Chapter 16

Parking garages smelled even worse as a full tiger, and the sour tang of Axel's nerves didn't help matters. Plus, the random echoing noise hurt my ears. I swiveled them around a bit in an attempt to shake it off.

Axel was having a conversation with some of Cunningham's security team about the night's details. The back gate of the trailer hadn't been opened yet, so I had nothing to do but sit there.

"You seem kind of nervous," said one of the security guys, in a tone that had my hackles up. Paranoia seemed to be the name of the game around here. "Everything okay? I'm going to need to take a quick look at your tiger."

Fuck. I rearranged myself into more of a springing position. Did they suspect something? Even without seeing them, I knew the security were shifters by their scents. Mostly coyotes. Not much of a threat, really, but if the shaman's magic failed, they'd smell me as quickly as any other kind of were. If I had to take them all out, I could, but then my plan would go to hell, and it'd be a race to find Raven and not get killed in the process.

"Sorry, yeah, this is a big night for me," Axel said, hardly missing a beat. Apparently I'd underestimated him. "Mr. Cunningham's really influential. You know that. It's a huge deal to be here. My tigers are rescues, so it's super important to me to be able to fund my nonprofit—"

"Great, that's cool," said another security guy dismissively. I flicked an ear, flexed a dinner-plate-sized paw, and mentally marked him for some biting if I had the chance. Axel's tigers were rescues? I really should've been nicer to the guy, starting with not getting him involved in this at all. "Let's see the tiger, huh? And get going, you're on in half an hour. Your people are already up there."

The gate rattled, Axel offered a few boilerplate warnings like "don't get your face bitten off," and I froze. What the hell did normal tigers do? Like most shifters, especially the predatory ones, I never went to zoos, and I'd never fucking interacted with actual tigers. Our scents freaked out the normal animals. Shit. Fuck. Be a tiger. Act casual.

I ended up flopping down on my side and half-lidding my eyes, leaving my claws partially out so as to project a hint of menace.

Three faces appeared in the gap at the top of the trailer door: Axel's, and two guys in suits with earpieces. They both sniffed the air, glanced around, and withdrew, apparently satisfied.

Well, give a point to the shaman and his piss-wax lump of awfulness.

Axel flashed me a nervous grin and opened the door the rest of the way.

"All right," he said, in a voice that might have been intended to sound soothing to tigers, or to sound to the security team like it was meant to sound soothing to tigers. My head hurt. "Let's get ready, hmm?"

He took a huge leather collar, a chain leash, and a whip from where they hung on the wall of the trailer.

"I'm so fucking sorry," he mouthed, barely audibly even to me. "The whip's for showmanship. The uh, collar. Please don't eat me?"

Shrugging felt odd in my tiger body, and it looked odd, too, by the puzzlement on Axel's face. I stood up, shook myself out, and blinked once, trying to indicate acceptance.

"Is that yes, you're okay with it, or yes, you're going to eat me?" Axel hissed.

Christ. I stared at him, trying to telepathically communicate that he needed to ask a fucking yes or no question.

"Crap," he said, comprehension dawning. "Um. Are you going to eat me?"

I blinked twice, and he slumped a bit, nodded, and got the collar on me with a minimum of fuss.

Raven , I repeated to myself. This is for Raven .

Stalking past the security guys without taking a limb or two required all my self-control. Two of them took point, and two more fell in behind at a respectful distance. Axel stayed close to me, looping up enough of the leash to be only a couple of feet from my head. Did he show that much trust with his actual tigers? Would anyone notice a difference? But no one challenged us as I padded into a service elevator, sat quietly at a word from Axel while the display on the panel ticked from G all the way to PH, and then padded out again into a utilitarian hallway.

We went a couple dozen yards along, the sound of a party starting to grow in volume from a faint, distant murmur to distinct chatter, clinking dishes, and music—some super pretentious-sounding jazz. Of course, all jazz ranged from pretentious to unbearable, until it got smoky vocals, and then it turned into dancing and/or sex music, but this shit was bad enough to make me flatten my ears.

"I'll go check on how it's going out there," one security guy said, and pushed his way through a swinging door. "I think they're almost ready for you."

The other who'd been in front of us went a few more feet down the hall and ushered us through another door. That led to a green room of sorts, with a couch and some bottled water. "We installed a ring for the tiger's leash, right there. And the sound guy's coming to mic you," he said, and left.

The sound guy came in and they fiddled with Axel's lapels. So as not to freak out the tech, I lay down meekly in the corner next to the metal ring they'd bolted to the wall, and I indulged in some silent panic.

They're almost ready .

Maybe they were, but not me. My heartbeat juddered down to the tips of the pads of my toes. A tiger's resting heart rate was about the same as a human's, and this felt at least twice as fast as that.

More than a year of stripping in front of an audience dozens of times a week, and my paws seemed to have riveted themselves to the floor with the worst case of stage fright I'd ever imagined, let alone experienced. Stage fright, shyness, and anxiety in general had never been a problem for me.

Until now.

Fuck. I had no idea what I was doing. And if I screwed up, Raven could pay the price for my stupidity. Again. What I was supposed to do, or look like, or…

"Come on, it's showtime," said a pleasant voice, pitched remarkably well to be soothing to tigers when necessary, it turned out. "You'll be awesome."

Axel, being a bro. And then he put his hand on my shoulder for a second, and it probably looked like a pet to anyone watching, but it felt more like the type of bracing pat a buddy might give you before you went to rip your pants off for a bachelorette party.

Deep breath. I could do this.

We left our little green room and then into the same door the first guy had gone through.

As the door swung open, I could've sworn I caught a faint, curling tendril of Raven's scent. It floated, delicate and haunting, over the heavier reek of alcohol and shrimp and steak and the perfumes and colognes of a whole mass of rich people sweating in their evening clothes.

It didn't exactly calm me down, but it focused me.

Honed me. Sharpened my senses and my resolve.

First I had to see him. I had to know he was all right, present and accounted for. Then…then I'd wait for the right opportunity to grab him and get the hell out of there.

Axel adjusted his grip on the whip, holding it at a more theatrical angle, and led the way through another service area, with gawking tuxedoed waiters pressing themselves against walls as far from me as they could manage. Then we were walking through a much nicer set of doors and into a full-size freaking ballroom, of all the things to have in the penthouse of a hotel.

The near end of the huge room held round dining tables half full of guests sitting and lingering over coffee, eyes and jewelry glittering in the subtle shaded lighting in the centers of the tables and the chandeliers above. We went right through, close enough to people's chairs that there were some oohs and aahs and discreet, ladylike shrieks of terror as I padded by. Axel bowed and smiled, working the crowd.

Up ahead, a double rank of seats ringed a large dance floor, and those were packed with Cunningham's friends or business associates or maybe people he fucking hated, all in evening clothes holding glasses of champagne. Behind them were cocktail tables with more guests at them.

So many fucking people. Christ. So many potential witnesses, so much potential for collateral damage.

The dance floor had—oh, fuck me, a couple of those gods-damned round platform things like at circuses, and a trio of giant rings, all supervised by three guys in spandex and capes, clearly Axel's team. Colored spotlights whirled. Someone with a microphone announced Axel and me, giving a spiel about Cunningham's support of good causes like tiger rescues.

But none of that was important. None of it mattered.

Because at the other end of the dance floor, seated next to Cunningham on a fancy settee thing at the edge of the low band platform, was Raven.

Even though colors weren't really the most important part of a tiger's vision, and even though Raven's white skin and black hair and black clothes should have had him fading into the background, he dazzled me, like stepping into the technicolor Land of Oz after spending my whole life in a gloomy, muted nightmare world. His tux had cropped trousers, showing off strappy stiletto sandals on those elegant feet, and instead of a bow tie he had some kind of silky white scarf that dipped down to show the soft hollow between his collar bones. A severe bun with a pair of chopsticks stuck through it at precise angles confined his mass of hair.

Every detail of him imprinted itself on my retinas. And as he glanced to the side, as one of his fingers twitched, as he shifted his foot, I caught it all, my tiger eyes attuned to the faintest movement of the prey I hunted.

Raven. Alive, and mostly well. Enough to sit up and be on display for Cunningham's world to stare at, anyway.

Until this moment, I hadn't quite been able to let go of my fear that it'd be otherwise.

Relief rushed through me dizzyingly, leaving me aching with determination. I'd keep my cool and keep my cover. I'd wait for my moment. And I'd seize it when it came along.

I stared at Raven and Cunningham while the announcer wound himself up to a crescendo. They sat close together, and as I watched, Cunningham put his hand on Raven's thigh.

Raven's leg tensed up. Tigers really could see the most minute movements even at a distance, and I saw Cunningham's fingers dig in slightly in response, even though his bland smile didn't waver.

In person, he projected an aura of violence that his photos hadn't captured, closely-cropped graying hair and narrow-set eyes giving him a look that blended middle-aged executive with contract killer. His tux had to have cost more than my car, maybe by a factor of three. The alpha-magic smell of him twined with Raven's honeysuckle and lemon, wrapping around and choking it like invasive vines, the combination nauseatingly vile.

Raven's pale, blank mask was clearly meant to give nothing away.

But to me…

…Cunningham's mouth open in a shriek of terror, claws sprouting too late to defend himself from my rending fangs…

Axel's hand landed on my shoulder again, this time with a lot more force.

I started, stilled, and forced myself to stop growling.

"Easy," he said, low-voiced but high-pitched with worry. Shit. "Easy. Please?"

And then we were walking into the center of the ring.

Raven hovered in my peripheral vision, always and forever the focus of my attention, but I forced myself to tune in to Axel's commands.

The performance space had been set up kind of like an obstacle course, I realized, with platforms and rings alternating around in a circle. The last ring had…oh, for fuck's sake. Little jets that would spout flame, no doubt at a dramatic moment before I jumped through it. There didn't seem to be a good way to communicate "if my whiskers get singed, I'll sue you and then gnaw the arms off your lawyer" with blinks and paw taps, so I settled for a speaking glance up at Axel, who paled slightly under his bronzer.

He recovered instantly, launching into his patter, voice rolling out of the sound system with surprising force given how tentatively he'd spoken to me so far.

"And now, this ferocious ruler of the jungle will show you how elegantly he can entertain you, ladies and gentlemen…"

He waved his whip at the first round platform, a drum roll sounding out of the speakers. And it was surprisingly less humiliating than I'd expected. It simply felt unbearably stupid. When I glittered up and pasted on a lecherous grin and shook my package at the crowd in my human shape, that was also stupid, and it didn't humiliate me because it wasn't really me .

All of a sudden, everything fell into place.

I tossed my head, my fur rippling, and pulled my lips back in enough of a snarl to display my fangs to the awed crowd without making them think I was about to go for someone's jugular. Meanwhile, I paced forward, paws in a precise line, the very picture of prowling, feline grace. This wasn't any different than the choreography I used on stage at Lucky or Knot. I could do this.

Wild applause greeted my leap onto the platform, the size of which required me to put all four of my paws fairly close together. Rearing up onto my hind legs and doing a bit of a dance tempted my shitty sense of humor, but I remembered just in time that a lot of people would probably die tonight if I outed myself as a shifter.

But then I made the mistake of giving in to Raven's irresistible pull, glancing up at the band platform as I landed on my own.

Our eyes met, his jet black and mine golden-orange streaked with brown—the same color as in my human body, although they were a different shape and size in this one, and the shaman's spell had suppressed my alpha glow.

Raven's eyes. Gods, and his scent, a thread of it teasing at my nose even through the huge ballroom's currents of air conditioning and people's movements, unmistakable even tainted with Cunningham's reek and filtered through all the other smells generated by a crowd.

For a crucial instant, my knees went weak. One paw slipped off the edge of the platform, and my reflexes compensated in the nick of time, my stumble lasting only a fraction of a second.

It was enough. As I perched neatly, wrapping my tail primly around my paws, I saw the minute change pass over Raven's face, there and gone again. A widening of the eyes, a slight part to those plush lips, before he pulled himself back together and went neutral.

But his eyes blazed.

And he knew .

If I'd been equipped for it in my current body, I'd have laughed. Normal animals didn't get as large as my shifted form, and I had—I'd have really, really liked to think, anyway—more intelligence in my eyes than the average tiger. Besides, Raven had spent two nights with me, in my arms, with me in him. Cried on me. Told me some of his secrets, trusted me, learned more about me than most people did, to be honest, because I tended to keep it pretty surface-level. It would've been nice to believe that he'd recognize me in any shape, as I'd have known him anywhere and in any guise.

But it had to be my clumsiness that clued him in, not any of that. Of course it did.

Humiliating as that might be, to be recognized by the most graceful and seductive person I'd ever met primarily for my lack of those qualities…thank the gods. Because making myself known to Raven without tipping anyone else off had been one of the night's biggest hurdles, and that had now been accomplished.

The rest of the performance went smoothly, because Axel announced each upcoming trick to the audience right before his gestures and commands that would've been an actual tiger's cues. Even jumping through the flaming hoop went well, and I landed on the final tiny platform without toppling over onto my back with my dick waving in the air. Small victories.

Some cymbals clashed, everyone applauded, and the announcer informed everyone that the show would go on after a fifteen-minute intermission.

Axel led me out the way we'd come in, and fuck, fuck, Raven was right there. I couldn't catch his eye again, and if I tried too hard it'd be obvious. Fifteen minutes. I had fifteen minutes to figure out what to do next.

Worst case, I'd take on my half-shifted form, charge the band platform, and carry Raven away by main force. He'd have the coin with him; I didn't even have to wonder. That was part of his fae nature.

We could fight our way out. Surprise would give me an advantage. I had to believe that. Get down the emergency stairs that the concierge girl had told me how to find, which would take a while given we were sixty floors up, but I could move faster than nearly anyone. Jump in the car Sean would have left for me, and get to Louie to hopefully complete the mirror-image deal.

That had sounded simple last night when I'd cooked it up. Now, as I followed Axel back through the catering area, it seemed impossible.

Gods. How stupid could one tiger be? I seemed determined to push the limits.

As soon as the green room door shut behind us, Axel collapsed into a chair, sucking in heaving breaths and wiping sweat from his temples—carefully, so as not to disturb his makeup.

"Oh, God," he whispered. "God. You were great, by the—oh no," he said, going greenish white. "Don't eat me! I didn't mean to use that word!"

For fuck's sake. I rolled my eyes, the only reaction available to me in this body. I could shift to human and try to verbally reassure him, but I had no idea who might walk in any second. And shit, there were probably…I glanced around, pretending to yawn, because a circus tiger looking for security cameras wouldn't be fucking suspicious or anything. Yep, there it was up in the corner of the ceiling. Hopefully no one thought too much of Axel talking to me like he had been a second ago. On second thought, no. A guy like Axel, with his rhinestone-encrusted white suit and his semi-tame tiger, could probably get away with nearly any eccentricity without raising any eyebrows.

In lieu of any better response to Axel's worry, I lay down on the floor, as nonthreatening as seven hundred pounds of muscle and claws and desperation could be.

Axel's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed convulsively. Not very nonthreatening, then. He sucked down most of a bottle of water and leaned back to rest.

And then jumped halfway out of his chair as a firm knock sounded on the door. I tensed up too, hopefully ready for anything.

"Come in," Axel called shakily.

The door opened to admit one of the more senior security guys, at least going by his particularly sour expression and his fortyish face and hair. I let my eyes drift halfway shut.

"Mr. Cunningham's companion wants to meet the tiger," he said. "You'll need to restrain it."

Mr. Cunningham's companion . A jolt like an electric shock ran through me, and it took everything I had to stay still, to pretend like I hadn't understood, like I wasn't trembling with eagerness. Raven, gods, clever Raven, who'd probably sweet-talked Cunningham with any number of promises that I'd rather die than let him fulfill in order to be allowed this indulgence.

But he wouldn't have to. I'd get him out before that.

Axel stood up, and his glance at me spoke volumes. I waited. He waited. Come on, come on …it twigged at last, that while I'd understood what the guy wanted, I couldn't admit it. He picked up my leash, snapped his fingers, and tugged gently, and I did my best to act like a tiger responding to a trainer, ambling the few steps over to the ring in the wall and sitting politely while Axel secured my collar by a short length of chain.

The guy nodded and withdrew.

"I'm sorry," Axel whispered. Had he really not noticed the camera? Fuck it, a guy like him would totally apologize to a tiger. I'd bet he watched TV on an extra-large couch with his actual tigers and apologized when they didn't like his choice of movie.

Axel stood next to me, his hand on my shoulder, probably trying to make us look totally safe to be around.

The security guy stepped in again, nodded his satisfaction, and held the door all the way open.

A waft of mouthwatering scent preceded Raven's entrance into the green room, and then he was there, close enough to reach out and touch. Cunningham's nasty odor clung to him, but I could erase that within seconds, holding him, kissing him, stripping him bare, sitting him on my cock and stuffing him with my come and then plugging him with my knot.

Flexing my claws did absolutely nothing to relieve the strain of staying still. And thank the gods I'd sat down with my front legs positioned just so. No bodyguard, no matter how well trained to ignore the weirdnesses and vagaries of rich people and their entertainers, would be able to overlook the trained tiger's massive erection.

Raven's gaze flickered over me and Axel. His lip curled slightly, and a dangerous gleam sparked in his eyes.

"Leave," he said imperiously, without specifying who he meant.

"Mr. Cunningham's not going to like it if I let you get hurt," the bodyguard said, but he looked like he'd only take a little convincing. Maybe he'd seen Raven use his magic and felt stuck between a rock and a hard place, his employer's cruelty to Raven and Raven's powers and anger, which were as precariously leashed as my enormous tiger's body.

But then Axel chimed in with, "I can't leave my tigers alone with anyone. It's not safe for you, or for them. I'm really sorry, sir."

Fuck, fuck…if Axel stuck to this principle of his, I was so screwed. Although there was still that camera, too. My mind flailed around in a circle, basically chasing its tail. And I had no one to blame but myself. My plan had been sketchy as hell to start with. And Axel had no idea that getting myself alone with Raven had been the entire goal of the exercise. He was fucking me over completely in his attempt to help me stay under the radar.

"Both of you," Raven said, and this time the faint, stern impatience in his tone had even my spine straightening. "I'm not human, those rules don't apply to me. The tiger won't hurt me, and I certainly wouldn't harm a dumb beast."

Dumb beast? Christ. When I'd gotten him out of here, and gotten him free, we'd be having a conversation about his sense of humor.

Very lightly, praying that it didn't look weird to the security guy, I shifted my shoulder under Axel's hand. And then I deliberately lifted one paw, let it hover, and set it down again.

Yes. Please take a fucking hint. Yes.

"Oh," Axel said, and cleared his throat. " Oh . Yeah, you're fae, maybe? You're good with animals, right? Maybe I can make an exception?"

I lifted my paw again, held it, and set it down.

Raven raised an eyebrow, clearly catching on. The bodyguard just looked bored.

"Thank you," Raven said, and sauntered farther into the room. "That's all."

The bodyguard held the door for Axel, who hesitated, mumbled a few more words of warning, shot me a look somewhere between confusion and apology, and scuttled out. The guard followed and shut the door.

And Raven and I were alone.