Known for their brutality and solitary ways, most tiger females and males spent little time together except for the occasional vicious mating.
But the Vorislavs weren’t raised like other tigers. Not with the father the good Lord cursed them with. The rest of his kin didn’t even call his daddy eccentric. They called him weird. The less friendly ones called him a freak. A freak among freaks. And he was Nik’s sperm donor.
Nik knew he should never come home from hunting and find his siblings sitting in his kitchen. Eating his food. Drinking his beer and coffee. And if they were, he shouldn’t let them live. But he did. The old man had insisted on it since they were cubs. He’d wanted a family from the very beginning and did everything necessary to ensure that. He prided himself on two things: surviving the Vietnam War and making sure all his children were with the same female.
Nik understood the first. But the last boggled his mind. There were few, if any, tigers who only bred with one female in their lifetime. Most of the tiger families consisted of half sisters and brothers. But not his. It wasn’t that his mother didn’t want other males either. But if any got too close, his father made sure they never got too close to much of anything ever again.
Really, if you favored your balls, you kept away from “Vorislav’s female”—his poor mother’s nickname among the tiger community.
Nik didn’t hate his father. He simply didn’t understand him. He definitely had no desire to be like him. True, he hadn’t yet had the need to have any cubs of his own like Ban, but his sexual appetite was as healthy as any of his breed. So, to avoid the nightmare of dealing with a tiger female in heat, he spent his free time getting his itch scratched by other cats. Lion females were great because they only bred with their own kind. So, if they needed or wanted simple sexual gratification, they came to him. Same thing with leopards and jackals.
But Nik avoided humans like the plague. They could be as bad as wolves. Some were happy enough to bump from one bed to another. Yet too many others wanted to commit their lives to one person. Forever! Why the hell would anyone do that? Why the hell did his father?
No. He needed to stay away from Angelina Santiago. Far, far away.
Of course, not easy with her living in his house—even temporarily. And pushing through his kitchen door with that half-crazed look on her face, storming up to him, and grasping his T-shirt between those soft, cool hands.
Yeah, a problem waiting to beat him over the head…again.
“Where is it?” she demanded.
“Where’s what?” He wanted to pull her hands off his shirt, but if he touched her again…
“The TV. Where is it?”
“I don’t have one.”
“What do you mean you don’t have one?” Panic wafted off her in waves. “What grown man doesn’t have a TV?”
“One who likes to read instead.”
“Read?” He loved her face. Especially when she looked so beautifully perplexed.
“Yeah. I read. And I have a whole bunch of books you can borrow.”
Her face twisted in disgust. “What? I look like Miki to you?”
She released him and stormed back out.
He stared at the door she went through. “Who the hell is Miki?”
Growling in annoyance, Angie moved through Nik’s house. They were alone. His family members long gone. Just her, the hillbilly, and books. Books!
She shook her head and wandered into what she could only assume was the library and his office. One wall had a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Books filled it and he even had books on top of books. The other wall had a floor-to-ceiling case as well, this one filled with CDs and actual vinyl albums. She went straight for the music. He set up his music chronologically starting with stuff from the fifties. She frowned. Clearly a big Elvis fan.
“No TV. And Elvis. Could this get any scarier?” As she moved past the different decades, she finally hit the eighties and nineties, and smiled in relief. He had a nice selection of alternative music and a butt load of some great tech. He seemed to be quite the Lords of Acid fan. Considering their music usually had to do with fucking while being bound, she wondered briefly if he was a bit of a “kinkoid”. Into tying up girls and fucking them senseless.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Goddammit! She really needed to get control of that. Having such a noisy clit really was unacceptable.
She grabbed one of the earlier Lords of Acid CDs and popped it into what had to be the most amazing sound system she’d ever seen. She turned on one of her favorite tracks, “Rough Sex,” then went through a pile of magazines he had on his desk. He had a stack of news magazines like Time and Newsweek, but she had no interest in reading anything that depressing. Thankfully, buried down at the bottom, was a recent copy of Vogue. The name on the subscription label said Kisa Vorislav. Must be a sister, since Nik wouldn’t dare have a wife.
With a sigh, she sat down at his desk, put her feet up on the exquisitely carved wood with the magazine on her lap, and promptly fell asleep.
Nik could hear her moving around his house. He could imagine the way the skirt of her mini-dress swirled around her thighs. And those shoes. The black “strappy ones” she debated about getting. They really did look good on her. Twenty grand well spent as far as he was concerned.
His cell phone went off and Nik let out a sigh of relief. Anything to distract him from the thought of that woman in those shoes.
“This is Nik.”
“Hey, Nik, darlin’.”
“Sahara. Hey, baby.” A lioness. She belonged to the Lyon Pride from this afternoon. He and Sahara had gone a few rounds in the past. The woman did know how to have fun.
“My sisters said they saw you in town today. And I started thinking, I’m free tonight…”
Nik smiled, then groaned. “I can’t. I’m babysitting a dog-lovin’ human.”
“Get your brothers to do it. From what I heard about her fabulous taste in clothes, they won’t mind a bit.”
Nik’s good humor fled. He thought about his brothers lingering around his territory, watching Angelina walk around his house in those shoes. He didn’t like that thought one goddamn bit. Then he realized he felt territorial about a woman he had no intention of breeding with. That particular realization pissed him off even more.
No way. He was not his father’s son. He’d meet up with Sahara tonight. Meet her and fuck her into oblivion, completely blocking out Angelina Santiago and her strappy black shoes.
“Ya know, Sahara, as a matter of fact—” Tech music suddenly pulsated through his house. But not just any tech music. The Lords of Acid. Specifically “Rough Sex” by Lords of Acid.
That heifer.
Thoughts of the evil viper bent over his kitchen table, taking his dick, while screaming out his name almost had him coming in his jeans. Especially when he added in the handcuffs.
“Sahara, I can’t. Really. I made a…” he sighed heavily, “…a commitment.”
“You?”
Nik’s frown returned. “Yes. Me.”
Sahara chuckled. “Uh…okay.”
Angie woke up when she felt her chair kicked.
“What?” she asked, not bothering to be polite.
“Hungry?”
She nodded, yawned, and stretched. Arms over her head, legs stretched out with toes pointed. When she finished, she looked up to see Nik staring down at her with his hands clenched into fists. “What?” she asked again.
“Nothin’,” he growled.
Strange man, she thought as she followed him from the room.