Hit List

At home I had Domino, who shifted to black and white, but physically his hair was black and white, showing the mix. If the human form showed just one, then one was what the tiger seemed to have. I’d never met another tiger who could do three colors, let alone four, but there was still that sweet scent of golden power. The gold tiger in me gave a soft, whuffing purr. I tried to think reasonably, but I didn’t feel reasonable. My skin felt heavy with need; things low in my body tightened. The reaction staggered me. Ethan reached out, took my arm, just instinct. Someone almost falls and you try to catch them. I could feel his hand through my jacket like heat and weight, as if his human shape were already only just something to hold all that power.

“Get out, Edward,” I said in a strangled voice.

“What?”

“Go back, see how the hunt’s going, but you can’t be here.”

“You’re going to lose control.”

“I think so,” I said.

“Anita . . .”

“Go, now, Edward, please, just go.” I was worried about my friend, but my eyes were all for the man in front of me. I stared up into those gray eyes and knew now that it was the color of his tiger. This close I could see the differences between human eyes and the tiger’s in his face. His arms had slid around me, drawing me in against his body; my arms were already around his waist.

“You want me?” He sounded surprised.

“Yes,” I said, and four different tigers began to trot up the long dark space inside me. I buried my face against his T-shirt and the chest underneath. He smelled like hot, red flame and the air after a lightning storm when it’s clean and fresh, and under that was candy. He smelled like cotton candy, sugary, sweet, something that would melt on your tongue. I’d found that all the gold tigers smelled like something sweet to me, under the sweet smell of candy was another sweet scent. Clover—white clover on a hot summer’s day—was what his blue tiger smelled like. Cynric at home smelled like a whole garden in high summer, so apparently blue tigers smelled like green, growing things. Four of my tigers stared up at me, their lips drawn back, to take in the scent of his skin, as deeply as we could breathe it in. They gave a chorus of growling purrs that rumbled up through my body as if my bones were a tuning fork for the beginning of some deep, bass song. It made my knees go weak. Ethan caught me, which pushed our bodies that last inch together. I could feel that his body was hard and eager already. The sensation of it drew a small noise from me. “Yes, I want you.” And the ardeur rose up in me like a wave, but this time the tigers inside me weren’t fighting it; their power mingled with the ardeur, and I realized something I hadn’t before. I had some of the same power as the old Master of Tigers, but the ardeur had turned it into something else, something warmer, kinder, more alive. That aliveness spilled up my skin and over his, so that he cried out, wordless, eyes closing, back bowing, arms tightening around me to simply keep him standing.

“So much power,” he whispered.

I had a moment to wonder if this was just the ardeur feeding, or if I would accidentally bind him to me metaphysically. I didn’t need more men in my life, not permanently. The thought helped me push the ardeur away, just a little, so I could have another thought. Ethan didn’t deserve to be bound to me forever, not by accident. I didn’t want to take his free will. I didn’t want to trap him, or me.

I was able to climb back into the driver’s seat of my own head. Ethan stared down at me. “What’s wrong? The power’s fading.”

“Something is wrong with this feeding, Ethan. It’s different.”

“What?”

“There’s a chance that it won’t just be the ardeur. That I’ll bind you to me as my tiger to call.”

“Like Alex?” he asked.

I nodded, staring up at him, searching his face. He was handsome in a guy sort of way, cheekbones high, but thin-faced, so the shape was a soft rectangle. He had a dimple in his chin.

“Alex still has his life, his job; you haven’t hurt him.”

“I don’t always know how deep the binding will be, Ethan. Do you understand that? Do you understand that I can’t predict what will happen?”

He blinked down at me, trying to fight free of the pheromones on the air. He swallowed hard and then said, “You’re giving me a chance to back out.”

“Yes.”

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“You could be a bride, as in Dracula’s brides. No real will of your own.” I stopped holding him so tight and tried to give us a little physical space to think. Ethan’s arms tightened against my back. “You can’t want that for yourself.”

“The red clan breeds with other clans. If the child looks like the other clan, it’s sent to them to be raised; if it looks like red clan, it stays here with us. But if the baby doesn’t look like either clan, then it stays with the mother, not because she wants it, but because the other clan won’t take it.”

I kept one arm around his waist but raised the other so I could touch his hair. I touched the white and gray of it, and last I stroked the dark, rich streak of red in his bangs, pulling on it just a little. It made me smile up at him, and that made him smile at me.

“You’re beautiful, don’t let anyone tell you different,” I said.

His smile widened. “The clan females won’t have sex with me because they don’t want to bring an impure child into the world. I even had a vasectomy three years ago, so I couldn’t get anyone pregnant. I thought that would make me safe enough for the clan females to want me, but they still saw me as impure, as if just my touch would make them less pure-blooded.”

“I’m so sorry that they’ve been stupid, Ethan.”

He smiled, a little sad around the edges. “Me, too.”

Domino back home was a half-black and half-white tiger. He’d been security for the white clan, but just as alone as Ethan was; at least with Domino the white clan had found him in foster care and adopted him. They hadn’t bargained for his birth and then treated him badly. It seemed somehow worse.

I smiled at him. “Since I don’t want to get pregnant by anyone, it’s a plus for me. Your lycanthropy already protects you from any disease, so with me on the birth control, too, we’re about as safe as we can get.”

“Our lycanthropy,” Ethan said.

“What?”

“You’re a panwere, right? You just don’t change shape, so our lycanthropy protects us from any other disease but the lycanthropy.”

I frowned, because I hadn’t really thought about it like that. “I don’t know; since I can carry multiple strains of lycanthropy, I’m not a hundred percent sure I can’t catch other diseases.”

He nodded. “That’s true, so you still have to worry about STDs.”

“If I’m with humans,” I said.

“Are you ever with humans?”

“No, but I bet you do just fine with the human women,” I said.

He smiled, and it was almost shy. “I tried dating humans, but I can’t tell them what I am, and you can’t hide it forever.”

“No,” I said, “you can’t.”

“It’s like denying what I am, who I am. It’s almost lonelier than not having anyone in my arms.”

I nodded. “I had a boyfriend, a fiancé who wanted me to do the white picket fence—so not my gig.”

He grinned at me. “I can feel that you want me.” He leaned over me, sniffing against the side of my face. “I can still smell the scent of red, and white, and blue . . . and something else I’ve never smelled before. You smell sweet and . . . Why do I see gold in my head? A gold tiger.”

“Because part of you is gold.”

“That’s not possible,” he said.

“I can smell the truth on your skin.”