The Curse of the Tiger Read online

  “Shit,” Faline rolled her eyes. “I’m being assigned to bed rest by a tiger. Fabulous.” Admittedly, it did feel good to rest on the cushiony bed. Faline thought briefly of her filthy clothes, unbrushed teeth and tangled hair, but realised that the one sharing her bed was about the least likely being in the world to be offended by them.

  Ah, well, she thought, as exhaustion began to cloud her mind. Maybe Hunter is okay. Maybe he’ll show up at my back door and share some whisky with me again. Maybe we can take up where we left off…

  Faline felt consciousness start to slide off her as effortlessly as a silk nightgown. She was on top of the covers, but the tiger’s fur was thick and warm. For the second time in less than a day, Faline found herself curled against the tiger’s back and lulled to sleep by its heavy, even breaths. She stroked the animal’s broad body and felt its powerful heart beating beneath its skin.

  Chapter Five

  In her dream, Hunter was back, curled with his back against her stomach. Lean, strong and blissfully nude, she smelt him even before she touched him. “It’s you,” she whispered, keeping her eyes closed so that she could focus on her other senses. Faline pressed her palms on his chest to feel his heartbeat.

  “It’s me,” he answered. “It really is.” He gripped Faline’s hand and slid it down, past his chest and over his belly. He wrapped her fingers around his erection and moved her hand up and down. His cock was so hard that it pointed towards his chin, stretched tight with heated blood and animal need.

  “Mmm,” Faline murmured. She squeezed his shaft gently. “I love how in dreams you can do things you’d never do otherwise,” she told him.

  “Oh really?” he asked. “Like what? You sucked on me the other day when you were wide awake. If you’re dreaming, I’d say that’s the least you can do.” Faline felt his roughened hands at her shoulders, pulling her on top of him and positioning her face over his crotch. “Open your mouth,” he directed. “Take it again.”

  He wound his fingers into her hair and pressed the tip of his erection to the seam of her lips. She licked it and tasted salt and musk.

  “That’s right,” he urged, and pulled her head closer to his groin.

  Faline lowered one hand to her belly and slid it beneath the elastic waist of her sweatpants. She was drenched and swollen, shamelessly wet for him. She skidded her fingers over her clit and drew the head of his cock into her mouth. So thick and hard and smooth… She pushed her fingers into her cunt as she sucked on the sleek knob.

  She paused, confused. Didn’t Hunter have a piercing? Shouldn’t her unconscious mind be able to remember the details from less than a day ago? She licked his tip, waiting to feel the hard point of the body jewellery that she’d felt yesterday, but it was perfectly sleek…

  And solid…

  And real…

  Faline choked in alarm, spat out Hunter’s cock and jerked away from his lap. “What the hell, Hunter?” she gasped. “What are you doing here? I was afraid you’d been, you know…” She swiped the back of her hand over her lips. “Devoured.” Faline glanced around the room. “Is the tiger outside?” she wondered aloud.

  Hunter scooted to the head of the bed and raked one hand through his hair. Four long scabs traced over his shoulder like racing stripes. “I’m fine, Faline, but we can talk about all that later.” He reached towards her and yanked upward at the hem of her tank top. “Where were we?”

  Faline swatted his hand away, sat up and squinted at him. “And where’s your piercing?” she demanded, pointing at the smooth, unblemished tip of his penis. “I know I felt a stud at the tip of your cock at sundown yesterday, but now it looks like it’s never been pierced.”

  Hunter casually lowered his hand to his lap and loosely gripped his shaft. “You didn’t feel a stud there,” he answered. “You felt a barb.”

  Faline watched silently as the ruddy tip of his erection disappeared and reappeared at the end of his sliding fist. “But… I don’t understand. What do you mean, a barb?”

  “You felt it because I was starting to leave my human form and change into something else. To transform into an animal, Faline. What animal has a barb on its penis?” he asked.

  Faline’s face flushed in mounting confusion and fear. She shook her head, refusing to believe. Hunter expediently slipped her top off and tossed it aside before she could protest.

  “Well, male tigers, of course, but what does that have to do with anything?” she mumbled. Her breath quickened and her exposed breasts rose and fell. Hunter’s nostrils flared and he licked his lips.

  “Don’t you remember when the tiger swiped me last night, Faline?” He indicated his scratches. “I’m glad you got him with the tranquiliser gun before I arrived. Otherwise, last night might have played out quite differently for both of us.”

  Frozen with indecision, Faline watched him reach towards her right breast. In her bed was a crazy stranger who’d stripped naked and run into the tiger sanctuary alone. The troublesome part was that this lunatic had her interest piqued and her body responding enthusiastically. Even more troubling was the fact that she was starting to believe what he was saying…

  He grazed her nipple with his fingertips and tugged lightly. Wet heat surged between her thighs. “I know it’s hard to accept,” he told her as he stroked her skin. “God knows it was hard enough for me to accept it, but a few weeks in a cage cured me of that problem.”

  Hunter pushed Faline firmly onto her back and removed her pants in one smooth motion, then knelt between her legs and spread them with his hands. Her eyes widened when he slid his fingers over the slickened lips of her pussy. She wriggled and tried to close her thighs. “Come on, Faline,” he cajoled. “It’s been way too long since I’ve touched a woman, and I was afraid it would never happen again. Besides, I know you want it, anyway.” She bit her lower lip as he pushed his fingers inside her. Her muscles instinctively clenched around them. “Don’t you?”

  The tight sensation in her cunt felt like bliss. Faline let her head fall back on her pillow. Of course, he was right. She did want it. She licked her lips and moved her hips against his hand. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I do.”

  The corner of Hunter’s mouth curved up in a feral grin. “Good,” he answered, and lowered his face to her breast. Faline found it hard to focus on anything but the soft heat of his mouth on her tit— oh yes —and the feel of his fingers as they penetrated her— oh fuck yes —but worries continued to buzz about in her head. “But, wait,” she protested weakly. “What? You were in a cage?”

  Hunter latched his lips on her breast and sucked hard, then released her wet flesh. “Hush, Faline,” he growled. “Later.” He watched her reddened and shining nipple as it trembled with her breaths, then leant forward to give her other breast a lick and nuzzle. Faline let her head slump back to the pillow and surrendered to his kisses.

  Her second nipple slid from his mouth and now matched the first—swollen, ruddy and stiffly peaked. He traced small circles on her clit with the pad of his thumb and she felt it stiffen. Faline gripped his hand urgently, arched her back and fed his fingers into her cunt.

  Hunter lowered his face to her stomach and kissed her just above the soft bed of hair at her pubis. Faline spread her knees and tilted her hips upward. He nipped the skin of her belly before moving his lips lower. She cried out when he flicked his tongue over her clitoris. “Oh, please,” she breathed. She shamelessly bucked her hips against his face.

  An orgasm shuddered through her body and Faline squeezed his wrist. “Mmm, don’t stop, don’t stop,” she murmured. She lifted her pelvis to maintain contact between her clit and his tongue as the ripples from her climax moved through her. Her body felt flush and languid, drenched with release. Faline sighed in satisfaction and opened her eyes.

  Clearly Hunter was far from satisfied. Faline watched him dig into his backpack, extract a condom and unroll it on his erection with swift efficiency. He hoisted Faline up from the bed and positioned her on her hands and knees, th
en pushed her chest down on the bed so that her ass was pointed upward. One of his hands gripped her hip and the other pushed between her shoulder blades, pinning her to the mattress. He slid his shaft between her folds and found her entrance. Faline wriggled away. “It’s too big, Hunter,” she protested. “It’s too thick. You’re going to hurt me.”

  He reached between her legs to stroke her again. Faline tried to relax her protesting muscles, but God, that thing was monstrous. “You’re wet enough,” he told her, and moved his juice-slickened fingers to her breast. “You can handle it.”

  “Mm-hm,” she breathed. Faline, trusting, spread her thighs and lifted her rear higher. “Just go slow, will you?”

  He moved deeper inside, blissfully stretching every tiny millimetre of her sheath with his heft. Hunter grunted and withdrew before pushing his way a bit farther into her. The walls of Faline’s pussy contracted and another orgasm began to build.

  “That’s good,” she encouraged him. What had been impossibly huge was now a perfect fit. His thighs slapped against her ass as he thrust at a greater speed. “Yeah,” she begged. “Faster, Hunter. Harder.”

  “I’m about to come,” he warned her. “Are you ready?” The pace of his fucking accelerated until he stiffened and groaned. She ground against him, overtaken by her own orgasm. Hunter shoved his cock into her, hard, with each draining pulse of his climax, and Faline met him push for push. She bent her back until she imagined that her shoulders would meet her rear.

  As the last shudders of their orgasms faded, Hunter slipped off his condom and eased her onto her side. Faline felt limply replete with him curled against her back. She closed her eyes contentedly as he stroked her bare side, from the sensitive hollow under her arm, down her ribs, into the dip of her waist, over the rounded curve of her hip, then slowly back again.

  “That was incredible, Hunter,” she whispered. “But I think there’s an elephant in the room, don’t you? Or maybe that’s a tiger, right?” She chuckled. “Wanna tell me more about whatever’s going on with you?”

  Hunter cupped Faline’s hip in his hand, turned her onto her back and slid a plump pillow beneath her head. “Look, I know it sounds insane—I wouldn’t have believed it before it happened to me—but it’s the truth. There’s this Ute woman, Abetzi, who has some sort of magic at her disposal, some dark kind of power.” He ground his jaw angrily. “She’s a witch, Faline. A real, honest to God witch. She turned me into a tiger after I reported her to the animal welfare agency for mistreating a couple of cubs.”

  “You know, Sabrina’s a Ute,” Faline said. “She told me about Abetzi a few months ago. She said she’s trouble, and that she has connections to evil, destructive sources of power. I just assumed the woman has nasty bodyguards or something.”

  “Trust me, that witch doesn’t need bodyguards,” Hunter replied. “She’s got a much stronger force backing her up. Abetzi makes her living with this exotic zoo she runs, and her speciality is tigers. She figured that if she couldn’t have her two cubs, she’d have one full-grown male in a cage for tourists to admire,” said Hunter, his lips twisting with repressed hatred. “She’d had one before, she said.”

  “Khan,” Faline breathed. “Must have been Khan. We got him after he was found running loose, underfed, wounded and vicious. And I’ll bet anything that those cubs were Taj and Sahib. They were brought to us as rescues as well.”

  Hunter nodded. “I was on my way to Kat’s Crest Refuge, but I stopped by a gas station first and poked my head into Abetzi’s petting zoo. It’s a cramped, filthy place.” He grimaced and continued. “I couldn’t let the cubs stay in those conditions, so I called the authorities, but Abetzi sure didn’t appreciate the loss of her two furry little cash cows. She contacted me and asked me to come over.” Shrugging, Hunter picked up a lock of Faline’s hair and played with it, winding it around his fingers. “She seemed harmless enough. I mean, she’s an old lady, right? She’s, what, four and a half feet tall? But I learned that her size has nothing to do with her power. She started speaking strange words and the world tilted under my feet, and the next thing I knew I was behind bars with a family from Iowa gawking at me.”

  Faline listened. It was nuts, no doubt about it, but plenty of bizarre stuff had happened in the last couple of days. Hunter’s appearance out of nowhere, and then his naked dash into the sanctuary…a rogue tiger saving her, protecting her and giving her a piggyback ride…and a huge influx of cash into Kat’s Crest’s accounts. Maybe the whole world had gone crazy.

  “I escaped three days ago,” Hunter continued, “by slamming against the locked door of my cage and breaking it at night while she was gone. The spell she’d cast didn’t allow me to get near her with a bad intent, so I had no choice but to run. As soon as I’d cleared the entrance to the zoo, I changed back into my human form. Of course, I was buck naked,” he shook his head in embarrassment, “so that part was a bit awkward. I came upon a house and covered my, uh, essential parts with a couple of outdoor cushions before I knocked on the door. Fortunately, the owner bought my story of being robbed and stripped, and allowed me to use the phone.”

  “Bet that was a sight to see,” Faline mused. She ran her fingers over his chest as she listened.

  “Yeah, I reckon,” Hunter shook his head and grinned. “The lady was nice enough to lend me some clothes, too. I called my bank, had some cash wired and checked into a hotel for a decent night’s sleep and a hot meal. I thought I was out of the woods. I woke up, felt great and called home to check in. But I’m thinking you can guess what happened when sundown came.”

  “Tiger time?”

  “Yup,” Hunter replied. He rose to his elbow and casually traced figure eights around Faline’s breasts as he spoke. “I was in my third floor hotel room, at least, so no one saw the transformation. My clothes tore clean off my body, like the Incredible Hulk when he gets cranky.” He paused briefly and lifted one eyebrow. “Let me tell you, it’s pretty hard to pack a backpack using nothing but claws and teeth. I waited until about four in the morning and the hotel was completely quiet. Thank God I didn’t bump into anyone, although they probably wouldn’t have believed their eyes if they’d seen a tiger walk out of the elevator with a backpack strap looped around its neck.”

  Chapter Six

  Faline licked her lips. Hunter’s story was compelling, but his fingers on her skin were awfully distracting. “Go on,” she told him.

  “Well, I came straight here,” Hunter drawled. “I took the back roads and the woods. It wasn’t hard to stay hidden. Then I watched you there on your porch, getting loaded on whisky, but I waited and hoped that I’d take on human form once more.”

  “And you did,” Faline said. “But how did you know to come here anyway?”

  “See, I had this idea that I’d volunteer for your father,” he continued, pushing her erect nipple from side to side as he spoke. “I had learned about Jonas online. Kinda foolhardy, in retrospect, just setting out across the country without contacting him first, I guess.” He smiled sheepishly. “I just really love tigers and I wanted to learn more about them, and this looked like the best place to do it. Pretty ironic, considering the way things have turned out, don’t you think? I’d planned to go back home and work at my dad’s company eventually. I was going to put out a line of coffee and frozen fruit treats. They were going to be the Buzzed Berry line—catchy, huh?” He leant forward to catch one of her nipples between his lips and tugged lightly.

  “Oh!” Faline murmured. She stroked the mussed brown hair on his head and asked, “Your dad has a food company?”

  “Uh-huh,” he answered. “Bama Belle Ice Cream.”

  Faline’s eyes flew open. “You donated the money, didn’t you?” she realised. “You saved Kat’s Crest!”

  “Kat’s Crest is worth saving, but I was also thinking of myself.” Hunter explained. He pulled the tip of her breast into his mouth and swirled his tongue over the pebbled peak before continuing. “If I’m going to live as a tiger half of the
time, I want to do it where I can run wild and hunt and”—he nipped her wet skin lightly with his teeth—“do all those other things that tigers like to do.”

  Hunter slid his fingers up her inner thigh and between her legs. Heat rose to her cheeks when he pushed one slim, long digit inside.

  He penetrated her slowly, and the slippery thinness she felt made Faline hungry for something much heavier and thicker. Another finger joined the first, and Faline groaned when he corkscrewed them at a frustratingly unhurried pace.

  Faline writhed against the sweet pressure and found his shaft with her hand. Already growing hard again, she thought, and gripped it. “You’ve got some pretty impressive stamina, you know that?” she noted. He pulled his slickened fingers from her cunt and knelt between her thighs. She heard the rustle of a condom wrapper before feeling the tip of his erection press against her wet folds.

  Faline gripped his hips and yanked them towards hers, manhandling him in order to get him exactly where she needed him to be. In one breathtaking thrust, she was blissfully filled and stretched once more. With her hands on the sculpted curves of his ass, Faline urged him to pump into her at top speed. Her body was softened, slickened and fully primed from the sexual bout that had just finished. “That’s good,” she panted. “It feels like you’re going to split me in two.”

  Hunter grunted and drew his eyebrows together in concentration.

  The mattress creaked and the headboard banged against the wall, but Faline heard nothing except for the rush of blood in her head and Hunter’s laboured breathing in her ear. She wrapped her legs around his waist and crossed her ankles in the curve of his lower back. “Oh, God,” he groaned, “you’re gonna make it happen again, Faline.”

  Faline squeezed her cunt in a tight Kegel clench and raked her nails over the cheeks of his ass. Hunter came with a roar and slammed his hips into her so hard that her head bonked on the headboard. Faline’s climax hit her as soon as she felt his. She gripped his rear, pulling him closer and tighter and deeper, as the pulsing, heated energy spun around her.