Hit List

He drew in a deep breath.

“Gods, you smell like home.”

“I was told that gold tigers don’t look for home.”

He shook his head. “Then they must have already found it, because everyone looks for home in someone.” He whispered it as he turned his face against mine and put his lips on my cheek. It was almost a kiss, but not quite. His breath was warm against my skin.

My pulse was thick in my throat, my body tingling with his nearness. “Do you understand what could happen to you?” I tried to sound reasonable, but it came out as a hoarse whisper.

“I think so.”

“We just have to wait for Alex, and then we can think about it. You can have time to think about it.”

His hand cupped the side of my face, sliding his fingers into my hair. He kissed me, ever so softly on the other side of my face. “I don’t want to think.”

I closed my eyes as he rubbed his face against mine, like a cat scent-marking, his hand tightened in my hair enough that I made a small noise for him. “What do you want?”

“I want to go home,” he whispered.

I drew away enough to look into his eyes; they’d already gone soft, half-focused. His lips were parted, and his lower lip was wet as if he’d licked it. The ardeur pushed at me; the tigers slapped at me, raking their claws down the inside of my body so that I half-crumpled in his arms. He caught me, held me, his face all concern. “Are you all right?”

I nodded. I was, but I wouldn’t be if I fought too much longer. I thought about Alex, and I felt him, he was coming, but I felt his irritation with his mother; she’d delayed him. He was too far away, I couldn’t hold out . . . I smelled Ethan’s skin and was honest with myself: I didn’t want to hold out. Yes, it was the ardeur, yes, it was the tigers inside me, but it was also his loneliness. I’d been lonely for years; I knew what it was like to be different and have no one love you for it.

“Are you all right?” he asked again, his hands on my arms now, as if he were afraid I’d fall.

“I will be,” I said.

“What can I do?”

I drew back from the ardeur, shoved the tigers down, and knew it wouldn’t last. “I need you to understand that I can’t control all of this. I don’t know how much of your free will you’ll lose when we do this. I need you to really understand that, Ethan.”

His gray eyes were very serious as he looked down at me. “I understand.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“No, but for the look in your face just a few minutes ago, for the smell of your skin, for that taste of belonging . . . Don’t leave me here alone.”

I thought at Alex. I thought, too late, Stay away, and then I stopped fighting. Stopped fighting the ardeur, stopped fighting the tigers, and stopped fighting myself. I gave myself to the moment and the man in my arms.

13

IT TOOK TIME to disarm each of us. My concern for my weapons helped chase back the ardeur enough that other issues came up—like the fact that the small room Ethan had kicked open was the machinery room. It was bare and concrete floored. I was down to my bra and jeans with a pile of weapons at my feet when I laughed and said, “Where can we have sex that we won’t lose skin doing it?”

Ethan peeled his shirt over his head and dropped it on his own pile of weapons. I would have tried to find someplace more comfortable to have sex, but seeing him shirtless distracted me. The fine muscles I’d seen in his arms hadn’t quite prepared me for how very nice he looked out of the shirt. There was always that moment when you got the clothes off for the very first time. It never grew old for me, that wonder of the first time, from the clothes coming off, to the first touch, the first kiss. Everyone kept telling me that with this many people in my life, and bed, I’d get jaded, but I never did. It was always fresh wonder, and Ethan standing there shirtless helped me chase back the ardeur even more, or maybe I just had more control of it now. But whatever the reason, I moved toward him, my hand outstretched so that I could run my fingers down the smooth, muscled grace of his chest. I had other men in my life who were more muscled, had more bulk, but Ethan’s level of muscle was just dandy. I ran my hand over the smooth swell of his chest, avoiding the nipples for now, because I actually wanted to caress him before we raised the ardeur too far again.

I ran my hand over the smooth ridges of his stomach. “Hmm, a six-pack, that takes work.”

His breath came out in a shuddering sigh, from just that innocent caress. “All I am to my clan is muscle, so I have to be the best muscle I can be.”

I curved my hands on either side of his waist, following along all that lean, hardworking muscle. Such a small touch, but it made him close his eyes and sigh. That reaction alone let me know just how long it had been since someone touched him. It made me sad for him. And then I felt something in the hallway, something hot and powerful, and angry . . . I turned back and went for my gun in its holster, but like Ethan’s gun it was under my shirt. I was on one knee, my shirt still in the air as I raised my gun up to aim at the door. Ethan was going for his gun, but he wouldn’t reach it in time.

14

MY FINGER WAS starting to pull the trigger as the door burst open, and I had a second to see that it was Alex in human form. If I’d been truly human I’d have shot him, but I had the reflexes to stop in time and aim the gun at the ceiling, though a moment later I wasn’t sure I’d made the right choice.

I had a heartbeat to see him, a second to have that moment of frozen, crystal-hard vision, when adrenaline and violence slow everything down as if you have all the time in the world to do something, to see it coming. It’s an illusion—if you see the same moment later on film, it’s all so fast. But it let me see bits of things so clearly and the rest was lost. Alex’s dark red hair was shorter than last time I’d seen him, almost shaved. He flashed yellow tiger eyes at me, his human face set in a snarl of rage as he rushed in a blur of speed and power at Ethan, who had his gun in his hand, but no time to aim, and if he had, would he have shot his prince?

Alex’s body hit Ethan’s and sent the other man back against the machinery behind us. Metal snapped, and groaned, as it broke underneath them. A harsh, coughing roar came out of Alex’s human throat as he snarled into Ethan’s face.

I was yelling, “Alex! No! Alex! No! Stop!” I aimed the gun at him, and moved with it aimed so that I had a clear head shot while he snarled into Ethan’s face. I had the shot, but I couldn’t take it. I’d kill Alex at this distance, and he was my tiger to call, which meant when he died, I might die too, and so might everyone that I was metaphysically tied to. Fuck!

I holstered the gun and let it fall to the floor, and went to them. I had the angle now and could see that one of the metal pipes had pierced Ethan’s side. There was blood all over that nice upper body. Fuck! I couldn’t risk shooting Alex, but I wouldn’t stand there and watch him tear Ethan apart either. I went back to my pile of weapons for a blade. But I’d forgotten what Ethan was, all he was to his clan: muscle.

His fist moved in a pale blur and Alex staggered back, blood flying from his face. Alex fell to the floor, catching himself on one hand. Ethan began to drag himself down the pipe. The sight of it twisted my stomach; God, it had to hurt. His power rolled off him in waves, and three of my tigers loved the taste of it, the heat of it, the disaster of it, because just watching Ethan force his body down that pipe in his side, I knew that when he got off that pipe the fight would be on.

I stepped between them, which if I’d meant to fight either of them would have been stupid, but I wasn’t planning on slugging it out with either of them. I didn’t so much drop my metaphysical shields as just find the anger that always seemed to be bubbling right below the surface of me. Feeding on sex was Jean-Claude’s vampire line,