Tigers Like It Hot (3 page)

“You’re right,” Mac agreed.

Jessi’s stomach knotted at his words.

“I knew you’d agree.” The woman turned their way with a smirk. She had the men by the short hairs, and she wanted Jess and Kelly to know it.

“Of course. We
all
agree.”

Zach or Derek had said that. She wasn’t sure who was who just yet.

Jessi’s heart constricted. She had known they didn’t really think she and Kelly were beautiful, but it still hurt to hear it.

“They are already sweet enough. They don’t need sugar.” Mac sat back and crossed his arms. “You, on the other hand, could use a bit of sugar.” He grinned. “Put a little meat on those bones.”

Jessi stared at Mac, her jaw slack. She could barely believe he’d said that.

The waitress stopped by their table with a smile. “The men over there…” Pausing, she pointed to Mac and Gareth. “…paid for your lunch
and
gave me a tip. Have a good day, ladies.” She leaned down and dropped the volume of her voice to a whisper. “They look like keepers to me. If I were you, I wouldn’t let them outta my sight.”

“You got that right, sister.” Kelly leaned close. “I don’t know about you, but I think I might have fallen in love in here.” She sighed. “The only problem with that is, I’m not sure which one I’ve fallen for—maybe both of them.” She rested her elbows on the table, putting her head in her hands.

“Both?” Jessi glanced at her best friend, knowing that she might have fallen a little in love herself. She only hoped that the men wouldn’t come between her and her best friend.

“Yeah. Both of the two dreamy ones with the dark brown hair.” She wrinkled her nose. “The other two look more
your
type. I know you lean toward guys who are a little more radical. That hair is radical, in my opinion.”

“Thank goodness!” Jessi rested her hand against the center of her chest. “I was afraid you were going to say Mac and Gareth.”

“Nope. Zach and Derek look more my speed,” Kelly said, her smile fading. “Now, our only problem is choosing between them. We’re trying to start a new life, not continue with the old one. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want guys all over calling us sluts.”

“I know.” Jessi bit her lip. “Maybe the best thing we can do for our future is to leave this place and not look back.” Her stomach clenched at the thought of leaving. The two of them glanced at the men and sighed.

“You’re right. I hate to say it, but we should probably go before we make a colossal mistake.” Kelly set her napkin on the table and stood, her expression haunted. “I feel as though I’m leaving someone very important to me. It’s almost like I’ve known them forever.”

“I know what you mean,” Jessi agreed as they headed for the door. It was almost as though someone had ripped her heart out, leaving a gaping wound in the center of her chest. “For some reason, leaving this town is the hardest thing I have ever decided to do.”

Gareth couldn’t believe it when the woman dressed as a devil, complete with horns, plopped down on his lap and wriggled around. She probably couldn’t figure out why he didn’t get a raging hard-on.

“Excuse me, miss.” He grasped her waist and lifted her off him as gently as he could. “But I
do
have a pressing matter to attend to.” He stood up before she could plop back down in his lap a second time. He didn’t want to be rude. In fact, he made it an unwritten rule never to treat women or children with anything but the utmost respect. All of their people felt that way, and most of them liked their women with lush curves. Thin women just didn’t turn him on. They never had.

The woman was attractive in her own way, but she didn’t have enough padding for him. Maybe their views on women were a throwback to times long past when a woman with a little extra flesh were deemed healthier and capable of caring for young better than a female who was thin and considered sickly.

He wasn’t sure what it was. Frankly, he didn’t give a damn. All he knew was the first woman he’d been attracted to in decades had just walked out the door. He’d be damned if he lost her now.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t mean to be rude, but we have to go.”

Zach and Derek were already halfway to the door. They
had
been a little rude when they stood and left without a word, but neither of them had a half-naked waif in their laps.

“Kelly, you must convince your friend not to leave,” Zach said as Gareth and Mac stepped out on to the sidewalk in front of the diner.

The stench of car exhaust and rotting garbage from the alleyway assaulted his senses and he wrinkled his nose. He would never understand the human need to have everything so spread out that they needed automobiles to take them everywhere.

Gareth loved living in the cascade. There were no cars. The people who lived out of town either walked or rode horses into the main hub. He looked around the small town and noticed that there were few residences. It was mostly businesses surrounded by a black sea of asphalt. The cascade was different, much different in appearance, only the residents seemed similar, other than half-turned shifters who lived there in a self-imposed exile, people like Mac and Zachary. Mac couldn’t transform his tail back into a small tailbone and Zach would forever have a paw where his hand should be.

They got a lucky break that the prince of their people had found another shifter community where he and his partner had found their mate. Like Jessi, she, too, had been human. Where Corbin found out about the continued practice to dress in costume on All-Hallows-Eve, they hatched a plan to send the people of the cascade out where they could go unnoticed as though wearing costumes. So far, it looked as though his half-baked plan to find a mate might just work.

“Zach is right,” Gareth said as he and Mac approached the foursome. “You can’t leave now. You should stay and enjoy the festivities.” According to the article he’d read when he did his research, this town celebrated Halloween for the entire month of October. They had to convince the women to stay in this town or they would lose their chance at courting them. They couldn’t follow them to another town until just before the end of the month.

Jessi turned to face them, her expression blank. “You guys are so full of crap. You can’t possibly think we believe you prefer
our
company to that.” She waved her arm toward the restaurant.

“Why not?” Mac asked as he stepped closer. The scowl on his face would have given any one of their people pause, but their mate just glared back at him, her eyes narrowed to mere slits.

“Because men like you four are rarely attracted top women like us.” She thinned her lips. “Unless you just think we’re easy and you’re only after sex.” She slapped her thigh. “See that? It’s not firm. It jiggles.”

“And?” Gareth asked as he moved up beside her, reaching out and splaying his fingers over one, gloriously full globe and squeezing her ass. “I like it.”

“Stop that!” Jessi slapped at his hand and moved away. “Everyone can see you. We’re in public, for God’s sake.”

“So what?” Mac asked with a raised brow. “We’re in a town that celebrates Halloween for a full month. Their women wear costumes so skimpy they should be illegal. I don’t think we’re going to shock anyone.”

“I don’t care.” She continued to scowl. “It shocks
me.
The last thing we need is for you guys to ruin our reputations here.”

“Sweetheart, your reputations are safe with us. I promise you that.”

“So now you’re saying you don’t want us?” She shook her head with obvious disgust. “Make up your minds, will you?” She glanced at her friend. “Come on, Kelly. We need to get back on the road.”

When she turned to walk away, Gareth reached out and grasped her arm. “You can’t go.”

“The hell I can’t.” She glanced at his hand on her arm. “Let me go or I’ll scream bloody murder. You’ll be arrested so fast your head will spin.”

Apparently, taking things slow was out of the question. He jerked her against him, palmed the back of her head and pressed his mouth against hers in a rough, but searing kiss. If one thing could get a mate’s attention, it was a kiss. At the very least, it would disorient her enough to get her attention.

At first, she stood stiff in his arms, her body rigid, her mouth closed. It wasn’t until after he pulled her close in his arms, pressed his body tight against hers, and his erection dug into the soft flesh of her lower belly that she finally responded.

Jessi finally opened her mouth, her tongue tangling with his. Her arms snaked around his neck, drawing him closer.

As much as Gareth wanted to deepen and continue their kiss, he knew it must end, at least for the time being. They had much to discuss. Jessi and her friend had a lot to learn about them before they took things any farther.

Jessi clung to the man as his mouth ravished hers. She couldn’t think beyond what the kiss had made her feel. She was no virgin. In fact, the idea was laughable after her youth, but she felt like one, standing in his arms with him kissing her like no other woman existed in the world.

Her head spun and her knees grew weak. She tightened her arms, drawing him closer, thrust her fingers through his hair and fisted her hands. His hair was as thick and soft as it looked.

She didn’t want the kiss to end, yet knew it must. She didn’t even know the man, and her days on one-night stands were long over. She never kissed a man on a first date, and this wasn’t even a first date. Whatever this was, it was much different, and she didn’t know what to do. This one kiss had broken every new rule she had.

Gareth reached up, gently untangled her fingers from his hair and stepped back to stare deep into her eyes. “We have to talk.” He glanced at Mac and his other friends. “We
all
need to talk. It won’t take long, and if you still feel the need to run afterward, none of us will stop you. We only ask that you hear us out.”

Jessi’s heart slipped into overdrive as she stared up at the four men that didn’t want them to leave. What did they want?

“Look,” she said as she stepped back and tested the grip he had on her arm. “I’m not sure who you guys think we are, but you’re making a horrible mistake.” She licked her lips and immediately knew she shouldn’t have when Gareth’s intense gaze shifted to her mouth. “We’re just two women from nowhere who want to make a new life for ourselves.”

She had wanted to do that for the last fifteen or so years. How did one outrun the bad reputation they’d made for themselves? They certainly couldn’t do it in their home town. Kelly had stayed in their home town and tried to live it down. Even after Jessi left, made a new life for herself, and returned, the old rumors and innuendo lifted their ugly heads and made themselves known once again.

They couldn’t outrun their impetuous youth as long as they stayed where people knew their pasts.

“Then, we can offer you just what you want.” Mac stepped forward, took her hand and lowered himself to one knee.

“Yes, we can,” Gareth agreed as he slid his hand down her arm, his fingers lacing with hers as he, too, lowered himself to one knee.

Jessi stared down at them, asking herself how many times she’d dreamed of having one man kneel before her like this and now she had two. “I don’t understand what you could possibly want from us.”

She glanced over at Kelly, surprised that the other two men had done the same. They knelt before her best friend, both of them staring up at her as though she hung the moon and stars.

How long had either of them waited to see any
one
man do this. Now, they stood in this strange, Halloween town with four men staring at them as though they were the only two women on the planet.

“Come with us to our room. We promise we won’t hurt you. We won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do and, if you still want to leave when we’re finished telling you what we need to say, you can go, and we won’t stop you.”

“Uh…” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I don’t know about you, Kelly, but I’ve stopped following strange men to their hotel rooms.”

“It’s tempting.” Kelly bit her lip. “You know how I feel about this, but you’re right. I’m not prepared to go to your rooms, nor am I prepared to take all of you to ours.”

Not that they had a room. They didn’t. In fact, they had only planned to stop for lunch.

“You could be anyone, anything. You could be axe murderers, for all we know.” Jessi stared down at the men kneeling before her, her arms tingling from the contact. Something told her that this could very well be the most important moment of her life. That was the main reason that she listened to her head this time, instead of her heart. If it was the most important moment, surely it meant that these men were up to no good.

“Telling you that we’re harmless wouldn’t help at all, would it?” one of the men asked Kelly.

Jessi still didn’t know which of them was Zach and which one was Derek. “First of all, knowing exactly who you guys are would help.”

“I’m Zachariah Webber.” One of the men stood before he bowed and kissed the back of Kelly’s hand. “And this is Derek Sorrelle,” he added as the other man who had latched onto Kelly stood and kissed the back of her other hand.

“I’m the handsome one in this group,” Derek said with a grin, revealing a dimple that Jessi knew Kelly would think was adorable. It was probably one of the reasons she liked him.

The two men who held Jessi’s hands stood and bowed over her hands at the same time. Each of them pressed a kiss to the back of the hand he held.

“We have already been introduced, but we’ll do so again.” Mac met her gaze. “I am Mackenzie Gardner.” He released her hand, reached back and pulled out his wallet. He opened it, revealing his driver’s license, pulled it from the pouch and handed it to her. “Give this to the desk clerk.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “Give the clerk my car keys. Gareth and I rode together. We can’t leave without them.” He glanced at Zech and Derek. “If you take their keys, as well, you’ll know we are stuck in this town with you.”

“Wait. You said that you have hotel rooms here.” Jessi took the license and the keys from the man. “You four don’t live here?”