She blinked, her mind whirling in confusion. “But the girls…I saw them. And you, too. You were all stripping!” She was babbling, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
“Your chi is growing chaotic again.” He extended his hands, but she backed away.
“Don’t touch me!” Tracy didn’t know why she was so vehement, especially since she did want to take his hands. She wanted to feel that incredible warmth sliding through her system again. She wanted him, and that thought terrified her more than all that other stuff about energy and chi and naked college girls. She felt confused and inadequate, which made him an even stronger temptation. She wanted to curl into his strength and lay all her fears at his feet. But she could not, not, not do that with this man! Not until she knew who he was and what he did. And yet, the desire was so strong.
She watched him bend down for his attaché case again. His expression was open, his body language charming, and his tush was really, really nicely formed. “I know it’s a lot to handle, right now,” he said. “But I have another class this evening at seven. Please come. Bring the police if you must, but come and see that what I teach is not illegal. It’s not even immoral.”
She wanted to shake her head. She wanted to say there was no way in hell that she would be sucked under his spell, but her mouth remained resolutely shut. Meanwhile, his hair was slipping across his forehead again. It was cute. He was cute and sexy and really smart, too. That was why she’d noticed him from the very beginning. “I don’t know what to think.”
He nodded and his eyes continued to draw her in, promising an answer if only she gave him a chance. “You have felt the energy. You know it is real. Come learn more tonight.”
He sounded so reasonable. And the last ten minutes had shown her that her anger stemmed from another source entirely—from Joey and her uncertain future. She didn’t know what to do.
“Your chi has cluttered up again,” he said quietly. “Doesn’t that bother you?”
She bit her lip. She did feel unsettled and…and exactly what he’d said: cluttered.
“Seven o’clock,” he repeated. “Please come.”
Chapter 3
NATHAN BARELY MADE IT upstairs before he collapsed on his bed with the shakes. Sweet heaven, he hadn’t realized! He hadn’t known, and who could have guessed? No wonder Tracy protected herself so fiercely. No wonder she didn’t date and never gave the ham-fisted American brutes the time of day. She was a tigress!
In every generation, there might be a dozen women who possessed the natural sensuality and purity to walk in the heavenly realm. These women could use their physical gifts to commune with angels and bring divine messages to Earth. It was like being a natural Buddha, only in a way most people would never accept. Buddhas used the mind to reach heaven, tigresses used their bodies as the window to the divine.
These women were a closely guarded secret in China and virtually unheard of in the United States. But he had grown up in a tigress temple, so he knew how special such women were. His great-grandmother, by all accounts, had been one of them. But the temple had floundered in recent years, in part because it lacked the guidance of a true divine tigress.
He couldn’t be sure that Miss Williams was one, of course. He had only touched her chi, branded the feel of her sweet energy into his mind. But there had been such untapped power within her, that he knew…No, he corrected himself, he guessed at her potential.
The irony of the situation made him laugh out loud. He had just divorced himself from his homeland and left the temple never to return. He wanted nothing to do with tigresses anymore—either natural or trained. And what did he discover? Perhaps the greatest untapped spirit in his generation.
No wonder she’d seemed so innocent in their flirtations. She had to keep her natural inclinations under tight control. If a woman of such sensitivity were to accidentally awaken the tigress within her—well, that would be terrible. The sexual drives would be overwhelming. Nymphomania was the usual result. Besides, he knew she was a single parent to her brother. He doubted she had the privacy to explore her sexuality as she wanted. So she kept herself apart as a way to protect herself.
It all made sense now. But oh, how that knowledge had cost him! His organ throbbed at the memory of touching her sweet chi. What a joy it would be to slowly initiate her to the ways of the tigress, to train her to take full mastery of her sexual powers!
Except, of course, he had foresworn all that. He had left the temple and had no wish to help any tigress in any way at all. They were all selfish women focused completely on heaven at the expense of everything and everyone else. Their quest was holy, their pressures innumerable, but he was done with helping them.
He struggled with his sense of ethics. He had to explain the truth to Miss Williams. He had to tell her about the temple and her natural talents. And when she understood, she would leave for the temple in Hong Kong and he would never see her again. She wouldn’t want to go, he knew, but spirits had a way of forcing a person to do things they never expected. He had seen it happen many times. An inner tigress was the most fearsome of spirits. It would want to be trained, would need to stretch for the divine. That was what tigresses did.
So whether she wished it or not, Miss Williams would end up being one of his mother’s students, perhaps the brightest tigress of her generation. Nathan sighed. So much for any possibility of a relationship between himself and Tracy. Tigresses were destined for bigger things. And he…
He had to go to school, get a degree, and then earn enough money to pay for his brother’s and sister’s education. And, he supposed, he would do one last task for the temple. He would teach Tracy Williams about her potential. Her natural tigress spirit would do the rest. In all likelihood, she would be in China within a month.
He groaned and tried to mentally quiet his throbbing organ. How typical of his life. The moment he noticed a girl, the moment he began to pursue a fascinating and intelligent woman was also the exact moment he discovered she was beyond his reach. A tigress in Illinois! Of all the hideous, perverse luck.
Of course, he still wasn’t sure, he reminded himself, but there was an easy test. She had claimed she had no interest in coming to his class tonight. If he was right, then the tigress within her would be unable to resist the call. Whether she understood it or not, she would come to him for training.
Simple. If she showed tonight, he would know she was a tigress. He would teach her the basics as quickly as possible, then send her on her way to the temple. If she didn’t appear, then he would know he was wrong. He could still pursue her as a man pursued a woman. She could still be his. But only if she resisted the call…
SHE HADN’T COME. Nathan grinned as he glanced at his cell phone clock—7:10 and Tracy wasn’t at class. That meant he was wrong. That meant Tracy was not a tigress and he could continue to pursue her. That meant at least one thing in his life was going right.
He grinned and turned to address Zoe, the only girl who had wanted to continue despite his landlord’s accusations during the last class. Zoe was a sweet porcelain doll of a girl—blue eyes, blond hair, and an air of desperation about her that baffled him. Her energy was compact, tightly controlled, and a mystery that would normally intrigue him. That she was also classically Greek beautiful was an added incentive. And yet she left him cold.
But that was the best kind of student—one he could instruct without fearing any emotional connection. He smiled and turned to Zoe. “I don’t think anyone else is joining us, so I guess it’ll be a private lesson between us.”
Zoe dimpled prettily, and Nathan began class. “As I said last time, every living thing has energy called chi. The male energy is called yang. The female is called yin.”
A tingle sizzled down his spine, and Nathan’s attention zeroed in on his apartment door. He knew without thinking that Tracy was right there, on the other side. She was hovering in indecision in the hallway, her female energy churning itself into a knot of agitation. He knew it, could sense it, and his heart sank into his toes.
He had his proof. She was a tigress. Her spirit had forced her to come to this class, and before long, she would forget everything she was, all her earthly attachments, and pursue heaven with single-minded devotion. That was what tigresses did whether they wanted to or not, whether they willed it or not. It was their calling, and it was sacred.
A tentative knock sounded. He was already across the room, opening the door for her. She stood uncertainly in the hallway, her ball cap pulled down almost below her eyes, and his heart lurched in sympathy. He could guess
