“You need to go now.” She pushed herself away from the dresser. His eyes narrowed at her sudden and brutally cold detachment as she scooped some folded clothes off the floor, pulled open the dresser drawer, and carefully placed them inside with the others.

“So it’s like that, is it?”

She glanced at him over her shoulder, “Like what?”

He shook his head, “You know, Sugar, if you wanna pretend what just happened didn’t…And that what we both felt, we didn’t. Well, that’s on you.”

The bedroom door opened as he headed out. “But we’ll both know that you’ll be lyin’ your pretty little ass off.”

Then he was gone. The door closing quietly behind him.

Angie glanced down at her hands. They were shaking. Badly. But not from fear. She didn’t fear the man. Not even close.

And for the first time ever, Angie regretted that she really hated being touched.

Chapter Five

Nik leaned against the kitchen counter. His arms crossed in front of him as he watched the food on his stove top bubble and cook. He could feel his face frowning. He’d let some woman make him frown. She also made him hard. Unbelievably, painfully, mind-alteringly hard. But the frowning definitely pissed him off more.

He didn’t let women get to him. Why should he? There were others. More than enough to keep a man damn happy without attaching himself to just one.

Known for their brutality and solitary ways, most tiger females and males spent little time together except for the occasional vicious mating.

But the Vorislavs weren’t raised like other tigers. Not with the father the good Lord cursed them with. The rest of his kin didn’t even call his daddy eccentric. They called him weird. The less friendly ones called him a freak. A freak among freaks. And he was Nik’s sperm donor.

Nik knew he should never come home from hunting and find his siblings sitting in his kitchen. Eating his food. Drinking his beer and coffee. And if they were, he shouldn’t let them live. But he did. The old man insisted on it since they were cubs. He wanted a family from the very beginning and he did everything necessary to ensure that. He prided himself on two things: surviving the Vietnam War and making sure that all his children were with the same female.

Nik understood the first. But the last boggled his mind. There were few, if any, tigers who only bred with one female in their lifetime. Most of the tiger families consisted of half sisters and brothers. But not his. And it wasn’t that his mother didn’t want other males. But if any got too close, his father made sure they never got too close to much of anything ever again.

Really, if you favored your balls, you kept away from “Vorislav’s female.” His poor mother’s nickname among the tiger community.

Nik didn’t hate his father. He simply didn’t understand him. And he definitely had no desire to be like him.True, he hadn’t yet had the desire to have any cubs of his own like Ban, but his sexual appetite was as healthy as any of his breed. So, to avoid the nightmare of dealing with a tiger female in heat, he spent his free time getting his itch scratched by other cats. Lion females were great because they only bred with their own kind. So, if they needed or wanted simple sexual gratification, they came to him. Same thing with leopards and jackals.

But he avoided humans like the plague. They could be as bad as wolves. Some were happy enough to bump from one bed to another. But others wanted to commit their lives to one person. Forever! Why the hell would anyone do that? Why the hell did his father?

No. He needed to stay away from Angelina Santiago. Far, far away.

Of course, not easy with her living in his house—even temporarily. And pushing through his kitchen door with that half-crazed look on her face, storming up to him, and grasping his T-shirt between those soft cool hands.

Yeah, a problem waiting to beat him over the head…again.

“Where is it?”

“Where’s what?” He wanted to pull her hands off his shirt, but if he touched her again…

“The TV. Where is it?”

“I don’t have one.”

“What do you mean you don’t have one?” Panic wafted off her in waves. “What grown man doesn’t have a TV?”

“One who likes to read instead.”

“Read?” He loved her face. Especially when she looked so beautifully perplexed.

“Yeah. I read. And I have a whole bunch of books you can borrow.”

Her face twisted in disgust, “What? I look like Miki to you?”

She released him and stormed back out.

He stared at the door she went through, “Who the hell is Miki?”

***

Growling in annoyance, Angie moved through Nik’s house. They were alone. His family members long gone. Just her, the hillbilly, and books. Books!

She shook her head and wandered into what she could only assume was the library and his office. One wall had a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Books filled it and he even had books on top of books. The other wall had a floor-to-ceiling case as well, this time filled with CDs and actual vinyl albums. As usual, she went straight for the music. He set up his music chronologically starting with stuff from the fifties. She frowned. Clearly a big Elvis fan.

“No TV. And Elvis. Could this get any scarier?” As she moved past the different decades, she finally hit the eighties and nineties, and smiled in relief. He had a nice selection of alternative music and a butt load of some great tech. He seemed to be quite the Lords of Acid fan. Considering their music usually had to do with fucking while being bound, she wondered briefly if he was a bit of a “kinkoid.” Into tying up girls and fucking them senseless.