to avoid making his brothers question why he was looking for them.
“Then you know,” Alexis continued, “that even within the compound, even with all the resources we’ve set up, there are some we can’t trust, and we don’t know who they are.”
“I don’t trust anyone right now.” When she raised her brows, he said, “No offense. I suppose I’m trusting you to a certain extent. But you’ll understand if I stay on guard around all tigers.”
She snorted. “Yeah, I can’t blame you. If she was my baby, I’d be viciously protective, too.”
“I’ve heard you already are.”
She grinned at that. “Guess it comes with being a parent. And speaking of which, how do you like the job so far?”
He thought of that beautiful little girl, sound asleep in the other room, the way she’d taken to her tiger nature as if she’d always expected it to be part of her life, the way she ordered him around when she was in human form, and the way she’d play-attacked him in tiger form. He smiled softly. “Love it.”
“Good. I assume you and Rose are…reconciling?”
“Working on it.”
“Then I assume you intend to stick by her and Zoe in the years ahead.”
“I do. Why do you care?”
“They’re going to need you.” She glanced back at the hallway leading to the rooms. “There’s been a change… A few of the females in the generation just before my daughters, they’re coming into their first estrous early. We’ve been keeping it pretty quiet.”
“Who’s we?”
“Elizaveta and me, the girls, and a handful of scientists Elizaveta trusts.”
“How do you know?”
“I work with most of the female tigers in the US.”
He raised his brows. “Work?”
“Self-defense training. Remember Su-jin Lee-Bennett?”
Vlad sucked in a breath. Everyone remember Sujin’s murder. It had rocked the community because her murderer was human.
“Well, after, it was decided the females needed to learn how to defend themselves properly. Instinct is all well and good, but training goes a lot further.”
The conversation suddenly made him very grateful Rose was a highly trained martial artist. They’d have to be sure Zoe got training, too. Thinking about Su-jin’s death, especially now that he had a daughter of his own to worry about, was too uncomfortable, so he went back to the original topic. “How early is the early estrous?”
“Two started at twenty.”
“That early?” Most tiger females didn’t come into their first estrous until around twenty-five.
“One girl had her first estrous at nineteen. We’re not making this common knowledge. They’re all too young to go into the Mate Run.”
“Theories about why it’s happening?”
“The extinction threat. We’re still right on the edge. The few scientists Elizaveta trusted with this have theorized the earlier estrous is a way for females to start breeding earlier so they have a longer reproductive life.”
“Why now? Why not a century ago? Why not two centuries ago when the problem first became serious?”
She shrugged. “Got me. But it’s the only logical explanation we have at the moment. The thing is, this probably means my daughter’s generation will have more females coming into estrous early. The secret won’t remain a secret much longer. The males will get wind and will expect these girls to start running.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“You have a daughter. A tiger daughter. Mixed or not, she’s a shifter, and she will be pressured to run. I know it’s years down the road, but you should know you might reach that point a lot sooner than you expect. It’s hard to tell with a hybrid. We have no way of knowing what road her biology will follow. But she’s going to need a strong advocate on her side. The best person to do that is her father.”
The urge to run away and keep Zoe and Rose hidden from his people got even stronger. “I’ll be with her,” he said. “I’ll keep her safe.”
“Good. Now, I’m going for a run. I’ll be back in a few hours.” She winked and ambled toward the front door, pulling her shirt off as she went.
Giving him and Rose some privacy from shifter hearing.
Privacy he intended to take advantage of. He paused in the hall outside Zoe’s door, assuring himself she slept soundly, surprised at how much he needed to check on her and how often. He found himself listening for her breathing almost automatically.
So this was what it was like to be a father.
Had his own father ever done this? Was there a time, ever, when his father had felt this protective instinct for him? He shook off the thought. He didn’t intend to be a father like his. He would be his own man, as he’d always been, and a better parent to Zoe.
As he made his way to his room, and Rose waiting in his bed, he hoped she’d give him the chance to experience what it was like to be a husband, too. Things between them were good at the moment, but she still didn’t trust him. And he wasn’t confident she’d even want him in her life after she faced the rest of his people.
He just had to prove to her he could keep her and Zoe protected and safe.
“What kept you?” Rose asked when Vlad came back, closing the door quietly behind him.
“I wanted to talk with Alexis, see what she’d set up for our trip, and what she’d found out about the reception we can expect.”
Rose narrowed her eyes and glanced over his body. “You’re still naked.”
He glanced down, as if he’d forgotten. “Yes. Zoe’s still asleep so there wasn’t a chance she’d catch me.”
“I wasn’t thinking about Zoe catching you. You sat out there talking with Alexis while you were naked.”
He chuckled. “I told you, we tigers don’t really pay much attention to nudity. I actually didn’t think about it.”
“Did Alexis?”
“Alexis is happily married and old enough to be my mother.”
Rose gaped. “She is? She looks maybe right on the edge of turning forty.”
“She’s almost fifty-two.” He paused. “Yeah, I guess she’s not quite old enough to be my mother. Close, though.”
“She couldn’t have had you at twenty-two?” To Rose, who’d gotten pregnant just before she turned twenty-four, Alexis sounded more than old enough to have a thirty year old son.
He crawled up beside her on the bed and pulled her into his arms. “Female tigers don’t go into estrous until around twenty-five.” His brows furrowed as he said it, as if he was leaving something out.
“What? What are you not telling me?”
He sighed and rubbed her arms. “It’s not a big deal, yet. But a few of our females have started coming into estrous…early. Really early for tigers.”
“What age?”
“Twenty. One even at nineteen. It’d be like nine and ten year old human girls getting their periods.”
“That does happen sometimes.”
“True, but it doesn’t happen in tigers. Females might come into estrous as early as twenty-four. But nineteen and twenty is really, really young.”
“Ah. The extinction thing?” She snuggled closer, savoring the warmth of his skin against hers.
“Likely. It’s being looked into.” He shook his head and kissed her. “Anyway, that’s not something we need to worry about.”
“For now. But Zoe will come to maturity someday.”
“I don’t even want to think about it.”
She chuckled. “You sound like a father.”
His expression softened and when he kissed her this time, it was a deep, deliciously heated kiss.
“Where’s Alexis now?” she asked when she came up for air. The idea that Alexis would hear them easily was a little embarrassing. Rose wasn’t quite
that
adventurous.
“She went for a run. A tiger run. For a few hours.” He nibbled the skin along her throat. “So we have some privacy. I checked, Zoe’s still asleep. It’s just the two of us.”
“Really?” She traced her fingers along his arm, angling her head so he could kiss his way along the other side of her neck. She shivered as the heat and need built again. “And what should we do with that privacy?”
“I think we should use that second condom.”
“You…up for that already?”
He took her hand and pressed her palm to his erection. “What do you think?”
She wrapped her fingers around his cock and stroked him. “I think you’ve got a lot of stamina.”
He spent the next two hours proving it.
Chapter Twelve
They spent the next three days teaching Zoe how to be a tiger and lining up their plans for the trip to West Virginia. Rose’s parents weren’t happy about the side trip, because she wouldn’t let them go with her. Since one of Vlad’s brothers had been to see them again, they were as worried as Rose. But a two-hour conversation on Vlad’s secure cellphone convinced them to remain behind.
Her dad did tell her who she could go to in West Virginia to borrow a gun or three, though.
“As many as you need,” he’d said.
When she’d told Vlad she intended to pick up a few guns before going to the elders’ compound, she’d fully expected a fight. After all, this was the US seat of his people’s governing body. Strangers bringing weapons into the center of power for a government was typically frowned upon.
He surprised her by encouraging the idea, even offering his own contacts for weapons and ammunition.
“We’ll make sure to pick up any gear we might possibly need,” he said. “I want us ready for any contingency. You armed with more than your various black belts will be good.”
“You should have an escape plan in place, too,” Alexis added. “In case everything goes wrong. Victor, myself, and the few people we’re trusting with your safety will be able to help and cover your backs, but if things get out of hand, leave the compound and go into hiding until we can work out a better plan.”