Just feeling him push his way inside me made me cry out. I was writhing and making small eager whimpering sounds before he got himself as tight inside me as he could go. There were inches left outside my body, but we’d learned that I wasn’t deep enough to hold all of him. He was growling and making frustrated noises as he fought to get enough room to thrust the way he wanted to. He pulled himself out of me, flipped me over onto my stomach on the floor, and was on top of me before I could decide if it was a good idea.

He pushed inside me and pulled my hips up so that I was on all fours for him as he began to push himself in and out, in and out. I felt that warm pressure begin to build deep in my body where he was rubbing himself over and over inside me. I did what I usually did, and said, “I’m close.”

The only answer I got was a deep, rumbling growl that almost didn’t sound like Micah in any form. I looked back over my shoulder, trying to see him, and found that his chartreuse eyes were gone, and I was looking into the fire-colored eyes of the black tiger he’d turned into only once before. I had a second to wonder if it was like any new beast form, harder to control at the beginning, and what that might mean if he shifted now, and then he picked up his rhythm so it was fast, and faster, thrusting all that hard, eager thickness deep within my body, so that he brought me screaming, but he didn’t stop. He pounded himself into me while I screamed orgasm after orgasm. I wasn’t sure if I let the ardeur go or if it rose on its own, as if the orgasm had made me lose control of more than just my pleasure. Always before Micah could keep me from feeding on him until he orgasmed—that brought all his barriers down—but when I reached out to feed this time he was just there, ready, eager to give it up, to give it all up. I had a second to feel how tired he was and how much he needed to let it go, and then the ardeur spilled up and over, and through us both. Micah thrust inside me and we both screamed our pleasure, as I drank him down everywhere his skin touched mine. His scream went from human to leopard, as his body gave one last thrust. I felt him go inside me, and we cried out together, but this time his scream was a lower, deeper, bass sound that I’d never heard from him. I felt the rush of heat just before his body shifted and then liquid hot as blood ran down the back of my body, but only where he touched me, so much neater than Domino had been.

The new form was like a reset and he was suddenly hard and impossibly big inside me. It was still black furred arms that reached for my shoulder, but the arms, like other parts of his body, seemed bigger. Claws dug in to hold me in place as he thrust one last time, so deep inside me that it was just this side of too much, just this side of pain, but it was the kind of pain you’d sell your soul for just one more time.

Blood began to ooze down my shoulder as the claws tightened and his body convulsed inside mine. He gave another coughing scream, and I knew before I looked back over my shoulder that it would be the tiger with fire-colored eyes that was pouring himself thick and hot inside me.

48

I HEARD THE door open behind us but couldn’t see anything but the change of light behind the tigerman’s body. I called out, “It’s Micah, he’s all right, I’m safe.” I trusted Micah, I did, I did, damn it.

“Holy shit!” A man’s voice from the door.

The tiger snarled over its shoulder, its claws digging in a little more, so that blood trickled faster from the points of its claws in my skin.

Rafael spoke from the bed. “Do not startle him.”

“Us, startle him?” I could see Benito now as he moved farther into the room so he could see me around the tiger’s body, so if he had to shoot the bullet wouldn’t go through the weretiger and into me.

“It’s Micah, he has two forms now,” Bram said; I knew his voice without seeing him.

“That’s not possible,” Benito said.

Rafael said, “I saw him change form; it is Micah. I don’t know how it is possible, but it is him.”

I looked at the floor, where my blood was starting to form tiny drop patterns. “Micah . . .” But the growl came again, and this time he leaned over me, nuzzling me, pressing his face into my hair, until I could feel the hard push of his muzzle against the back of my neck. Male cats often bite the back of their mate’s neck during sex, but if what I was feeling bit the back of my human neck I was gone, or crippled for life, unless I could heal it.

Bram stepped wide around us, hands held out so that his gun was pointed at the ceiling. “Micah, Nimir-Raj, can you hear me? I am one of your leopards.”

His breath was hot as he huffed into my hair, but he wasn’t just getting my scent; I was getting his and my black tiger snarled inside me, awake and pissed. We didn’t like the claws in our shoulder, not one bit.

“Run, get Jade, bring her here, now!” Bram said. I heard someone running away, and Benito was still in the room, so there were more guards in the hallway.

“Micah,” Rafael said, “say something, let us know you understand us and that you are not going to hurt Anita.”

The tiger leaned back from my hair. I felt a tension ease from the muscles in his arms, and the claws in my shoulder eased. “I’m here. I’m here,” he said in a voice that was lower and deeper, coming from the chest of the tiger, bigger than even his leopardman form could boast.

Benito spoke, “My king, move to me, you do not need to be here.”

“Is that right, Micah, are you a danger to us?”

“I am aware, but I am having some issues regaining full control,” the tigerman said; for some reason I couldn’t think of him as Micah the way I did his panther form.