Bullet

I caught movement and found Jade standing with Domino off to one side. She was looking away, down, her posture as if someone had struck her. Women weren’t my normal cup of tea, but I couldn’t regret anything I’d done with Jade. Even now I wanted to touch her, and I didn’t fight the urge. I just held out my hand and thought of the smell of her skin.

She smiled at me, and that one shy, pleased smile made it worth noticing her pain. She came to my hand and tucked herself in against me. In the heels I was enough taller that she was able to cuddle in against my shoulder the way I did to some men.

The look of disgust on the red tigress’s face made me smile. She didn’t like that I smiled at her. “I felt your power over the other tigers, but the red clan is made of sterner stuff.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“She’s Reba,” Victor said, “daughter of the Red Queen.”

“I expected your brother,” I said.

“Alex is out of the country on some journalist assignment. He’s catching a plane and disrupting all his plans because you and your master put out the call.” She made it sound ridiculous.

I looked at the men with her. One of them had long red hair spilling over his shoulders. It wasn’t as dark as Reba’s, though there was a touch of black to its edge. Hunter, that was his name, had hair the color they tell you is red in school. Again, humans didn’t have hair like that. His eyes were pure yellow and caught the candlelight as he looked at me. He raised his hand and gave a little wave and smile. I smiled back. I’d have rather had Alex, but I’d already slept with Hunter. He was one of the few in the room I could say that about.

“Don’t flirt with her,” Reba said, voice cutting like an angry whip across his smile. He stopped looking at me but said, “I thought that’s why we were here.”

“My mother made us come, but I’m the dominant red here, and that means if I say, no, it’s no.”

I hugged Jade and laid a soft kiss on her temple, then sent her back to Domino. I looked down at the weretiger in front of me. “I’ll be right back.”

I stepped out into the middle of the room, and I held my hand out. I understood now that it would have worked with everyone else I slept with in Vegas. I was ready for something a little less dramatic. “Hunter,” I said, “come to me.”

He smiled, and he started to do what I’d asked.

Reba told the other men to grab him. “Don’t let her bewitch him, too.”

My red tiger circled inside me, looking up, as if she’d have to climb to escape. She gave a low growl and sniffed the air. I echoed her and we both wanted the red tigers. We wanted people who smelled of home.

We, the tiger and I, looked at the other two men who had grabbed Hunter’s arms. They both had shorter hair. One had waves that promised if he’d grow it longer it would be like the other woman with her soft waves that fell around her shoulders. She and the first man had skin that was closer to human redheads, all peaches and cream, and the red of their hair held an orange undertone to it rather than a black. Their eyes were both nearly solid yellow. Siblings maybe, or close cousins, down to the similarity of bone structure that made their faces a little long through the cheeks. I realized that Hunter’s face had that shape, too, and his eyes were strongly yellow. How intermarried was everyone in their clan?

The second man had more difference to him. His hair was the palest red of all, falling around his ears in unruly curls and waves as if he were growing it out from the shorter haircut of the first man. Curly hair was always a bitch to grow out. There was always a stage where you couldn’t do anything with it. His eyes were gray with green in them if the light caught them right. Of them all I liked his face best. It was a little like trying to pick a kitten from a litter, except you aren’t trying to decide which kitten you’d like to have sex with—well, not unless something’s gone horribly wrong for both you and the kitten.

“You aren’t our master, Anita Blake. You can’t even make one of us cross this room to you. My mother sent us because all the other tigers urged her to, but she believes like I do that you are just another pretender to our throne.” She pointed a finger at the white tigers. “It’s your two males that are teaching our secrets to outsiders and giving her and her vampire master delusions of grandeur.”

“You have not tasted her power yet,” Victor said. “Taste it and then tell us that Crispin and Domino are still ours to command.”

I decided not to choose. I’d call whichever one wanted to come the most. I held my hand out and felt the red tiger swelling up around me like a red mist. “Red tigers, red tigers, come to me.” But it wasn’t the words that called them, it was the energy. Once I’d accidentally called every color of unmated male tiger in the country when Marmee Noir had been trying to make me her perfect vessel, but I’d learned to narrow my focus. I narrowed the power down to that handful of people standing there.

Hunter pulled free of the other two men, and they didn’t fight him. They just stood there, arms at their sides staring after him, at me.

“Hunter, no!” Reba yelled.

He ignored her and hurried to me. He took my hand in both of his and laid a kiss on it. He began to lay kisses up my arm, and at six feet he was tall enough that it was easier to drop to his knees to kiss his way up my lower arm than to bend over. Every kiss grew the energy between us, so that I saw a visual behind my eyes of little red sparks, as if every kiss warmed my skin. Sex didn’t make tiger energy grow stronger; that was my little extra, Jean-Claude’s ardeur, and my succubus.

The man with the pale red hair started across the room. Reba yelled, “Jared, come back here!”

Hunter had gotten to his feet so he could kiss up to my shoulder. He moved behind me, lifting my hair so he could kiss my neck. Jared touched my hand, and Hunter snarled at him over my shoulder, one arm around my waist drawing me in closer to his body. Jared dropped to his knees, which let me know that either Hunter was above him in the hierarchy of their clan, or Jared had already lost fights to him and didn’t want to try it again.

The red tiger might have tried to choose, but I understood now that I didn’t have to; we needed them all. “No fighting over me, Hunter; you know I share well.”

I almost felt him pouting for a moment, body tense, and then he let it go. Even his body relaxed. The red warmth spilled down my hand and helped me draw the other weretiger closer. Jared stayed on his knees as if he didn’t trust Hunter, but he kept my hand, rubbing his cheek against me, scent-marking me. The weight of Hunter at my back and Jared at my side helped spread that warm, red energy farther like a pool of water trickling closer, growing deeper.

The last man started toward me. Reba yelled, “No!” She had the other woman by the arm. She wasn’t letting her last tiger get away; she’d hold this one herself.

The man stopped, obviously torn.

Hunter bent over my neck and suddenly bit me. Not hard, not to hurt, but it tipped the energy closer to sex. He set his teeth in my neck until I made small noises. A hand began to slide up my leg, tracing the edge of my hose. Somewhere in all of it I’d closed my eyes, so that when a third pair of hands started up the other leg, I had to open my eyes to see the last weretiger on his knees beside Jared. His fingers played in the hollow of my thigh, just at the edge of the cloth of the thong. Either it was a way of teasing me, or he was waiting for permission to cross that last lacy barrier.

I felt the energy spike, red tiger, hot and angry, and it wasn’t us. Hunter stopped biting me to look across the room. Reba had a knife in her hand. The hem of her dress was still shifted so that I saw the thigh holster. She’d slashed the other woman’s face open and was holding her by her wrist while she bled. Reba turned her tiger eyes to me and roared, “You can’t have us!”