Fire & Frost (5 page)

TO BE FAIR — and because she didn’t have any other options — she gave them the weekend. Against her better judgment, she went out on dates with all three and tried to make the best of things. After all, she didn’t have to marry the guy, right? He just had to get her pregnant.

Even after her date, she couldn’t stand Nelson. He was polite enough, and he held doors open for her and acted like a gentleman. He was also controlling and a bit too old fashioned for her taste. They’d gone to a restaurant — his pick, since her pick wasn’t ‘any good’ according to him. Once there, he’d promptly ordered for her before she’d had a chance to look at the menu, and when she’d tried to order a cocktail, he’d told her that he didn’t find it appropriate for ladies to drink in public.

Of course, when she’d snarled at him, he’d changed his tune.

Montgomery was not much better. They’d gone out to a restaurant; the exact same one that Nelson had taken her to. Once there, Montgomery had grilled her about his brother. Had she liked Nelson? Had he purchased her dinner or had they gone dutch? Did she think his brother was the better-looking one? Everything seemed to be a competition between the two of them, and that was a major turnoff for her. She just imagined trying to sleep with the man. He’d probably quiz her on his technique and ask her who her best had been. Nor did she want to subject her future child to a lifetime of his father’s competitiveness.

Cory had taken her to a bowling alley, and they’d played a few games while chatting. To her surprise, she genuinely liked Cory. He was nice, low-key, and easygoing. He was also a pothead who lived in his parents’ basement, but she supposed she couldn’t have everything.

Too bad his last name was Janitor.

Cory was nice enough, but just because he was the lesser of three evils didn’t mean that she wanted to have his baby. After the bowling date, she headed back to her apartment — alone — and stared at her phone, debating. After a moment, she sighed.

In desperation, she called the dating agency one more time.

In what seemed to be par for the course, she got Ryder’s voicemail. “Hi there! You’ve reached the desk of Ryder St. James,” a perky voice chirped. “I’m unavailable to take your call at the moment, but leave me a message and your account number and I’ll call you back as soon as possible. Have a super day!”

“Hey, um, Ryder? I don’t remember my account number, but this is Estrella Townsend. The liger that’s about to go into heat. I’m guessing you don’t have many of those at the agency so I’m hoping you’ll remember who I am. Anyhow, I wanted to say that I didn’t mark down anyone on my card at the speed mating the other night, but…” She sighed, hating herself for even bringing it up. “But I was wondering if anyone marked me down. If so, can you let me know? I’m willing to reconsider dating anyone who put me down. Anyhow, call me back.” Estrella rattled her number off and then hung up, hating that she’d had to stoop to this.

Pickings were definitely slim and getting slimmer all the time. Maybe she needed to make a list of attributes she was looking for in a man, and then she could narrow down her (rather sparse) selection. After all, she could always go turkey baster and raid a sperm bank or something, she supposed, but that wouldn’t help with her heat much. She needed to have sex, period.

Her apartment was too warm. Fanning herself with a notebook, Estrella opened all the windows, letting the icy winter air breeze in. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Maybe she could make her list while having a nice, relaxing, chilly soak in the tub to bring her internal temperature down a bit.

Estrella undressed and filled the tub, adding some bubble bath. She gave a soft sigh of pleasure when she soaked her limbs in the cool water. It immediately felt better. Picking up her paper again, she tapped her lip with the pen and considered.

If she was man-shopping for herself, she liked tall men. Dark hair. Muscles. A little bit dangerous. Someone with a take-charge kind of personality who wouldn’t be overbearing or condescending. She liked a man who knew what he wanted, but trusted her enough to make her own decisions and wouldn’t try to override her. She wrote down a few notes, then considered. Tattoos? For some reason she’d found tattoos sexy lately…

She froze in the icy water, and stared at her list.
Dark hair. Muscles. Tall. Tattoos. Take charge.

Vic. It was all Vic.

Damn it. She tossed the notebook and pen to the far end of the bathroom and sank into the tub, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. She supposed she could lie to others but not to herself. Did she really want Vic that badly? When had her appreciation for him turned to full-blown desire?

It was bad to want your alpha. Bad bad bad. It mucked up a relationship that she couldn’t afford to muck up. Things were awkward enough for her as one of the few females in the tiger clan. Mix in her liger heritage and things were already weird. Crushing on her alpha? Just made things even worse.

Her hand slid to her belly under the water, and she stared down at her naked body through the bubbles. She’d always thought she was pretty sexy, if it weren’t for the height thing. Would a guy like Vic find someone like her attractive? Estrella raised one long leg into the air, studying it. Her muscles were tight, her skin tanned. She had a good body. Average face, maybe, but a good body.

Now Vic, he had an
amazing
body. She pictured his big, muscular arms, rippling with tattoos, and a shiver of desire flashed through her. Her hand slid lower, to her sex.

It was just the heat that was making her so turned on, she told herself. Passing phase. Even so, she pictured Vic’s strong, muscular arms and her fingers slid between the lips of her sex, finding her clit. She was already aching with need; the heat gave her a hair-trigger reaction to anything sexual. A quick stroke of her fingers and she sucked in a breath. This…was not helping her ridiculous crush on Vic.

And yet. She couldn’t resist sliding her fingers over her clit again and then circling the sensitive bud with sudden, sure moves. The heat that was making her crazy unleashed like a hurricane, and within seconds, she was gasping through the waves of a powerful orgasm, her other hand clenching on the side of the tub, splashing water over the side with the force of her movements.

The force of it rocked her to her core. She’d had sex before. She’d definitely had orgasms. But never quite like that. All that for a few quick brushes of her fingers? Jeez. When she finally found the man to father her child, she was going to tear him apart.

That left out humans and smaller shifters for sure. Estrella sank deeper into the frigid waters. Her choices seemed to be narrowing by the minute.

BY THE TIME SHE finally got out of the tub, her apartment was a comfortable 42 degrees, her orgasm was a distant memory, and her skin was beginning to itch with desire again. Instead of sating the urge inside her, the furtive masturbation in the tub had only made things worse. As she toweled off her skin, she groaned every time the terry-cloth of the fabric brushed against her.

This was not going to work. She needed to burn off some energy. Best cure for that as a shifter was to either have lots of sweaty sex, or to shift and go for a run in animal form.

And since she couldn’t do anything about the former, the latter would have to do.

Estrella dressed as gingerly as possible and then grabbed her keys and phone, heading out of her apartment and to her car. There was a definite icy bite to the weather, the skies, overcast. The sun was just about to go down, dropping the temperature further, which would be welcome given her state of mind. She would love a cold snap.

Jumping into her car, she dialed Vic’s number as she drove.

“Everything okay?” he asked as soon as he picked up.

“Fine,” she said, then exhaled sharply. Had her nipples just hardened at the sound of his voice? Jesus. She was a mess. “I’m coming over for a run. Be there in five.”

“I’ll run with you,” he said, and hung up before she could protest.

Damn it. Bad enough that she had to call and let him know that she needed to run. As shifters that stood out like sore thumbs amongst the local wildlife, they didn’t have the freedoms that the badgers, the foxes, or even the were-cougars did. A normal person would probably panic if they saw a badger or a were-cougar. They’d certainly call the cops if they saw a tiger — and the media would go wild. One of the Barlows had the clever idea of a big cat rescue project as a cover for their clan. So, when they needed to run, they headed out to Little Paradise and Kenna Barlow’s farm. Kenna was Vic’s sister.

She parked in Kenna’s yard and didn’t bother to head in to introduce herself — Kenna was used to the tiger clan prowling around at all hours and wouldn’t bother to check on her. Instead, she glanced around for Vic’s car. No sign of it yet. Damn. She lifted the floor mat and tossed her keys and phone underneath it, then headed to the gate on the side of the farmhouse.

The need to shift into liger form was bristling through her skin. Vic wouldn’t like it if she took off on her run without him, especially after he’d told her that he was on his way. You didn’t piss off your alpha with stupid, passive-aggressive moves like that. Not if you valued your place in the clan. If there was one thing Estrella didn’t mess with, it was her tenuous spot in the clan.

Of course, nothing said she couldn’t go ahead and shift herself. It would probably be better, considering her nipples would stand at attention as soon as Vic came into view, and she’d probably start giving off the scent of a cat in heat. With those embarrassing thoughts flaring through her mind, she hastily stripped out of her clothing and tossed it into a pile near the barbed-wire fence. Then, she crouched low in the grass and waited for the transformation.

It came a few moments later, ripping through her with a force that was almost orgasmic. God, it felt good to switch to her liger form. Yawning, she lazily stretched her large paws out in front of her, arching her back. Her tail flicked back and forth. She smacked her chops a few times, the scents of the night more powerful now that she’d shifted, the lighting as clear as day despite the sun’s disappearance. The scents of the trees in the distance filled her nostrils, and she looked at them with longing, then sighed and flopped her large body to the ground, waiting.

Vic pulled up a few minutes later, just when her patience was reaching its breaking point. Good. Casually, she lifted a paw and began to wash it, acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary as Vic entered the gate and then shut it behind him. He gave her an amused look. “Sorry I’m late.”

She ignored him, licking the pads of one foot as if it were the most fascinating thing ever. Her tail twitched.

“There was a cop behind me, so I had to go the speed limit all the way here,” he explained, then grabbed the hem of his shirt and yanked it over his head, exposing rock-hard abs and more tattoos.

Estrella froze, mid-paw-lick. Okay. Okay. She could do this. She knew Vic had all those yummy tattoos and washboard abs. She’d seen him naked dozens of times. She’d seen every shifter in her clan naked dozens of times. So why was Vic’s delicious body driving her wild now? She dropped her paw, and her claws curled. She might have kneaded the grass with her claws a little while he stripped out of his jeans and tossed his clothing over hers.

Damn. She had to do something about this, she realized as he began to change.

Even when her heat was taken care of, this infatuation with Vic was going to continue to be a problem.

“IT’S EMBARRASSING,” ESTRELLA TOLD Jayde over coffee. “As soon as I see him, my kitty goes wild. And this time, I’m not referring to my liger.”

Jayde snorted and stirred her iced latte vigorously with her straw. Her bracelets jangled with her movements. “So did you tackle him in the woods and show him your wild side?”

Estrella sighed. “No. I ran like a chicken. Did my liger thing and avoided him as much as humanly possible.”

“Pathetic.”

“I know.”

“You should tell him you like him,” Jayde said. The tip of the straw disappeared between her bright pink lips, and she slurped loudly. Jayde was a good friend, but she didn’t know the meaning of low-key. Even now. They were having a quiet morning coffee between friends. Estrella was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. Jayde wore a neon green mini-dress with a ruffled hem and enough bracelets to make a jewelry store pause. Her long black hair was pulled up in a high ponytail. “You want him, right? Just tell him. I bet he’ll be flattered.”

“Or horrified,” Estrella said quietly, sipping her own iced coffee. She normally preferred her drink scalding, but, with the heat, the thought of putting anything warm in her system was repulsive. “I just don’t want anything to jeopardize my spot in the clan, Jayde. Bad enough that I’m an outsider. I don’t want to be that weird outsider who’s crushing on the alpha. I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again if he turns me down.”

“So who are you going to go with? The chauvinist asshole, the competitive asshole, or the pothead?”

Estrella buried her face in her hands. “I really hate that those are my only options.”