Tangling with the Tiger: Lone Pine Pride, Book 5 (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

Kelly was a consummate gentleman. He opened doors. He took her arm when they walked through a potentially icy part of the path. He rested his hand solicitously on the small of her back. He was everything courteous and protective.

And she hated every second of it.

By the time they got to his bungalow, Grace was barely restraining the urge to smack his hands away from her. She wasn’t a dainty little flower, damn it. And the last thing she wanted was a man who treated her like one.

When he took her coat, she almost decked him.

Before he started trying to court her, Kelly had seemed as comfortable with her independence as she was. When she’d bristled and mouthed off at him, his tanned face would split into a heart-stopping grin and he would laugh, holding up his hands in surrender. But he wasn’t surrendering now. He wanted more from her and that more included letting him coddle her—which just made her want to throw things at his head. He’d ruined everything.

His bungalow was nicer than hers. Someone—undoubtedly a woman—had feng shuied the hell out the place and subdivided the large open space into three distinct areas. The color scheme was all rich golds, reds and yellows—undoubtedly picked to complement Kelly’s golden boy coloring. A Japanese screen painted with roaring lions matched the hand-painted headboard and wardrobe and gave the bed a sense of seclusion.

A broad L-shaped desk and matching cherry wood filing cabinet sectioned off another part of the room—the décor there ranch classic, more in keeping with Kelly’s cowboy persona. The computer on the desk looked state of the art—to Grace’s untrained eye—not surprising given how he made his living.

He may play dress-up as a cowboy, but cows didn’t usually react well to wranglers who smelled like predators, and in the lion communities everyone lent a hand—whether through financial aid if they worked off site or through labor on the pride lands themselves. Kelly occasionally filled in as a guard when they were short staffed, but that was more a hobby than a vocation. Beneath his Stetsons and shit-kickers he was a sought-after graphic designer—when he could be bothered to work rather than making it his business to bother her.

Grace ignored the “bedroom” and “office” and headed straight for the sitting area to the left of the door—two overstuffed chairs with a matching ottoman and sofa were arranged in a comfortably conversational manner, while all maintaining clear views of the cabinet on the wall that Grace knew slid back to reveal a flat screen television.

She flopped onto one of the chairs and glowered up at Kelly as he hung their coats. “I don’t like this dating thing.”

“You haven’t exactly given it a fair shot. You’ve been avoiding me for the last week.” Kelly sat on the edge of the couch opposite her and leaned forward, his forearms braced on his spread knees. “What’s wrong, Grace? What did I do? You never used to avoid me like I might explode at any moment.”

“Yeah, well, I never thought you were going to explode with unwanted emotion before. You changed the rules, Kelly.”

“And you’re the only one who’s allowed to change them?”

“You made me feel guilty about using you for sex.”

His eyes crinkled with a wicked grin. “Hey, I like being used for sex. And the fact that you feel guilty is a sign that you feel something for me. Maybe more than you want to, but it’s there.”

“I feel lots of things for you. Pity. Irritation. Frustration.”

“Grace.” Her name was a reprimand.

In a way he was right. It would be so much easier if she felt nothing for him, but… “I like you. I’m not denying that. And if I wanted someone then I couldn’t find a better guy than you. I just don’t want the things you seem to want me to want.”

“What things?”

“A mate. Kids. Everything my mother has been trying to force on me since I was seventeen.”

“I’m not asking you to become June Cleaver. I wouldn’t want that even if it was possible. I just want you to let me in. Let me be your support system.”

“What if I don’t want a support system? I’m
good
at doing things on my own. That’s how I like it.”

“You can’t keep trying to carry the world on your shoulders. Eventually you’ll buckle. I just want to be the one to catch you when you do.”

“And I want to be with someone who believes I will never buckle.”

“Everyone buckles at some point. You don’t have to be Wonder Woman. No one would think any less of you if you were mortal.”

What if I want to be Wonder Woman?
She nearly growled at him. “I’m not going to be weak just so you can feel necessary.”

The first flicker of irritation passed across Kelly’s easygoing expression, like a cloud across the sun. “That’s not what I’m asking for.”

“No. It’s just how you’re acting.”

“Because I was worried about you when I heard you were outnumbered ten-to-one at a riot today?”

“It was more like five-to-one, but that’s not the point. The point is that you assumed I needed your big strong manly arms around me so I could fall apart after I did my job and kicked some fucking
ass
today. You should be giving me a fucking high five, not treating me like a damsel in distress.”

“I
wasn’t
.” Now his irritation seemed to match hers.

Great. She’d succeeded in pissing off the most affable lion in the pride.
Well done, Grace
. “This is getting us nowhere. I’m going to go.” She shoved to her feet and Kelly sprang up, blocking the path to the door.

“Would you just talk to me?” he growled.

She sighed. Planting her feet, she folded her arms. “What do you see when you look at me, Kelly?”

He didn’t hesitate a beat. “Someone smart and strong and capable and sexy as hell.”

Warmth crept up her neck. “Okay, good answer. But are you sure that’s what you want? Are you sure you don’t want the girl who will run into your arms when she’s had a rough day? Are you sure you aren’t hoping to be the one person who flashes through my mind when my life is in danger? Because I’m going to be honest with you, there is no flashing. All I’m thinking of is how I can get my ass out of trouble and that’s all I want to be thinking of.”

His expression turned mulish. “Just because you don’t feel anything epic and earth-shattering for me now doesn’t mean you won’t. You aren’t even giving us a chance.”

“Because I don’t want to, Kelly. I liked things the way we had them before and I’m
mad
at you for trying to change the rules. Now I have to find a new fuck buddy because I don’t want a mate.”

“I know you’re afraid of letting yourself care about me, but I would never hurt you, Grace. And I’m not giving up,” he insisted.

She sighed. Fucking lions. They never knew when to quit. “You will. I’m more stubborn than you are.”

He didn’t say anything, doggedly holding her gaze. She hadn’t gotten through to him. He was that certain she was going to change her mind and throw herself into his arms. It would have been romantic if it hadn’t been so freaking annoying.

“See ya ’round, Kelly,” she said, gathering her coat—which, thank God, he didn’t try to help her into. Though he did hold the door when she left. She could feel his gaze pressing against her shoulder blades as she tromped off into the falling snow, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of looking back. The last thing he needed was encouragement.

The snow was beginning to accumulate on the paths and it creaked under her feet as she made her way to her own bungalow. It wasn’t far; she and Kelly lived in the same quadrant of the main compound—which she’d always thought was wonderfully convenient when they were using one another to scratch a sexual itch. Now she almost wished it was farther so she could walk out some of her frustration.

She was at her own door too soon. It was one of the few bungalows that didn’t have a porch—popular among the lions for lazing in the sun in the summer. She wasn’t sure what made her pause with her hand on the latch. A whisper of sound, a trace of a scent, or maybe just that awareness of someone watching her that shivered across her nerve endings.

She turned, hand still on the latch, and looked up. She didn’t see him, but instinct overruled her senses and told her he was there.

“Spying is rude, you perv,” she called—pitching her voice softly so she wouldn’t wake her closest neighbors if they were already sleeping.

Nothing. But the certainty that he was up there didn’t diminish.

“Dominec.” Sharper this time. A smidge louder. “Get your ass down here. I know you’re there.”

The scrape of a claw against shingles. A heavy body shifting above her head.

She was so prepared to see the pale yellow tiger leap to the ground beside her, she stumbled back a step when Dominec dropped to a crouch beside her in human form. His hands were partially shifted to give himself a better grip, but his clothes were damp from the snow, proving he’d been up there in human form for a while.

Dumbass.
It would serve him right if he got hypothermia.

The wet cloth clung to the muscles of his shoulders and chest, accentuating the sculpted strength of his human form. His hair was damp as well, the jet-black locks curling more with the moisture, lending him a false air of boyishness. The night shadows did nothing to hide his scars—if anything making them even more ghoulish—but she’d long since stopped being distracted by the marks. Instead she found herself captivated by the heated intensity in his black eyes. Dominec was unsettling on the best of days, but today she found herself unsettled in an entirely different way.

“What are you lurking up there for?” she demanded, her voice sharper than she’d intended, but she didn’t want him to see how he’d rattled her. “Are you stalking me?”

Dominec tipped his head to the side. She wasn’t surprised when he ignored the questions. “Is Kelly your mate?” he asked.

“What? No. Who told you that?” Shit. Was that the rumor going around the pride? Had Kelly started it? Just what she needed. For it to get back to her mother that she and Kelly were official.

Dominec’s expression darkened further. “You’re in love with the Hawk?”

She snorted. “Please.”

“Kye? Xander?”

“No.” What the fuck was with men that they all needed you to be mated? Like their puny masculine brains couldn’t comprehend the idea of a woman who might be enough on her own.

“But you have a mate?”

“Not that it’s any of your fucking business either way—”

“Answer the question,” he snapped.

Typically she would tell someone who made that demand where he could shove his question. She had no idea why she answered. “No. I don’t have a mate. Happy?”

“Yes.”

He lunged for her with that insane speed—no one moved like Dominec—too fast for her to get her guard up. His hand closed on the side of her neck, his thumb along her jaw. She threw up a hand in an instinctive palm-heel strike, going for his solar plexus to knock his breath out and send him back a step, but his other hand redirected her strike away from his body, twisting his grip, his fingers locking around her wrist. Her free hand lifted as he leaned in to attack—head butt? Fangs to her throat?—but before she could make contact his lips pressed against hers and—

What the HELL?

He was kissing her.

Shock froze her muscles.

Dominec CrazyAss Giroux was kissing her.

And he was
good
. His mouth moved over hers with expert ease and all of her other senses shorted out to make room for the overload of sensation coming through the kiss. She held herself perfectly still—until he made a little frustrated growl in his throat, stepping closer without breaking the kiss so her head tipped back and suddenly there was an aspect of dominance to the kiss that simultaneously made her knees melt and fired her will to push back. So she pushed back. Shoving her tongue against his. Sucking. Nipping. Trying to
win
the kiss.

His growl changed.

His hand fisted in the short hair at the base of her neck, the other still caging her wrist, and she lifted her free hand to grip his damp shirt at his shoulder, jerking him closer until their bodies connected—breast to chest, hip to hip. He was only a few inches taller than she was, but it was enough to make the fit perfect, pressure hitting her right where she wanted it.

A purr rumbled in his chest as the kiss went on and on.

She didn’t know how long they would have stood there, battling for sensual control, if the high-pitched laughter of some pride teenagers hadn’t cut through the night, startling her back to sanity.

Grace lurched back, shoving with her hand on his chest and twisting her other arm to free her wrist. He let her go and she froze two steps away from him, their heavy breaths forming puffy white clouds between them as she gaped at him.

Dominec calmly straightened his shirt where she had twisted it and nodded to himself.

“Right,” he murmured, as if something had been decided.

Then he turned and walked away without a backward glance.

Her jaw fell open like the hinge had come loose. She had no idea what the fuck had just happened.

Dominec, of all people.

The man was certifiable.

But
damn
. Grace lifted her finger to touch her bee-stung lips. Just…
damn
.

Chapter Twelve

Okay, then.

Dominec strolled down the paths of the main compound and for once the idyllic night wasn’t lost on him. The world was hushed and lovely—the inside of a snow globe, sparkling fantasy perfection.

He hadn’t set out to kiss Grace. He’d gone to her bungalow, cold in his human form, because he’d felt something unfinished hanging over him. He hadn’t liked seeing her with Kelly. Hadn’t liked watching her walk away. Hadn’t known what to do, but had gone to her place to wait until the incoherent drive of his instincts resolved into understandable action.

When she’d appeared, he hadn’t planned on revealing his presence, but she’d known he was there. He’d jumped down…and the rest had just sort of happened without any direction from his brain. He supposed, thinking back on it now, he’d wanted to see what would happen. To try it out. An experimental kiss.

It had been impulse. Instinct.

He wanted to do it again.

If she let him. She’d looked more confused than thrilled when she’d shoved him away. Hardly a good sign.

He might have to woo her.

Dominec stopped on the path, frowning.
Fuck
. What did he know about romance anymore? He was the poster-child for damaged beyond repair. Not exactly a romantic catch. Especially when Kelly—flawless, well-adjusted Kelly—was also in the hunt. Grace had said he wasn’t her mate, but something was going on there. The lion clearly felt he had a claim.

Dominec tried to remember how romance worked, but his old memories were rusty and out of order—and Ksenia had been the aggressor when they met. And then she’d gotten knocked up and been stuck with him. Or gotten pregnant on purpose to trap him—as he’d often suspected. She’d always treated him like a work in progress, something she had to fix.

Well he was really broken now.

Maybe Grace liked fixer-uppers.

Agitation and cold tugged at his skin and Dominec stripped down right there in the path, shifting form and shaking the snow from his fur. His thoughts were cooler and calmer in this shape—but the tiger wanted Grace too. It didn’t understand why he’d walked away. Didn’t understand being too broken to fix.

He couldn’t remember love, but he could recognize it when he saw it. Patch and Roman. Lila and Santiago. The doctor and the Hawk.

A scent teased his nostrils, muted by the snow, but still there for all that it was faint. A human scent. He was near the edge of the main compound. This must be the path the Hawk took the doctor along when he brought her down for questioning.

Acting on instinct he didn’t examine, Dominec set off into the woods, following the scent—all but smothered by the snow, but she’d passed this way frequently enough that he could pick it up in spite of that.

The cabin was small. Shades were drawn over the windows, but slivers of light broke through and the smoke from the chimney announced that it was occupied. Dominec lay in the shadow of a tree a hundred yards from the cabin and watched, though nothing moved and he was too far away to hear anything within.

The Hawk had been captured by the Organization as well, but he wasn’t broken like Dominec. He still remembered how to love. It was there in his face whenever he looked at the doctor. How did he do that? Had he forgotten what was done to him? Or had he escaped before it got to the point of no return?

Dominec didn’t know how long he watched the cabin before the door opened and the Hawk stepped out, fastening his pants and looping a tranq gun holster over his hip. He leaned against the exterior wall. Dominec stayed perfectly motionless, but after a few minutes Adrian seemed to sense him, scanning the night until his raptor-sharp vision locked onto the tree where Dominec lay.

The Hawk loosed the tranq gun from its holster, holding it casually at his side, staring Dominec down.

It was tempting to show the birdie just how useless that little tranquilizer toy would be if Dominec was of a mind to attack—but he was on probation and Grace wouldn’t like it. So Dominec rose, waving his tail behind him like a banner, and loped back toward the main compound.

He would figure out the mystery of how to woo Grace tomorrow.

Late the next morning, Grace jogged toward the infirmary, her pace slowed somewhat by the crowding on the few paths that had been cleared of snow. Rachel would be starting work as the newest pride doctor today and Grace had volunteered to watch over her for the overprotective Hawk. In part so she could hear about Rachel’s breakthroughs in shifter reproduction, but also so she could show the good doctor photos of the surviving Organization prisoners and get her intel on them—before any more of them wound up dead.

As soon as she’d gotten off the phone with Adrian, she’d run out to the remote cabin where Xander had hidden the remaining prisoners and snapped some pics on her cell phone to show Rachel.

It was efficient. Killing two birds with one stone. Adrian would take a guard shift on the perimeter and Grace would hold down the fort at the infirmary. All in the name of efficiency. It had nothing to do with the fact that the infirmary was about the last place she was likely to run into Dominec.

Dominec, who had kissed her last night. And then afterward apparently tracked down Rachel at Adrian’s cabin and had done his creepy stalker thing outside, triggering the Hawk’s latest rash of protective paranoia.

Was that why he’d done it? To discombobulate her so she wouldn’t follow him when he went stalking Rachel?

But that didn’t make any sense. She hadn’t been watching him that closely. He was still free to move around the pride lands. She would never have known he was there if the Hawk hadn’t spotted him. And she wouldn’t have cared if Adrian hadn’t been so convinced Dominec was out to hurt Rachel.

But if he hadn’t kissed her to distract her, she had no explanation for what had happened last night in the shadow of her house.

Grace was comfortable with every pride member and wasn’t afraid to poke her nose in and fix everyone else’s problems—especially when people were being idiots over romantic matters—but she’d never really had romantic drama of her own to share before and she didn’t really know who to go to in order to share it.

She rarely felt the lack of female confidantes. She spent most of her time with the other pride security personnel—who were almost uniformly male—and it had never seemed like an issue before, but she could hardly walk up to Kye and Xander and say, “Guys, he kissed me! Help me figure out what it
means
.”

Yeah. That would go over well.

She just didn’t have any girlfriends.

She was friendly with Moira—though the bear shifter had such a mild temperament Grace sometimes worried she would offend her with her more colorful opinions. Moira’s dominant characteristic was kindness—a statement which could never be made about Grace.

She liked Patch well enough, but she’d only begun getting to know the cougar shifter. The age gap was wide enough—and Patch had been far enough outside the pride hierarchy for most of her life—that they’d never really talked before she and Roman had mated. Now their interactions, while friendly, were defined by their connections to the Alpha. Grace would always be first-and-foremost Roman’s lieutenant, which wasn’t exactly conducive to girl talk with his mate.

And while Whiskey might be a world-class listener—and probably the closest thing to a confidante Grace had—it didn’t feel right to tell her. It didn’t feel right to tell any of them.

Unfortunately, that didn’t help her figure out what the hell had happened—or escape the fact that it had. Dominec CrazyAss had kissed her. And not just a peck.

Could he be her new fuck buddy? The idea was insane. Yes, she’d frequently been tempted to throw herself against him to see which one of them would end up on top, but she hadn’t meant it like
that
. Though the thought was entirely too hot.

Suddenly the flush on her cheeks had to do with far more than the fact that she’d jogged halfway across the pride lands.

Okay. So there was an attraction there. Fine. That didn’t mean she had to act on it. Getting involved with Freddy Krueger wasn’t high on her list of life goals.

Though if he tried to kiss her again… Well. It wasn’t her fault if she let him.

Grace shoved through the back door of the infirmary and moved quickly to the tiny locker room next to the office they all shared—though Brandt tried to claim it as his own. She tossed her backpack into her locker and closed it before following the sound of voices toward the large front room. Adrian and Rachel were already there, chatting with Dr. Brandt amid the patient beds and exam tables.

Moira was nowhere in sight—though she had to be in the building. When Grace had called Brandt this morning to let him know Rachel was coming in, she’d been able to hear Moira’s yelp of excitement in the background. The midwife wouldn’t miss a shot at picking Dr. Russell’s brain.

Rachel had the beginnings of a black eye—which Grace fully intended to investigate as soon as Adrian left, though the good doctor wasn’t acting afraid of the Hawk. It had better have been an accident. Grace liked the Hawk. She’d hate to have to kick his ass into next week if she found out he’d been knocking around his girl.

As soon as she shooed Adrian off to his shift on the perimeter and Brandt went back into the bowels of the infirmary to find Moira, Grace made a point of putting the stiffly formal doctor at ease and then bringing up the shiner.

The good doctor was comfortingly irate that Grace would even imply that Adrian might hurt her—insisting with gratifying indignation that she’d gotten in the way of one of Adrian’s Organization nightmares the previous night—but Grace made a note to keep an eye on the couple, just in case. Lieutenants looked out for their pride mates, and Rachel was pride now, even if she was human.

Grace let the subject drop, Moira appeared—full of enthusiasm for the day—and they all got down to the business of showing Rachel Russell the pride’s medical facilities and digging into her knowledge of shifter DNA.

Time flew when you were talking about hormone therapies and cross-breed fertility. It felt like no time at all, but must have been hours later when the four of them wound up crammed into Brandt’s office and the conversation turned to her work at the Organization.

When she went into detail on the experiments, Grace forced herself to focus on the science, reminding herself that she liked the good doctor—and that Rachel had helped over a hundred shifters escape captivity. She certainly hadn’t lacked for test subjects.

“We had hundreds and hundreds of samples—every mature shifter brought through Organization labs was harvested for reproductive material.”

“
Jesus
.”

Every head snapped toward the doorway at that guttural curse. Adrian stood there, horror and hurt in every line of his face.

Grace had only a moment to marvel that it must be even later than she thought if the Hawk was already done with his perimeter shift before he bolted down the hall and Rachel leapt out of her chair to give chase. “Adrian!”

Grace, Brandt and Moira all clearly heard the pair dart into a patient room down the hall and slam the door—then politely pretended their shifter hearing couldn’t easily pick up the sound of raised voices coming from behind the door.

Moira frowned after them. “Should we do something?”

Adrian was doubtless one of those “samples” Rachel had mentioned. Grace figured she might have some choice words for the love of her life if he’d harvested her for genetic material too—not that she was ever going to have a love of her life, but she could imagine. “Give them a minute to work it out,” Grace suggested. “If it sounds like it’s getting worse, I’ll intervene.”

But the conversation only lasted a few seconds more before the sound of the Hawk storming out reached them.
Elvis has left the building
.

Brandt grimaced. “She did the best she could in a shitty situation.”

“He knows that,” Grace said. But the Hawk was still having violent nightmares about what had been done to him in captivity. Not surprising he’d reacted badly to the reminder that Dr. Russell had been a party to that. “He’ll come around.”

At least she hoped he would. Grace might not believe in true love for herself, but damned if she wasn’t going to fight for it for everyone she cared about.